I sense a disturbing trend amongst some of the fresh graduates lately.  A lot of kids are coming my way that fit a specific archetype: nice, smart, passionate, and utterly screwed by the false expectations fed to them by their educational institutions.  They have spent at least four years and their reserve of educational funds following a producer track at a school that offers a producer track for the video games industry.

When they graduate, they will be fighting for positions that make up the smallest ratio of head count on a development team when compared to programmers, artists, designers, audio engineers, and QA.  And within this ratio, they will be competing with an army of veteran experienced producers who are flooding the job market seeking to fill those low-ratio positions.

I feel for these kids who will be graduating this year with a "producer education", and I can't help but garner a growing disdain for the educational facilities that are empowering this mindset of entitlement to producer positions at some game company upon fresh graduation.

I would like to make the following potentially controversial assertion:

I am often approached by students asking for advice on getting their first job in the industry.  I typically respond by asking them what their skillsets are.  Sadly, I am finding more and more who would answer that their skillset lies in their management prowess as they proudly explain their past experiences managing group projects in the classroom.

I run into enough of these archetypes to the point where I am now developing a template response to those who ask me for advice on getting in.  Aside from pointing them to the excellent IGDA Breakin' in link, I will also offer these words to them:

You must become familiar with the skills from each of your cats if you are to lead them against the evil forces of Mumm-Raa.

Master them all... to become Lion-O!