Sometimes It's Just Business

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Abstract

Problem: How should game developers handle the tension between personal friendships and professional hiring decisions?

Approach: Tim Cain shares three anonymized stories from his career where friends expected him to bypass normal hiring processes, and reflects on the phrase "it's not personal, it's just business."

Findings: While companies sometimes abuse that phrase to excuse genuinely harmful actions, there are legitimate cases where hiring decisions really are purely business — a bad fit is a bad fit regardless of friendship. Trying to leverage personal connections to skip vetting processes puts everyone in a bad position.

Key insight: Good friends don't ask you to compromise your professional integrity, and good professionals don't let friendship override honest evaluation. Interviews and tests serve both sides — they help you find the right company just as much as they help companies find the right candidate.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABBR5VQHIQs

1. Three Stories of Friends and Hiring

1.1. The Specialist Who Didn't Work Out

Tim recommended a friend — a specialist — for a role his company desperately needed to fill. The hire didn't work out on either end: the friend wasn't handled well, and the friend didn't handle the situation well either. He quit. Tim's boss told him afterward: "It's going to be a while before I trust any of your recommendations." The boss framed it as business — a waste of time and money — and Tim acknowledges he wasn't wrong.

1.2. The Programmer Who Wouldn't Show His Code

A former colleague had a unique arrangement at his previous company: nobody was allowed to see his source code. Teams received only pre-compiled libraries and header files. A decade later, this person applied at Tim's company and asked Tim to vouch for his coding ability so he could skip the programming test. Tim pointed out the obvious problem: he'd literally never seen the man's code. The colleague got angry and left without taking the test or applying.

1.3. The Designer Who Failed the Test

A friend applied as a designer on Tim's project. He took the required design test, but the lead designer flagged it as subpar — incomplete answers, obvious holes in the design work. Tim agreed the results were objectively weak. When the friend didn't get an offer, he asked Tim to override the lead designer. Tim refused: overriding his own lead would undermine the team, and why would the friend even want a job obtained that way? The friend left angry.

2. The Real Lesson

Tim acknowledges that companies often misuse "it's not personal, it's just business" to excuse genuinely harmful decisions — especially the classic move of calling employees "family" and then laying everyone off. But he draws a distinction: sometimes hiring decisions really are pure business. A mismatch in skills, work style, or game genre preference doesn't reflect on anyone's worth as a person.

3. Friendship and Professional Boundaries

Tim notes he has friends he'd never work with — not because they're bad at their jobs, but because they'd clash on code philosophy, design opinions, or game preferences. That's a healthy separation. He also shares that he once flubbed a test at a company where he knew senior people, but chose not to reach out for help. He didn't want a job he didn't deserve, and didn't want to put friends in an awkward position.

4. Interviews Work Both Ways

Tests and interviews aren't just for companies to evaluate candidates — they're equally useful for candidates evaluating companies. The questions a company asks and how they conduct interviews reveal whether it's a place you'd actually want to work. Tim encourages asking questions during interviews to make that assessment. Sometimes not getting the job turns out to be dodging a bullet.

5. References