Building the Perfect Team

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Building the Perfect Team

• Michael Capps, Ph.D.
• President, Epic Games, Inc.

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Overview

• Audience check
• What gives me the right
• Defining success
• Hiring
• Rewards
• Saying Goodbye
• Critical Positions

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Epic Games

• Founded 16 years ago by CEO Tim Sweeney
• About 90 employees
• Early success with Jill of the Jungle, Epic
  Pinball, then Unreal
  
• Licensing Unreal Engine since 1996
• 2006 shipped Gears of War, 4M units and many GOTY
  awards
  
• This month shipped Unreal Tournament 3 and Gears
  of War for Windows

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Leadership expert?

• Not really
• I lead because I hate inefficiency
• Or that which I perceive as inefficiency
• Or really, when its not done how Id do it
• So I guess I lead because I simply hate following

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Mikes fascinating story

• Socialization and Education 1976 - 2000
• Americas Army 2000 - 2002
• Scion Studios 2002 2004
• Epic Games 2004

until Im hit by a bus
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Visualize Success

• Whats our end goal?
• Team dynamics and Culture
• Really, we want
• People to work harder than usual
• People to work hard on the same thing
• Not in scope
• People to work hard on the right thing

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Visualize Success

• In other words, we want a team with
• Unity of purpose
• Willingness to sacrifice for that purpose
• This doesnt mean sacrifice your family
• Rather sacrifice enjoyable inefficiencies

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Enjoyable Inefficiencies

• Petty squabbling
• intolerance for failure
• Territorial behavior
• Random web browsing
• Random research projects
• Tasks that look deceptively like progress but
  dont help to ship games
  
• UT during lunch
• Unless youre working on UT of course

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Team case studies

• Project Lowlife
• get it running on almost anything
• Americas Army
• keep a secret and shock the world
• Scion Studios
• beat Epic at their own game

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Team case studies

• Epic Games
• be the undisputed best in games and tech
• Okay, so we think we did that. So now
• Against the odds, stay on top!

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Team case studies

• Theres a trend in Capps brand cultures
• MISSION (Almost) Impossible

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Believing in leadership

• Your team needs to be confident in you
• You dont have to be perfect
• you cant be
• Earn their trust and theyll support your
  decisions

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Believing in leadership

• So if youre going to fuck up
• Please do so with confidence
• Panache even
• You can blame any fuckups on this talk
• Or, even more hip
• Blame your engine middleware

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HiringDisclaimer I am not an artist
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but I can hire them!
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Epics Hiring Process

• Resume review by HR
• Resume review by experts
• Skills Test
• HR phone call
• Experts phone call(s)
• Reference checking
• On-site interview
• Background investigation

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A good resume

• Bad spelling is a pass
• Programmers who dont spell check probably dont
  test their code
  
• Artists who dont spell check probably dont ask
  peers to review their work

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A good portfolio

• Should include only great work
• if they send something weak, assume they don't
  know the difference
  
• or they don't ask for advice from peers /
  mentors
  
• Look for crediting, clean presentation, etc.

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Demonstrate Passion

• Good teams require passion
• So we look for this first and foremost
• What projects are they working on at home?
• For junior hires
• Look for game focused internships or
  extracurricular activities
  
• Best tests are outside of the classroom
• Hobby projects, mods, etc. are king

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Skill test

• Make them juggle
• See how they take direction
• No matter how perfect, we always send back for
  more
  
• I dont take tests
• Dont hire this guy
• Hes probably too important to write input code
  or clean up LODs
  
• Or any of the other stuff that ships games

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The on-site interview

• For artists not for skills, just team fit
• For coders technical interview and team fit
• What are we afraid of?
• that they wont work hard
• or that they will bail on us
• or that they are a jerk
• or that they secretly want to be a designer

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Interview psychology

• Look for people who
• Are nice and friendly, pass the elevator test
• Are respectful of your studios work
• Show excitement about working there
• Want to learn from your employees

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Interview psychology

• You want a studio full of people who feel lucky
  to be here
  
• You MUST turn down brilliant people who dont fit
  your culture
  
• Your lead coder will get mad at you for passing
  on a brilliant jerk programmer
  
• Tell him its my fault

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Hiring Strategy

• This industry is startingly small
• There are two degrees of separation between every
  game company in the world
  
• So play nice with offer timing, other companies,
  etc.
  
• You dont get lots of chances to screw up, so use
  them wisely

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Environment is important
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Environment

• Read Peopleware
• Physical environment
• Environment foments collaboration
• Or more frequently, prevents it
• Manage interruptions
• Interruptions are surprisingly costly

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Environment

• Team environment
• Epic is game teams and engine team
• Game teams
• Producer
• Lead designer
• Level designers and lead
• Gameplay coders and lead
• Artists and lead

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Rewarding Performance

• Rewards are very dangerous
• People will do what you reward them for
• So much can go wrong
• Infinite defect methodology
• Doing that which is noticed
• Working when its noticed
• Reward based on performance reviews!

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Reviewing Performance

• Details of the epic process
• Twice yearly
• Leads and random peers
• The Big Conversation
• Epics review points
• Quality and Attention to Detail
• Creativity and Problem Solving
• Communication and Teamwork
• Work Ethic

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Reviewing Your Performance

• 360-degree feedback
• Climate surveys
• HR one-on-ones
• Compliments, Concerns, Criticism meetings
• Lots of informal discussions, lunches, etc!
• Managing by walking around isnt just a cliché

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Saying Goodbye

• Employee reviews arent always positive
• Punishment and firing is critical to maintaining
  team trust
  
• Nothing demotivates like working next to someone
  who isnt working hard
  
• Act carefully
• Treat them like youd want to be treated
• Employees need to be confident that you wont
  fire on a whim
  
• Maybe theyre just on the wrong task?

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Saying Goodbye

• Epics process
• Disclaimer rules on doing this legally are quite
  complex
  
• Epics contracts are at-will
• Having reviews is helpful
• Initial informal discussion
• Formal discussion with a performance plan

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Saying Goodbye

• Epic Performance Plan
• Written statement they must sign
• Producer, discipline lead, and HR
• Immediate, significant, and ongoing improvement
• Short lifetime for review, usually 2 weeks
• If it goes poorly, terminate
• Otherwise repeat, increase interval, finish

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Saying Goodbye

• I have roughly a 60 success rate
• But Ive felt better 100 of the time
• And I dont work next to the guy
• Be open and honest about termination
• Tell the team immediately
• His team shouldnt be surprised!
• Reassure team it was a long discussion

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Critical positions

• The Hit by a bus bus is coming
• What do you do?

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Critical positions

• Find the most critical position
• Figure how to make it (more) bus-proof
• Repeat throughout the organization
• Warning if anyone is actually hit by a bus on
  your team, you will be the logical suspect

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Leadership and promotion

• We usually have the luxury of time at Epic
• So we test extensively under fire
• Responsibility without authority
• To lead this way, they must earn respect
• Also makes promotions nice and smooth
• Oh yeah? Its about time

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Critical positions

• You could be hit by a bus, too
• Make yourself replaceable
• Who are you grooming for your job?
• You are be paid to create a sustainable
  organization
  
• Not to keep yourself in a job for life

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Critical positions

• Not all employers appreciate this, sadly
• You usually must prep a replacement before you
  can be promoted
  
• And you should prep a replacement before you move
  out
  
• So prep now before either opportunity knocks

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There is no trick

• Many necessary conditions for team gel
• But no sufficient conditions
• Make a lot of teams
• Experiment with sub teams and ad hoc teams
• Build a toolchest
• Learn from others, its less painful
• In the end, youre training your gut

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There is no trick

• Read everything
• There is no perfect book for game production
• Managing engineers is an art form with hundreds
  of books
  
• Producers must manage artists at the same time
• Steal from books Good to Great, Drucker,
  Peopleware, Slack, Flow, Wisdom of Teams, etc.

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In conclusion

• Success comes from motivated teams
• Teams can come from good luck
• But theyre more likely to come from diligent
  culture planning
  
• Hire the right people
• Reward them
• Firmly remove wrong people
• Watch your critical positions
• And youll have the team you need

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Questions?