IGDA-F Alumni Weekend, July 2024
13 min read
So you got into the industry. Now what?
I want to start by acknowledging the current state of the industry. It’s an incredibly rough environment right now, especially for those looking to break in and those affected by layoffs due to no fault of their own.
This has had an industry-wide impact. Teams have to do more work with less people. Juniors are under a lot of pressure to perform and often take on a lot of tasks beyond their initial scope.
This essay is intended as a sum of my own experiences as a young UX designer in the games industry.
If you’re a junior—or have ever been one—I’m sure you’ve encountered something similar to what I’m about to describe.
It began after the first few months.
I had met everyone and settled in fine. I was, by all accounts, having a great time.
Then, without realising how or why, I started feeling like I had hit a plateau.
A lot of self-doubt started to seep in, seemingly out of nowhere.
Much of this anxiety could be distilled into seven questions:
What goals should I be setting?
The seniors are kind of scary and intimidating… How do I reach out to them without bothering them?
Am I being a burden? Am I being annoying?
Am I doing ok?
Should I be doing more? (and what should I be doing??)
How could I be doing better?
Is the goal-setting stuff specific to my company? Should I be thinking about my own career and personal development through a different, wider lens?
A lot of these thoughts can be summed up into two words: impostor syndrome. (Perfectionism too, if you want to add a third).
So what do you do?
It never really goes away for some people (or, more accurately, it comes and it goes).
The good news is that many others have the same problem—you can talk with them to vote out the real impostor. Sorry for the bad among us joke.
Let’s address each question:
Am I doing ok?
You’re probably doing just fine. But if you want more detailed information, the best way to know if you’re doing well — or just OK — is to ask someone.
This is obviously easier said than done, especially if you’re not super close to your manager.
If that’s the case, then ask your teammates and other people you work directly with.
If you’re comfortable with working and talking openly with them, your coworkers the best people to ask — given that they have hands-on experience working with you.
I’d recommend waiting at least three or four months after your start date before you ask for feedback, so that they have some kind of frame of reference.
This is also where mentorship comes in.
I’m very aware that mentorship is a buzzword.
Maybe your company already has established mentorship programmes — but I’d urge you to challenge yourself and go out there to find mentors outside your direct company.
Make sure your mentor is in the same field and profession as you.
They’ll be best suited to understand how you’re doing and give you a hopefully impartial, unbiased third-party perspective on things you might not be so sure about.
The other hidden benefit of getting a mentor outside your company is that it requires you to network a bit, and building up your network is never a bad thing.
Some people recommend that you have frequent recurring meetings with your mentors.
I don’t necessarily think that’s true or the most effective; ultimately it depends on the dynamic, relationship, and schedules that both of you have.
What might work for a mid-level mentor might not work for a super senior mentor who has meetings every day and can only meet once every two months. Most importantly, if you just don’t super vibe with someone, you don’t have to continue.
Ok, so how do you get a mentor?
It turns out that once you get into the industry, it’s a lot easier to reach out to others who are also in the industry.
I’d recommend the usual channels — Twitter, LinkedIn, Discord servers (which I’ll go into more detail about later), but also ADPList if you’re in roles that also exist in the wider tech industry, like product management, UX design, and so on.
Having tried all of these multiple times, I’ve personally found Twitter to be the most effective. If there’s someone that you’ve looked up to for a long time, let them know (obviously mileage may vary, don’t be annoying).
When you’ve hopefully found someone, what do you even talk about with them?
This leads to a few other questions — which includes maybe the most difficult one.
How could I be doing better?
Your company probably already has some kind of goal-setting format that you have to follow. This may or may not be aligned to your company’s job ladder competencies.
As someone earlier on in their career, I think it’s often difficult to separate the idea of goal-setting from “what do I have to do to get a promotion?”
It’s always worth talking with your manager and mentor on how you can more effectively set goals, but thinking in the long term and working backwards is something that’s helped me a lot.
Who do you want to be in 30 years? How do you get there? What do you prioritise?
To get to that place, where would you need to be in 10 years? 5?
Of course, this isn’t set in stone. A lot can change in a few years. But thinking along this framework can help give you more structure in your day to day work as well as the way you think about your career, rather than stressing over “how do I speedrun a promotion?”
For me, I think I’d like to be a Creative Director in 30 years. It's still really scary for me to write that out. I think that’s how you know it’s real — it’ll feel scary and out of reach, and near impossible currently.
For that to happen, I know I need to get really good at communicating with people — not just other designers, but also producers, project managers, engineers, and artists.
More specifically, I need to get really good at communicating my vision to a lot of people without leaving out the important parts.
That means I need to practise giving recaps, talking concisely, and checking in with people after key meetings. It’s hard to get buy-in if people don’t fully understand what you’re talking about.
I also need to get better at being decisive. Creative directors have to be opinionated while being able to pivot quickly. I need to be able to propose strong, well-thought out ideas knowing that I need to make compromises and change things down the line.
In terms of hard skills, I also need a lot of knowledge about different aspects of art and design. It would probably also help if I got a better understanding of how implementation works too.
So that's a lot of software, tools, and context already that are up next on my career path. I’m not the greatest at After Effects, Origami Studio, or JavaScript right now, but there’s plenty of time for me to get better at those in the next 30 years.
Ultimately — and this could be a hot take — but it’s not about your current job.
Sure, if your goal is getting a promotion, then there’s definitely ways you can optimise — and I’ll get into those later — but at the end of the day, a job is a job.
You’re still going to be a person that people have to interact with 10 or 30 years from now, no matter what role or industry you end up in.
It sounds a bit cringy, but use your goals as an opportunity to improve who you are as a person, rather than solely who you are as a worker. Above all, make sure you focus on making yourself a person who people like being around.
Let’s talk a bit more about the development part of personal development.
We might get swept up in learning tools for everyday work — whether it’s Figma, Jira, Unreal Engine, or 3D modelling software — but remember that those aren’t necessarily all there is to the job.
The intangibles of craft are just as important as the tangibles.
These are things like knowing how to document your work efficiently for handoff — that might differ depending on the specific engineers who you’re working with, and better understanding their quirks and context is important; or knowing which parts of your work can be negotiated; or fully understanding where your role fits in the larger pipeline of game development within your current studio or company.
For me, the best way has been blocking off a chunk of time (could be Friday mornings every week) to try things out, stay updated with new developments in my industry, or straight up trying to learn something new — even (and especially if) it’s completely unrelated to my role, like 3D or animation software.
I’d also recommend checking if there are Slack channels in your company for learning a particular software, or a book club. It definitely helps if you have accountability buddies.
I’ve found that the most random tidbits of knowledge and context can be immensely useful at the most unexpected times.
For me, I learned a lot of HTML, CSS and a bit of JavaScript growing up and coding my own website themes on Tumblr. This has actually helped immensely when talking with engineers, in a way that other designers aren’t as familiar.
It’s helped me get a better understanding of what issues they’re facing and the constraints that we’re working with as a team, rather than feeling frustrated and stuck when my initial designs don’t end up looking the way I thought they would.
It doesn’t even have to be software-related.
It could be working on improving your presentation skills, or learning how to better facilitate workshops and ideation, or how to critique and present feedback in a supportive way. Tailor your learning to your goals.
Another great way of learning is by joining communities and attending events.
If you managed to land a job in the games industry, it usually means that you’re already somewhat aware of relevant communities and events going on.
Finding a mentor is one way to network, but events help a lot to fulfil that networking aspect as well as keeping you up to date with industry knowledge (or introducing you to supportive industry communities).
Events also give you more information you can share out to your team or organisation at large.
I personally really recommend industry Discord servers. For me, the community at We Can Fix It In UI has been so instrumental in helping answer so many of my questions as a UX designer.
There are so many wonderful, kind people out there that you can reach out to and learn from, and it’s so much easier to have a community you can rely on outside of work.
In terms of conferences, the obvious one is GDC, but there are lots of barriers to entry.
I’d recommend looking locally — gameconfguide is a great resource, but I’d also suggest checking out lu.ma, which aggregates more tech-focused events that you might find interesting too.
As someone working on accessibility, I'd be remiss not to mention the Game Accessibility conference run by IGDA’s own Game Accessibility special interest group — they do livestreams of their conferences twice a year for free, and there’s a lot you can learn.
The seniors are kind of scary and intimidating…
How do I reach out to them and establish some kind of mutuality without bothering them? Should I be doing more?
Let’s talk about visibility.
Visibility and advocating for yourself is really hard as a junior, especially if you’re fighting with impostor syndrome. But visibility is literally what makes other people realise that you even exist, and it's incredibly important.
There are lots of different ways you can advocate for yourself — the easiest is if you have a good relationship with your manager, who can also amplify your voice on your behalf.
If you’re in a large company, sometimes your contributions can get lost in the vast expanse of day to day work — so if you feel really proud of your work, show it to others who might be interested!
If you learn something useful outside of work — maybe in the time that you’ve reserved for yourself — present it in a team meeting! Post it in Slack! If you go to an event, share the key takeaways so that everyone learns with you.
Visibility is all about sharing.
It’s how you can help other people get to know you better — by showing, not telling.
I think a big assumption that a lot of juniors make is that we don’t have anything to bring to the table that seniors don’t already know, rather than seeing it instead as a potentially equivalent exchange of ideas.
If you’re a junior, use that “freshness” to your advantage! Share the cool new stuff that’s going on that the old guard might not know about.
You’ve probably been exposed to myriad new information, software tools, and contexts that people who have been embedded in the industry for a long long time don’t know about.
In my experience, I’ve always learned the most on projects where I’ve been paired up with a more senior designer. I’ve had multiple senior designers reach out to me to ask about Gen Z gaming habits, or Figma best practices — it’s really surprising how much you can learn from each other.
Seniors get to where they are by being open and sharing their thoughts and findings.
Working on your own visibility means that you’re developing your own voice. How will you present yourself to your manager, your team, your company, and the industry more broadly?
As juniors, we also often expect our manager to tell us what we should be doing, when in actuality, it should probably be the opposite.
You should be managing your manager. All through our lives — all the years of school or college — we’ve gotten very used to just getting tasks assigned to us and doing them by the deadline, but now there’s a lot less structure.
Work is a lot more autonomous and self-directed, especially the higher up you go.
The next time you want to ask your manager what to do or what the next steps are in your project, think about it yourself first.
What are the long-term criteria that need to be met for the project to succeed? Again, how do you work backwards? What’s necessary?
Shifting my thinking from short term wins to long term planning has helped me a lot.
At the end of the day, your manager is just a reflection of your own wins.
Lastly:
Am I being a burden? Am I being annoying?
Probably not. They hired you for a reason. It’s always better to over-communicate than to pretend that you already know things, and then fail.
You’re not being a burden by asking questions or double checking your work: especially if you’re a new hire, people understand that you’re still learning and getting the hang of it. The first 6 months are basically protected time for you to reach out to as many people as you want for more information, and they should be understanding enough to not question you about it.
When seniors get hired and onboarded, they have to do the same things too.
When you ask questions, it proves that you’re eager to learn, as well as that you’re mature enough to know that you don’t know. It proves that you’re proactive — you’re showing people what kind of teammate you are and making sure that you’re on the same page. This makes it so much easier for your team and your manager to know what other information you’ll need, rather than them not knowing and potentially unconsciously undermining or underestimating your progress.
To add to that, I’ve been in so many situations where I’ve asked a question that other people don’t really know the answer to either. This happens a lot more than you might think. Whenever you feel like you’re not sure about something, there’s a high chance that someone else in the room also isn’t 100% sure or needs a refresher. You’re doing everyone a favour by communicating that, and sharing out that knowledge.
One of the best senior designers I know always makes sure to ask a lot of questions for clarification before heading off to ideate and create his own proposals. You’re being thorough and checking things that might prevent misunderstandings or wasted time is never a bad idea. Also, it’s extra bonus points if people don’t know the answer.
Learning to ask good questions is also a skill that you’ll develop. The more you ask, the better you’ll get.
Conclusion
So, let’s circle back to the wall of impostor syndrome.
We’ve tackled all of these now, and hopefully you’re better equipped with tools and knowledge to move forward in your career.
We’ve talked about mentorship, goal setting, visibility and sharing, and learning and community.
I want to conclude by just saying — be brave! Don’t be afraid to advocate for yourself!
There are so many times you second-guess yourself before sending that Slack message with your ideas and thoughts, or you don’t speak up in a meeting because you think your point is really obvious and everyone already knows. If you’re thinking something, other people are probably thinking it too.
Work on getting good at voicing disagreement and pushing back in a constructive way! Make sure your reasoning is based on concrete principles, rather than feelings. It only gets better the more you do it, and the more you do it, the more hits you’ll have than misses.
Ultimately, see this as a chance to improve your own community. Leave your own mark, whatever it may be.
So you got into the industry. The “now what?” is up to you.
© 2024 Ava Liao