Whistle While You (Look For) Work

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At the moment, my life is in a weird limbo.

The suddenness of getting hired in the middle of my last year of college had thrown a lot of things into whack, and it took me several months to wind down after getting put back on the market.  I still wake up in cold sweats, having experienced a plethora of weird dreams involving a collision of interests between college and work (such as a major release and a final exam on the same day).  I’ve had to leave my phone laying on its face on my nightstand, since even just the light from it sending me twitter notifications have been known to wake me up.

However, I’m ready to enter the market again.

These past few months, I’ve been working on slimming down the number of active projects I am working on.  I am down to two:  OpenBYOND and a major overhaul of 7chan’s backend code.  Before, I had anywhere from 10-15 projects running at once.   I’ve also slowly been beefing up my portfolio, which was virtually non-existent prior to this year.  People are beginning to lose interest in OpenBYOND, and 7chan itself seems to be on its last legs, so I’m now desperately trying to find something to do.

Ideally, I’d like to work in the video gaming industry again, helping build up a small indie company’s infrastructure like I did with Squad. Unfortunately, where I live, trying to get on a flight to another country takes months of preparation, only to end up getting sent home for days due to crappy Washington State weather.  I’d love to move out of town (not much of opportunity for a nerd in a military town), but overseas is just a bit much, especially with cultural differences and timezones for all the day-to-day stuff.  To put the problem into perspective, that crosses out about 75% of indie game companies.

Another option is working for a larger studio.  The problem is, you’re then faced with the problem facing everyone who wants to work for large corporations: Everyone wants to work for a big company.  Even sending them a professional resume and cover letter wouldn’t get you noticed amidst the flood of all the other resumes and cover letters.  Having a cover letter would just ensure you end up in the “tries really hard” paper shredding bin.  From what I understand, I’d have to get a talent agency on board to even be considered.  I’m a post-college-student trying to find a job.  I just don’t have that kind of money.  I’m not even sure if I would even be on these HR departments’ radars, given that my only job experience in the field was Kerbal Space Program.  Sure, I feel I did my best work there, but I can’t read other people’s minds for their opinions.

So, I don’t know where to start.  I’d like to get some work, but at the same time, I’d like to try and be sensible about it.  I also cannot do another long internship like I did the last time:  I’m now on my own insurance, and pills alone are expensive as hell these days, even as generics.  If anyone out there has any advice for how to get my foot in the door again, please shoot me an email.  If you’re a game development company who needs someone to help with wrangling your networking infrastructure, or need help setting up a modding system for your game(s), or anything else I can help with, and are in the United States*, email me (please).  Hell, if you even have a suggestion for a great place where my skills might make a difference, and where I might have a snowball’s chance in hell of making it through the door, email me.  Otherwise, I’m sort of a ship without a rudder.  There’s lots of choices out there.


 

*: Unless, of course, you are willing to either let me work from home, or provide a stable income that I can use to pay for a place to live.  Hot female co-workers with a spare bed are, of course, also acceptable.