Well, I can tell you that the problem isn't a lack of Dev Applicants.

I submitted an application approximately a month ago. Since then I have sent a few emails just looking for acknowledgement that my application had been received and a timeline. I haven't received a single response.

At this point I've withdrawn my application. It's ashame because I have a masters in computer science and professional experience and I was just looking to donate my time to enhance our community. I thought I would be filling a dire need, but based on my experiences no one on staff is feeling any pressure to bring in new developers.

If this isn't falling through the cracks I don't know what is. I've seen the posts about GM classes and cycles, which would make complete sense for a larger operation with already sufficient manpower. GS in not in that situation. There aren't enough people in the community for there to be a constant flood of new dev applications. At least have someone glance at the pool of new ones once a week or so. Failing that, read their emails.

The people offering their time presumably have other things they could be doing with the time they are offering. Demanding time commitments and then leaving applicants with no feedback is essentially asking them to put that time on hold in the hopes that it will be required. Waiting around for a decision without any feedback at all is not enjoyable and creates uncertainty when making other plans. I could only convince myself that someone would be reviewing my application real soon now for so long.

So, yeah, there's cycles, and they bake new GMs in fairly large batches as they tend to lose a few during the training, or shortly afterwards. Also, they want to maximize the bang for the buck they get from those dozen or so hours every week (for months) the GMs are investing into training the new folks.

As a game, GS is the antithesis of today's instant-gratification gaming: everything is pretty long term here by comparison.

The GM hiring process is the same. They're looking at the long-term needs rather than reacting to every short term issue. Short term thinking like that would lead to fairly significant training inefficiencies. The bottom line is that to keep GS running, they're thinking long-term (as in years). That gets them the most GMs for the training effort invested.

Without addressing the other unrelated points, focusing on the long-term does not preclude taking effective intermediate measures.

Training GMs in batches in no way teaches against expending minimal effort to retain applicants. That might be the case if quality development applicants were an unlimited resource, or even an abundant one. Unfortunately, they are not.

The new system is infinitely better than the old at least. Now you have actual confirmation your application is in. You can update it without rebuilding it entirely. There's even a place for feedback from the person that reviewed the application.

Anyone with even a basic experience with Simu knows they do almost nothing "fast." I wouldn't expect the hiring process to be a fast one either.

- Andreas

EES Website: http://www.gsranger.net/
Foraging Galore: http://www.gsranger.net/guides/foraging/
PRO Resources: http://www.gsmeetinghalls.com/

Don't feed the troll, it only makes him worse.

I thought it has been mentioned that on the new application there is a way for seeing if your application has been reviewed, or atleast processed in some way.

A few thoughts from someone that hires for a team.

I'd personally love to give each applicant a review of their application. The best I have time for would be a couple of form letters. I'm not going to insult anyone with that.

As has been stated we need to think long term. Don't doubt that I'd love to hire some people right this minute and have them working in a week. It doesn't work that way, though.

I'm not singling anyone out here, but if you can't hang in through the application/review/hiring process, you're probably not a good fit. Speaking for my team, CE Systems, we have a very lengthy training process. Basic GM training, Events training, referral training and GSL training. I need people that are in it for the long haul, not short term burnouts.

Maybe I'm missing something on the confirmation email issue from the player side. Once you submit your application, can't you look at it? That would seem like confirmation to me.

SGM Sleken

I'm not singling anyone out here, but if you can't hang in through the application/review/hiring process, you're probably not a good fit.

I completely agree that I would not be a good fit if the system works in the same manner internally. I imagine that most efficient coders would fall into the same category. That might be why hiring practices within the software industry are so different.

Training is a normal part of the process. It generally takes people a little while to start contributing effectively everywhere. I doubt anyone expects to work at full efficiency from day one. Given that GSL isn't published, that would be completely unrealistic.

What I was looking for was confirmation that my application would be reviewed and a timeline. Really, anything that would let me plan. This problem could probably be solved by making an announcement before opening a class to solicit applications.

Unfortunately the current system is, as people have mentioned, a black hole. People submit applications and either never hear back or hear back at some later point after essentially a random period of time. It's essentially designed to frustrate candidates by offering as little feedback as possible.

It's understandable that you can't give extensive feedback for every application. Not responding at all, however, is not. Form letters aren't an insult, they're the compromise between an unrealistic amount of feedback and none at all. They aren't just to communicate the rejection, responding shows that you reviewed the material they worked on. It lets people know that they weren't just completely wasting their time. More importantly for you, that you weren't just completely wasting their time.

I don't think that is applicable in my case. I would be very surprised if my application was even glanced at, let alone reviewed. I'm hoping that someone can learn something from my experience. Maybe knowing that competent coders aren't getting the opportunity to help advance the game can motivate some change.

<<We do this with CE and Dev focused GameMaster hiring classes as well as when we're looking for new GameHosts.

I'm suggesting that the current ability to submit applications at any time be removed. Instead, the system would be open for submissions only while applications were being solicited.

That's assuming there is no possibility of changing the review policy instead.

"I'm not singling anyone out here, but if you can't hang in through the application/review/hiring process, you're probably not a good fit." -- Sleken

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I've been trying to become a member of staff (host/gm/mod) since the late 90's and I've yet to have someone come out and outright say: you aren't going to become one, you're wasting your time.

How much more hanging in am I supposed to be doing?

>> What I was looking for was confirmation that my application would be reviewed and a timeline. Really, anything that would let me plan.

This caught my eye. I am curious as to what exactly you would need to plan for?

--
Naos

I'm immune to fire! Now with more banhammer! You sense the bond between you and your grey cat grow stronger.

This caught my eye. I am curious as to what exactly you would need to plan for?

--
Naos

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I'm not him, but I can think of dozens of things to plan for.

Anytime I take on a new job I make it a point to not plan any vacations in the next 6 months. I try to get them out of my system before being hired. Maybe he has a ton of free time and wants to fill it up this summer, so he could spend it GMing or working at a summer camp, or agreeing to volunteer for X amount of hours. Maybe he takes projects from rentacoder to fill his free time and doesn't want to do take on another if he'll need that time to train. Maybe it's a choice between GMing and invading Poland.

Dgry

Depends on the era, Robert... France never fell in World War 1. Granted, Poland fell quickly, too, in 1939. Sending horses against tanks will lend to that...

>> This caught my eye. I am curious as to what exactly you would need to plan for?

GRYPES was essentially correct. I have some more free time this summer and wanted to do something productive. I also need to know what I can commit to when people ask me if I'll be free.

I volunteered a lot of hours for someone who is working full time. It isn't just time I would spend playing in the meantime.

Maybe GMing isn't as large a commitment as I thought and I should not have assumed that I would need to plan around it.

The difficulty is, we never know quite when we're going to hire during the year, and then we never know quite how long the hiring process will take, and then we never know quite how long each new GM will take to clear training. So, planning is going to be a little difficult.

The other thing to keep in mind is that although training is time intensive, you pretty much need the same amount of time each month throughout the year to GM at a level that keeps you ticking over as an AGM/FGM. I mean, I certainly didn't plan anything around being hired, in fact I think I applied in the middle of Grad School for some crazy reason, so being hired then would have been a nightmare!

I know the waiting sucks, but it is totally worth it. I know from personal experience that waiting a couple of years after applying was not super fun, but it was totally worth it! <3

~Izzea
ASGM Towns & Communities
Mentor Guru
Forum Manager
Famous in Norway

>If this is directed at me I'm not sure why you are making these assumptions. My availability isn't seasonal. That's why I used more free time instead of just free time. I didn't volunteer time I don't have.

It was clearly not directed at you. The specific statement I was talking to, though:

>Maybe he has a ton of free time and wants to fill it up this summer, so he could spend it GMing or working at a summer camp, or agreeing to volunteer for X amount of hours.

I was just clarifying that GMing really isn't a summer job sort of deal. That is all.

Auchand

It's funnier in Enochian.

"The difficulty is, we never know quite when we're going to hire during the year..." -- Izzea

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I would figure, given the state of things, that Simutronics would be quite eager to hire people wanting to make the game better as a staff member.

Worried about people abusing the power? That's what trial periods are for.

Worried about people getting burnt out? That's why you give them small projects (such as going through bug reports or reading the forums and responding to threads that should have staff input) to start with until you know they can be trusted with a bigger job.

I'm not saying that each and every applicant should be hired..

..but it really sounds like you just let everyone sit there collecting dust until some yearly review.

>I would figure, given the state of things, that Simutronics would be quite eager to hire people wanting to make the game better as a staff member.

There's a significant time and effort cost put in to new GameMaster training. We are, of course, always eager to get new classes of GMs, but I don't think there's a better way to make use of our limited training resources than by hiring in groups like they have been doing for some time.

>Worried about people abusing the power? That's what trial periods are for.

Except for the fact that our game is in real-time, with a real audience. New GameMasters are trained about the potential for abusing power, but I'm personally glad that the hiring team puts so much effort into culling the flock. We've had new GMs have not panned out for various reasons, and you'd be surprised at the damage that could be done by the aforementioned abuse.

>Worried about people getting burnt out? That's why you give them small projects (such as going through bug reports or reading the forums and responding to threads that should have staff input) to start with until you know they can be trusted with a bigger job.

The way our training process currently works, it's difficult to dribble out projects to people in general. In addition to the multitudinous things that genuinely need doing, we all tend to accumulate pet projects that can quickly become overwhelming. I know I have several MB of pure *.txt files of stuff that I want to do, but can't seem to fit in. I think maybe you're underestimating the sheer amount of learning new GMs need to do. I found my early days to be a matter of completely re-learning GemStone from behind the scenes.

>Perhaps it would help applicants for current GM's to relate their own experience with the hiring process. How long did you guys have to wait before hearing about your application? Did you do sit back and wait, or were you doing 'call-backs'?

I waited six years to get hired. It was something of an agonizing process, and I do remember the sensation that I was on one side of a brick wall with no one answering back. We are much more open about discussing our hiring process now than GMs used to be--to me, GMing in general used to have this aura of mystery that I found at turns silly, baffling, and frustrating.

I was relieved when I finally got accepted as a GameHost, and then a week or two after finishing training, I was interviewed to become a GameMaster. But yeah, six years.

Auchand

It's funnier in Enochian.

<<I'm actually surprised by the multiple comments I have seen from GMs about my suitability as a candidate. My application and subsequent emails answered all of these questions.

Something important to note, based on the statement above, is that not all GMs have access to the applications, or to emails pertaining to them. Because they contain information that would be considered more sensitive, such as your mailing address and real name, the applications are only accessible by the staff who need to see them for hiring purposes. This is a very limited pool of GMs.

On a personal note, I applied several times over the years.

My first application was as early as 1999. I ultimately became a GM in January of 2007. In between were several new applications as my skillset and interests changed. The application that led to me being hired was filed after a forum request for CE applicants. I was originally interviewed because a position had opened up to run the MHO system. During training I expressed an interest in Platinum, and then SGM Khaladon "stole" me for his Upsells team, which was also down a person. Because I filled a spot on Upsells and not on the original team I was intended for, the next hiring class had a spot for someone to take over MHOs. All this to say, I waited a long time.

Cheers,
Itzel

Team Plat
Forest Gnome Guru
Elven Nations Guru

Jaired says, "Stop standing in the way of the artistic picture that I am trying to paint through WORDS."

>Whipper-snappers.

Yep!

We call you "Old man Sleken" behind your back.

<3


~Izzea
ASGM Towns & Communities
Mentor Guru
Forum Manager
Famous in Norway

In any of the Real World jobs I've applied for, I've only ever gotten any sort of phone call or email if I was absolutely flat out rejected.

Also, in following up on the original question, once your application has been submitted and marked as "Reviewed", then that means the GM(s) in question are looking at it and it's locked from being updated so that it can't be changed while it's being evaluated. Until then, you can update it as often as you like and GMs shouldn't be marking apps as "Reviewed" unless they're actually in process of reviewing an app.

As many folks have pointed out, applying to be a GM is a process that can take quite a long time. Getting interviewed is something that can take months, depending on when your app was submitted on the hiring-cycle.

If you want to get your foot in the door, I've always been a strong proponent of applying to be a Host first and then working your way up. I started as a Mentor and worked my way up as a Board Monitor and then as a Host. It's beneficial for both parties, since we can get a good idea of how you work and you get a good idea of how things work upstairs without "ruining" anything for you and letting you see behind the curtain.

While the system we have now is far from perfect (for example, we can only set a blanket status for an App regardless of how many positions that person is wanting to apply for), it's a far sight better than the system we used to use.

Solomon

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"Also, in following up on the original question, once your application has been submitted and marked as "Reviewed", then that means the GM(s) in question are looking at it and it's locked from being updated so that it can't be changed while it's being evaluated. Until then, you can update it as often as you like and GMs shouldn't be marking apps as "Reviewed" unless they're actually in process of reviewing an app." -- Solomon

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It's been that way since late February. Is that normal?