Spotlight: Brandon Thorpe, Senior IT Engineer
24th Sep 2021
How did you get your job at d3t?
In 2015 I had moved to a new part of Warrington, where I started a new football team with my dad and a few other people – one of which was d3t co-founder, Jamie Campbell.
Jamie had noticed on social media that I had followed up on an enquiry about a job opportunity and he got in touch with myself to see if I was actively looking. I wasn’t at the time but had heard about d3t and was always interested in video games, so I thought, why not say yes.
Things moved quickly from that point, as after looking at my CV an interview was set-up at the company’s old Heath offices, where I was asked to do a test, along with meeting the small team at the time. Fast forward six years, two office moves and more than 100 new staff and here we are – where I am still loving every moment of it!
What do you do day-to-day?
My day-to-day can be split up between two categories: reactive and proactive.
Reactive work at d3t is different to any other company that I have supported in the past, and it’s due to the tech savviness of the staff. It’s very rare that someone will lock themselves out or forget their password, and usually when someone does have a problem, they come to us with a brilliantly detailed explanation of what is wrong, and what they have done to resolve it before coming to us. Ninety percent of the time, issues will either be a problem affecting how the development staff work, whether that be a software/hardware request, an access amend or help troubleshooting why something isn’t working. However, the other ten percent will be an unforeseen and challenging issue to resolve, which always keeps us on our toes!
The other side of my role is the proactive work, which is where a lot of my time is spent. We always have projects on the go to make sure that d3t is in the best position to succeed. Technology is always moving; data is getting bigger and more sensitive, and we need to be able to keep up with that. As you can imagine d3t has changed massively since my first day in October 2015, and it’s because we constantly look at how we work and where it can be improved, you cannot stay still in this industry because you’ll get left behind.
Do you have any tips for people looking to get into the games industry?
From an IT point of view, I think it’s very important to have good knowledge of how games are made if you’re going to get into the industry. The biggest learning curve for me was always knowing what was critical and what wasn’t. In any Managed Service Provider, you will have some method of prioritising tickets/issues, however, that’s not always the correct way of looking at things. This is something that I had to adapt to when I entered the industry.
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