8/1/14 Episode 145: Getting a Job in R&D

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

I’m pulling out of my driveway! We all know what that means! It’s time for another Drive to Work.

Okay. Today, I’m going to answer probably the answer I get asked most in email of any other question. So today I’m going to explain, “How do you get a job in R&D?”

So I get a lot of mail. A lot of mail. And a very, very common question, the letter will be something along this, which is, “You know what? I’ve thought long and hard about what I want to do, what I really like to do is what you do. How do I get a job at R&D?”

And I get a lot of different variations on the question. I get sometimes people asking me, “I’m about to go to college, what should I study?” I get people saying, “I want to get noticed, how do I do that?” I get people like, “What are the requirements that are necessary?”

So anyway, today I’m going to walk through all of that. I’m going to spend my podcast today talking everything you ever wanted to know about how to get a job in R&D.  Now, I will say, listening to the podcast alone won’t get you the job. But it will give you some valuable information that perhaps you could use to one day make your own podcast.

Okay. So let’s start with college. So I often get the question about, “Okay. Long-term, I’d like to get a job in R&D. What do I need to do in college to do that?” And my answer is, A. you need to go to college. One of our rules is that we look for a minimum of an undergraduate degree. For R&D. So if we are trying to hire somebody, I’m not going to say we’ve never hired somebody without an undergraduate degree, but it is something we consider a prerequisite, and you very much want to have one. It will make your job immensely harder if you don’t.

So, what do I want you to study? And the answer is, there’s not a particular thing. There’s some individual skills, and I’ll walk through those.  

So the skills that you want to acquire: number one is just general communication skills. The ability to understand—actually, I’m out of order. Number one is you need analytical skills to be able to look at something and analyze the. Number two, you need communication skills to be able to communicate what it is your feelings are and how you analyze things. Those are the two most important skills.

Now, there’s general people skills. There’s general skills with Magic. Actually—let me make this a caveat before I go anywhere else. Not that this one’s a hard on. But the number one thing we look for if you want to work on Magic is that you know and understand Magic.

Which means is, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some very talented people who didn’t know Magic. And what we found was that Magic, 21 year in, there’s so much craft to it that someone who is talented that doesn’t know the game is less valuable to us than somebody who has a lot of raw natural talent potential that really well knows the game. Because a lot of designing Magic or developing Magic is understanding the nature of what has been done and what is there.

Now, that’s not to say someone who’s talented can’t learn that eventually, but the first real skill that’s important is a true understanding of Magic. Which means, “You want to work on Magic? Play a lot of Magic.”

And not just a lot of Magic. Play a lot of games. That one of the things about—for example, whenever you ask people about how to be a great writer, one of the responses you always get is, “Read.” And why read? Because if you want to know how to write, well, look at people that know how to write and learn from them. If you want to know how to be a game designer, play games.

For example, the best game designer I know, Richard Garfield, is an absolute—I mean, the reason I think he’s so good is, he loves games. He goes out of his way to play every game he can play. So he is just filled to the brim with knowledge about games. He knows all the ins and outs of how games work. Because he’s played them all.

And a lot of times, part of playing a game, or part of doing design is thinking of how different things are done so that when you need to solve a problem, you have an arsenal of tools to solve that. Every time you play a game, you learn about how that game functions. And every game’s a little bit different. So every game you play, you learn new tools that are available to you.

And a lot of really good game design is just going, “Oh, hmm, here’s a problem. Here’s a game that has a similar problem, solves it in this way.” Now, maybe you won’t solve it the same way, but it helps you understand how you can solve problems. Okay, so number one, play a lot of Magic, number two, play a lot of games in general.

Number three is, and this is a valuable skill, and this comes with game-playing, which is allow yourself the ability to adapt games. One of the things that I find when people play games is, some people are very hesitant to ever change the rules of the game they play.

Now, I recommend normally when you play, the first time you play a game, play by the way the people intended it—wanted you to play. Why? Because they spent a lot of time on it. They might know things you don’t know. But as you play the game, there’s nothing wrong with adapting the game you are playing. That part of learning how to be a game designer, good training wheels is just adapting games you already have. Of saying, “You know what, I think this game would be better if such and such were true.”

And now. Like I said, you want to respect the original designers to figure out what they were doing. But don’t be afraid of experimenting. Don’t be afraid of trying things. Some of the earliest games that people tend to design are just taking other people’s games and just playing different games with the components of somebody else’s game. There’s lots of famous example of something started as people adapted or did a mod to an existing game, and that turned into its own game that later went on to become its own separate game.

So anyway, feel free to experiment with the games you’re playing. They’re your games, you can do with them what you must. I mean, one of the things about Magic that’s awesome is all the people that created variants. Commander’s a classic example of people just said, “We’re going to make our own format and have some fun.” And other people said, “You know what? This is a lot of fun.” And it caught on. But that was just somebody saying, “We’re going to try a different way to play.”

And make your own Magic formats. That’s awesome. Make your own Magic drafts. Make your own—have fun. Magic is a very modular and flexible game. Have fun finding your own ways to have fun with Magic. Just like with any game. When I say to adapt games, I don’t just mean any games. Magic is fine too. Come up with cool, interesting ways to use Magic cards. To do new things and new formats and new drafts you’ve never done before.

Okay. Now, in college, you need to… you need to go to college. You need to acquire analytical skills. What analytical skills means is the ability to understand why things do and don’t work. That a lot of what the job in R&D is, is being able to say, “Oh, here’s the problem. Hmm, if you did this, that might solve the problem.”

And now—actually, they’re two different skills. First is just analyzing what the problem is. Like, one of the skills that’s very important is looking at something and going, “Oh, this is the problem.” And the reason that’s a really important skill is, this is a team project, if you will. That designing Magic and developing Magic is not just one person. So if you’re able to identify a problem, even if you can’t solve it, there’s a whole team that can solve it. And correctly analyzing problems is very important.

Now the second thing is the ability to solve problems. Right? Analyzing problems is important, but the ability to solve problems and come up with solutions. And like I said, I recommend this all the time, but A Whack on the Side of the Head, it’s my favorite book on creative thinking by Dr. Roger von Oech, and it is a really, really good book about thinking about the creative process. And I find it very useful.

A lot of problem solving is creative thinking and understanding how you think and where you limit yourself, which is what the book is all about. It’s about these ten mental locks that keep you from being as creative as you can be. The premise of the book is that anybody can be creative, that you keep yourself from being creative. Anyway, I talk about it a bit. Go read it. If you haven’t. It’s an awesome book.

So you have to learn to analyze problems, you have to learn to solve problems. You also have to learn to communicate. Communicating is really, really important. That for example, for years, I would have ideas, and I would just fight about them. And like, “We should do this.”

What I finally learned is that I had to be better—ironically, I’m a pretty good communicator, I’ve written my column forever. But it took me to realize that I needed to use those skills interpersonally to explain why I wanted things made. I’m a very instinctual person, and that just saying, “I feel it should be this way” doesn’t get the job done because people are like, “Well, I feel it should be this way.” You have to explain why you want something. Communication skills are really important.

Now. What should you study in college? You should study something that you are passionate about. So this is another thing that’s important to understand about R&D, which is our goal, there’s no preset thing. Like I’m going to talk today about how some of the people got hired in R&D. And it is not like they all got done in the same pattern. It’s not like, “Oh, well if you just study these three things, then you’re a shoo-in.”

In fact, really what makes you most attractive to R&D is that you have a mix of skills that R&D does not already have. The thing that makes you most attractive to us is to say, “I understand Magic, I understand Magic well, I have the analytical problem-solving skills or problem-recognition skills, I have problem-solving skills, I have communication skills. And I bring to this table something unique. Something that you don’t have.”

Because—so here’s a really important thing. If you are trying to get a job, any job, this is true for Magic, the goal is not to explain why the job would be good for you. The goal is to explain why you would be good for the job. So many people, when I’ve gone through people trying to get jobs at Wizards, so many people keep stressing how much they would love the job.

And I’ll let you in on a secret. That’s—I mean, I’m glad you would love the job, but you know what? R&D is filled with people that love the job. R&D is filled with people that love Magic and doing game design and game development. That doesn’t set you apart.

There’s nothing wrong, when you apply, talking about your history of Magic and how long you’ve played. Stuff like that is good. I mean, in fact, we look for people that really know Magic. So that’s not a bad thing. But how much you want the job is not ever going to get you the job. Nobody hires you because of how it would make you happy. They hire you because of how much you would be good for the job.

So remember, when applying for a job, your goal is to convince the employer that you, the future employee, would help them. That pretty much whenever you have a job interview, your goal in a job interview is to say, “You want to hire me because I am the best candidate for the job. That me being hired would help you. That if you bring me on to make Magic, I will help make Magic a better game.”

Remember that. That is really important. In all of this. I will explain how to try to get to the point that maybe one day you get an interview. When you get an interview, please please please, spend the time and energy explaining why you would benefit us. Okay? We know you would love the job. We know it would be awesome. We know it would be a dream come true. I get it, and it’s great, a little bit of passion about how much you love Magic is awesome. But spend your energy explaining why you are valuable to us. I cannot stress that enough.

Okay. So, go to college. Get some degree. Learn important skills. I mean, learn the basic skills you need to function in R&D, besides the analytical and the problem-solving and the communication skills, also people skills are valuable. When you come to work in R&D, we are a team-based group. We work in teams. And so what that means is, we’ve got to sit in a room with you over a long period of time.

And you know what? We want to feel like you are a team player. That you’re someone who will get along. Not, by the way, that you won’t contradict or say something different, that is fine, in fact, R&D likes people that are willing to speak up for what they believe. But doing so in a way that is polite and not offensive to people, and in a way in which you are explaining why you are disagreeing on something. It is fine to say, “I think that’s a mistake.” When you come in for your R&D interview, it’s okay to say like, “Hey, this thing you do all the time, I don’t think that’s the right way to do it.” That is fine. But then explain why it’s not. The point is not to be adversarial, the point is to be cooperative, and you can argue cooperatively. That’s really important.

Okay, okay. So now you spent your teen years playing Magic and playing games and you finally got to college and you went and you learned all the skills I’m talking about, and you got some new skills that are unique to yourself. Okay. You are now a college graduate. What’s the next step?

Okay, the next step is you need to get noticed. So here’s the big problem that explains to you the challenges you’re up against. There are a lot of people that would like to work in R&D. It’s the number one question I get in my email. There’s a lot of people like, “You know what would be awesome? That would be awesome.”

The problem is, there’s not a lot of jobs in Magic R&D. And the people who have the jobs tend to stay for a while. Why? Because it is fun. It’s a fun job. I mean, there’s a reason a lot of people want to do it. It is a fun job. It’s work, I stress this by the way, there’s that famous saying that says, “Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

Which is a little bit of a lie, because I love my job. It is a lot of work. It’s good work, it’s happy work, that I get up in the morning and I’m excited to go to work. And that I’m not—at the end of the day it’s like, “Oh, I have to go home because I need to go home,” and not like, “Whoo, I’m so desperate to go home.”                I mean, I remember I had an internship as a job for like one summer, in which I remember like at five o’clock I got to leave, and every day, at like four fifty-eight, I’d watch the clock for the last couple minutes. Because at five, the moment I was allowed to leave I would leave. And I’m like, “I don’t want a job like that!” Where I’m so unhappy with my job that I’m just waiting for the opportunity to go.

Now it’s like—I usually leave at six, and sometimes it’s like, “Oh, it’s six! I gotta get going home.” Not like, “Oh my God, I’m so happy to leave, let me watch the clock, it’s six o’clock, I can go.”

Okay. A part of internship—interesting, the story had to do with internship. So the way R&D works, by the way, is with rare exceptions, and the rare exceptions are you’ve already established your expertise in other fields—for example, you are a game designer that’s worked at other companies and done game design, so you come to us with lots of experience.

Other than that, most jobs in R&D we hire interns. Our job interview process essentially is, we hire you as an intern, you have 6 months—and it’s a paid internship. You have 6 months essentially to show to us why we should try to convert you from an intern into a full-time job.

And almost every single person currently working, with only a few exceptions—I mean, I’m one of the few exceptions because back in the day we didn’t do internships. But pretty much all the different people working for R&D now, with a few exceptions, were interns. Because that’s how we do it. We bring you in, you have 6 months to demonstrate what you can do.

And the reason for that is, there’s a lot that goes on in R&D. It’s hard in any one interview to get a sense of whether someone will really be good or not. I mean, you have to get by the interview to get an internship, so that is one important level.

Okay. So how do you get noticed? You want to get one of these internships. You want to prove what you can do. How do you score an internship? So there are three major ways to do it, and there’s some minor ways. So let me talk about the major ways.

Number one. You can excel at competitive Magic. That doesn’t necessarily mean the Pro Tour. There is… Star City Games has a circuit, there’s circuits, there’s different places you can play. But what you need to do is you need to demonstrate that you understand—because part of being good at competitive Magic is understanding how the game ticks, understanding how cards work. That when Development is looking for new people, one of the best places to look is people that have shown--they’ve been dominant in how they “break” Magic. I made little air quotes there.

And another really important skill for Development is the ability to make decks. It’s the ability to go, “I think this card is broken, let me demonstrate this card is broken.” And so just—now when I say competitive player, I don’t mean you have to win Pro Tours. I mean you have to do well enough that people are aware of who you are, and that you have to demonstrate analytical skills, you have to demonstrate deckbuilding skills, you have to demonstrate card evaluation skills.

So that is number one. If you want to get into Development, that is the easiest way—or most common way to get into Development. Now and the one thing I should stress—the people who are in Development were not necessarily top-tier Pro Tour players. It’s not like you had to be Top 8-ing every other Pro Tour to get a chance to get into Development.

No. You have to be good enough that people were aware who you are, and that—so this ties into the second thing. The second thing is writing articles. Now, the first one is helped by writing articles, because you want people to know who you are. Now, being a good pro player allows you to write articles, and so… but you do not need to be a pro player to write articles. Another way to demonstrate to R&D is to write to show that you understand how Magic ticks. That’s another way to demonstrate that you get Magic. You get how it works.

And there is—look, write articles. So for example, we talked about the Pro Tour, well most of our Development right now, Erik Lauer, Dave Humphreys, Adam Prosak, these are all people that—Ian Duke. These are all people that had some Pro Tour experience. They’re not necessarily—okay, Humphreys is Hall of Fame, Erik Lauer’s pretty good. But I mean, the rest of the people were on the Pro Tour, were good enough that they got noticed, but were not top-tier, you know, Top 8—they are not people that were contention for Hall of Fame. But they proved that they were good enough.

Now. Writing articles. My two best examples of people who got in writing articles. Number one is Tom LaPille. Tom LaPille was like, “I want to work at R&D. You know what I’m going to do? I am going to take some facet.” He decided cubes. And he said, “I am going to demonstrate to R&D that I can master this one aspect. I will write about it, become the expert on it, and demonstrate through this aspect that I understand card evaluation, that I understand how cards work.”

And then Tom LaPille, through recognition through writing—I mean, Tom did end up at a Pro Tour or two, it’s not like Tom—Tom is a good enough player that he could get to a Pro Tour. But really what made him stand out was this using articles as a means to draw attention. And to show that he understood what made Magic tick.

The other person who got in—actually, this was a little more indirect, but Aaron Forsythe was hired. I was the person who—I mean, I recommended him. To run the website. And why? Because he wrote articles that demonstrated to me—and he edited articles, that he really understood how Magic ticked and that he’d be good at running the website.

And then, once he got the foot in the door, he was able to have an opportunity, he worked on Fifth Dawn. In fact, we brought him on originally so he could write an article about it. And he did such a great job he ended up getting a job in R&D.

That’s another thing I will say, by the way, which is getting your foot in the door at Wizards, even if not at R&D, is also very valuable because once you’re in the door, you have opportunities the average person does not. You have opportunities to come and do playtesting. You have opportunities to do hole-filling. You have opportunities to come to design seminars. You have opportunities to do rare polls. You have opportunities to do things in which you can get noticed.

So that’s another thing, which is if you’re at [Wizards], that’s another option. Now, I should stress, if you get a job in [Wizards] and you’re not in R&D, you better do really, really good at the job you are (???) for. If the people [who hire you] feel like your only goal is to be in R&D, and you’re not doing that job well, well guess what, you’re going to be booted. And once you’re booted, it’s even harder to get into R&D.

But if you get in the door, and you excel, and you just show that you’re really good at your job, there will be opportunities to demonstrate to R&D what you can do. And for example, Dan Emmons is a good example of a designer who started in customer service, what we call Game Support. And he came to me and said—he had worked on the Great Designer Search 2, I’ll get to the Great Designer Search in a second, and he had said, “I really wanted to be a designer.”

I said, “Okay, here’s what you do. Go to the seminars. Do hole-filling. Do all these things that help get you noticed.” He did, and he eventually landed a job in Design, in R&D, because he demonstrated through these things that he was dedicated and talented.

Okay. The third way. So there is doing well on the Pro Tour, there is writing articles, and the third way is the Great Designer Search. [NLH—First one, second one] Now, the Great Designer Search is tricky, because we don’t do a lot of them. We’ve done two so far. The way the Great Designer Search works is, you have to apply. It begins by writing some essays. Then there’ll be—I mean, that’s the way we’ve done it in the past. Then there’s a multiple-choice test to check your Magic knowledge. Then there is a design test.

And you’ve got to get through all this gauntlet to eventually get to the Top 8. And then there’s like a reality show competition where there’s five competitions, each time one person’s knocked out until we get down to three people. Those people get flown in for a job interview. A full-blown job interview.

So a few caveats for the Great Designer Search. You need to be 18, because it’s employment and you need to be 18 for employment. Number two, and this is a tricky one. You have to be able to work in the United States. I know I get a lot of flak for this every time we have a Great Designer Search. As much as we are doing this cool thing, in the end it is a job search for an internship.

And the problem is, in order to get an internship, you have to be able to work in the United States. It is very, very hard, almost impossible to get a green card for an internship. It needs to be a full-time job. But we don’t hire full-time jobs, we start by hiring interns. So it is very hard—so in order to apply for the GDS, you have to be eligible to be able to work in the United States. Because that is what the prize is. A job working in the United States.

I know, I know there’s talented people from around the world, and I do not control how the United States does their job processing. It is very difficult to get outside people in for a job. It is almost impossible to do so for an internship.

Now, we have tried to set up the GDS, we did the second one so that outside people had the opportunity to be involved and get some recognition of their skills. But anyway, you need to be 18, you need to be able to work in the United States. And number three, you need to be able to relocate to Seattle. That is where the job is. If you can’t, then it doesn’t do you any good. Winning an internship that you can’t partake in is not particularly of value to anybody.

But anyway, the Great Designer Search, really what we’re doing is, I had a hard time trying to find designers. It’s a tricky thing. Developers can kind of look at the Pro Tour, and there’s a lot of development skills you can see through competitive play. Design, there’s no designer Pro Tour. There’s no thing that plays up those particular skills. So the Great Designer Search was really made as kind of a process by which I can just look at design skills.

It is elaborate, and if you happen to get into GDS it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work. A lot of work. And it’s kind of crazy, much like if you ever watch Project Runway or The Apprentice or any one of these—Top Chef, or any one of these things in which you’re trying to get a job, and to do so you have to prove what you’re capable of doing. And they make you do crazy challenges to prove it.

A lot of things we make you do—it’s not that we don’t do the same things in R&D, we do, but usually the constraints are a little different. And the timeline is way different. We usually have a lot more people, more time, and more resources.

But the Great Designer Search has proven to be a really good tool for finding R&D people. We now have eight people in the company that come from the GDS. Seven of which are currently in R&D. Alexis is still in Digital. The Great Designer Search—one of these days we’ll do a third Great Designer Search, it will happen, I can’t tell you when. But I do know that eventually we will do another one. Only because the first two were so successful for us.

In fact, not only have we gotten eight people from it, but we even won an internal award, what’s called an “Innie” award, it’s a Hasbro award for innovation. And we won an Innie award for GDS2. We didn’t apply for GDS1. We won for GDS2.

Okay. So now, somebody’s noticed you. You’re going to come in for the job interview. I’m going to tell you how to do better on the job interview. So number one, I explained this part before. Explain why you would be good for the job, not why the job would be good for you.

Number two. Explain what you have to offer that is unique. I mean, you definitely want to go through your resumé of what you know about Magic, that’s important. But then, explain to us what you bring to the table that we do not currently have and why that is very valuable.

Next. It’s important when you’re interviewing at R&D, we—it is a big positive to us that you have opinions and that you stress those opinions. Now, do it politely, do it constructively, do it in a way that says, “Here’s somebody we want to work with.”

And remember that the decisions that have been made that you might be arguing against were made by the people in the room interviewing you. Which means if you think we could do something better, voice it as if there’s something better, not that we were stupid to make that decision. Not that somehow—don’t fault us for making the decision... that’s a general interview thing. Your job is to make us want to be with you. You attacking the interviewers does not do that.

I get a lot of email, for example, where somebody both attacked me and then in the same letter asked me how to get a job. Well, my advice to you is, for starters, don’t attack the person you’re trying to get a job from. There’s ways to be constructive in your criticism.

For example, you might say, “You guys do Thing X. I understand why you do Thing X, and I think when you came up with the rule it made a lot of sense. But things have changed, and here’s why I believe Thing X might not be true anymore.”

Now, if you look at Magic, R&D, we’ve made tons of changes over the years. It is not as if we are unwilling to change things. In fact, we are very willing to change things if we think the change is good. The key is, if you’re coming to interview, explain why.

Also, a job interview does not mean you have to explain why everything we’re doing is wrong. Part of it could be you talking about what we do right and why. Once again, the key of an interview is multifold. One is, we want to see do you have what it takes. The second thing is, we want to understand how you fit into R&D culture. How you fit with the group. And the third thing is, we want to understand what you bring to the table. What makes you unique?

And if you can come and say, “Here’s some…” Like, you somehow got an interview for R&D. Awesome. And be aware, by the way, once we notice you, there are a bunch of steps that you will go through before you even get to the interview. The Great Designer Search, obviously, we put you through the Great Designer Search.

For like Development internships, there will be different things we will send you. There will be different—sometimes we call them (???) tests, where we give you cards that are undeveloped and ask you to develop them. Sometimes we might just get your opinions on things. We might ask you different questions. But you will go through something to get in the door.

Once you’re in the door, okay, what is very, very valuable is, come armed with, “Here’s some ideas on how I think Magic can be improved.” Once again, politely, constructively, and not just how, why. Because the key is, and this is the most important thing. Most of what will happen when you are in R&D will come from the training you get. That most of what you need to know, you do not know.

I mean, I write stuff, Sam writes stuff. I mean, there’s Design and Development columns, and you definitely—if you’re applying for designer, read my column. Applying to be a developer, read Sam’s column. If you’re applying to Creative, read the Creative column. Well, it’s a… now it’s short stories.

But anyway, whatever you’re trying to know, make sure you’re familiar with the element of—as much as you can, we’re very open as a company, be familiar as much as you can with what you’re applying for. You want to be a designer, understand design. Read my design columns. If you want to be a developer, understand development. Read development columns. You want to be a creative person, read the short stories. Understand our story. Understand what’s going on. Be knowledgeable. That’s important.

So you want to make sure you’re knowledgeable, and then try to explain to us what you will do for us. How you will—and one of the great ways to do that is to come in saying, “Here are things that I think you could do better, here’s why.” And once again, constructively explain why. That is something valuable to us. The reason we want to hire somebody is we want to say, “This person will make Magic better.”  

Now. Once again, stress this. I talked about this a little earlier. Don’t underestimate the importance of group dynamics. And that we have to work with you. You need to come across as somebody who wants to work with other people. That’s why, for example, being hypercritical and insulting the people that you’re coming in says, “Oh, well they’re insulting me in an interview where they’re trying to get a job. That does not bode well.” That we want to hire people that are constructive. That will work well with other people.

Okay. Now, let’s say you have gotten through the first thing. Gotten noticed. Gotten through whatever test we gave you. Gotten an interview. Done the interview. Now we’re inviting you into R&D. My advice there is you’re a new hire in R&D. Listen. Not—give your opinion, we want your opinion. It’s why we hired you.

But it’s very important to come in the door and listen and learn, and there’s an amazing amount of things to read when you first get here. We have a lot of documentation, we have a lot of stuff on our wiki. There’s just a lot of material. Plus you’ll have missed two years worth of cards. There will be two years of cards that we know that you don’t that you’ll pick up on.

What people call their “black hole.” That when you come to Wizards, there’s a period in time in which you weren’t playing with the sets, but you weren’t there making the sets. And that you looked over the sets, but you’re not as familiar with them because you didn’t play with them as extensively and you didn’t make them. Usually if you either played them or made them, you’re familiar with them. But there’s a black hole where you haven’t played with it, but you haven’t made it. But anyway, study study study study. When you finally get in. Absorb as much as you can.

And here is a very valuable thing. Asking questions. If you want to help bond with people, that’s a good little life lesson, asking questions is a good way to do that. Because what you’re saying to somebody is, “You have information that I can need. Please help me.” One of the big things about people dynamics in general is, asking for help people often see as a sign of weakness, but actually happens to be a sign of strength.

Because what it says is, “I’m willing to get somebody else to allow me to help me.” When someone comes in early on and they ask questions, I’m like, “Awesome, here’s a person that’s trying to learn how to do their job.” You are not going to know what you’re doing the day you walk in—I mean, you’ll have some idea. I’m not saying you’re helpless, obviously we hired you. But you have a lot to learn. And so the attitude I love to see on a new employee in R&D is someone who says, “I am eager to learn. Help me learn.”

Anyway. I now see the parking lot. So I’m hoping today, like I said. Getting a job in R&D is very difficult. A lot of people want it, not a lot of jobs. But I do believe, if you look at… I was going to talk about how people got their jobs. Maybe that will be its own podcast. There’s actually probably an entire car ride full of how the different people in R&D ended up getting their jobs. So maybe that will be a different podcast at some point.

But anyway, what I’m trying to say is, if you want to get a job at R&D, there are paths and ways to do that. But you have to be smart about it, and it acquires a lot of work and energy. It is not easy. It is not—the people who got their job in R&D all earned their way into R&D. And that you want a job, you have to earn it. It is not something that will be given to you. And it doesn’t matter how much you would enjoy it, it matters how much you would be good for the job.

I said that, and now I have parked my car. Which means it’s time for me to be making Magic. So thanks for joining me today, guys, I’ll talk to you next time.