How Unity started my amazing career

When I picked up Unity, in if I can recall correctly 2012, I was on my way to drop out of my poli sci major.
My family couldn't afford to pay for my last year so I lost interest in school for the most part.
I spent tons of time working on little prototypes, I made a little beat box, that even though I never got it to work right( maybe I'll take another shot since I'm much better programer now ) gave me tons of experience.

Laying on my sisters coach I had little direction in life, I knew I wanted to keep learning, keep making games. So on Craigslist I saw an add for a Junior JS role. Cool, I was working with Unity Script for about 6 months, I could totally write enough JavaScript to get this job.

Went into the interview, this was in 2013, and I was hired on the spot. This exact job didn't work out, but a few months later I had my first Salary job( QA) . For 2 years or so I worked as much as I could, I kept working on my games, I learned Node JS. When I interviewed for my next job I was honestly full of doubt, this would be a much higher paying gig, but I had one thing on my side, they used Unity. During the interview my code actually failed due to API depreciation, my interviewer laughed it off , saying it happened to them all the time.

After that position I found a QA Automation job and that's now my field. Through self learning, and a large bit of luck( and TONS of help from these forums, StackOverflow is very hostile to newbies , this community welcomes them with open arms) I now have a six figure job. I don't work in games, but I have an AMAZING career and it's ALL thanks to Unity.

The best part is I find Unity has just gotten better. It's even easier to get started now. And as a challenge to myself I'm finishing my degree this month. I'd like to thank the hard worker developers who have brought game design to the masses, and more so I'd like to thank each and everyone of you. Here a 20 year game dev vet and a 20 year old can chat about the best way to use APIs.

So for me the story starts again. I'm a bit busier now , but I'm not doing much this weekend, so why not knock out a prototype

Edit : A big shout out to
MaDDoX

When I knew NOTHING he went above and beyond as an asset author to help me get things working.

 

Nice story! Thank you for sharing.

 

That's really awesome, wish you luck.

I can relate, they're like "Shut up, this question is already posted so get lost" or something like "If you could be a little more clearer then we might be able to help you" or "Read the rules before posting, fool" Not literally but figuratively.

 

I mean, those are all pretty legit reasons and are all things that happen here every day.

• It's a common question you can find the answer to on google in 3 seconds.
• The question is too vague, doesn't provide any code/context or is too non-specific/ambiguous to answer properly.
• Breaks the rules, like double posting, not using code tags, includes copyrighted code, etc..

Low effort posts are not something that instill a desire to help someone. At the very best, the person can make a poor quality post but seem to be genuine enough to merit you trying to help them because they are not morons looking for free solutions.

Most people here are really helpful and there aren't super strict rules about post content. I try to be helpful when I can, but often find that the person asking some question is totally clueless and over their head so I just point them to the getting started section with tutorials that they need to go over and they often don't take it so well.

 

This is fantastic to hear.

One thing I would say... you attribute it as being "all thanks to Unity". While they certainly helped out I feel that you should own most of the credit yourself. You actively learned, you deliberately pushed yourself, you put yourself out there, you took risks. Unity may have helped you get started, and it's great to see you acknowledge that, but the rest was all you, and you should acknowledge that too.



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I think that this ...

... is spot on.

I know it doesn't seem that way to a newbie. I honestly do. I also know that some people can be incredibly rude when pointing these things out, and I 100% agree that it's poor form and shouldn't happen. Still, there are underlying reasons behind some of the blunt responses you get, which might be more understandable if you see things from the other person's perspective. So... consider.

You're talking to other human beings, many of whom have put huge amounts of time and effort and practice into learning the things you're asking about. You're asking them to now spend some time and effort on you. They all have limited time in which to help people, and in spending that time on you they're then not spending it on someone else.

In that context, lets examine each of these:

The point of knowledge repositories (answers sites, forums, FAQs and so on) is that a question can be answered once and then used by many people. The benefit of that is that people who know the answers can spend their time helping with less common, more difficult, or unusual questions, or with people who genuinely need personalised assistance for some reason.

So, when you re-ask a question that's already been answered in public people see that as wasting their time. You could have asked Google, but instead you decided to ask a human to spend time repeating the answer for you. It would also clog their repository with lots of slightly different versions of the same information, which makes searching harder for future visitors.

In short, there are good reasons for some communities to want to avoid duplicate questions/answers.

While I see why this one is frustrating, this is said by people who genuinely want to help.

The thing is that we're not mind readers, and we can't see what's going on inside your computer. We can't suggest a solution until we know what the problem is and can figure out some likely causes. We're often asked things that are about as descriptive as "X doesn't work. How do I fix it?"

Now, assuming you know a little about cars... if someone rings you and just says "Hey, my car won't start", what do you do? You can't jump straight to a solution without knowing more. So you're probably going to ask a question like "Ok, what happens when you turn the key?" You're not being a jerk, you're probing for information so that you can help them solve the problem.

People online asking for more information are doing exactly the same thing.

Well, the rules exist for a reason. Broadly speaking, they exist to help things run smoothly and efficiently.

Keep in mind that you're entering someone else's community with the hope that someone there will spend their time and effort trying to help you. If the first thing you do is break their rules that's not an awesome impression, and doesn't exactly inspire them to want to help you. There's also a bit of a respect thing going on there - you want them to spend time helping you, but you either couldn't even be bothered reading their rules, or chose to ignore them. If someone enters your home or business and messes with how you do things how does that make you feel? The same applies here.

(Have you seen Dr Strange? As an outside viewer it's pretty obvious to us that he's being a bit of a jerk when he first meets the monks, especially the part where he ignores the advice of the guy making the introduction and assumes he knows how to behave. He wants help from those people but couldn't be bothered even trying to understand them. Don't be that person.)

Furthermore, while they might be helping you directly, people helping out online generally do it out of a community spirit. They're doing it in part so that others with a similar problem later can also get a solution (ie: see the first point), and so that others can generally learn from it. If you mess things up by not following the rules then you make both of those things harder, which devalues the effort anyone puts in for anyone other than yourself.


Now, as I've said, none of this excuses rudeness. But I do hope that seeing the other side of things helps you to realise that it's not all rudeness, and that some of the responses you get are in fact genuine attempts to be helpful.