Do Your Homework

I misunderstood homework as a kid. Quite frankly I often did not do it unless it really interested me. I have to give credit to my math teachers in high school (and my science teachers but for other reasons). I was going to Waterloo to study Mathematics and they were doing their damned best to get me to develop habits that I would need to be successful. In one of my classes, we put our homework problems on the board every lesson and I was always in the "volunteer" pool picked by the teacher to show my work. Unfortunately, I was cocky about it and always learned the material in real-time while I was writing out the solution on the board. I kinda missed the point he was trying to make.

Homework does not teach you much. All the studies will tell you that. But that is not why it is important. This is a Hail Mary pass by the education system to get you to realize it is a life skill that is probably in some overpriced self-help book about how to be an amazing super rich successful person who adults Real Good. Mostly, it accomplishes the opposite result, and gets people to just hate doing their homework. I am crying on the inside about this.

I am an angel of death to most human resource departments. Sometimes they realize I have TRON-like powers and I fight for the user, but in some cases, I upset the apple cart of their status quo and bring my horrible notions of change. I have given presentations on hiring practices and techniques and tools I use to companies. Sometimes, mere minutes later, I have had those tools and techniques weaponized against me to get me to stop doing things so gosh darned differently than the way things used to get done. "We like the quality of people you hire and we do not like the way you hire them". I wish I could have seen my face when I was first told that statement. The visible flush of emotions that washed through my body would probably have won an award for TV drama.

This is one place where homework has value. I use homework in hiring as a signal detector.

Slightly-older-John differs from in-high-school-John with regards to homework. Somewhere along the way I learned the importance of homework. It was not in college. Final exams in college were a time for me to find religion. I honestly prayed to pass some of my more brutal math exams. Sometimes at 3:00 in the morning. I did pass those classes, and in some cases I wound up with good grades. I cannot credit homework for that. I would sit in a study group, flipping pages of problems and reading them and going "yeah I could do that if I needed to". Then I would wait for someone to say "let's get a beer!" Usually that was me because I was kind of alone in that sentiment.

So what the hell is the point of homework? All the time I was in an institution that required it, I never did it. All the times I discovered the value of homework happened in the real world, where I was spending time doing things for a paycheck. Any time I did homework, I found I got better results.

Homework really works. It is something that differentiates outcomes in the workplace. It helps at home too. It is a miracle cure if you do it correctly, and rub that lotion all over your body. Yes, even the hard to reach places. Let's talk about homework in the workplace for a second. If I talked about the rubbing-all-over-the-body part of homework I am sure those haters in HR would love to get that documented so they use it against me, while I am doing my evil practice of making their lives easier.

So let's talk about a few delicious flavors of homework:

Homework at the Workplace

I do homework at work all the time. It is an important part of the job. I experiment with side projects to learn new technology. I do little consulting gigs to apply some of my deep knowledge to improve things when available; especially if it helps a friend. I make video games, and accordingly, I play lots of stuff that is topical or relevant, or even popular just to understand it. Yes, I have a few fancy Fortnite umbrellas from that sweet sweet victory royale and not all of those were due to the back pain of getting carried by my leet son. In some cases (sorry kids) you got schooled by an old lazy programmer and you should probably delete the game.

Setting aside those projects and those battle royale moments, I also read books. I read management books. I read science fiction books. I read news, and fake news, and facebook epic threads. All of that helps me grok what people are seeing, believing, thinking and doing. All of these things shape my work output.

Half of these things are less interesting if you are not making products for consumers, but they are all still important. Doing these homework exercises are valuable and there is too much to do in a nine to five day with real work to include all of this.

When working for "The Man" I have often told people to carve time out of their day for self improvement and to plan for it. I often get asked by people "How much time should I schedule for self improvement?" Thank you Admiral Ackbar, that is totally a trap. You cannot be told how much time to dedicate towards self improvement; you have to find your balance between getting stuff done and getting career development milestones accomplished. It is not fair to ask someone to tell you how much time to dedicate to self improvement. For starters, if it is too much time, you are neglecting your day job and other stakeholders will want to have accountability for it. If it is too little time, then you are going to blame your lack of career progress on the manager or leader who give you that window. Google gives you an experimental day to do stuff. Once a week? Once every two weeks? I forget. I do not know if they still do that anymore. You can probably look that up on the internet if you really were curious.

You will need to figure out how much time you need to spend every week on self improvement. You will probably need more hours in a week than you can realistically take out of your nine-to-five day-job. Congratulations, you just found out how much homework you need to do.

Homework in Hiring

So I spent a lot of time doing homework. I count my WoW-raiding as homework. Reading books is homework. Watching popular shows on netflix is homework. Writing code on sundays for a side project is homework. I do not want to tell you the number of hours I spend on homework. Again, if I was not making games, half of this would be total rubbish. You do need a certain amount of zeitgeist comprehension and familiarity with mass-market content to be successful as a game developer.

This is why I am going to give you a cheat sheet if you want to work with me on a project in the future. If you are here reading this, you might be doing your homework. I appreciate that. It goes back to that saying "the harder I work the luckier I get". Homework is a signal for a willingness to do hard work. When I interview people I am a fan of assigning small homework projects to understand people. I am careful to follow a few very specific rules in those homework assignments and I want to talk about them and what I learn from them.

No hard deadline

I do a take-home coding assessment for people. One of the most important traits of this is the lack of the deadline. I am not trying to add pressure to this process. I also dislike doing this in real-time because you do not give people an opportunity to show their best work. Real-time coding assessments also have a high false-negative rate. I can confirm this; I choked once on a job interview in this fashion; I was there. The pain is real. Everyone is busy and doing things. I want to see work output and I want to have someone spend two to six hours writing code for me to solve a specific problem. I know the duration because I time myself and other people on the tasks I assign.

Set the bar low

A lot of people assign really clever puzzles as part of their onsite interview or coding assessments. Stupid-pet-trick questions are garbage. They self-select to people who love the same quirky problems as you do. That is great for people who grab beers together but having diversity in problem solving is probably more desirable. I spent some time self selecting for puzzle lovers early in my career and I did not realize I was basically hiring myself over and over again. You limit your hiring tremendously that way. Find a very simple problem to give to people, give it to them as a word problem and see what they give you in return. Some people ask questions, some people do not. That is all okay. Make sure it is a basic problem. You can even let them know it is by design when they get curious about it. Do not make it about a problem you are currently having at work. I find it a turn off when I am being asked to solve someone's problems at work before they have even given me a paycheck.

Get really high

Look for people who get really high. High over the bar that is... What were you thinking? I gave people at Zynga a game implementation project. One person built their game in Unity and submitted it to the Google Play Store. I am still impressed by that today. Talk about doing bonus homework! I am watching that person's career with great interest. By setting the bar low, you can give people a chance to shine. If you ask people to build a simple program, and they add some bells and whistles to show their chops, that goes a long way with me. I love to give people a chance to shine and I love it even more when they shine so very brightly. It means you value the homework time and will invest it in a good outcome.

Know the score

I also use this as a commitment to make hiring somewhat more human. If there is one thing I really despise about the recruiting process it is the silence. I do my very best to communicate as a human being with potential team mates even if they do not make it. I have seen people who did not get hired at one place get hired at another place by the same person. I have seen people who did not get the job right now, but did get it eventually. The world is small. What can we do to help improve those kinds of outcomes? For me, I grade people against a rough rubric and I let them know the score. If you did not pass my assessment I tell you why. I let you know what you can improve. Providing feedback in the hiring process, even in a negative result, with some constructive criticism is very important. I found it to be a net-positive and something people are terrified about. I have seen similar solutions from people who have one year of experience and people with ten years of experience. I would have higher expectations on code from someone with ten years of experience and I would give them that feedback. I have told people that their styles are similar to mine and that I can understand how they approach problems and I am eager to have them screened onsite for a job. I have also told junior people that their solutions are very advanced and indicative of a deep understanding of their craft. Moments like this are great for all parties in the hiring process. You have asked people to do homework for you as a courtesy to earn a paycheck. The least you can do for them is communicate that you have reviewed it thoroughly and share your thoughts with them. I think that step is deeply appreciated even in the case that it is a negative outcome. With some feedback, I think that people with a negative outcome know what they need to improve for next time.

Design/Production Homework

This is well and good for engineering but is this the only way you can do this? Not really. I used to assign design and production assignments too. When I was working at a large casual games company quite some time ago I would ask people a pretty basic question. "Have you played Candy Crush?" I am floored by how many people who wanted to work on mobile games did not play Candy Crush five years ago. For crying out loud aren't you curious why this game is so successful? Is there nothing you can learn from the market leader in the category?

If someone wanted a design or production job on a free-to-play games team I would expect them to have played through level 70 of Candy Crush. If you did not do that yet, I would ask you to do that and schedule a follow-up interview when you were done.

That seems oddly specific doesn't it? It is. There are a few reasons for that level specifically. There are a few gate-keeping mechanics in Candy Crush that exist, including difficulty and also some social and/or payment gates. You would need to spend $2.97, or get three people to help you through three gates in order to get to level 61, and level 70 was documented as one of the harder levels that churned out players.

I would ask someone after they played through these levels to tell me why I had them do that. The above reasons help me to understand how they think about games and if they can translate those mechanics and the aesthetics they observed into why it is a commercial success. If you did not really understand those things, I would worry about your contributions to making a commercially successful product in the same or adjacent product space.

The Basics

Well here we are. Now you know how big of a jerk I am in the hiring process. I saved the easy C+ grade for the very end. You might say I made you do some homework to get this far. I am laughing at myself over here for my cleverness. You should laugh with me, it would make the experience less creepy.

The dial-tone level of homework I expect in the hiring process is still one that people often miss. There is no easier way to fail a phone screen interview for a game company than to fail to answer this question correctly; "Have you played our game?".

You would honestly be surprised by how many people will apply for a job with barely reading a website let alone downloading products and experimenting with them. I still do not understand it. If you explained it to me slowly I fear I might not be able to internalize it. Please do not even try.

If you have not had the time or inclination to play the game, I will accept an explanation, and I will also ask you to do me the courtesy of playing it before the on-site conversation. If you have not done it then, you might not get my "must hire this person" vote when the moment comes.

Thank you for your time; I hope you enjoyed this assemblage of words. I have many; you should consume them all.

I will continue to do these and to broadcast on the socials. Creep me on tweeter. Follow me on LinkedIn. Send me a message or give me a reply in the comments. The more feedback I get, the more I will spray the ether with my 0's and my 1's.