71: Chapter 71 No, you're really 29 years old.

The two sat down at the desk and began to determine the personnel to be recruited.

"Let me list the positions we currently need to recruit for—one lead programmer. We need one frontend and one backend programmer each. We need to recruit for the art team, and we also need to recruit game designers. The last one is a finance person."

After finishing, he looked at Zhou Min: "What do you think is still missing?"

Zhou Min thought for a moment and said: "Boss Chen, we are still missing an operations person. After the game is made, we need to consider promotion and channel integration in advance, right?"

Chen Fan nodded and added another line on the paper: "Operations is not urgent for now; it won't be too late to recruit once the product has a prototype. But you are right, we can post the job opening first and look at resumes slowly."

Zhou Min replied: "Okay."

"Anything else?"

"Hmm, for now, these positions are almost complete. We can wait until the project starts later and fill them as needed."

"Alright, let's settle on that for now."

Zhou Min jotted a few notes in her notebook and asked again: "Boss Chen, how much do you think is appropriate for the lead programmer's salary?"

"What's the industry average?"

"Here in Xian, lead programmers with over three years of experience who can lead a team generally earn between 8,000 and 12,000, and a very small number can reach 15,000."

"Let's set it directly at 12,000. For the lead programmer, we must choose someone with stronger capabilities."

"Alright, Boss Chen."

Next, Chen Fan confirmed the approximate salaries for the other positions with her.

After confirming, he asked her to draft a standard employment contract template.

After Qiao Linlin returned, they printed out two copies and had the two of them sign the employment contracts first.

After signing the contracts, Chen Fan spoke with Zhou Min, telling her to screen the resumes first, and if there were any suitable ones, she could just call him to confirm the interview time.

...

Three days later. In the company's meeting room. Sitting in front of Chen Fan and Zhou Min was a middle-aged man who looked to be about forty years old with thinning hair.

This was the lead programmer they were interviewing today.

In fact, they had already interviewed three lead programmers over the past few days, but none of them met the requirements.

On the other hand, the finance position was filled very quickly, while the others had no movement yet because the lead programmer hadn't been hired.

Now that they had an HR manager, Zhou Min was the main interviewer, and Chen Fan only needed to provide final approval.

"Please introduce yourself first," Zhou Min said.

"My name is Zhang Tao, 29 years old, graduated in 2007, and I've been doing game development for over three years. Previously, I was a lead programmer at a web game company in Xian, led a team of 10, and launched two projects."

Hearing Zhang Tao say he was 29, Chen Fan widened his eyes.

He looked at the man opposite him with thinning hair and a shiny forehead, silently swallowing the words that were on the tip of his tongue.

The fuck, 29? I'd believe it if he said 40.

"No, are you really 29?" Chen Fan couldn't help but ask.

Zhang Tao seemed accustomed to this reaction, smiled honestly, revealing a row of neat teeth.

"Well, programmers age quickly. At my college reunion, they all said I looked like their uncle."

Zhou Min nodded without changing her expression: "I completely understand. Now, please continue to introduce the projects you have worked on before."

Zhang Tao nodded: "The first one was a Three Kingdoms-themed SLG, similar to 'Seven Heroes Rivalry,' and I was responsible for the entire client architecture. The project had a peak of 8,000 concurrent users. The biggest pitfall I encountered was a memory leak; the server crashed on the third day after launch. Later, I refactored the resource loading module and loaded images on demand, which solved it. The second one was a card game, which achieved a monthly turnover of 3 million."

"You said the first one was an SLG; what architecture did you use for the client? How did you handle large-scale battles on the same screen?"

"The client used Flash AS3, and the framework was an MVC one I built myself. For resource management, I made an asynchronous loader that loaded in blocks according to the map, ensuring the large map wouldn't lag. The server side was C++, with socket communication, and the protocol used protobuf..."

"Can you tell me about that asynchronous loader?" Zhou Min continued to ask.

"At the time, we..." When it came to his professional knowledge, Zhang Tao began to speak eloquently.

Although Chen Fan didn't understand the technical details, seeing him speak so logically and confidently, he felt that this person had real skills, not to mention his hair couldn't be faked.

After Zhang Tao finished speaking, Zhou Min asked about his views on team management.

Regarding team management, Zhang Tao's answer wasn't outstanding, but it was standard and acceptable. After all, he was a programmer, so it was normal for him not to be skilled in management.

"I've learned enough on my end. How about you, Boss Chen?"

"I have no further questions."

After a pause, Chen Fan added: "But there's one thing I want to ask you—you previously led a team of 10 people. If you encountered someone in the team who couldn't keep up with the progress, how would you handle it?"

"First, I check if it's an attitude problem or a capability problem. For an attitude problem, if they don't change after two talks, I advise them to resign. For a capability problem, I try to mentor them if possible; if they really can't be helped, I transfer them to a different position and find something suitable for them to do. After all, everyone is good at different things."

"Alright, I have no more questions. Do you have any questions about the company?"

"What I want to know is about the salary—is it consistent with what was written in the job posting?"

"That's right. The base salary is 12,000, with weekends off and social insurance and housing fund, but there will be overtime, and overtime will be paid according to statutory overtime rates. If you work for a full year, there will be a share of the project profits."

This point about project profit sharing was decided with Zhou Min over the past few days, because most game companies now offer profit sharing to the core team, and it's basically very difficult to recruit highly capable people without it.

It is generally calculated based on 10% of the profits, but this is not distributed to the lead programmer alone; it is distributed to the entire core team, with the lead programmer getting a little more. It's usually around 2%.

For example, if the first month's profit is 5 million, 500,000 would be distributed to the core team.

For Chen Fan, if they can earn him 5 million, distributing 500,000 to them is no big deal.

Zhang Tao nodded after hearing this: "I have no questions, Boss Chen."

"Alright, let's stop here for today. You can go back and wait for notification."

"Okay."

After Zhang Tao left, Chen Fan looked at Zhou Min: "What do you think?"

Zhou Min: "His technical skills are solid; he could handle all the details we discussed and isn't the type who only memorizes concepts. Moreover, he has handled two launched projects. The first SLG had a peak of 8,000 concurrent users, and the second card game achieved a monthly turnover of 3 million—this resume is quite impressive in Xian."

She paused and added: "He also has experience leading a team. Although his management skills aren't particularly outstanding, he's a programmer, so it's enough if he can assign tasks clearly and not cause trouble. Overall, I think he's quite suitable."

"Alright, then it's him. Notify him of the interview results and have him report for duty as soon as possible."

"Alright, Boss Chen."