Artur Davydenko started his career in gaming, working at studios like Kefir Games and Playgendary. Today, he’s a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Meta and an ex-Googler. In this interview, Artur shares what it takes to switch from gamedev to big tech — from rewriting your resume to rethinking your feedback style.
Why did it happen — why did you change the industry?
Back in 2019, I wanted to join a big, international company to see how it feels inside and to learn how they build teams, goals, and processes. At the time, 70% of employees in the gaming industry were male, and the leadership percentage should’ve been 90%. Coming from a post-USSR country, the top-down management approach was dominant.
Searching for new experiences, I applied to all big tech companies and, in the end, joined Google in Ireland.
How did your professional identity change after changing the industry? What did you take with you from gamedev, and what did you have to “let go”?
From the soft skills perspective, it has changed a lot. If we use Erin Meyer’s “Culture Map” dimensions, the dominant leadership model in US tech companies is egalitarian, which is what I was looking for after working in hierarchical companies before.
Here, I would also highlight that in my home region’s culture, trust is relationship-based, whereas in the US and European countries, it’s usually task-based. Similarly, communications in low-context (which is ever-changing) is quite normal in US companies like Google or Meta. In other words, your success is connected to jumping between contexts and bringing results to the table fast while being less confrontational and more diplomatic in giving negative feedback to colleagues. The last piece was the hardest for me to let go of, as I used to be quite direct with my colleagues and CEOs. In the long run, I’m glad that I can now work in both models.
On the other hand, from a hard skills perspective, I wouldn’t say that I needed a lot of new skills to be a salesman at Google or Meta after working on Performance Marketing/Partnerships in gaming studios.
Here, I would also highlight that in my home region’s culture, trust is relationship-based, whereas in the US and European countries, it’s usually task-based.
How did you evaluate your “convertibility” at the start? Were there any blind spots where you overestimated or underestimated yourself as a candidate?
“Transferable experience” is quite a common topic in big corporations as people tend to change teams and roles every few years. The main blind spots for me were in strategic thinking and storytelling, where:
- I needed to be able to analyze the whole region (which I was covering as a salesman) and find key trends based on data. Then, every corporation has a “right to win” filter where I needed to prioritize those trends where Google/Meta has the differentiator/strength and can convert it into a big revenue opportunity ($MM). And this exercise repeats every year.
- After I found a big opportunity, it isn’t automatically picked up by everyone without a good internal story to prove that it’s profitable and brings incentive to key internal stakeholders (senior colleagues and leadership). Without storytelling and public speaking skills, it’s very difficult to grow in US corporations. Obviously, it requires at least an intermediate level of English, which I also needed to polish on the fly.
What turned out to be critically important in a resume and portfolio for Google/Meta – and what did recruiters not care about at all, although it used to be “gold”?
I think that many people from Eastern Europe (like me) highlight the number of years and list of hard skills (programming languages, tools, etc.) that they have. While experience length may be important for a very senior leadership position, it is a matter of 4-8-12-15 year brackets which are connected to specific levels at corporations. But in most cases, people downgrade and join mid-level positions at corporations where, after 8 years and a few key hard skills, it doesn’t really matter.
What mattered for me was:
- To have a short 1-page resume with key work experience and achievements. Here is the template to help InGame Job readers!
- To adapt the resume and narrow it down for a particular position.
For instance, it was very important to find out the product and business area I would support (in my case, it was selling Google AdMob to App&Gaming studios) and highlight my relevant experience and achievements (in-app ads monetization and marketing experience in a gaming studio).
What is the key difference between an interview in big tech compared to gamedev – not only in structure, but also in expectations from the candidate?
As I worked only in US corporations, I will share their interviewing process that consists of 1) Resume review (it’s usually done automatically by a scraping tool and double-checked by a Sourcer/Recruiter); 2) Initial contact via email (to check if the candidate still wants to proceed); 3) Prescreen call with a recruiter (CV check, role motivation, and salary check); 4) Screen call with a hiring manager (to check the particular skills for a particular role in their team and culture fit); 5) Onsite interviews with 3 company employees (to further check hard and soft skills for a particular role); 6) Job Offer.
As you can see, big tech spends a lot of time on sourcing and prescreening, which makes the CV critical. If I were to simplify, I would say that joining a big tech company is a “statistics game” – you need to send your personalized CV many times before it will force your way through.
I’ve worked both in Sales and Product orgs within Google/Meta:
- For Sales: while AI is widening the number of tasks that one big tech employee can do, they still rely on deep specialization with you being a very reliable, focused (and well-paid) “gear in a giant machine”.
- For Product: it’s quite the opposite, where hard skills (analytics, roadmap planning) and general experience within the tech industry are good enough. The big filter here is a list of big problems ($MM) that a person solved prior to joining a big tech.
- For both Sales and Product: big tech expects people to be able to start high-level (usual STAR method for interview), but go much deeper after a follow-up interview question. It is all about mental frameworks – being able to answer a question structurally (and shortly) but provide depth is an expectation from the candidate.
If you had to put together a “roadmap” for a gamedev specialist for an interview at Google or Meta – what would it consist of?
For middle specialists (4-8 years of experience):
- Solve one problem for 4 years very well.
- Start looking for a role in Google/Meta that requires specifically knowing how to solve your “one problem”. Apply to these roles and be patient.
- Have a filled, clear LinkedIn.
- Master your CV and train your interview skills through mock interviews.
For lead-, senior specialists (8+ years of experience):
- Solve one problem for 4 years very well.
- Act as a product owner where you drive cross-functional teams to land a big project. Repeat 2-3 times. Note: if you have people management experience, that will do.
- Have a filled, clear LinkedIn.
- Master your CV and train your interview skills through mock interviews.
As you can see, big tech spends a lot of time on sourcing and prescreening, which makes the CV critical.
How do you look at gamedev from the world of big tech now – what do you think are the strengths of this industry, and what, on the contrary, is a restraining factor for career growth?
As I’m running a “game industry news” community internally, I try not to lose my connection with gamedev. Having worked in companies with ads-funded monetization models and millions of eager advertisers (Google/Meta), I look at games through the prism of supply and demand – people still spend many hours in games, and advertisers see it as a great “supply source”. I see gamedev as “hard-working creative people” who are at the heart of it.
Most gamedev studios I know are rigorously data-driven as it’s crucial to know user retention, engagement, and monetization metrics. At the same time, people are creative in the way they try to improve these metrics while launching fun content. I think that it’s a very complex problem space, and people are quite educated and tech-savvy.
On the other hand, gamedev working environments can be ambiguous in goaling and toxic in communications. Here I mean that many studios don’t spend much time clearly communicating company/team goals and developing soft skills for collaboration (as it’s quite difficult to find a job, so people tend to stick to their studio). That’s not the case in big tech, where clear communications without toxic behavior is the norm.
If finishing on a glass half full note: if I could do it, then many people will be able to do it themselves too.
