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工作室该如何争取更多优秀的人才

发布时间:2013-10-28 16:06:20 Tags:,,,,

作者:Laura Yip

硅谷是众多开发者的根据地。顶级人才之间的战斗正日趋激烈,而这些人也都拥有一份高薪且高福利的工作。独立工作室,手机游戏创造者和发行巨头都在与谷歌,苹果和Facebook等公司争夺人才去创建,维护并分析自己的游戏。对于成功的开发商而言,获得新鲜血液是非常急迫的事。

所以你是如何向出色的软件工程师推销自己?以下是我在Storm8以及从我们的创始人团队(游戏邦注:从Facebook中跳槽过来转向利用手机社交游戏的发展潜能)中学到的一些经验教训。

这并不是关于福利,而是关于挑战。

许多初创企业和工作室尝试着基于福利去聘请员工,但当所有公司提供的是同样的利益时,这种方法将不再发挥作用。美食,无限提供的零食与饮料,健身设施,免费的班车,游戏室等等都是非常棒的福利,但是它们却不会完全影响某个人想要加入某一公司的决心。真正有才能的人不会根据自己可以获得多少早前街机游戏,或是否有免费班车将自己载到最近的地铁站而决定自己的下一份工作。他们会着眼于公司的业务承诺,寻找有助个人发展的机遇,寻找不断获得学习的机会以及寻找有意义的挑战。

你是如何基于不同方式接近游戏开发?他们将尝试着解决怎样的软件工程,系统和规模挑战?他们将接触怎样的代码语言或开发平台?这些都是你需要思考的问题。

对于急需的工程师,每日的免费福利只是条件的一部分。你还需要传达给对方自己所面对的问题,他们该在解决这一问题中扮演怎样的角色等等。根据我们的经验,真正优秀的工程师并不会为此退缩,他们甚至会直接忽视免费的午餐和晚餐而致力于问题的解决过程中。

professional development(from hull)

professional development(from hull)

支持持续的专业发展。

拥有足够的时间与空间完美地解决一个问题对于许多工程师来说都很有吸引力,但是当你精通了第一个问题并且仍有机会去解决不同的问题时,这种吸引力才更大。对于有才能的工程师而言,个人和职业发展非常重要。你需要在此回答一些问题:新员工上岗最快要多久?新人多久可以获得提拔?如何给予表现好的雇员奖励?如何进行项目决定与分配?我能够获得除游戏创造以外怎样的技术机遇?你的公司平衡自治与监督是怎样的?

在Storm8,我们发现那些致力于各种游戏类型的工程师将会在对其它团队的工作产生兴趣时转向该团队并逗留与此。优秀的人才会享受处理不同问题的挑战;你不希望看到他们因为某一项目而受挫。创造让人们可以在团队间自由转变的文化是一种鼓舞士气的方法,并能够支持成员们的持续专业发展。举个例子来说吧,如果技术团队成员对业务开发感兴趣并有能力完成那份工作,这将能够帮助你提升合作的价值。这不仅能够推动团队的发展,同时也能够控制你自己的职业,让你拥有足够的自由去追求其它兴趣。

影响公司和外部世界的空间。

我们经常能从一些潜在员工口中听到,他们之所以在寻找新的机遇是因为感觉自己的价值被低估了。他们认为这就像是一种统计数值;就像另一个来自拥有500多名世界各地成员的团队的工程师正致力于一个不一定能够问世的项目中。有才能的工程师会寻找那些能让自己在一开始便发挥价值的项目,直至最后。他们会寻找机会与别人合作,并寻找方法去影响自己开发的作品。通过向工程师表明他们的反馈和努力工作都是有价值的,他们的理念将在游戏的下次迭代中落实行动等等,你将能够更有效地与他们保持长期合作。

传达你的作品对于游戏外部世界的影响也很重要。你应该分享你的用户反馈,赋予产品人性化并解释他们的朋友或亲人该如何在日常生活中发现这些内容的作用与娱乐性。

培养较高的协同环境。

许多初创企业和开发者之所以选择了开放的交流平面图也是有原因的。这是关于拥有一个开放的上下交流结构。保持扁平结构将需要更投入地处理员工对于工作的满意度和所有权问题。在Storm8,创造者很少会咨询日常游戏决策——所以这一责任自然落到团队身上,他们也想保持这种分配方式。

关于呈现员工将如何影响他们开发的作品,让应聘者感觉你们非常欢迎他们提出各种理念真的非常重要;建议不会只是被丢进决策制作者很少回注意到的匿名数字意见箱中。在Storm8,这不只应用于某些人的特定项目中,也贯穿于公司的各个方面。我们允许所有人去贡献游戏理念,并定期将非团队成员带到头脑风暴中。我们也会听取他们的想法。

结论

尽管网络和社交媒体世界中的巨头们都具有一定的知名度和产品熟悉度,但这并不意味着你不能与其它元素与之抢夺人才。你之所以愿意为自己的公司做出贡献,公司创始人之所以会创建这家公司以及投资者和玩家之所以愿意为其做出投资等等都是有原因的,你需要将这些要点清楚地呈现出来。通过创造高价值和无形的福利,你将能够吸引更多合适的技术人才;这些人将为你的产品创造贡献出与你同样的热情。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Professional Growth Is King

by Laura Yip

Silicon Valley is a developer’s playground. The battle for top-tier talent is heated and these folks have their pick of high paying, Chuck Taylor-wearing jobs. Indie studios, mobile game makers and giant publisher incumbents are all fighting with the likes of Google, Apple and Facebook for employees to build, maintain and analyze their games. And, for successful developers, new blood is needed fast.

So how do you sell your company to highly coveted software engineers? Here are some lessons I’ve learned at Storm8 and from our team of founders that jumped ship from Facebook to capitalize on the growth potential of mobile social games.

It’s not all about perks, it’s about the challenge.

Many startups and studios try to recruit people based on perks, but that doesn’t always work when almost all companies offer the same benefits (and sometimes even better than yours if you’re small). Gourmet meals, unlimited snacks and drinks, fitness facilities, free shuttles, game rooms — yes these are all great, and sometimes necessary, but they will not make or break someone’s decision to join a company. Really talented individuals don’t base their next career move on how many old school arcade games they would have access to, or a free shuttle to the nearest train station. They look at the company’s business promise, they look for opportunities for personal growth, they look for ways to consistently learn, they look for meaningful challenges.

How do you approach game development differently? What software engineering, system and scale challenges will they attempt to solve? What coding languages or development platforms will they be exposed to? These are only some of the questions you should be thinking about answering.

For in-demand engineers, daily freebies are barely a cherry on top of a good offer. You need to communicate what issues you are facing and how they can be part of the answer. In our experience, top-grade engineers don’t shy away from say, a scaling issue, and actually even skip the free lunches and dinners to tackle them.

Support ongoing professional development.

Having the time and space to solve one problem beautifully can excite many engineers, but the opportunity to solve different, new problems once you master your first is often more compelling. Personal and career growth is crucial to talented engineers. Some questions that need to be addressed here include: How quickly are new hires on boarded? How fast can someone new move up? How are employees rewarded for good work? How are projects decided and assigned? What technical opportunities outside of building games are open to me? How does your company balance autonomy and oversight?

We’ve found that engineers who work on a variety of game genres and move laterally to new teams if interested excel at Storm8, and they stick around, too. Top talents enjoy the challenge of tackling different problems; you don’t want them to feel stuck on one project. Creating a culture that allows people to freely move across teams is a morale booster and supports ongoing professional development. For instance, a technical team member who may have interest in business development and have an aptitude for it can easily provide value in partnership deals. It’s not only about moving up the ranks, but having control over your own career and having the freedom to pursue other interests internally if there’s a fit.

Room to impact the company and the outside world.

We often hear from prospective employees that the reason that they look for a new opportunity is because they feel undervalued. They feel like a statistic; just another engineer on a 500+ person team across continents working on a project that may or may not be canned in their market next month. Talented engineers look for projects that they can own from the beginning to the end. They look for opportunities to collaborate and a way to make an impact on the products that they develop. By showing engineers that their feedback and hard work is valued, that their ideas are actually implemented in the next iteration of a game, you will have a bigger chance of successfully bringing them on board.

It’s also important to communicate the impact that your products make to the world outside of your company’s walls. Share your user’s feedback, humanize your products and explain how even their friends or family can find these things useful and entertaining in their everyday lives.

Foster a highly collaborative environment.

There is a reason that many startups and developers have open floor plans. It’s not so that they look hip and friendly on an “about us” page; it’s about having an open flow of communication up and down an organization. Staying true to a flat structure has more to do with employee satisfaction and ownership over work than you might think. At Storm8, founders are rarely consulted on day-to-day game decisions — that responsibility lands with the team and they want to keep it that way.

In relation to showcasing how employees can make an impact to the products they develop, it’s important for incoming candidates to understand that their ideas are always welcome; that suggestions don’t just go into an anonymous digital suggestion box that decision-makers rarely monitor. At Storm8, this not only applies to someone’s specific project, but to all aspects of the company. We ask everyone to contribute game ideas and regularly pull non-team members into brainstorms. And we listen to them, too.

A Final Note

While the dominant players in the Internet and social media world have name recognition and product familiarity, that doesn’t mean you can’t compete for talent on many others factors. There is a reason you work for your company and why your founders started it and why investors and players are sustaining it – so let that shine through. By building on these high-value and intangible perks, you’re sure to attract the right technical talent; those who will share the same passion and enthusiasm for your product as you do.(source:gamasutra)


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