"I once managed a team of 40 people": Tech lead couldn't find work in Poland and took a cashier job

Valery has 15 years of experience in IT as a game designer. Before that, he worked in sales, PC assembly, and he speaks English at C1 level as well as basic Polish. His wife has two years of experience in customer support, copywriting, and text translation (besides English and Polish, she also speaks Chinese and Finnish).

Over three months, the couple couldn’t find jobs in their field in Poland. We asked Valery to share how they ended up in this situation.

Relocation and layoffs

— It’s a complicated story. The more I think about it, the more depressing it becomes. Now I’m working at «Żabka» (a Polish chain of small convenience stores), and my wife got a job in cleaning. Yet I had once been a producer managing a department of nearly 40 people.

Let me start from the beginning. In 2021, I was working as a producer at WannaPlay, a Belarusian mobile game developer and publisher. That same year, I moved to Poland.

After the war began, WannaPlay laid off about 200 people, or nearly 90% of its staff. This happened because all investors left the company. The company was recklessly spending investment money, and they quickly ran out of funds.

I was laid off and immediately started looking for a job. I found one within a month: I took the first decent-paying opportunity that came along.

I should add that we initially had a substantial financial safety net. But a significant portion went toward relocating, moving our belongings, and buying necessities for our apartment (which we rented almost empty). As we adjusted to our new salary and higher prices, our savings diminished considerably.

«The NFT hype died down, the project collapsed, and the circus began»

I got a remote job with a company based in the UAE that was developing crypto games. They paid consistently. Meanwhile, I passively looked for alternative work, without much enthusiasm, as the market was declining. Everywhere I looked, salaries were lower than what I was making at the Emirati studio.

My wife wasn’t working at that time: our financial situation allowed us to live on my salary alone. Additionally, right before we left Belarus, her father passed away. Naturally, I didn’t pressure her to find work at such a difficult time, especially since it wasn’t financially critical for us.

While I was working at the Emirati studio, Web3 games died out before gaining traction. The NFT hype faded, and the project collapsed. As we brainstormed our next game, I pitched my idea. That’s when the circus began!

The game was anime-style with a storyline. The studio’s CEO, apparently an anime fan, started micromanaging excessively. He delved into the minutest details, constantly pushing his own ideas (often disastrous ones) over everyone else’s.

It ranged from demands to rewrite entire chapters of narrative to deciding to cut off traffic acquisition during the project’s most profitable season. Additionally, the CEO destroyed long-term retention, ad monetization, and half of the offers (in gamification, these are proposals that use game mechanics to encourage users to make purchases or take other targeted actions).

Furthermore, we had no holidays, no sick leave. Plus, vacation was limited to just two weeks, with only 50% of the salary paid during that period.

Working there, I completely burned out and lost motivation to even passively job hunt. Although decent offers occasionally came in, they offered increasingly lower salaries.

By the time the company owner learned about the CEO’s actions, it was too late. The company had burned through tons of money—money the owner provided from his own pocket. I was tasked with reviving everything, and I actually managed to bring the game to acceptable profitability. But it was too late: the money was completely gone. Eventually, everyone except juniors was let go, so they could keep the game running somehow and maintain whatever could still generate revenue.

«I look at the offers recruiters sent me in early spring and kick myself»

While all this was happening, my wife had found a job in support at the American embassy and had been working there for six months. Then came the policy shift following Trump’s election in November 2024. He gave orders to shut down all Russian-language support. I should add that my wife worked not only with Russians but also with Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Russian-speaking citizens of the Baltic states. But ultimately, everyone was fired and the department was closed.

In spring, recruiters were still reaching out to me, but I thought our project was doing more or less fine. From summer onward, I started contacting them myself, first lazily, then more actively. But there were no responses at all. Eventually, I began mass-applying to vacancies, and finally got some responses. However, they all said the same thing: your experience in the last three to five years doesn’t match our profile.

I looked at statistics on skillshot.pl, a Polish game dev job search site. Some vacancies receive up to a thousand applications! So I understand the studios' selectiveness now. But that doesn’t make it any easier for me.

For instance, as a sole proprietor, I need to pay contributions to ZUS [the Polish equivalent of social security]. It’s calculated in a specific way: the payment amount is reviewed only once a year, and even if you lose your job three times, you still have to pay as calculated.

Why «Żabka»?

That’s how I ended up as a cashier at «Żabka», and my wife as a cleaner. Now I look at offers that were sent to me in early spring and kick myself. But what can you do?

I had to settle for «Żabka» because we ran out of money. I faced the question: what are we going to live on?

«Żabka» is a place where Polish at roughly an A2 level is sufficient. Besides it, I considered factories, for example. But they’re an hour and a half away, while «Żabka» is literally in my building. And there are no interviews for it, as with any manual labor job. At least, I haven’t seen any.

Financially, it’s pure hell right now. «Żabka,» of course, hasn’t solved all our problems. This month we can barely pay for housing, thankfully our lease agreement is ending soon, and we’ll be moving out.

Living in this apartment is too expensive for us now.