Uber is hiring!

Check here for our currently listed position.

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/uber-entertainment-test-ninja.56057/

Can testers work from home?

Surely the developers of P.A. appreciate the power of web technology and global business?

The short answer is no.

The longer answer is that people do work from home sometimes, but it is the exception to their regular schedules rather than the rule. Face to face communication is just extremely convenient and efficient, and with current communication technology you can't beat it.

With Lync, Team viewer, TFS, VOIP phones and web cams I work pretty well out of the satellite office in the company i work for with only 1 other dev. The rest of the team is in another province. Granted, I've got to be available for the morning team meeting an hour earlier than most of the devs (local time) but I don't have any communication barriers with co-workers (unless they don't check emails). The point is, it's certainly doable especially for non-mission critical staff.

I don't think the point is that it is doable. The point is, uber wants to communicate face to face.

I love to see things like this. Shows that Uber is growing – which is good for us.

This. While working remotely is certainly doable, and at times necessary, it's hard to replace having regular face to face discussions, discussing the latest playtest over lunch, etc. There's a lot of intangibles you miss out on when you're 100% offsite. Having worked with a lot of remote teams over the years, I can speak very much to how hard this can be. Sometimes it's necessary and can even work out well, but I've never been in a situation where I said "Gosh, this remote thing is awesome! It would suck if we got to share an office."

I once had to work with someone in a project who had unpleasant BO, which made working remotely kinda nice, but then that is a bit different I suppose

In general I do agree though, the subtle nuances of body language and un-garbled speech is invaluable.

Testing a product is somewhat mission-critical, especially in a public product with iterative updates.

Best of luck Uber, I'd apply but I'm an ocean away!

Me too. Oh, and I have no experience what-so-ever in game development. But hey, do you consider people with a lot of enthusiasm and a degree from the University of Life?

Dam, if only it was 2017, Id be jumpin at applying, best wishes to the Uber Crew

I'm enrolling in Computer Science here in Brazil can i apply? if yes where do i send my CV?

Damnit, we've been doing a lot of testing and QA planning the last month or so, you shoulda posted this job listing in the future when I graduated and had money to live in the US D:

If Uber will translate PA on other languages, I'll be glad to work on russian translation

I am working on getting these files ready today for upload. Hoping to start a new localization thread shortly.

I've got a question that concerns schooling, as someone who wants to be a game designer (ex. AI design), what kind of college courses would you suggest?

There are a few really good schools for it - locally to us, we have one of the best - DigiPen. Incredibly hard, and does a great job at making great game devs. A number of our employees are graduates from there.

Generally speaking, I would focus on:
- Programming
- Math
- Some basic art courses
- Psychology

Depending on your interest, history, art history, etc can also come in very useful for learning how to research cultures, period styles, etc.

But more than anything, download Unity (or UDK) today and start making games in your spare time. Any advice you ever get from anyone about how to get in the games industry that doesn't include "Go start making games", is bad advice. There are more, better tools today then has ever existed before. Unity and UDK are so incredibly powerful and so easy to get into. There are books on both, and there are thousands of YouTube and Web tutorials on how to get started. Go make a Pac Man clone. Or a Flappy Bird clone. The best way to learn how to make a game is to make a game, and it's usually easiest by just emulating an old favorite. You can grow your skills from there.

General life advice? Don't be afraid of failing or making mistakes. People who are good at what they do got good by doing it a lot, which means screwing up a lot. Lastly? Be willing to learn. Which means be willing to research a problem until you figure it out. Both of those are important no matter what you do, but making games, you'll often be solving problems no one else has.. or at least no one else wrote up a web post about, so Stack Overflow may not have the answers.

Psychology? So you can hypnotise people and insert subliminal messages into your games?

If your main interest is design, yes, a solid understanding of human psychology, motivation and such is very handy to have. While I never took classes, I've done a ton of reading over the years on how we engage, learn and improve. It's a very handy design tool.

I definitely agree with everything Garat says here.
I'm currently studying Game Design and Production Management (GDPM) at the University of Abertay Dundee, which is considered one of the best European game design schools, and we're CONSTANTLY encouraged to be spending time outside of class making our own games alone or with friends. A friend of mine in my class finished a huge Fallout: New Vegas mod that got him featured on major games press like Polygon and Kotaku; I'm working on expanding an auto-runner game I created for a module last semester (although likely simplifying since the coursework was a pitch doc, art, sketchbooks and animation playblasts to "sell" the game, and it was very mobile oriented. It'll likely end up a bit.trip runner clone with my own specific art). Here's a quick super-rough animation if anyone's interested: was supposed to be a mobile runner where the player moved obstacles in the environment to progress, open paths and defeat monsters



Fun extra fact: Our QA lecturer won't shut the hell up about how he broke the Crackdown DLC by messing up all the testing scripts on it :3