Meet Amir Satvat, the man leading efforts to find laid-off developers new jobs
Finding a job can be stressful and daunting. Given the wave of layoffs in the games industry, including those from Microsoft this week, it's a tall task. It can also be time-consuming and difficult during this economic downturn.
However, Amir Satvat — currently working as business development director at Tencent — says he was inspired to help people with that process. He has gone on to foster a community and roster of resources to help people find new work or enter the games industry for the first time, with nearly 2,000 people placed so far.
Satvat says he began the effort after learning about round of job cuts at Microsoft in October of 2022.
As he recalls, "It was near Thanksgiving time, and you're thinking about being with your family, feeling safe and happy. [However], many people did not feel that way because they had started getting jobs cut."
Satvat says that he then began working on this via LinkedIn and eventually created the resource he calls the Games Jobs Workbook. The guide includes help from professionals in the games industry as well.
He explains, "What if I found a standardized way to take the hundreds of roles and broke [that] into 20 common categories so people could easily browse games jobs? We added a coaching network and now have over 2,000 people as mentors. Eventually, I even built up a website."
When visiting the website, users can access 15 games industry job resources across six categories. For example, job seekers can find assistance with career planning, role listings, and connections.
Satvat tells GamesIndustry.biz that his efforts got significant traction on LinkedIn, and he now has a follower base of more than 85,000 people. He adds that a Discord server for game jobs was launched and had 1,200 users sign up.
"My best estimate is that we've helped more than 1,800 people find work, and we've enabled more than 31,000 career coaching conversations. I'm really proud of it. It's all for free. I don't get any money. Nobody in our network gets
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