Interview Experience: Negative
Difficulty: Easy
Process: Phone interview, one round
Applied for a Game Producer role and was shortlisted. The interview was a single call conducted by senior leadership.
The call began without any introduction of the interviewer or the company — no overview of the role, the team, or what the conversation would cover — and moved straight to "introduce yourself." I gave my background.
One question asked how I estimate issues and which tracking system I use. I explained that the specific tools at my previous employer (a AAA studio) are proprietary and covered by an NDA, so I couldn't name them, but that I was happy to walk through my estimation approach and methodology in detail.
The response to that was, close to verbatim: "I've been in this industry 25 years — if you can't answer, either you don't understand the question or you've never worked." There was little room to finish a point before being cut off, and the methodology I offered to discuss wasn't taken up.
The call ended early.
Advice to candidates: declining to disclose a former employer's confidential, NDA-protected tooling is standard professional practice, and it's worth being prepared for how an interviewer reacts to that. If you're coming from a studio with strict IP policies, have a clear way to describe your *process* and *methodology* without naming proprietary systems, and treat the tone of a first conversation as real information about the working environment.
Would have appreciated: a brief introduction, room to complete answers, and openness to discussing methodology when specific tool names can't be shared.