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The new job

My new job is at the Institute of Cartography at ETH Zürich (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich = Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich). I would categorize this as a technical university. This is my first time ever at a university; well beyond been a visitor; so a total new environment for me.

Let me show the job description that I found while using Google to do some searches for game developer positions here in Switzerland

You will be working within the European project #Around an Inspiring Virtual Learning World in Eighty Days# (acronym 80Days), with the goal of creating the next generation of educational 3D games.
You will be involved mainly with the implementation of the envisioned 3D game demonstrator following given specifications of the game design and learning design requirements.
Main tasks:
- Game development: This task starts with in-depth specifications of the technological approaches for a given game design. In the second part, the implementation of the game is performed (game engine, scripting engine, sound system, GUI system, input and output modules, physics engine, etc#). An implementation focus lies in the generation of 3D Virtual Environments from prepared geo-spatial data sources (Digital Terrain Models, satellite/aerial images, various topographic and thematic data sources).
- Game asset production: Together with contents coming from given sources (e.g. geographical material), different types of game assets will be developed including 3D graphics, 2D graphics, sound effects, background music, texts, etc

You will be part of a small, motivated team at the Institute of Cartography, ETH Zürich. Possibility of obtaining a PhD degree.

I have to admit that first time I read this description I had to re-read it a few time; just sounded too good, such a job in Switzerland. Amazing :-) That it is a game that involves teaching just makes it more interesting, not long ago I was had talks with a guy about e-learning but I never imagined it would happen so fast and on this scale.

This is of course not ‘normal’ game development and especially not compared to the mobile games I worked on in the past. The whole development of the game will also be handled in a very different way compared to what I’m used to (more about that in a bit).

I never worked with geo-spatial data sources or GIS systems and the 3D games I have been involved in were rather limited compared to this project. All this was no problem with the guys at ETH, my experience with game development (design, producing, programming…) counted a lot more. The new things such as handling geo data and advance 3D rendering can be taught, it is after all just new technology and new data sets, things I always had it easy to adapt to. There are SO many information and tutorial on the internet, so if you are a person like me that have it easy with learning (and having been through several technologies before just makes it a lot easier) then it there are no reason to worry.

So I take this as a great challenge and a way to learn a lot of new materials; not only things that can be used for game development but for a lot of other applications, just look at Google Earth and how they use rendering together with geo data.

We will be working as a very small and close team in Zürich, just me and a specialist in geo data but the whole project is of course to big to handle by a few persons. The game is a European wide project with partners in UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy and Austria and of course Switzerland. Some of the partners have experience in game development and some are experts in other areas. So the whole project will be managed and handled different from normal game development. That people are spread over several offices (countries) is no issue for me as I’m used to communicate with various instant messenger programs.

The whole project will take 30 month and not a day longer. You often see ‘normal’ games been delayed but this can’t be the case for us as the project is EU funded.

For me there are still a lot of unclear things but since we are at a very early stage it is okay (Hey, I didn’t even start the new job yet) and we will be having a kick-off meeting in Austria next month. None of this worries me at all; I’m just excited about the whole project and how it will be to work together with the various partners.

Changes in work and life

For the last 10 years I have been working from a home office; the work has been on single game projects or as technical director for a German mobile game publisher/developer, so I was not working alone but I was always alone in my office. This is going to change a LOT now; the place where I will be working have around 30 people working there at the moment. I will be sharing office with 1-3 people but will have contact with lots of people during the day.

This is a change that I welcome, sometimes it does get a bit lonely here in the home office and I have felt from time to time that I was ’stalling’ in my own development. This was both personally but also professional; working directly with people will improve a lot of things; it will give good chances for discussions and talks about all kinds of subjects. At the same time the people I will be working close with will have a total different background. I have tried this once before in Ireland (Working with a programmer who came from the French Space Agency, so VERY different background) and I profited a lot from that.

Having to work in a office also brings other changes; such as more fixed working hours, this is no issue of course but something that I have to get used to. So no more sleeping long and been able to just walk from one room to the next to get to work. The new place is around one hours drive from my place, that’s if I take the car. I will be checking the trains as that will be way cheaper but then we are talking around 1 hour and 45 minutes for one way trip. A good advantage of taking the train is that I can relax; read some books, listen to podcasts or even bring the notebook with me.

Since I will be away the whole day the kids will not be able to come over when ever they like it. Right now they often pass by my place when they return from school or kindergarten (They live most of the time with their mom, but that is almost next door). The kids did mention that they where not happy about this but they understand. It will also be a challenge to get early up enough to send them off in the morning and be back in time for the days where I pick them up, but I’m sure we will manage.

Next challenge for me and my ex-wife will be doing the schedule for the kids and who takes care of them and when; in the past it was pretty easy as I was always home but now we have to have more strict rules for it, this might mean I have to leave one hour earlier from work some days and then do the work in the evening. I have often been doing work in the evenings so no change for me really and the people at ETH also got no issue with me doing this; as long as I do my hours and get the work done. I’m pretty sure that after spending some time getting used to the change and to adapt; that I and my ex-wife will sort it all out without problems (We always did in the past).

I wrote a good bit about changes and challenges but there is one thing that will be easy to get used to. That is holidays, for the last few years I didn’t take many days off at all but now I will be having a total of 25 days pr year. This was one thing the kids liked a lot about the new job :-)

Conclusion

So after going from a great job to been unemployed, then getting to panic mode, then it seems the whole situation will change to something great. This is what I hope and more important what I’m convinced it will be. Sure there will be some big changes in our lives but nothing dramatic; I mean, I see people everyday that have to commute to work and have little time home and they do manage :-)

There will be a lot of new things for me to learn at the new job and this suit me VERY well. Having worked on such a project will be great, especially considering that the position is limited to 30 month. So in 30 month I will probably be looking for a new job but I will be at a better position to do so. So this does not worry me at all, I will wait 2 years with the worry :-)

So what happens from now and until I start the new job, I will be doing some study to improve my knowledge, especially regarding GIS (So I at least have an idea about what they are talking about); this will be through the learning system found on GITTA (Geographic Information Technology Training Alliance).

Blogging

This post turn into a WAY longer post than expected (so typical me), so if anyone got to the end then do leave a comment :-) (No prizes to be won). I do plan to blog about working at ETHZ and also about the project. I do not know how much I may blog about; such as technical details but I’m sure there will be things I can write about. I will know more about this after the meeting in Austria.

So consider this to be the start of a series of blog entries…

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• What direction to go?
• Look for new possibilities

These two subjects became serious issues recently for me which will result in some big changes for me (After been through a few changes recently). On the 1st of April (No April jokes, please) I will be starting a new job at a Technical University here in Switzerland. This will be the biggest job change for me during my 10 years here in Switzerland. This change is not only related to work but will go beyond it and result in changes for us all here (the kids, my ex-wife and myself).

Let me tell the story… This will be done in two parts, with the first one today and second tomorrow.

Suddenly no job and the problems…

I recently ended up in a situation that I never been in before really. I was without job, 100% unemployed.

The reason for this suddenly happening was that the project I worked on before was canceled almost from one day to another. I will not go into details why this happened but I fully agree that it had to be done. It had to be said that I have been working with/for a friend for the last 2 years and it was his decision that the project was canceled, this was pure a business decision so we are still friends :-)

Anyway, this meant that from one day to the next I was without any projects to work on; which means no work/money… I got registered as unemployed quickly after, but I’m a special case in the system here in Switzerland. Normally as self-employed you can NOT get unemployment money when you are out of work/projects BUT due to my special case I have been paying unemployment insurance. I did get turned down by the unemployment department but I have appealed the case with some facts. When this will be sorted I don’t know.

This also means that I have been without any income for awhile now and that hurts us all at the moment.

The search

Just after the news about the project been dropped I updated my resume (Thanks to Ian, Jon, Chris, Michael, Daniel & Ole.. and the people I forgot, for giving advise and feedback on the resume).

The resume got uploaded to several job sites and to my big surprise I was contacted by several agencies the day after. A bit unlucky as I had throat problems at that stage so I wasn’t able to speak. During the time I was looking for job I got several calls and emails from many people. One sad part was that a lot of them was from the UK; asking if I was interested in positions as game developer (programmer) at UK companies. Sure the jobs might have been interesting but I was never interested in moving away from here.

I spent many hours daily looking for possible jobs here in Switzerland. I also got in touch with friends from various companies to discuss the possibility for freelance/remote work on their projects and it was close a few times; but at the end nothing came up. During the month before I had been considering to look for work outside of the games business (Switzerland is a bad place for game development; so few companies). I often heard that it should be very easy to get jobs here in Switzerland, especially in the Zurich area when you work as software engineer. This turned out to be true but just not for me. My experience is just very narrow (But damn good if I have to say it); most companies are looking for people with Java EE (Enterprise Edition) experience, together with web application development. This is one area where I have absolutely NO experience.

Anyway, I never gave up and continued searching

Getting close to panic mode…

I was getting to a stage where I REALLY just needed some kind of job; yes, getting a bit close to panic. It hurts when there are no forms of income (and no savings) and the closer to the end of the month I got the more nervous I got. My ex-wife and the kids are also rather depending on me, they where very supporting and understanding all the time but that sure does not pay any of our bills.

Then one day I did another Google for “game developer” here in Switzerland and I came across a rather interesting job; which I applied for RIGHT away and within a very short time I went for an interview and was offered the job the same day. Everything went very fast and after some consideration over the weekend I accepted the job. Some might call this a rushed decision but I do not feel like that AT ALL; the job suits me pretty good and I’m still very excited about it. I actually went to the University today for some talks and that just confirmed that it was the right decision.

To be continued…

So panic turned into something rather exciting which I will write more about tomorrow. I will include some information about the new job and also what kind of changes this will involve.

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