How much experience is considered medium level unity development skills

Ratel

I my be dumb for asking this but still I would like to have as small reference or starting point to the answer, how much do you need to know (have mastered) to be considered a developer of medium level knowledge of Unity3D?
Do you need to know network programming, physics or UI. How does game pattern design fit into this, stuff like cellular automata and a star path finding ect.?

I have been wondering this for a while now, any feedback would be appreciated.

Elyaradine

When people talk about levels of experience when they're hiring, I think they're primarily looking at work experience. My impression's in the game industry have been that 0-2 years is Junior, 3-5 years is intermediate, and 6+ years is senior (based on my observations in local and international job boards over the years. These numbers are kind of laughably low, but it's partly because of how young the game industry generally is, and how unfortunately common it is/was for folks to leave the game industry after not "making it" for ~7 years). It's also somewhat dependent on how many titles you've helped see through to the point where they ship.

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I've generally worked in fairly small teams (the largest while in SA was about 20 -- I think a studio larger than that may want to hire for specific specializations), and found that each game, each project, had a bunch of new stuff to learn. I think there are some obvious core things that you can expect to have to tackle on almost all games if you're a game programmer (e.g. UI, physics/collision, managing state/AI, saving/loading), I don't think you can really prepare specializations in South Africa. Like, you could prep super hard for being a specialist network programmer, but find that no studios are looking for that position. I personally think a local studio's far more likely to hire a generalist with a good attitude who's open to picking up specialist skills on-the-job.

francoisvn

When I look at potential hires and think of how they slot into my mental image or junior/intermediate/senior, I try to look less at the number of years under their belt and more at what they are capable of. A junior needs to have some basic competencies, and from then the scale is really determined by what they lack in comparison to a senior. I expect a senior to have most of these:

* technically skilled: able to solve a wide variety of problems given the time (obviously some of those they will be able to solve quicker due to more exp in that area)
* good at communication: be able to communicate their ideas/thoughts, contribute meaningfully, professionalism, ...
* good at time estimates for tasks: I am aware that this is tough, but if I ask how long something will take you and you can't even give me a rough range, or ask for some time to investigate and get back to me soon, then that's an issue
* good at breaking down larger tasks
* self-managing
* meticulous
* ability to lead/manage others

Yeah, not every senior dev will have all of these, some will make up for a deficiency in one area with another, and I've certainly forgotten about a couple, but this is more-or-less how I think about it. This is not specific to any one language, framework, etc. but a more general approach to work and experience. I would much prefer (and have before) hired someone that had relatively little experience in the exact technology at hand, but because of their general level of competency and willingness to learn, did an excellent job (and easily made up for the time skilling up with the relevant technology).

EDIT: note that besides the first point, most of those skills are most easily learnt from time on the job, hence the use of years as a measure for junior/intermediate/senior, but I think that different ppl learn at very different rates, so the years can be misleading.

bischonator

You might want to take a look at the Unity Courseware. https://certification.unity.com/courseware
They are trying to create a benchmark certification in order to answer your very question :)

Ratel

Thanks for the reply and insight guys