tck has been in games for 12 years today we’re going to talk about growing teams what teams have you grown already

growing teams in Bangalore During the covid period where we had to start an entire new studio I believe he went from

zero to something like 40 or 50 people why grow an international remote team there’s a huge untapped gaming Talent

there you go there you realize there’s hundreds of millions of young people they all play games big one that comes to mind straight away when you think we

would do that differently really is just culture how do you build trust with people that haven’t worked with before but not only have you not worked with

them before they maybe have not worked with anybody like you before TK Ford welcome to the show thank

you for having me thank you for coming i’ like to start the podcast with how we

met I guess in this situation is how we met in person we was at bright and develop not too long ago how did you

find Brighton it was really good it was really good it’s always good to get out there and kind of realize that there’s more going on just outside of your

studio and you know meet new people like yourself and and Old Friends you’ve not seen for a while so yeah really interesting yeah no it was a good time

and I want to actually touch on something you said which I thought was quite funny so T has been in gains for

12 years now heads development at quy which is a very large kind of mobile

gaming publisher they also self-publish hundreds of employees I don’t know if you can correct me of how big but yeah

very big studio and you’re the head of development so I want to start with what is a typical day as head of development

at quy cuz I feel like every title has its own version of what that actually means so like what is actually meaning

case exactly yeah yeah and I you know I don’t want to give the stereotypical answer that every day every day is different so I I’ll try and spare you of

that whilst also actually just saying that um but yeah essentially I’m running four Dev teams uh three in the UK one in

our in our Indian office we have remote staff as well um and we’re trying to make mobile games we’re trying to make

prototype games so we’ve got games in live Ops we’ve got games in very very early development and we’ve got games

kind of in mid mid to soft launch so making sure that the teams are organized everyone’s getting the support that they need EX ET um checking in with my

producers I am formerly a producer head of production so I’m kind of making sure that that things are okay on that on

that line uh but also dipping my toes in whether it’s design art programming whatever whatever kind of needs my help

um so yeah that’s I guess the day today is really making sure that things are uh flowing and there’s no immediate

blockers that that can’t be solved fantastic So today we’re going to talk about growing teams because you’ve

done that a fair bit and also interestingly done it remotely even with countries like in Asia from my standing

so very interesting perspective so that’s what we’re going to dive into today and we got a lot of different questions around that so I will start

with just if you could paint us a picture like what teams have you grown already like what are the scales are we

talking about here sure so yeah so when I joined qu we were 20 people and that included you know the finance guy and

and and everybody kind of involved not not not just the game team so uh we were one team two developers two artists some

QA producer Etc uh and as we had success predominantly it was in hyper casual so we started to expand let’s go from one

team to two teams and how you how do we manage that do we need an extra pair of hands in production Etc um we went from

I’d say smallest we were ever 10 people so everyone knows each other’s names everybody knows what people are working

on you know the day before all in the same office in in in lemington Spa all the way up to now we’re around 50 people

across uh all all of our different game teams uh and we also work with the publishing team which is his own

separate entity and also external developers Etc so we’ve grown teams internally in liton Spa we’ve grown

teams in Bangalore During the covid period where we had to start an entire new studio I believe we went from zero

to something like 40 or 50 people before any of us had touched foot in that in that studio so that was a really interesting time um and yeah that’s

that’s kind of where we’ve gone from and where where we are now so the team as is now is 50 people one that you’re in and

then publishing is separate okay that makes sense all righty so you mentioned

Bangalore there so why grow an international remote team because we’ve seen a lot of talk about

how we are bringing people back into your office but that’s kind of like as far away on the slider as it goes so

like why build an international remote team it is it is well I mean so it’s it’s remote from us but there is a

studio there there’s a fantastic studio there um we were looking to to expand our presence so we were outside of the

UK we want to be a global publisher so say okay well how can we be a global developer is there are there places in the world that are kind of right for

expansion games are coming up there’s obviously China uh there’s the us but that’s kind of a saturated Market uh and

there’s countries like Japan that are maybe slightly harder to get to get a grasp in um so we came across India we

looked there were some other Studios starting there as well there were Studios that have been existing there for a long time I believe Sumo digital

code Masters have have operations there uh and then it really came just to looking at the cities where do we go and

we found that Bangalore is is the tech Hub there’s Intel there’s Microsoft there’s there’s everybody there that you

could you could possibly think of um and obviously there’s a huge untapped G Talent there you go there you realize

there’s hundreds of millions of young people they all play games but there’s very little um history of game making

there but there’s lots of people who want to do it so we decided listen if we’re going to do it anywhere that seems

like the exciting place to be um and then yeah we started okay well let’s start with a small office what do we

want we want a game team so we’re going to need some programmers we’re going need some artists we’re going to need a producer um let’s put some feers out

let’s see let’s see what we get in terms of CVS let’s see how much we’re going to have to you know grow from Maybe plant

people from the UK over there and we kind of grow it that way or maybe there’s actually a you know some Talent we can take from the local areas other Studios and and it was really an organic

process I wasn’t involved in the kind of big picture this is the plan of how we’re going to go from X to you know to

Y in terms of expansion um but yeah I mean I think it’s gone well but there’s obviously a

ton of things if we were to do it again it would go so much better in terms of organization and onboarding and all of all of that sort of

stuff perfect followup to what I’m about to say I was like going to say what’s the unforeseen challenges you’ve

encountered when scaling your team internationally so I guess because there’s so many what would you say is

like the big one that comes to mind straight away when you think we would do that differently okay well I wouldn’t do

it during a global pandemic that’s the number one is UN unbelievably uh

difficult to build relationships with people and build trust and and get across your company culture with people that you’ve never met in a studio that

you’ve never touched and and and it’s extremely difficult um and it kind of

relates but really just culture how do you get across culture and how do you build trust with people that you haven’t

worked with before but not only have you not worked with them before they maybe have not worked with anybody like you before and when I say like you I mean a

kind of Western developer mindset um the big not necessarily issue but the big

thing about India development as I see it is that a lot of Outsource work happens there or a lot of support work

happens there and you know the main difference between a main studio and a support studio is that ability to make decisions and uh kind of have conviction

behind what you want to do and your your passion a lot of it is we’ve been told to do this this is the deadline we need

to deliver on this and that I feel is quite culturally pervasive in India

obviously don’t want to draw too blanket stereotype there’s really ingenious people out there who willing to push the

boat and say this is this is what I think we should do but in general there’s a lot of people who are used to you know hearing this is what we have to

do we need to do this now and that’s not how we work that’s not what we wanted to do from the beginning it was not about producing art for our games in India it

was about producing games full circle even down to marketing Etc um and maybe

we didn’t do enough from the outset to really implant that hey we are growing our team with you and we want you to

feel complete equals with us and we know when we say something it’s not a command it’s a it’s it’s it’s an open invite for

a discussion about how we should get to you know the result that we want to get to and I do feel like we were semi aware of

that you know we want to make a good impression we try to make you know be as friendly as possible but I’m sure now looking back there’s there’s there’s plenty of things we could do we could

have taken external device uh device advice from people we could have spoken to other Studios that have opened uh

places there and you know hopefully they would have have shared their knowledge but yeah all in all that is the the big

takeaway the cultural um merging of two two different areas of the world now

this came up actually on a previous podcast with kiraj who’s from India and he’s worked then in King Spanish version

King Stockholm version and then he’s also worked out roio which was Finnish and he he had like that slider of

culture and he echoed a lot of what you said and he found actually going back to

kind of Indian style development that was a challenge I’m just thinking from

the listener’s point of view it’s like if you are going to work with people from that world how would you try to

communicate that point that you made where we want it to be more I guess

people having the initiative you know a bit more equal and less like take task do task how do you how would you go

about doing that I think I think you need to well first of all you need to fly there you

need to spend some time there um IDE dearly as much time as possible not not a fleet inv visit where it’s like handshakes and then and then back on the

plan so if you can get yourself out there get yourself out there uh break down the kind

of any sort of Illusion that you have this secret source to making games you know like this this um when I was

younger I grew up I didn’t know that games were made in the UK for me everything was made in America right so when I found out that the games that I

played were actually made in the town like one town across from me it was like amazing and when I first got my foot there was QA it’s like everyone’s you

that thing as a child Everyone’s an adult and everyone knows what they’re doing and they must always be right because they made X game that I kind of

liked um that’s not the reality of the situation so if there is any of that

between you and your new studio especially if it’s from a culture that is used to being kind of spoken to and

directed you need to break that down and you can do that kind of in in in all manner of ways you can open up to your

struggles that you’ve had previously and why that you hope the people starting can can help you make that better um but

equally you can just be more involved in those initial early projects so you don’t leave people kind of at a whim of

like a slack message in the morning a kind of follow up you know the day after you have to sort of show them you’re

working and that you don’t know the answer and that you’re working through things and you’re failing and and and sharing that with the team and sometimes

drawing suggestions out of them and just going with that suggestion like you know what we’re going to do that and we’re going to learn from it um don’t don’t

assume it will happen just because you’re kind of nice to people or you know like I said you’ve you’ve met them

you went out for one beer with them and then you flew back like you really have to go out your way to say hey I’m you know we’re in this together and we’re

going to learn together and we’re going to fail and succeed together yeah and I think that expands to more like just just a global thing

right like when you’re in remote situation so what are the three things

as the person on boarding a candidate that I need to nail every time cool yeah okay so first of all you need

to introduce them to the decision makers in the studio like even if they’re a junior artist coming on a team where

they are very unlikely to interact with your executive producer Etc it’s still very important that they touch Bas with them and they know that that person is

is a human being that when they see them around you know they are they feel valued they’re not a a small Cog when you’re a small Cog in a world it’s very

easy to go well I’m just going to go be a slightly larger Cog somewhere else you don’t you know you don’t feel appreciated um build up a a vast wealth

of documentation about your team because as much as you know you may grab them for an hour in the morning they come in and say right Harry sit down we’re going to you

know I’m going to talk to you about what we’re trying to achieve here I want to give you a bunch of reading material to go away with as well and when I say

reading material I don’t mean walls and walls of Confluence pages I mean like something fun that you crafted for them

like introductions to the team and what you hope that they can achieve and who they can go to with certain certain problems um a third thing of what you

should probably do don’t so I hear a lot of people and this has happened even here in the past

I’m sure maybe they’re on a probation and it’s six months at at the company and that kind of comes and goes and it’s

never actually addressed and it’s oh I guess I pass then you know I haven’t actually heard that take that seriously

with them and I think of course if they pass probation

and you never mentioned it because they’ve been so good that’s that’s fine it’s not necessarily detrimental but if

people feel like they have achieved something and you make a big deal out of it and you talk about it as we come up to it so you know you got we’re three

months in how do you feel that you’re working towards your initial goals that we set you in order to you quote P probation when they do achieve that you

can get them in you can say you’ve absolutely smashed this I really appreciate you being here and I want to hear feedback from you know from you as

well take feedback from them so the next person’s on boarding is is slightly better um that’s always that’s always

huge when I joined quar my manager at the time was the COO the current COO Jason because again we were much smaller

um and it was going right I was doing a good job and he pulled me in like four months maybe into the probation period

because I had requested a work phone it’s like the dream of like a young guy as oh work a phone paid for by the company um and you couldn’t technically

have it until he passed probation and he said you know what I’m going to pass you probation early you can have the phone whatever just get out get out of you

little SC and just kind of and but like it felt great and it boosted my confidence like damn I’m doing a good job and that you know it’s it’s hard to

measure but I’m sure it meant that I put in more effort and I put in more enthusiasm towards what I was doing in those following two months um than if it

had just kind of passed over because he didn’t quite have time to get round to me you know because it seen as like a nonissue you’ve passed big deal so I

guess there are my there are my top three things off the top of my head oh very good and yeah I relate to the

recognizing achievement like when I had the equivalent as a recruiter we also have probations and you have the goals

and what you’re expected so when you pass it’s a day people mention it and it feels good man I think yeah it’s very

important like in recruitment that’s like kind of taken to sometimes the extreme like there’s screens and every

time you get a deal as they say we celebrate like everyone feels when it happens even if it’s a small thing and I

think that can be translated more to more Industries really like we need to celebrate those wins rather than just

only focus on when a bad thing happens that’s the only time you hear from your boss right it should be an 8020 where

positive positive oh by the way maybe do this better positive positive yeah yeah exactly I mean so going on to what you

should do like you’re a candidate you’re going in you’ve obviously done this a few places you’ve had a positive experience what what have you always

gone in with the mindset of this is what I’m going to prove in those in those first three months or or six months whatever it may be

interesting so from a candidate perspective I’ve so yeah my context is I

prepped Unity developers some actually joined Cory even and my job was to make

sure they not only got the job but they stayed because they were all contractors so I actually had first week check-in

then month checkin so from an onboarding perspective it’s like okay you need to find out the man if it’s the boss then

make him your friend please and by making your friend that that doesn’t mean kissing up it literally just means

okay what would make his life easier if he’s given you a lot of

instructions maybe do things more proactively it’s like ah I noticed we started doing that I can now take that

off your plate like all these things I very selfishly for me and the candidate

but also the client make yourself Irreplaceable okay how do you make yourself Irreplaceable give so much value where it’s like it would be silly

to let Joe go he’s like yeah because Joe’s doing all of this so as a candidate if I’m going in I’d be looking

for things that I could do outside of my job description or if there’s something in my job description which I could do a

lot quicker I would make that very clear like look I I can do this in x amount of time it actually happened um where they

projected a code rewrite would take six weeks and it was done in two weeks so like definitely don’t stretch that out

to six weeks no you do it in two weeks and then you say here are the other things I could do with the remaining

time and amazing like what an amazing experience from the client perspective so to recap there is like actually try

to build that relationship with the manager and understand what his life would look like if he was a bit better

and then see if you can enhance that and then yeah be friendly I think there’s a big thing in a remote World some people

go too much to cck in the machine mentality where it might not be efficient to send the extra message to

that colleague where you don’t need to talk to them but you want to build those relationships for when you do need them so so you’re not seen as that in my case

like that annoying contractor is asking for help like you want to be the person who’s come in and helped so yeah

building that relationship and just becoming Irreplaceable like as as much as possible yeah no I agree I agree I

like I I really like the point of making somebody’s life easier like I always that’s that’s advice I give to people

when when they’re going to go for an interview like they may be looking at your or they may be asking questions rather to ascertain your your technical

skill level or whatever but really the feeling that they want at the end of the day is that you won’t let them down you know coming into their Studio you’re

going to be a net positive not a net negative so everything you say has to build that case nothing should be neutral like wasted time and obviously

it shouldn’t be negative and that’s yeah if you if you think about that rather than stressing over what if they ask me that one question about shaders that I

can’t answer think about any question imagine there is a question you can’t answer don’t worry about the specifics

and then think how do I show them about how you know how do I approach questions I can’t answer how would I deal with something that I can’t solve straight

away and that is always like the tilting factor I trust

that person to come into this team whereas the other person they may have said all the right things but you know maybe it was a bit too scripted or it

was or I feel like they were saying what I wanted to hear because everybody’s so self-aware nowadays right everyone knows what to say um so yeah super important

and and I think going back to like the Cog in a machine thing don’t it’s so

easy now you see the memes on on LinkedIn and stuff which I’ve spent a lot more time on recently is that don’t fall for the uh don’t fall for the

perception that every single company doesn’t care about you and it’s always you versus the company in just you know

it’s it’s it’s it’s you and nothing else and just move from company to company just getting that slight bump and all of this like of course maybe in some

Industries there’s a place for that huge Industries where it you know that’s that’s that’s your main goal you’re only

in it for that anyway so you may as well do it but if you’re coming into a team we talk about building teams you can’t

build a team where the team doesn’t have long-term long-term Buy in right so you need to bring that to the team as well you need to go in with the mindset of

like I’m gonna I don’t mind going out of my way in this situation I finished my work in six hours so rather than go home

early I’m going to do I’m going to help somebody else I’m going to unburden them for further two hours not because it’s going to benefit me today but it’s going

to compound over time in my reputation in the team that I care about because I’m here for the you know for the Long

Haul and when people see that in their teammates it makes them work harder and it’s this it’s this like reverberation

of actual Good Good Vibes and good positive effort put from the team and you know you can instill that people

from day one everybody pays attention to the person who’s just come into the team and if you come in and you raise the level everybody else has to sit up

straight and be like right okay this is this is the new this is the new level and it’s is um it’s a huge impact you

can make and if you’ve got a good manager they will definitely notice that just couldn’t agree more like I whenever

I was working like when I was at the recruitment company I was working at my goal was to make Evolution the company

as much value as possible and then if I’m doing a good job then happy days but

everything was angled to make Evolution as much money as possible and then what ended up happening is actually had like

six months where I didn’t do a placement for myself but I’ve pulled opportunities for the rest of the team and I thought I don’t

mind I’m just trying to make Evolution money the good things will come but then my manager had to say like start being more selfish please I was like oh okay

and then I started but then everything came good to me and it was a lot of what

goes around comes around so like a lot of those relationships that I was building ended up benefiting me in a

ways that I couldn’t imagine so when we take this to the gaming professional world if you just add so much value like

ah just so much value like it’s just good things will happen good things will happen and in games specifically like QA

to producer to head of development that was your journey I noticed a lot of guests on the show they happens to be

the person who just always put their hand up and did extra work and then magically they got a very quick

promotion I wonder why that happened probably not on a job description it said do X and then get promotion but if

you just do more stuff the boss will be like I want him to do more higher leverage stuff because he’s very good

clearly let’s make that happen but that usually won’t happen they won’t ask you

typically exactly exactly yeah you need to take you need to take that initiative and you need to if if you take that

initiative and you’re kind of stretching yourself to do things that you haven’t been trained to do or you haven’t had the kind of you haven’t been dragged

through years of gaining exactly the amount of experience that you need you need at some studios that’s how it works right you know you need to prove to US

10 times over you can do this thing before you have the opportunity to do it if you’re going to push yourself to go out to go out of that way you need to

accept well what happens when I fail or I fall short and you you have to own up to your mistake and you have to have

that relationship again with your team where you know you’re comfortable in saying hey I’ve messed this up and this

is why it won’t happen again and this is why you know I’ve learned from it and let’s let’s move forward and even that accountability when things aren’t going

well builds in your favor like again it’s not a negative it’s that it’s actually a positive and you know when

things are going super well yeah you learn some things but I think there there’s some sort of saying you learn more in defeat than you do when yeah

when you win you learn that’s ex yeah yeah so you need to be able to put yourself out there and then again if

people see you fail and you’re in charge of the team then they’re going to be more open to failing as long as the goal was you know achieve something brilliant

or achieve something that would have changed the metrics in the game and and all this stuff adds up there is no

actual formula to make it a good game it’s all of the things that you do whilst you pursue a logical and

consistent Target if we do this we will probably create something good but all of the other stuff that encourages the

team on a day-to-day basis is is that stuff that you can’t measure but definitely results in really good game teams seem to make good games

consistently and poor game teams don’t it’s not a kind of boring Excel formula

that they have and you don’t it’s it’s all of that other stuff yeah and if there was that formula then we would be

getting loads of games and we have Su it by there’s enough there’s enough billions on the line if it was a formula we would have sust it 100% yeah I think

the good teams um I just remembered that point you made about interviews and how to reply to a question where you don’t

know the answer I been on hundreds of interviews and I actually sit on them so

I’ve had a weird perspective where I can see a lot of different hiring strategies and I’ve get feedback from the candidate

and the hiring manager and some of the hiring managers ask questions which they know the candidate will have no way of

knowing to test how they would respond to that type of question so people should prepare and what I used to tell

uh candidates is this is an amazing layup because you’re going to say I don’t know first of what I always say is

like ask for clarification don’t just say no sorry you say ask for clarification do you mean this is it

similar to X and if they say no double time no then you say okay actually haven’t heard that before I think it’s

like this but if not I have no problem learning because I’ve learned this thing where I had to do in two weeks and I’m

sure I can do that again here and then you’ve actually just made the negative to a positive because you’ve just had an

opportunity to show that you learn quickly which solves pretty much 90% of job descriptions like if you just learn

quickly that’s what I tried to have the takeaway as a every interview you learn quick and you’re nice exactly exactly

what’s your ceiling that’s the thing like what is a team’s ceiling what is an individual ceiling because you like say

you’re hiring for a programmer the reason people do what you just said is like you eventually you ask

questions that they can’t answer is because if you only ask the questions they had to answer then you would never be able to tell the person who could go all the way to lead and the person who

was actually going to cap off at you know regular or senior or whatever so you need to show that you’ve got that capacity to learn and that is humility

it’s curiosity it’s all those things kind of rolled into one mhm I have a big

pivot now which is a difficult question I feel yeah so you have an international

team my question is do you believe you get Innovation through diversity of

thought diversity of for yes absolutely I mean kind of by definition that question answers itself do I

believe diversity in certain areas cultural ethnicity whatever uh is always

the breeding ground for diverse opinions and

Innovation maybe maybe in some case it depends what you’re building this is this is the real thing it depends what

you’re building like I I I believe that there’s a lot to be said for people being able to work together cohesively

without too much misunderstanding so you know if we take it to the to the really kind of basic

thing of if you put a bunch of people with shared experiences together and then they try to create something in an

in a small amount of time under under strict resources the fact that they have a lot of uh commonalities will probably

actually help them deliver what they’re trying to deliver in that sense it cannot it’s not always a benefit to say we need to make sure everybody in this

team is as different to each other as possible um if you’re trying to push the boundaries though maybe you’re trying to

do something artistically or or speak into a certain point of view of course it’s going to help to have to have

varying opinions World Views Etc um and this is the thing right the more you travel for your personal life or the

more you work with people who are abroad you realize man not not everybody thinks like me and that’s that’s really interesting and I don’t see a world in

which it’s normally a negative I think if it’s overly forced and crowbar in for the you know for the sake of it then

absolutely it’s it’s going to be a detriment and we have to be careful that we have to be very aware of that because there are people who are out there to do

that whether it’s in good faith or not that’s that’s that’s their MO they believe it’s always better and you know there’s very few things in life that are

always better so I think no it’s a short answer like it won’t always lead to that

but in terms of how we’ve worked working with India I think it’s definitely helped us you know it’s helped us get better at communication it’s helped us

understand that you have to like we’re talking about you have to empower people to actually speak their mind or that may be more generally true to somebody in

India working in a games company but you will have people in your UK Studio who have that same problem right you know that they they find it hard to say no if

they’ve been given an order by somebody who happens to have a job title higher than them and that’s not what you want because at some point everybody with a

you know Superior job title had a lower job title at least you’d hope so otherwise you they’re not going to have much empathy for the team so um yeah

hopefully that kind of answers your question without getting me into too much trouble no no I appreciate it the I

think I’ve heard the themm like diversity of thought will get Innovation and I really like agree with that and

diversity of thought can happen through ethnicity that can also happen like you mentioned there people different within

the own country so yeah when shoehorned in nothing’s ever that easy that’s the

thing if you can say it in in in one kind of one sentence takeaway then it’s probably not true or it’s it’s not a

it’s not a cohesive thought that can actually be action so my followup

question here is when you’re growing a team and you want to take this into account I find this when someone’s

talking about how they want to build a team that JS well together that seems like the most one of the biggest

problems I’ve ever heard of because we’re deal with humans and a human puzzle piece doesn’t sound easy so how

do you take that into account when you’re actually growing a team like especially when you’re growing at

scale that’s a really good question it’s a really question because because I think the question comes is how much

should you take it into account if you’re going from zero to 100 people and

you need 100 people to execute what you’re trying to do I think then it’s more important to think everybody that

we hire needs to fit this Vision that we have and we’re starting from scratch and we can kind of design that group of

people you know we can have our our extroverts and our introverts and are and are um you know harder to control

people who may be very creative and are more structured you can do all that if you’re organically growing a team over

time it’s very easy to fall for the Trap of uh you hear it all the time right will they fit our culture or you know do

they fit our way of working and it that can be a problem because then you end up in this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy if everyone

thinks like you everyone acts like you so I think rather than trying to pick people who have a specific set of traits

that you have just to not rock the boat you need to identify really what you don’t want to bring into the team the

negatives um I was speaking to somebody recently from a different studio and he said they have a policy which is we

don’t hire creative you know everyone’s had like this person they’re brilliant but or they’re hard to work

with it’s like you know and they made the choice for their team that we’re not willing to put up with that doesn’t mean it won’t work but that’s not what we’re

doing and then I think it’s always better to exclude the things you don’t want rather than try to Define in a very definitive list

of things you do want because you know the odds are there’s tons of things you would want but you don’t know what they are so instead just say well you we

don’t want this we don’t want our soul we don’t want XYZ everybody else is fair game and then you should have a decent

you know a decent culture after that yeah i’ agree with that because then the filter the filtering is a lot less that

way yeah exactly exactly you don’t want to filter somebody out because of your own ignorance right whereas you can filter them out because you objectively

know you do not want to deal with them yeah and especially as a recruiter as well like we literally do filter so like

I sometimes got instructions to filter by country because they H manager said

we like the way they work in Romania example so like yeah wait a minute there

might be other countries that do that so what am I actually looking for specifically could I at Poland and then

we can hopefully have those type of conversations and get access to more people that’s an idea anyway yeah I I mean that’s I mean like

you as you were saying that you know you kind of it’s a conversation with your recruitment Studio have you thought

about XYZ because it’s similar this is not something that I’ve done but actually maybe I will do it going forward um maybe even go to your team

and say we’ve got this vacant position programmer so what what do we want we

like them to program please yes we we’ll have that bit we’ll cover that bit is there is there a personality type or is there a type of person you feel that

would really benefit the team you don’t currently have or is there somebody that you specifically don’t want maybe the

person who’s just left had a trait that you really don’t want to see again in in the person that we bring in and you know actually supplying the team with

somebody in the ilk of what they want providing it’s reason reasonable and you’re the manager you know you get to

make decision at the end of the day that could actually be a very positive thing for building again that kind of that culture of we are a team we’re in it for

the long haul we’re not just a bunch of people who happen to have to work together on this this single project

yeah 100% that’s when I did what it’s called a job qualification call A lot of it is SP on personality as well and like

what would be a cuz I could find a good Unity developer but what if you need someone who is like

very much not like the person who’s leaving for example or maybe someone who’s very proactive and outgoing and

would bring people together because the team’s missing some of that and then yeah um whenever that’s happened it’s

really done quite well I have a bit of a tactical question now so you’ve managed

teams globally so what tools would you say are like indispensable

interesting I don’t think any specific tool is indispensable I think there are there are sets of tools so good project

management software that can be jro that’s what we use um a good video call

service and that means not not just like Zoom or teams or whatever but actually a good setup in the studio so uh you know

we’ve we’ve we’ve gone to Great expense to install Zoom rooms so you have fantastic quality microphones fantastic

quality cameras Etc that makes working with people internationally much easier there’s nothing worse than

uh the delay when you’re talking and then that person doesn’t contribute to the to the meeting because they’re sick of feeling like it’s huge it’s huge and

like there’s you know I I’ve heard people say if you can’t all be in a room then you should all be remote you should

all be on video even if you’re in the studio so at least everybody’s on that same same Level Playing Field that I mean it maybe but I think

another way to do it is make sure you have a good video conferencing setup so the people that are remote can can get

more of the actual benefit of being together versus you all lose it just because one person you know can’t be there I had a podcast with a bunch of

producers and they said just that and I was very much in agreement because I’ve been in those meetings however then I

spoke to someone who worked in America and said yeah we don’t have this problem in America because we build these amazing rooms where the latency is like

zero massive screens and it feels like they’re in the room I was like ah so you just need to pay to solve the problem

okay so put a bit more money out the room it just works sorry remind me of your question

again I was I was too caught up on the the zoom room no we were just talking about tools about managing teams sool

yeah yeah there’s a lot of different ways people use it some people swear by only using teams to remove the

complexity I believe that’s Glenn brace who said that um we did a podcast last year but then some people love slack and

then some people use different things so I’m just thinking for people at home um is there any tools that you use because

you had different time zones like you had a very extreme situation yeah yeah no I mean I won’t give specific tools

because I think the only person who can really outline the tools is is is the person listening to this running their Studio but but I think you made a good

point there or or one of your guests did which is it’s important to focus on a on on a set of tools and not allow people

to kind of diversify for small personal preference so you know if we’ve got a jir project then I don’t want anybody

keeping track of their tasks on on on Trello because they find Trello easier they may find Trello easier but if the

group finds jir easier you need to upskale that person so that they also find J you know palatable to use um that

is actually talking about growing teams that’s think that as as we’ve matured as a business and we’ve realized that

there’s just certain things we’re just not good at and we kind of beat ourselves up about it and we’ve brought in people who’ve got much more

organizational experience people from 10,000 you know people companies Etc and one of the things that’s I’ve learned is

that this is these are very normal growing pains for a company to have the you know the the issues that qu have had

and that we’re solving um and they often say things like you might find that you

use jir but you don’t use Confluence and this team uses Confluence and there’s a there’s there’s a subscription to Monday and why are we paying for that and Etc

and apparent you know what I’ve heard is it’s a very very normal thing but what you do need to do is get a hold of it before it gets out of control before

you’re spending $5,000 a month on something that one person uses because somebody suggested it off hand and there

was no there was no look into it so if you’ve got the luxury you can hire a procurement manager you can hire you

know a competent head of it and you can say listen you know I want to get a here are my problems here are the tools that

I think are best for it but I’ve not gone and done the research you know ask ask yourself that honestly you may say I love jir but have you actually tried the

Alternatives and do you really use it to its deepest subset of tools and if not what do you use are there cheap

Alternatives out there that is actually you know similar for you so it’s important to evaluate it and and and not

to allow that kind of slow seep of of of people drifting off of stuff because

small small things in the in the moment will lead over the course of a year I always say if you lose a day in a project

because we have very short projects two weeks three weeks four weeks that adds up to like one or two prototypes not ever made that year

and you know that could be your hit game and and it’s and it’s just not what you want to be in for the sake of easily

solvable process or tool situations th% I tend to be the person

who procrastinates I used to procrastinate making my Excel a little bit better I’m like oh it’s long-term

benefit but I think there is a reason to have that mentality um I recently found

out that some companies gaming Studios pay 4 to 5,000 a month for their

recruitment license I’m like wait a minute what and it’s like some of these don’t have to be that expensive like

some people come like yeah we’re just paying for these list of features that we do not use but it’s like subscription

creep and I feel like on a personal level we’re having it but I think on a company level it’s the easiest thing to be like ah just see you in five years

when the accountant moans at us but like yeah please yeah 100% if you’re if you’re growing a

team you need to be cognizant of the cost it doesn’t matter how much VC you’ve got or how much personal back and you’ve got or whatever you know you

don’t want to create a cultural habit of it doesn’t that’s not my job to think about exactly yeah yeah like yeah you

can without it becoming a burden on them you can pass that down to the team you know when they say hey can I have this

Unity package this asset pack whatever it is um you know like one of the questions you can ask them rather than just would it make our games better say

do you think it’s worth the the cost benefit if they say well I I don’t know I don’t know how to work that out you say well you know how many assets do we

get in it how long would it take you to make them personally do you think that would disrupt your project oh yeah it would takeing me thousands of

hours to make that stuff okay is it good quality yeah is it is it is it acceptable to your level absolutely then it seems like it’s worth purchasing you

know and but if it’s like no I could I could knock that up but I don’t have the time now it’s okay well let’s let’s make time for you and let’s let’s not spend

that cost so you know you can if you instill that into every single person in your team then you don’t have to be so

paranoid that it’s you know you have to be on top of it or your Finance team have to be on top of it because nobody wants to hear from the finance team ever

you know it’s just not it’s just not an enjoyable experience yeah yeah yeah now

I heard a story on Alex hosi podcast where in one of his companies they had the accountant say oh we need to get

this tool it would save us like thousands of hours a year he said okay but then the call costed like stupid

High number like well for this to get a return on benefit we would have to do the exact same things we’re doing now

for 10 years straight and then it would break even so like yes we’re saving all these hours but like no it’s just not so

if we can always do that calculation then hopefully that you know SA the subscription creep yeah yeah yeah

there’s definitely like economies of scale in in in software obviously but even in in people right again just to go

back to Growing teams like there’s often that there’s a there’s a sense of when you’re a small team this person’s really

good at something and it’s hard for them to let go of doing stuff and it’s hard for them to defer work and you have to be comfortable with things being done

you know 90% as well as you may do them but ultimately you can’t stretch yourself across across all things and if

you’re a game studio and you go you’re a mobile Studio even a larger Studio you from one team to two teams you may say

right well do we need another producer or do we need X more producers it’s like well we can probably cope with it Etc um

because you don’t want to spend that that single salary because you think well right now that salary or not that salary is X more money spent right but

you should go one layer deeper you should go multiple layers deeper and say well will we deliver on time more often

will we will the team feel more supported and that results in less churn you know there’s so many ways you can view it and it’s always well it’s like

as far as I’m concerned spending money on people that’s the biggest outlay for a business especially a software business like like us but it’s also the

best place to spend your money you know I don’t want to upgrade to the premium package of jira if I could actually hire

another you know inventive creative human being who could who could bring more to the company than just the

ability to run company managed projects or whatever so it’s h it’s really important when you’re when you’re small

and growing to think about those costs and where should you spend them where’s the real value absolutely so before we

um close out now at the kind of near the end here I want to talk about the two

perspectives of the person hiring someone and then the person being hired joining a new team when it comes to

values so I feel like quy did this very well from the two developers I placed

like they literally sent me a message saying oh my God this was the best on boarding ever so like okay let me try

unpack this so if you’re hiring someone how do you onboard them to your culture

to your values like practically practically yeah yeah all right well so

yeah a lot of the tips I gave definitely apply so let them meet the people that are making the decisions make sure that

you tell them that you’re open to their suggestions to actually make the company better

like I I wrote a LinkedIn post about this the other day as well about you have to have transparency around your your real

company goals or your studio goals or your team goals like you can’t just have the fluffy goal of to make everybody in

the world 10% happier or whatever it has to be like this is what we’re actually trying to do so you can get on board you can get behind it and you can you can

now notice things that we do that don’t align with that that actual goal and you can you you can talk to us about it um

be cognizant rather than just because I what I found is I interview somebody

especially if they’re a senior person by the time they actually start I barely remember who they are and that sounds really bad but because it can be four

months from like a notice period and then a relocation or whatever and I have to just rely on the fact that you know

well I’m a good hiring manager and I at the time I was confident and I don’t remember what they sound like and you’re just like oh my God you start to worry

like what if they said off and they’re terrible um but like try not to do that yeah you know I’ve just said I do that but try not to do that try to build a

kind of personality map of them in your head and then think about what may they struggle with if you hire somebody from

from Eastern Europe and an Eastern European company look at their CV if they ever worked in a company like your

company is this the biggest company they’ve ever worked at is it the smallest company they’ve ever worked at and try to tell

the teams that you put them on the people that you put them with so that they feel most comfortable at the beginning you know maybe there’s people

who English is not their native language it’s they speak good English but it’s not their native language and there are other people on the team who also speak

their native language maybe you can pair them with them at the beginning uh if you anticipate they may have a certain struggle when they start around whatever

it is pair them with somebody who you know had that struggle and they can they you know they can help them um never

leave it to the day where you’re like oh that person starts tomorrow I should you know I should be on I I should be because we’ve I don’t know if we all

have but I’ve certainly started at companies where that’s clearly what’s happened you know you like 50/50 in my

exp yeah you walk in and they’re like oh T yes um a you’re going to sit uh there

let me just don’t worry about the monitor don’t worry about this and okay okay cool this is great I feel really valued here so yeah don’t don’t allow

that to happen like go out of your way like like don’t don’t defer that to the admin team or whatever like look at their desk make sure things are set up

properly make sure they’ve got the equipment they want send them a message on LinkedIn a week before they start and just say hey I’m I can’t wait to get you

uh here if you got any questions about local area maybe they’re moving like let me know um if you have a this is the

thing like you can’t fake this if you have to have a good company culture you have to care about the people starting and if you do and then you’re also

cognizant of what their experience will be a lot of this stuff will come naturally to you I you know I won’t be

saying anything new to you if a lot of what I’m saying is new to you then you need to think about why this hasn’t crossed your mind in the past and you

know potentially you’re just busy I’m not trying to condemn anybody listening but like you need to think okay I I I should put more emphasis on this put

yourself in their shoes and and that should be it should be a good experience for

them yeah I think it’s also a thing that everyone knows they should do at the

start but then it’s like good habits as time goes on like oh I don’t have time for that now I’ll do that later and then

it you just stop doing it forever I think that sort of thing starts to happen like we when a contractor was

starting would always check in like the week before the day of the first week

and then the first month and then recur and then some clients I would ask them

oh what do they need to do um to get ready for Monday like ah they should actually do these list of things is like oh if I didn’t ask you you wouldn’t have

sent that and then that on boarding day would have been a lot weirder so do stuff like that just saying oh maybe

install unity and be ready if you’re working remote um these little things and also just saying hey really excited

to join like really excited to have you or yeah exactly this very cool thing that happened was on the day

There’s an actual one to one meeting that said welcome like just a one to one meeting that just said hey welcome to

company this is very good to have you here this is why you’re joining boom and then this is what your first week’s

going to look like some companies just skip that part and I’m like why so much value no definitely I mean I like to

tell people how many people they beat out you know like we had 700 applicants for this job you are you are literally

the one out of 700 people who applied for this and you know you beat the three people obviously you’re not going to name their names but they came from this

x Studio X Y studio and we chose you because we feel and I I can’t remember where I heard this but there’s

definitely a a a line of thought in psychology where if you tell people what

you like about them or or how you expect them to act what I love about you is you always do this they’re much more likely

to do it than if you kind of criticize them for fact they do not do it so we cannot wait to have you in the studio because we really believe you’re going

to increase communication and be vocal when you you know you’re telling them this oh that’s that’s me all over I’ll

do that for you like CU you know that’s the expectation so set set the expectations be nice and clear re a real

boring but absolutely actionable practical thing is have a Excel sheet Monday board jro whatever it is of tasks

that you have to run through before they start Task that they get to run through when they start that you can just check in because you know I am busy sometimes

I don’t have time to every single day catch up with them at the end of the day whatever reason but I can go on that Monday board and I can see okay they

have installed this they have spoke to that person oh they haven’t done this they left a comment on it that says can’t find X person you know whatever

and then I can I can solve that problem for them and it’s just you know really small but again I don’t know how many companies are actually doing it and if

you implement it tomorrow like how is it really going to have a negative impact I I highly doubt it yeah I agree um I used

to do this with my freelancer we’d have like an end of week I guess Retros like

hey how’d it go then we just swapped that to just end of day reports it’s like oh this is a lot better then saves

everyone time so like having an async way keep track of what’s Happening without having to be like so what’s

happened for the last 6 days like why is this we’re in a digital world let’s like keep track of this somewhere where we

can both look at it so yeah th% then we can be improved because you might think those seven tasks was a bit egregious to

say they can all do it one day but you wouldn’t be able to track that without putting it down on paper amazing so

before we wrap up because I believe we did answer the question about what a candidate should do when they start is

what is one thing you we haven’t covered today that you feel like people should hear like what is one thing you want to leave people

with um I feel in general of so this this

applies to growing a team if you’re the person growing a team presumably for the first time if you’re 15 years older than

me and you’ve done this at 10 times bigger Studios you’re probably not super interested in what I have to say please give me feedback because I there’s a lot

I need to learn but if you’re if this is the first time you’re doing this think about what you would want of an of an individual to when they’re getting

better at something so ask for feedback speak to the team Don’t Be Afraid don’t

always stop yourself because of something that may go wrong or what’s the worst case scenario for doing this

like the likelihood is you need to do more and not not get scared so if you think that a opening up a position for

production to support this new team that you’re growing ah it’s going to I’m going to have to have an you know a difficult conversation with whoever

Finance HR my boss um so I won’t do it we’ll you you know we’ll cope we’ll we

we’ll do whatever like that’s not it’s very rarely the right thing to do like always ask the question explain to them

your concerns I’m worried that it might be viewed this way but this is the you know these are the benefits roll people into the conversation there are if

you’re a producer you you understand exactly what I’m about to say a one of the easiest parts of a producer’s job but also it’s a thing that a lot of

people give you give you credit for is just putting two people together who have asked you a question or they have

com comments about each other and then just saying say that to each other and then they’ll go off and they’ll solve it and they’ll come back and be like you’re

so good at your job and it’s like I’m really I’m not sure I’m not so sure so

in don’t don’t don’t hold questions in that could be asked and that’s whether you’re an individual or you’re growing a

team like ask all the questions roll things in Google it like reach out to people who’ve done other things like

something that I’ve really noticed in on on LinkedIn is that people are a lot friendlier than you might imagine so

when we were opening the studio I’m going to forget his name now which is terrible of me but it has been I’ve not done this before I will look for other

studios in Bangalore that have been started by external companies and there’s a company called Laya games in

in Bangalore and they’re they’re backed by uh a Californian kind of VC I believe

really sorry if I’m getting this wrong but I reached out and I said is you know we’re starting a studio and I’m sure there’s a lot you’ve learned like it’d be great to catch up even better to

catch up in in person and you know they they responded and we had a great conversation it’s like oh this is this is great so don’t be afraid to do that

ask questions and yeah don’t don’t lock up when it matters and think no what I should do is hunker down and and you

know solve solve this myself there’s my ramble in life advice