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I would think going back to uni would be good, particularly in IT as it's a field that keeps changing, only way to keep on top of it is well, uni and work, sometimes it has disastrous consequences in work though when something changes in the IT department
 
Have you tried joining a temp agency just to get some work and posts under your belt? It's in a different field but after I spent 8 months not even getting interviews after uni I joined a specialised science recruitment agency and within a day I got an interview!

Is it the type of industry you can be self employed and work as a contractor? I have a mate who does graphic design and that's how he works.

If you can get some part time work or whatever you could also consider open university courses to get more qualifications at the same time.
 
Have you tried joining a temp agency just to get some work and posts under your belt? It's in a different field but after I spent 8 months not even getting interviews after uni I joined a specialised science recruitment agency and within a day I got an interview!

Is it the type of industry you can be self employed and work as a contractor? I have a mate who does graphic design and that's how he works.

If you can get some part time work or whatever you could also consider open university courses to get more qualifications at the same time.
I don't have the confidence or skills to handle contract or self-employed work. I much rather have a full-time position. I have looked into part-time roles but they're not in the right area of expertise.
 
Okay Grav, first things first if you're going for a dev role then a degree won't do you any good and a postgrad degree is next to useless. Certifications would be preferred to education (not sure why but that's how it is these days). From a recruiter's perspective a company would be recruiting for someone with experience who can already do the job they're recruiting for and the only way to sell that is to show them what you can do and have done in the past. You're in a pretty good position at AUKN where you can do that but I'll come on to that in a bit.
So you need to define your skill set more along with what you want to work towards. That last bit is what's gonna have more impact on a company's expectations of you. If you can tell them where you think you should be in a few years it can sometimes be seen as an indicator of where the industry is moving and you're more likely to fit in to it.
Want to pursue Web but I have broaden my area to consider other IT roles
So when you say you want to pursue web what exactly do you mean by that? I know you've got a background and an interest in dev but from a recruitment perspective people are gonna be looking for frontend, backend or full stack. Full stack would be considered less skilled but cheaper but its usually a good way to get your foot in the door so you can specialise later. You would still be expected to have experience working with databases and infrastructure just because its now so common to find people who have. Also in any IT field these days you're gonna be pushing it if you have no exposure to AWS or Azure. My works is currently recruiting for a couple of data engineers and the only thing they're asking for is the Microsoft Data Platforms certification and experience having done it before in a corporate environment. They don't see higher education as beneficial in that area so the way in to that role would be do the DP-200 and DP-201 exams and show them you've done the work before be it for another company or in a demonstrable personal project. Azure certifications and AWS certifications FTW here.
One option you've got is to go for an internal IT support role, and because of the way ops can blend with dev you would be able to move in to more of a develeopment role by taking care of automation. Code makes normal people cry so if an employer saw you could work with it then they'd be more flexible about your workload resulting in a role change. Its not at all unusual for a company to create a new role just because they've got someone skilled enough to do something (even if they didn't think of until now).
Another option (and the one I'd recommend) is to run off a personal project which would demonstrate your ability to meet the requirements the job you're wanting is asking for. So for example take the simulcast stuff you've got going on and make it a cloud hosted database solution. I know that if you walked in to ours for an interview having no experience but very clearly the ability, then if you had something shiny to show off they'd just start you small and take the credit when you start doing nice things. Make a little project and ensure its being used by people (thus making it "current" and "active"), and try your best to use technologies that could be used in a real-life project to help the recruiter think "oooh that kind of thing is what such and such customer wants".
The chances of me finding a job is now getting lower the longer it takes.
Incorrect on this one - the chances of you finding a high paying job gets lower but it also balances out by tempting someone to take a chance on you with a lower salary. That one's give and take mate so just have a bit more confidence in your situation if not yourself.

Sorry for the massive waffle but there're at least a few valid points in here if you can stay awake long enough to dig them out.
 
Hi guys

Sentai filmworks older copies before 2015 are region locked, well until now that is.
Hakuoki is now geolocked.
I had a feeling this might happen and Gemsy-chan has now confirmed it.
Which means its highly likely most of if not all of sentai's older titles directly from the sentai site are now geolocked.
The only problem is that we are unable to tell the difference between older titles released before 2015 and now.

So I'm unable to put older titles on the list unless its a re-release.
 
Hmm... can't really offer much advice on the university side as I never went.

Speaking as a (embedded) software developer... from your existing Games degree I'm guessing you've had a little dabble (through presumably Unity/Unreal Engine) in some C++/C#?

Learning C, C++ and maybe C# (I'm still a novice at it really) is a long term way to go in broadening yourself into other roles like (embedded) software development (not games) and sometimes what is regarded as web development languages like Python and Perl will still come into play. To be honest if it wasn't for no commercial experience I might have had a job as a Perl developer, thankfully I have more fun writing stuff in C and C++ (at work and home). 😆

For the interviews I had a A4 portfolio of code, designs and other bits of pieces from my personal software projects. I'm still amazed that I could nearly fill up a 120-page portfolio with my stuff.

Sorry I'm probably not much help on this, @NormanicGrav. More my own thoughts and experiences here. 😅

/umiko
 
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So I'm waiting on anime and have nothing to watch.
So I ordered into the badlands. I now nothing of the series, it was a random buy.
I just watched a trailer, looks goods.
 
Some really good advice has already been given and I'd like to stress Adam-M's point regarding a degree compared to certification. If you want to do a post-graduate degree, just do it, but if your (sole) goal is to increase your chances at landing a job, it won't have the desired effect.

The thing I look for in candidates is a combination of experience and potential. For experience prior jobs are best, but without those, hobby projects go a long way. So whenever you learn/try-out a new language or technique, try and make a (small) project out of it and throw it up on Github or something. Having an active project that's being used (and maintained) is even better, but that isn't trivially accomplished.

As for the "potential" part, I want to see a broad set of skills so I'm confident that the candidate can adapt. Say a candidate has some experience in Python, done a lot of C# (backend) and has done some web development (e.g. a SPA). I would feel confident tasking that person with writing a "(cloud) function" in Node.js (not as full time occupation, but as a one-off task). This wouldn't hold true if the person only ever developed in one language.

Now the above examples all focus on programming languages, but there are a lot more skills that are increasingly important to have in the field. Things like being familiar with Cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP), knowing about testing (unit testing, integration testing), DevOps related (CI/CD), Agile, SCRUM, etc... These skills are harder to demonstrate with "hobby projects", but you could blog about them or go the certification route. Quite frankly, I do think it looks odd when people have a lot of certificates compared to work experience, but that might just be me, as I find most certificates to be a bit of a farce (generally you need to learn for the exam rather than learn the subject itself).

I'm not sure what kind of jobs you apply for, but try and go broader. When hired as full stack developer, it could very well be that you end up doing practically nothing else but frontend work (most cases you can steer the direction you want!). It also depends a bit on the size of the company, the larger it is the more it tends to have clearly defined roles. Personally I prefer smaller companies as there's often a bit more freedom. Others like big corporate companies, as they like working their way up in those environments, but that often comes down to politics as opposed to showing what you can do. I guess the point I was trying to make is, the job as outlined in a vacancy is generally not as fixed as you might think.

Also on your CV, not sure how the Games degree is listed, but it might give people the wrong idea. Over here, there's also a Games degree, which is for 80% or more just general Computer Science, but might not look like that to others. Obviously never lie on your CV, but it wouldn't hurt if there are alternative names for your degree that focus more on the CS nature of it (or alternatively highlight parts of the degree that are general). On the subject of CVs, when listing anything I would focus on the skills or techniques you used/gained. You'd be surprised how often people just describe the product/project itself, instead of what they did on it and how.
(All the above is obviously based on my opinion and experiences, but might also be based on cultural differences as I don't live or work in the UK)

Lastly, stay positive and confident as that will get noticed.
 
As a side-note to what me and Lynx said about certifications, a company is only able to market itself as a "Microsoft Silver/Gold/Platinum Partner" by having a certain number of employees who hold a certification. Same thing applies to AWS, Google Cloud, Cisco and all sorts of vendors.
Point is, walk in with a cert and you're giving them the ability to change the future of the company and allow them to enter a certain market which maybe they're thinking about but not able to reach....yet.
And the personal learning project will really help - get the simulcast stuff in a cloud hosted db? If you need help with this stuff I can probably help.
 
The bloody neighbour’s dog is at it again... and now it’s my night shifts

Would it be a tad unnecessary at this point, to become a martial artist, and create a new technique known as “dog implosion fist”?
 
The bloody neighbour’s dog is at it again... and now it’s my night shifts

Would it be a tad unnecessary at this point, to become a martial artist, and create a new technique known as “dog implosion fist”?
If you do I wanna learn it. I hate it when I’m on nights. The neighbour 2 doors down had a yappy thing. But the worse one is that one of the neighbours has a laugh like a witch.
 
Has anyone experianced this?

You've enjoyed a series twice already (Example, played the game and watched the Anime)

But then you read the Manga and it still makes you shocked/surprised at some of the events that happen in the series
 
Has anyone experianced this?

You've enjoyed a series twice already (Example, played the game and watched the Anime)

But then you read the Manga and it still makes you shocked/surprised at some of the events that happen in the series
kind of, with Abyss.
I got the anime first as it was an apparent hit on anime strike (same time as Land of the Lustrous) and Naanbread's reaction when Reg is about to kill mitty got to me, I got the manga a little while after that and Nyanty Nyan Nyaights shouting "my treasure!" got to me. dang that bun
 
Double post, but not my day. Harsh note for everyone in work mentioning headphones and phones on the shop floor, I'd actually have to use something like headphones since mine are noise cancelling and the rubbish earbuds they have keep popping out of my ears, not using them before I've ended the day with a huge migraine

Looks like I won't be working here much longer. Its 12 hour shifts and one half hour break, they treat dogs better than us
 
It's my favourite anime film. I've watched it so many times now and cried ugly every time. 😭
Read the manga 👍 The film cut a lot of the side characters "screen time".
I watched 3 films all pretty close to one another. This, Your Name, and Anthem of the Heart and I still maintain that whilst all good AotH is my favourite.
 
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