Topic: Work Stuff
My life takes some funny turns now and then. Today was the end of my first week at my new job as General Manager of Wireless Products at Namco of America, a place I wouldn't have expected to be only a month ago, when I was seriously considering bailing out of the game biz entirely.
As with most of the work I've had in this industry, I didn't go to it. It came to me. A colleague who knew I was looking for work gave my name to a recruiter. After much phone tag, the recruiter called me about this position at Namco. Two hours later, Namco called me and I did a 1.5 hour phone interview that went really well. They wanted me in for a face to face right away, but the man I needed to meet was in Japan, so, almost two weeks passed before I was able to come in for the interview. I honestly wasn't sure if I'd done well or not when I left, yet less than 24 hours after I'd left for the interview, the Chief Operating Officer called me directly and offered me the job!
Settling into a upper level position like this isn't the easiest thing in the world, as not only are you trying to remember eveyone's name and where the paperclips are, but you have to hit the ground running on a whole bunch of projects in various stages of pre- post and production.
But I can't complain too much, despite the 40 minute commute each way, I'm making over 1.5 times what I was making at Psygnosis 6 years ago, the company bought me a spiffy new camera phone and let me pick out my own computer for work, I get good benefits, work with nice people, I get to have a lot of say in what products we do, I'm going to Japan in Sept., and I get to play a lot of Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man as part of my job. Yes, Namco IS the Pac-Man company, and the bread and butter of the Wireless division is getting the two main Pac games out on every handset possible. What a treat, since Ms. Pac-Man remains, to this day, my favorite video game of all time.
Life she is good!
Posted by molyneaux
at 10:40 PM PDT
Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:43 PM PDT
