Meet Amir Satvat, the man leading efforts to find laid-off developers new jobs

Finding a job can be stressful and daunting. Given the wave of layoffs in the games industry, including those from Microsoft this week, it’s a tall task. It can also be time-consuming and difficult during this economic downturn.

However, Amir Satvat — currently working as business development director at Tencent — says he was inspired to help people with that process. He has gone on to foster a community and roster of resources to help people find new work or enter the games industry for the first time, with nearly 2,000 people placed so far.

Satvat says he began the effort after learning about round of job cuts at Microsoft in October of 2022.

As he recalls, “It was near Thanksgiving time, and you’re thinking about being with your family, feeling safe and happy. [However], many people did not feel that way because they had started getting jobs cut.”

Satvat says that he then began working on this via LinkedIn and eventually created the resource he calls the Games Jobs Workbook. The guide includes help from professionals in the games industry as well.

“What if I found a standardized way to take the hundreds of roles and broke [that] into 20 common categories so people could easily browse games jobs?”

He explains, “What if I found a standardized way to take the hundreds of roles and broke [that] into 20 common categories so people could easily browse games jobs? We added a coaching network and now have over 2,000 people as mentors. Eventually, I even built up a website.”

When visiting the website, users can access 15 games industry job resources across six categories. For example, job seekers can find assistance with career planning, role listings, and connections.

Satvat tells GamesIndustry.biz that his efforts got significant traction on LinkedIn, and he now has a follower base of more than 85,000 people. He adds that a Discord server for game jobs was launched and had 1,200 users sign up.

“My best estimate is that we’ve helped more than 1,800 people find work, and we’ve enabled more than 31,000 career coaching conversations. I’m really proud of it. It’s all for free. I don’t get any money. Nobody in our network gets money. There’s no ulterior motives,” he says.

“[This] is just to be kind to others, and it is the largest impact in helping gamers get jobs since I started it on November 2, 2022 of any individual or organization in the world.”

Satvat explains that the job seeking and job application processes can feel daunting. For example, people have to find roles on websites, jobs sites, and social media posts and then create profiles if necessary.

“Rather than going through some 60-minute process, everything is condensed to a form. You take five minutes and fill it out”

He says, “All of that is way too complicated. These poor people who are looking for jobs, who are already going through a lot of emotional duress and are stressed out, they can’t deal with that. So I said, we’re going make it this simple.

“Rather than going through some 60-minute process, everything is condensed to a form. You take five minutes and fill it out, and then somebody in our community, whether it’s me, a mentor, or a resource provider, will take over and make that happen.”

Regarding how many people are paying attention to his efforts, Satvat explains that over the last year, his LinkedIn community has had 40 million views, and two-thirds of that traffic comes from the games industry.

Satvat notes that the most difficult part of starting this endeavor was believing in himself and building the network.

“People [said], ‘oh, it’s never going to work if you don’t pay people. It won’t work if you don’t have a sophisticated website”

“People [said], ‘oh, it’s never going to work if you don’t pay people. It won’t work if you don’t have a sophisticated website. If you don’t have data scientists tracking all this stuff, it’s not going work’,” he says.

“The hard part is getting the members in because once you cross a tipping over point, everyone hears about it, everyone’s [willing] to participate because it’s cool because it’s helpful…Getting those first 100 mentors into the service took a lot of work when nobody knew it was anything.”

Regarding mentors, Satvat says he also uses LinkedIn to vet people and provide them with a layer of privacy when coaching job seekers.

“I mandated that everybody have a LinkedIn profile and at least three years of work experience. [This] allowed me to look over their backgrounds, make sure this looks kosher and so forth,” he explains.

“I mandated that everybody have a LinkedIn profile and at least three years of work experience”

“On the flip side, mentors had concerns because if there’s now this free service you’re putting out on a literally a Google sheet, anybody can reach out to me. Am I going to get 1,000 emails from random people?”

He continues, “My other requirement is that if you’re going to write to any of [these] people, you have to be on LinkedIn with a trackable profile. That’s what I decided early on for people’s privacy…conversations are just all through LinkedIn only.”

Satvat explains that he’s also transparent about job seekers’ chances of getting hired. Since starting this endeavor in 2022, he calculates that a person with no experience in the games industry finding a job within a year is 3% to 5%.

He says, “If you were someone who lost your job in games, your chance of getting reabsorbed into [the sector] in 12 months is 20% to 25%. So [the] first thing I say to people is, don’t personalize that there’s something wrong with you. You shouldn’t feel bad that recruiters aren’t writing you back or you’re getting form letter rejections.”

“If you were someone who lost your job in games, your chance of getting reabsorbed into [the sector] in 12 months is 20% to 25%”

He notes that breaking into the industry may be as difficult as entering a prestigious university — but it is not impossible. Using himself as an example, he says that pivoting into gaming is a more accessible pathway.

He joined Amazon in 2019 and, in the following year, worked at Amazon Games before moving to Tencent Games.

People are always looking for jobs, and with the growing number of layoffs, Satvat continues to be rather busy. However, he explains that he’s been able to create a process and work schedule that allows him personal time.

“I try to set really strict limits on time and delineation of everything I do. My family and our kids always come first. I block that [time] out,” he says.