Here’s a couple of things that I really wish I could have done differently and would probably have resulted in me being better off than I am now.

1. Chat with Steve Chiang, EA Sports SVP

When I came into my internship at EA Tiburon as the Matchmaking feature owner, I was told the current state of the system was one of Steve’s pet-peeves. I was quite honored that such an important feature was trusted in my hands. I was hoping that there’d be some natural time when either my supervisor or producer would facilitate some sort of meeting with him, and there was some talk of just that. Unfortunately, it just never happened.

You should always assume that everything is important to the boss, but when you’re told that something you’re working on is something he has a particularly strong opinion about, you should go on a fact-finding mission and see what sort of particulars are involved. The way I went about it, I designed some additional criteria and logic, along with a revised GUI and flow. Feeling that that just “wasn’t enough” and utilizing my observations of other social connections between people, I also proposed some completely different systems that sidestepped matchmaking almost altogether. The guys up at EA Canada sounded excited about it when I pitched it to them, but who knows what Steve thought.

The extra kick in the butt I’m giving myself for this is that one of the people I interviewed with recently saw that I was at EA and asked if I knew Steve, since they’d worked together before. I thought the interview (or at least the conversation) went well, but maybe getting a recommendation from the big boss would have greatly aided in securing that job. (I think ultimately the interview sort of suffered from a mutual deviation from discussion about level design.)

2. Not the right place or time

During another phone interview, I was on a conference call with five or so people including the hiring coordinator. Ignoring my unfocused ramblings, I think the cherry on top of my total muck-up was what I chose to ask when prompted if I had any questions.

I need to clarify that I was interviewing for a job that my classmate just grew out of, so I was more or less quite familiar with the duties and work environment from talking with him. This left me rather devoid of things to ask. Not wanting to not have a question and knowing the kind of shite pay my friend was offered, I asked about the pay range. “Because I hear it’s kind of expensive there.” Ooph. 1. I was already pretty sure I made a poor impression, marking myself off their list, so there probably wasn’t any consideration towards hiring me anymore. 2. Fellow employees technically shouldn’t be aware of each other’s salary. That information should only be shared with HR. 3. It made me sound unexperienced and entitled.

Always save that kind of talk for later when you’re negotiating the actual offer.