Naughty Dog Interview Questions

One of the worst and unprofessional interview process I have ever experienced. After doing 120+ hour on the art test, only for the art lead to rescheduled the interview 4 times. When I finally got the phone interview I was told afterward that position which was changed to contract from full time, then the contract also has been filled. The lead recruiter who called me about it ended the conversations with “Sorry, no not sorry technically we didn’t do any thing wrong.” Talking to others, my experience is not unique. Its amazing these people can behave like this because they make great games now its okay to treat candidates like garbage. Somehow the has studio turned a blind eye to this for a long time.

The first two interviews consisted of generic interview questions about video games and work history. The 3rd interview had applicants play a video game while the interview team watched. I was initially contacted one month after applying, and each interview happened roughly 3 weeks apart, so it was a long process. The staff who conducted the interview were really nice! I did not receive an offer though, and I was fairly overqualified for the position. It seemed like there were a ton of applicants, so it's probably pretty competitive.

There were two stages of the interview. The first stage - with the chief system administrator. The second stage was with the managers. All the questions were correct and relevant to the specialty. In the second interview there were mostly questions related to soft skills.

The overall process took almost 3 months. It started with an edit test and then I had 3 interviews. We mainly discussed skillset, experience, and what could be brought to the company.

Process was 1 phone screening, 2 Zoom interviews with different people on the production team, and 1 last casual call over Zoom to discuss where you might fit on the team/for which department. Interviews were all pretty standard. Everyone I met was super kind! Turn around time between my first interview and the offer was fast enough (~3-4 weeks).

This was for a position as a temp. I applied and got a email to schedule an interview about a week and a half later. The first interview was with two members of the team. The interview was mainly asking about my experience and basic behavioral questions. At the end of that interview, they let me know that there would be a second and final interview. After a day or two I was emailed again to schedule that interview. This time the interview had 4 members ( same two from the first interview) and they asked kind of similar things. Nothing really technical since this is more a customer service type of position. A few days after that interview I was contacted again to meet with the recruiter who offered me the position. It was a really professional and engaging process and everyone that I spoke with was extremely nice and helpful.

Well let's just say I never quite made it to the actual interview but I still wanted to share my experience because I took their pre-interview test and it was a really bad experience. I was contacted by a recruiter who sent me a test which if I recall was a 3-day long test, but this test had absolutely nothing to do with UI scripting/ programming and everything to do with UI design, something I did 0% preparation for. On top of that, this UI design assignment was supposed to have been completed in a program like Photoshop which was not even a required skill. How are they going to ask you to know how to design a UI in software you don't know or barely know? Not only that, this is supposed to be a programming role, I expected a test on how I would program UI elements in a game not how I would design them, I didn't apply for UI Technical Designer which another role they offer. Needless to say I needed a ton of clarification on what I was supposed to do. The recruiter somewhat ghosted me and when they did get back to me, the team was too busy to answer my questions. Overall, a bad experience. I got what felt to have been the wrong test and when I needed them to clarify some parts of and assignment (tosee if maybe they game me the wrong test) I was 0% prepared for, they had no time for my questions. Had this been a test on how to actually program a UI, I'm fairly certain I would have done a pretty good job.

I had one interview with two recruiters in which they asked the typical Interview questions (strengths/weaknesses, describe a situation where..). The next day I was told that I made it to the second round, which was another interview but this time with two members of the Quality Assurance team. The second interview was less formal but they still asked some typical interview questions.

Naughty Dog interviewed me, told me they definitely wanted to move me on in the process, then ghosted me. I followed up and told them I had another offer so I preferred to move quickly and they basically told me they *might* want to move forward, but they can’t tell me for sure yet so maybe I should just take the other job - are you kidding? I told them I was interested enough that I would try to hold on my other offer as long as I could. They booked me another interview and then they cancelled one hour before! They knew I had another offer and they told me I’d have to wait another 3 weeks to interview. Terrible candidate experience and disrespectful. I was really interested in this position and the experience with TA alone was so off-putting that I think I should just pass.

This interview had much more math than any other interview I did with a game dev company. However, nothing that I was asked was particularly difficult or unusual, you just need to be prepared. Mainly questions are related to linear algebra, i.e. vectors, matrices and etc. Some hardware architecture and general software development questions are asked as well, but those are not very difficult as well. I had a few rounds of interview, but in the end were turned down because of US visa.