Over the last week or two, I've been pursuing four really promising job opportunities in Sydney and Brisbane. It was a cruelly difficult decision to make, but I've decided that Team Bondi is the best job for me to take.
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The first job that came up was with the secretive Silverbrook Research. The recruiter that contacted me assured me it was a great company for me. I was skeptical, given that all of their patents (the only public record of their activities) appear to be for inkjet printing technology, but I was prepared to give them a chance. I did a C++ test for them and was invited in for an interview. I found out they are involved in some really interesting stuff, and it may have been a good job, but the interview didn't go well. With three other promising leads, though, I wasn't overly concerned.
I applied directly to Google - they don't use recruiters - because Google are currently expanding their Sydney operations and advertising graduate positions. Recruitment seems to be managed locally in Sydney, but my technical interviews were handled by employees in the U.S. Unfortunately, I guess a huge number of people appy to Google and the recruitment process is very long and drawn out. Google would be a fantastic place to work and I progressed through two rounds of technical interviews, but it would still be a couple of months before they made a job offer and I couldn't justify passing over other offers just to wait on Google, so I withdrew my application today.
The most involved application process I've gone through has been for Team Bondi. A recruiter presented me to 5 different games development houses in Australia, but we quickly narrowed it down to Team Bondi as the most promising place. I did a screening test, a C++ test, and a design test for them, and had two interviews with 5 different people while I was in Sydney. Team Bondi was very thorough. The recruiter kept me well informed throughout the whole process, and by the end it was no surprise when they made me a job offer yesterday.
In stark contrast, Jeppesen made me a job offer within 24 hours of talking to them for the first time. The recruitment process, the interview, and the person I spoke to, were all straight-up to the point of brusqueness, but it was refreshing in its own way and when they made their job offer today I was confident that it would be a good match.
This left me in a quandary. In the space of 24 hours I had two job offers, each of which would be fantastic, but too different from one another to directly compare them. Team Bondi was something of a dream job - doesn't every geek want to program games at some point? - but the work had definite attractions: a hugely ambitious game, great offices, interesting technologies. Jeppesen was more in line with where my PhD was leading and promised a more obvious career path, along with a highly intelligent team (over a dozen PhDs just in the software development team!) and challenging problems. Both jobs appealed to me a lot!
I think I could honestly have flipped a coin to choose between them, but in the end I chose Team Bondi, despite significant drawbacks, because it's the perfect entry job into the games industry, and if I didn't try it I'd always be wondering if I should have. And if it doesn't work out, then I can cut my losses it'll still be valuable experience that I can take with me. But, naturally, I'm hoping it won't come to that :)
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