I am a game-engine-developer... without any work at the moment.
People just rarely want my skills, I work with C, C++, Lua, ASM, blazing-speed well built code that takes a long time to make.
People don't even ask me to do interviews, when I see all these posts on HN complaining of interviews I can't relate, I never get invited to them in first place, because I don't know React, Enterprise-Java, Electron and other whatever new very high-level tech designed to speed up dev (at cost of program speed for end user) that is popular.
Game engines have a lot of similarities with the problems in Robotics. Given an array of on-board sensors you need to build a model of your environment, plan through it, behave intelligently, and network information with other robots or human users. Furthermore to validate the product you need a simulation environment and engines like Unreal are starting to be used to do so (https://github.com/Microsoft/AirSim). High performance code is key to making it all happen in real time and C++ is the native tongue.
I work at http://shield.ai/ and we're building these robots today. Our mission is to reduce American and civilian casualties to 0 by 2030 in ground combat. If you're interested - here's my email adam.dorwart [at] shield [dot] ai
A lot of ex-gamedev(I'm one of them) go into embedded devices and mobile where power/perf still matters or over into financial(more common in eu gamedev) where latency is king.
That's the route I took(gamedev->embedded/mobile->bigco), I'd look into those type of companies where a low level native skillset matters.
There are plenty of jobs available for game engine developers, and low level engine programmers in general. If you'#re applying for jobs with React/Electron in the descriptions, you're not really applying for engine developer positions, though.
Where? Mind you, I don't live in a first world country... So it must be either remote, or allow relocation. (in my country at least ALL jobs are for React/Electron/Java... I applied to them because they are the only job listing that existed in first place, better to work on the 'wrong field' than to be hungry).
I don't know where youre located, but in many parts of the world there are low level c++ jobs available. The us and Europe are full of them, and every company I've spoken to has offered relocation.
There's a difference between people not wanting your skills, and people not wanting your skills where you're located, unfortunately.
I doubt that. If you're referring to the people adding the json datatype & operators, there's little overlap with the people working on replication related issues.
People just rarely want my skills, I work with C, C++, Lua, ASM, blazing-speed well built code that takes a long time to make.
People don't even ask me to do interviews, when I see all these posts on HN complaining of interviews I can't relate, I never get invited to them in first place, because I don't know React, Enterprise-Java, Electron and other whatever new very high-level tech designed to speed up dev (at cost of program speed for end user) that is popular.