How to Hire Top Product Leaders in Gaming

Speaker A: We're not talking about somebody who's going to move the interval between 10 million ARR and 12 million ARR. But we're talking about potentially somebody who's going to make a difference from grossing 10k a month or whatever, or 50k a month or whatever. And somebody's going to gross saying 10, 12 million a day, your lifetime sales of a billion dollars. So when you etch it back to that, it's kind of an important hire.

Speaker B: To get it right is important. To get it wrong is devastating for your company. And being able to navigate this can be tricky as well.

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Mission One, the Executive Edge. I'm your host or co host Gerald Miles and joining me is Dan Hampton from the usa. How are you doing, Dan?

Speaker B: Great, yeah. How about you?

Speaker A: I'm um, well, thank you. Yep. We're nearly uh, at the end of February, almost a sixth of the way through the year, which always seems crazy, uh, when you say it like that, but the light is increasing which is good. It's improving my mood.

Speaker B: Nice. I don't like the light as much because it's just bright in here. You know, just work in a dark cave.

Speaker A: You know, work in a dark cave. That sounds great leadership advice for anyone out there thinking about how do we, how do we motivate our employees? There was some fact, a study, uh, in a factory where they, they messed around with light levels and they thought that people were working better with better lighting. And then they realized it was just actually when you went in with the clipboards and like measured people, they work better anyway. So they're like, oh, we keep increasing the likes and keep going. People like, oh, this guy with the clipboard better work harder. Uh, but they sound a bit of a false positive on that one. Excellent. Uh, today Dan, we're going to be talking about a subject that we get asked a lot about. Clients. As our listeners might know, we have a deep specialism particularly in the sector of computer gaming and do a lot of work particularly in the world of mobile gaming. So this is a targeted episode where we want to talk about probably the number one expertise that we get often asked for within uh, gaming, which is specifically around the product function within mobile games. So we thought we'd dedicate a special episode where we dive really deep on how to hire the very best product talent that you can, uh, within the world of mobile gaming. What are your thoughts on this kind of search? When you hear about gaming company coming to saying we need a product leader, what's your sort of initial Reactions and thoughts.

Speaker B: I uh, mean excitement. Right. Like this is a really fun search. I think, uh, there are just some amazing world class candidates out there in this space. This is a transformative, important, impactful hire and uh, it will show up in kind of the business metrics, revenue standpoint. So it's a fun role to help someone hire for. There's a lot of opportunity I think to be creative within it. I think there's a lot of excitement around people that you can get into the mix on some level and some are kind of locked into their roles. But for me, whenever we get a role like this, um, I think it's pretty exciting and fun to work on. It's a challenge, but a lot of fun.

Speaker A: Yes. And the reason why it's so in demand, right Is because it is such a huge value driver for the organization. It really does move the needle. You get this right higher right or not right. It has big implications for the clients. So coming in, it's a weighty one and it's also an interesting one where we get asked both by mobile games makers, but actually product function is also one of the most highly sought after functions by consumer apps looking to gamify, looking to sort of update their model one way or the other, geolingify that sort of hub their business as well. And on this podcast we're going to be covering just a bit of the history of the function, particularly if you're outside of gaming and you're looking to hire a product leader from within gaming. This will help you get some background and then we've got some top tips on how to think about what you're looking for, how to get it, understand who's the right person to hire and really assess those qualities and then sort of when to flex and when not to flex on bringing in the right person. Dan, do you want to kick us off when we're thinking about hiring a mobile games leader? Where are you going to start with that? Right, It's a big one. Like are uh, you going to hire the very best mobile leader in product? Where's your mind initially going to like, what do you need to get sorted out and understand going into that?

Speaker B: I'll kind of maybe just give the audience a little bit of um, context into the history of the role first and then we'll kind of go forward from there. Product's been around a long time in kind of traditional CPG companies became more prevalent within Google and around the year 2002, 2001 timeframe when they built this associate product manager Function within games, it became more of a thing in the social, um, gaming element of FarmVille, that kind of thing. And really that's when you kind of see this tech in games product function come about. And it's kind of lasted through the years, um, and then early 2000 or early 2010s kind of timeframe with mobile free to global product became, was even more of a thing. And you see companies like Scopely and Zynga, uh, and elsewhere really formalized this function. And then even later in AAA games, computer games, PC console games, um, it slowly kind of emerged as more of a function, but more around kind of like games that are doing live service elements. So think of your Fortnites for example and this role is really focused on being the bridge between kind of game design and business optimization. It's really more of the, for live service games is really focused on kind of retention of players, monetization and then the live service economics of it. So that's kind of the history of it. I think that's kind of where the role has gone and the evolution of it over the last 20 years, 25 years, it's been coming in very, in a very important role and I think um, one that only grows in importance moving forward. How does that sound to you Gerard? Uh, you know, before we kind of dig into kind of the role, kind of how we think about the search, but anything you'd add there to the

Speaker A: history, I think what you're hitting on there Dan, is considering it's only been around since 2000 and tens really.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: It's not a very old function within games. So if you're coming from outside of the sector, if you're in the consumer sector looking at hiring in games, first of all, I'd say the title has been used differently at different companies. Most games Companies through those 2010 years grew up very differently. They're often very founder driven and those founders had their own imprint and mark on their company and the way they structured it. King for example, who met Candy Crush, they had a business performance function and months later so they sort of split up and then later on moved to more of a product titling. So they had different elements sitting within different areas. So I think that's just the first thing that I'd say to anyone who's looking at this area who doesn't have a lot of context is understand not all product is equal. Sometimes people are more production focused, sometimes they're more design focused, sometimes they're more live operations functions. Sometimes a, uh, creative can Also mean something technically creative can mean the, or the art person can be a sort of a big C creative, as it were. Or creative vision could sit more within a product area as well. So I think it's, you have to understand that element of the history there. I think, you know, another part that's interesting for, because Dan and I, we've both done a lot of tech, broader consumer tech hiring and enterprise tech hiring over the years. But there, whenever you're looking for product, you'd often say particularly five, ten years, gee, so you want to go to North America, you want to go to west coast North America. Because the talent density in broader tech on west coast was extremely high.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Like everyone wanted the person who did it for XYZ company, um, you know, Uber or Airbnb, whoever it was, right. You want to go and get those people now with games because grown up in a much more bitty way, I'm going to say bitty way. You've got hubs in Helsinki, you've got hubs in London, you've got hubs in Berlin, you got hubs in Turkey, you've got hubs in Montreal, you've got hubs in Toronto, you got hubs in San Francisco, Louisiana, et cetera. And now of course, Shanghai, Singapore, South Korea, etc. Because of that, the product function is much more diverse in terms of geographical location than it is for a lot of other tech functions where you're often looking much more narrowly at the top percentile, uh, being in the US So that's also good. And I think for an advantage is again good to know where the hubs are for where you're looking because there will be more cities that you might not have thought of that could be talented talent pools or interesting places, uh, to go on the hunt for.

Speaker B: Well, and not only within hubs. Then you double click into that and it's like, okay, well what areas produce the best mid core talent? What produces the best casual talent, which like different mechanics of different games, right. And so you're thinking about kind of where, where can you find people that worked at a certain level of scale, right? And you kind of really can see different places produce different flavors of the talent overall and different archetypes too, which is interesting.

Speaker A: That's a great point. You could almost think about like vintages of wine, as you might say, like of this grape. That area is fantastic. And you look at another grape, you'd say it might be quite a subtle nuance. Right. But you'd say, we would say, for example, if you're looking for social casino talent, right? Like Israel, there's lots of great talent out there. And also the product leaders that come out of that, even if they're not in social casino, they often have a similar sort of very data driven, very analytics, strong monetization, strong type viewpoint. Again these are generalizations but again you sort of know, okay, well there's going to be a higher density talent for this type of product leader. Again I think west coast you get more of that as well. As you pointed out, early 2000s like German midcore hardcore, lots of games coming out from web over to mobile. There was a vintage there. Ah, not so much recently. Um, no offense to any German mid core product leaders out there. Get in touch, let us know if you think you're making the next big hit there. But there's different sort of vintages for when these products came out and where the talent was and who that was. And as uh, specialists Dan, I would drill again really deep on that down to like the individual names of people and you because of you pick it out. But at a high level if you're looking into this it's good to think about, okay, well where are the talent pools? And also updating your knowledge. I'd say that it's a young industry but it's quite evolving. So I think still there can be um, what is the scene of Helsinki talent now versus where it was five years ago is different or six, seven years ago. Those answers will update or places are coming up and it's no secret that Istanbul is incredibly rich in terms of the talent pool there. For product leaders however, it's also incredibly inaccessible because actually very few of those people want to relocate out of there or go and take a different coin to go to say the east coast of America or Canada or whatever. They have a fantastic ecosystem so they're very hard to pry out. So that granularization and that sort of. Dan and I have talked about this before where when you're in a search you've also got to be doing that research as you're going and building up that knowledge picture and really making sure you're super sharp about where's the exact talent for what I want right now and not like where it was two years ago. And understanding that look, I think you

Speaker B: can think about it in different archetypes. You know, do you need a pre or post launch product leader? Do you need someone who's more of a visionary, do you need someone who's more of a monetization or live Ops expert, you know, someone who's operated a certain way or do you need more someone who's more of a, you know, kind of business manager of the product as well. And then you go to different companies or different areas and you know that or certain cultures have different level of scale or team sizes or that kind of things at different companies too. I think if you're thinking about what you're looking for, you know, having clarity I think would be a top tip, is have clarity of what you're looking for and then, you know, maybe that's thinking about your archetypes that you need or you're thinking about, okay, well what are the key criteria that I'm solving for? And you'll, you cast a wide net around specific genres, specific scale. Are you a startup? Um, you know, in that case you might need someone from a startup based in, you know, Berlin and you need someone that can cover your teams across Europe. Maybe you need somebody there as well. Right. But thinking about who might fit and then layering in your archetypes and then laying in your criteria so you know, someone can meet the challenges of tomorrow or today that you're solving for, what else would you add to that? Gerard, you know, around kind of your key criteria or how are you thinking about gaining clarity around this hire?

Speaker A: I think it's a great tip is of, is sort of thinking about very carefully what are the parameters for my search here. And again, if, if you're an audience already in mobile gaming, you're going to have a lot of, you know, stronger instincts on where that is. But still you can be creative to thinking, okay, well what is analogous, right, because we try and say, try and keep it as broad as you can while still being relevant. And the reason we say keep it broader is because it's a very thin talent pool. Like the really top tier product leaders are worth their weight in gold. They are people, uh, who are courted and often probably could go and raise money themselves if they want. So a lot of them go on to be founders. They're taking money, they've, they've got a lot of power in the market. Even though games has been a very quiet market in the last couple of years post Covid, it's been a quieter market. It doesn't mean that that fight for that top talent is any less fierce or that these people are settling because they are being kept by their employers and, or they're being courted by others who are offering them very best. So often when you dive into it, I think a lot of hiring managers that we work with are quite conservative in terms of they want a track record of previous success or scale.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: They want to see leaders who have previously scaled something. Often our world is a nine figure grossing game, right? Like that's often the sort of the golden bar. Have they either uh, been early on a nine figure grossing game or they've run it? See scale, that's what scale is when you really drill down the number of games that get to that scale in the last 10 years. And then you take out the teams who were uh, driven by founders who are now billionaires so they're not looking for jobs. And you take out the teams that were built out in job physics. You're probably not going to be able to attract in talent. So some teams in China, for example, be very hard to relocate to Europe or North America. Once you strip all that out, you're left with actually a very few number of people and you cut out the people who are very happy, found their own thing diary, whatever it is, it's a small number so it can get thin quickly and therefore being creative or being aware of okay, where's some breakout successes or maybe if it's not the right level of scale, but maybe it's the right trajectory of growth. So maybe they've done an absolutely knockout hit for a, for a company that usually does 10 million games and they've done a 50, 60 million game, might be like, wow, who is that person? Right. Uh, and uh, that might still scale to 100 million. You might be able to catch them in that period before that's gone up and again they're off the market or they're looking for a different quality or something. So keep it clear and try and keep it broad and creative with your criteria to make sure you keep widening that net as much as possible.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And I think it's important to know if you're hiring for this role, were they on a specific game through the certain growth years or were they on it through stabilization years? And you know, understanding which person drove the impact more than others. This day and age when R and D budgets have shrunk quite a bit or non existent, finding somebody that knows how to rejuvenate a game is important as well. You know, we've seen the Clash Royale success story from last year, you know, and I think other games will want to see things like that or figure out a ways to innovate within a specific game. So people that are doing new things or vitalizing a game or bringing players back, you know, Those skill sets are becoming increasingly more important as well.

Speaker A: So I think it's. And again it's sort of the depth and breadth of experiences is widening slowly as there's more people have been in mobile product over years and we are sort of seeing different profiles of different people coming through who are uh, specialized in revitalization or something like that. Right. We've now got a cohort of legacy games that need revitalization and I think Supercell have been leading the way on that. I'm showing both. I think Hay Day and Clash Royale have had their best ever years or something like that. I think this last year and those are games that are a decade plus old and other people are looking at that and saying, okay, how do you do that? And I think actually it's really drilling into the nuance of it. I think a lot of those games were doing very well during COVID and everyone knew it was this Covid sort of bumper that was being kicked, but then they declined afterwards. And I think some people had a bit of a fatalism of well, that's Covid, right? But actually there's so many of these games that are seeing a lot of rejuvenation and both in mobile M bosses of broader gaming, I think we've seen games like companies like Jagex, they're flying the flag for a UK based games company of great notoriety and love. They're still seeing amazing games with Runescape, which I think is a 25 year old game and they're still finding new players, new generation of revenue, et cetera, et cetera, which is interesting. Right. In a world that's very classically hit driven, you got to find a new hit sometimes. It's also about reviving what you already have. Dan, what would be a good sort of second tip? So first tip is having clarity on what you're looking for in a thin market, thinking about where you can find this person deeply. What's your second tip on hiring a great product leader?

Speaker B: Second tip really is figuring out who drove the needle, who made the impact, who was the fuel for the rocket ship that was the game, who was simply a passenger. How you figure that out can be a challenge, but it also can be easy on some level. If you have the right references, you have the right network. Right. If you don't have the network, it becomes much more difficult and you can't simply rely on the references given by that person. Right. So if you can back channel reference somebody in a process, that's great. If you're working with you know, recruiters like us that, uh, maybe have the network can, you know, leverage that network to get the back channel references and figure that out. Understanding reputation, you can get into kind of understanding what years the game grew, product grew, and then figure out if they were on it. But then you still have to figure out if they were the driver behind it as well at that point. Are there any other ways I think that you go and you think about this kind of understanding impact.

Speaker A: As you said, the main thing is having real clarity on the fact that there are some people who are providing an outsized return, right? The people who are, uh, holding the creative vision or who really got that project together. And usually it's a couple of people, usually it's like 2, 3, 4 maybe people really at that core and different functions who all hum together. But they were all outsized movers of the needle and sort of identifying that, which critical stage that happened and who drove it through. And we know we work with some of the biggest franchises on the planet or people who make the biggest franchise on the planet. We know the way they talk about it, they'll say there was a core team who did xyz. This is really what happened. And we hear that story over and over again. These are the person who knows. And it's really interesting in referencing sometimes they do this and they'll say, well, no, it's really this person. And that's the sort of the core, right? Because yeah, they were involved, they were around, they were in the room, but they weren't the person who was seen by that peer group in retrospect and in the company of saying like, no, these were the core talent. It wouldn't have happened if it weren't for these people. And that's often, um, what I think you're really looking for. I think the other thing is, and again, this is a nuanced point because at one level that's an easier. That is probably a bit more of the. The first level is checking, okay, well, did they have this impact? I think the other thing to think about is understanding what impact is. And I think clients sometimes really struggle with this of if you come into a burning ship or burning house, right, and you put the fire out, you haven't driven lots of growth, right? You might have just got it down to ashes, right? Or like, how bad. I don't know how good this fire analogy is. But yeah, depending on how bad the fire was, right. It might be a great success to have just simply slowed the fire down a little bit, right? That might have been a herculean monumental work. I think. I think it's probably deeply psychological. As human beings, we obviously tend towards the people who've got the hockey stick curve going up and wow, they've done all this growth. Not all products are equal, and therefore not everyone's impact on those products are equal either. At a certain level, covering the people who've done what you want at the scale and all the rest can be hard in itself. If you really want to get a nuance and get a level deeper, uh, it might be that person who, as said, dug into a really deep situation or a difficult situation into a failing product and have managed to it turned it from minus 20% year on year to flat. That could be a really exciting story of, okay, well, they had to really understand the player deeply. They had to understand the monetization angle deeply. They had to work probably with some pretty tough constraints, right. It shows a lot of their character or their ability. And those stories can be more interesting again than somebody who came into a hugely successful franchise. 150 million and they grow it to 200 million or something like that. Okay, well, it was already growing that year pathway anyway. And a lot of the stuff had been set up, uh, previously, before they came in to affect that is kind

Speaker B: of a secret, but it's not really. But when you say an individual can have an outsized impact, right? And I think some companies have really leaned into that and they make their hires based off of that looking, you know, having their bar set to that level, right, where they're figuring out, uh, who made the impact and then just really focusing on bringing those, those individuals in. And that's a tough ask. But the people in this space can have such a big impact, drive the business in a certain way. That really makes sense that you go and, and you're trying to recruit those individuals to have a. Because they're. The contributions one person can make can really move, can really change things for a business, for a game, you know, for product far beyond that, you know, just the big one hire. Not all companies, I think maybe have that luxury of being able to do that. But if you can go and you can and you can attract those, that level of candidate, I think it really moves you, you know, much faster than your competitors.

Speaker A: I agree. And um, for us, a third top tip is what we've done. So what we've done for that so far, we've done keeping flexible within your criteria. We've thought about how to find those needle drivers. What else should people be thinking about as they're approaching this search.

Speaker B: I think you really have to think about, well, the people you can attract to the role, who's available. And in the perfect world, you're hiring a VP product and maybe the team's already built and you're just really focused on this very specific gap. There are other cases where maybe that person doesn't exist perfectly for the, the role you're trying to fill, you know, because there's a thin market for your genre or your scale or something different. Some companies are moving back to office, so you may not have the luxury of a perfect fit. Gerard and in that case, how do you think about this hire? How do you think about this role? Do you just go and uh, bring in the best athlete you can find? Do you switch, you know, change it up on leveling? Like how do you think about kind of maybe your, the puzzle piece you need just doesn't exist. And, but there's something close. Like where do you give? Where do you not give? How do you think about that point in the search?

Speaker A: I think it's a case of art and science. Some of this is judgment and some of this could be set more in rules. I'd go back to if you get this product, we can't understate. If you get this product, right, there's a potential to make billion dollar franchises. It's incredibly hard, it's a long route, et cetera, et cetera. We know all that. But that's the reward, right? We're not talking about somebody who's going to move the novel between 10 million ARR and 12 million ARR. And that's exciting, right, to get 2 million more in ARR. But we're talking about potentially somebody who's going to make a difference from grossing 10k month or whatever, or 50k a month or whatever. And somebody's going to Gross saying 10, 12 million a day and lifetime sales of a billion dollars. So when you etch it back to that, it's kind of an important hire, right? Like it's really, really critical that you get this hire, right? So to my mind, you should have that at the back of your mind when you're looking at candidates and thinking about fit. And you may be, as I said, you may judge it that look, I've got the rest of this team, right? I need to hire someone who fits into this eight hole that I've got for them and they've got to be able to be happy that they're a strong creative person. They've got A GM who's got like a bit of a product idea, whatever it is, and you might say that that has to be the right thing for the right team. And that's your judgment call. I think if you find someone, though, who's exceptional, if you're hiring somebody other Ronaldo Messi, to use the football analogy, like, uh, of that level of hiring, that's an opportunity for the general manager, m. The hiring manager, CEO, whoever it is, to step back and say, could this person put us in the. You know, help us win the Champions League? My current team is never going to win the Champions League. But, like, we could maybe like, get higher up our own table. That's not as good as the person who could win you the Champions League. So if you've got that sort of star power, if you've got that person who is able to really revolutionize your entire company. Because again, I can think of people. I can think of three, four people to my head, like, they pretty much saved that company. I can think of companies. I give you examples of people and companies that say that person that post a different time, they brought out that game. That was the salvation of that game. And then that led them go on and on and on. It's like a real hero journey. So the stakes are that high or the impact is that high. I say you think about the person you have, and if you think about how do I get them into the team? And that might mean some significant changes. That might mean you have to absolutely blow out your budget. It might mean you have to say, okay, well, this person only work. They report into xyz or they have this lovely control or this is how it works. Now, I don't think with product, it's too much of a problem most of the time. Again, it's quite a powerful position anyway. I think you have to empower product. But sometimes we do see it with some classic situations. Could be very large companies. It's actually very large, very small companies. Probably the extremities, right? Very large companies. You have a little bit more of a structure or a position where there's more cooks in the kitchen or maybe there's an external partner or something. There's just complexities that they say, well, we do that or cross these people's toes, or we can't stretch the budget for this because we've got to fit it in our banding, et cetera, et cetera. Or actually very small companies that were sometimes as a CEO who's pretty involved in these decisions and they want to Keep a hot control ironically at the extremities I think in between in the middle mid sized companies this doesn't come up as much because it's a little bit clearer or there's more flags. But I think it's have that sense of if you see Star PI grab it, put all your resources on courting it because it's worth it. Right. And it returns. And I don't. It's not the moment to start thinking oh well that's going to be different from the way we pay other people or oh well that might upset the production leader because they've been pretty, they've been here 20 years and or 15 years and they're very set in their ways and you know it's like it might be that point you go like are uh, they going to get to win the Champions League? To sort of really push that analogy. What do you think Zang? I accept you can't push that argument always.

Speaker B: You can't always. I mean you don't always have the freedom to shape the roll around of higher per se. I do agree with your point though that you have to try to grab these people. I mean like a world class product leader can be the difference between your game failing in soft launch and your game achieving a billion dollars. The difference in a world class product leader is so impactful that if you find them you really got to do your best to bring them in. And there's a finite pool of those people and they're all probably vast majority of them are incredibly happy and well paid and the ones that from a generation ago probably aren't even working anymore because they've made so much money. So there's a finite pool, they're going off the, they're retiring whatever build their own companies. But if you find them in the right time in their career and you can bring them in and they could be a major um, difference maker. So go and get them. Go and get Messi when he's for first at Barcelona. You know maybe you can even get him today. He's been around, you know he's at, in Miami here. Uh, but still fantastic.

Speaker A: Danny moving to sports agency work as well while you're launching the Mission 1 sports agency where uh, we should clarify we're not Messi's agent before we get the call.

Speaker B: You know there's the messies of the world in product, you know in mobile gaming. Right. As well. And, and if you can find those people and you can bring them in or if you, if they're on your team already do everything you can to retain them.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good point, dad. That's a really good point because, yeah, people like us are, uh, like, heading them up all the time, trying to say, like, hey, tempt you to something else.

Speaker B: Absolutely right. And I think that, that, that happens quite a bit. But, you know, go and bring that person in. If you can shape the role around them, do that. If you have a finite specific gap, you know, maybe that means you're flexing on titling SVP versus vp or you're flexing on something else to make the role attractive to them, or you're giving them a succession plan that they know that they're going to fill the role in a narrower gap today. But a, uh, year from now they'll be doing something else or they'll have more space, uh, you know, more freedom or, you know, that kind of thing. This is such an important role. I think you have to do everything you can to bring these people in. And we've seen it, you know, compensation continues to go up, up into the right for these people will continue. I think it's just such an important hire that you. To get it right is important. To get it wrong is devastating, you know, for your company. Right. And being able to navigate this can be tricky as well.

Speaker A: This is a conversation we spent years hiring these people and years looking at this. So there's a lot of depth, right. And a lot of nuances. As always in these podcasts, we're always trying to give that general overview, uh, that fits as many situations as possible. But it's a narrow but very deep field here. Right. Of getting it right. So as listeners, we hope you've had some, found some wisdom here again. So depending on where you're on that scale, uh, you might be already down to the deeper end of really want to go more and more granular into who these people are, et cetera. Or if you're at the higher end and coming into games from outside, you might be thinking, okay, well how do I poach this talent? I don't know where to start. Let us know. This is a subject we love to talk about. So particularly if you're thinking about this hiring, just want some advice, give us a call or drop us a line on LinkedIn or whatever it is. But I think this is a, uh, topic we might come back to as well or look into nuanced within if there's a lot of excitement, uh, for it.

Speaker B: And I'll just say one thing. If you're a candidate out there thinking about this and wondering, you know, hey, why is it so hard for me to get a job? The market is thin and challenging, right. And there's great people out there, I think, looking for roles. And if you can't find a role right now, it doesn't mean you're not a great talent. It just means that roles don't exist as much. And we talk to people every day, every week trying to figure out their next move. And it's not indicative of talent level there. Just sometimes it's indicative of just the market is not as strong as it was in the, um, pandemic days, but the rules are still coming. They're just slow.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's a good point, Dan, because I think maybe you should do a mirror episode actually on the, uh, candidate side of this, of where the market is now for product hiring or just generally across mobile games. Because again, there's few companies out there are still investing in hiring, but a lot that are still, uh, working through some deeper structural issues that mean the investment, the coherency around your game strategy or product strategies is not quite there.

Speaker B: Exactly right. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks everybody for listening. Please, as Gerard likes to say, every episode like and subscribe did say smash that subscribe button.

Speaker A: That's what you're going to say.

Speaker B: The kids say absolutely. And uh, thanks for listening. If you have any comments, please let us know or any other future episode topics you'd like us to cover. And please let us know.

Speaker A: Take care, everyone.

Speaker B: Take care of.

Speaker A: That's another episode of Mission 1, the Executive Edge. If you found this valuable hit, subscribe and leave us a review. It helps other professionals discover the show,

Speaker B: have a question about executive hiring, or want to share your own experience? Reach out on LinkedIn or visit Mission1IO podcast. We read everything, and your stories often inspire future episodes.

Speaker A: The Executive Edge is brought to you by Mission One, where we specialize in places senior leaders at tech, entertainment and AI companies. Learn more at Mission1io.

Speaker B: Thanks for listening and we hope to see you again soon on the Executive Edge.