Ask HN: How to break into AR/MR Industry
I&#x27;m not in the current AR&#x2F;MR&#x2F;VR industry, but I have friends and colleagues who are, and I worked in VR last time it was a thing.<p>I&#x27;d guess you&#x27;re missing one or more of: (a) serious EE&#x2F;ME experience, (b) having <i>contributed</i> to computer vision&#x2F;graphics instead of just <i>understanding</i> the current state of the art and&#x2F;or tooling, and&#x2F;or (c) having designed and built AR&#x2F;MR&#x2F;VR hardware and software systems from scratch instead of building apps for existing systems or using existing tooling.<p>At a company that is inventing something new, the most valuable, sought-after hires are of people who invent and advance the company&#x27;s work; and people who can interface between engineering and content.<p>The former means people who invent and write algorithms for OpenCV, not people who simply use OpenCV.  Or having built AR hardware and software in combination, and therefore have a deep, practical understanding of the tradeoffs in different generations of hardware and different methods of projection, etc., rather than having only built apps for existing AR toolkits or platforms.<p>The latter means software developers who can also work with the hardware.  They may not be <i>required</i> to design a circuit board or engineer some optics, but they understand the operation of the hardware, can fix it if it breaks, can diagnose hardware problems and provide the sort of hardware bug reports every software developer wishes an end-user could provide, etc.<p>(An example of this would be the technical artist in video game studios.  They&#x27;re a respected, senior artist [so they can make actual art, and so their processes to do so are reasonable and representative] who can also program, and either creates tools for artists, or is the interface between the artists and the tool developers.)<p>If you aren&#x27;t one or the other, then you&#x27;re a step removed from where the company is at: inventing new things.  They don&#x27;t have the time or manpower to hold your hand.  You&#x27;re stuck only being able to build for the things that already exist, not helping them advance.<p>It&#x27;s why Microsoft&#x27;s #1 recommendation for non-technical designers who want to get into HoloLens work is to become technical enough to be proficient in Unity, if not the entire Windows 10 development toolchain.  If they aren&#x27;t self-sufficient enough to be able to get all of their work onto a device on their own, HoloLens isn&#x27;t ready for them yet.  It&#x27;s not plug-and-play, everyone involved needs to be able to wear all the hats.<p>If you can&#x27;t show that you&#x27;re already inventing new things yourself; or that you have a practical, working knowledge of the entire system, the kind that comes with having built something from scratch; then there may not be a place for you yet.