ALTWhat you’re asking about feels a lot like [finding a mentor] - a more experienced dev who can help the less experienced dev level up and improve more quickly. If you’re working in game dev already, it’s pretty rare to go cross-studio unless the project itself is so big that it is a cross-studio collaboration (e.g. Call of Duty, Battlefront, etc.). This is because a junior dev is usually already working within a team that will have more experienced devs who are both familiar with the junior’s tasks and with the project context. A mentor at an external studio might be able to help in a more general sense but won’t be as able to provide more specific guidance without sufficient understanding of the work the junior is doing.
ALTWhen a junior dev reached out to me for mentorship, I don’t expect much in return - certainly not any kind of material compensation. I expect engagement, self-reflection, and a willingness to learn from mentees. I’ve tried working with mentees in the past who didn’t show much interest in learning from me at all. I’ve worked with mentees who didn’t seem engaged - they’d skip meetings, they would give minimal answers to my questions, and so on. I don’t want to waste my time or effort trying to mentor someone who doesn’t want to be there. My goal as a mentor isn’t (just) to stroke the junior’s ego or do the work for them, it’s to help them level up by showing them more to consider than their current view of the situation. If I’m not helping them level up, it’s a waste of their time and mine.
[Join us on Discord] and/or [Support us on Patreon]
Got a burning question you want answered?
- Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter
- Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr
- Frequent Questions: The FAQ
