As. To be fair, this was this was early in in the layoff phase, like probably within the first four to six months of me being laid off. So this was still 2023. That's what
I've noticed to the first half of 2020 20 was getting like more activity, whether it be for interviews or for small gigs. I personally got more small gigs. I, before starting rafter, I was basically working for about a year.
Yeah.
Then friend introduced me to my co founder, and we decided to open about fantastic. And then Aaron, I've known for how many years now?
It was a dream hack when I it was before when I first year was 2017 2017. That's when I started. Yeah, so a lot of years now.
So yeah, we've, we've known each other for us. We both do kind of full time consulting. Working on things like that. And then I have a co founder who's not on this call today because he's going to VC summit in Barcelona.
Nice and where were you guys based out of are you in America?
We both own off. Okay, nice. Nice. Yeah, it
seems like it's it's a hub. Austin is definitely one of those one of those development hubs for all kinds of games indies, aaa, blah, blah,
blah. Yeah. Nice film and music. Right.
All of the above?
Yeah. Creative Hub. That's like, I think there's a there's a gig I'm looking at actually, that's based out of Austin
was that Where are you based?
I'm just outside of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in town called Squamish, which is a town that's situated right between Vancouver and Whistler. Whistler was the hosting city for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Oh, and it's you know, it's a it's a world worldwide destination for skiing and snowboarding and all that kind of thing. But also mountain biking in the summer, downhill mountain biking is huge and in Squamish Squamish is one of the has one of those. I think it's the second largest freestanding granite monoliths in the world. So rock climbing is huge here. Because we're at the end of a really long very slender, sound or waterway when sports are really popular here so that's like BASE jumping kitesurfing trail running out paddleboarding. It's it's an outdoor like destination for anyone that likes to play outside seems
like a interesting opportunity for like our video.
Yeah, someone wants to do like a VR destination. Squamish would definitely be ridiculous from downhill mountain biking to the kite type boarding BASE jumping off of what we call the chief which is this monolith be crazy stuff. For sure. Yeah. I couldn't recommend it enough. In fact, I've got buddies in VR, I should recommend it too. Yeah, yeah, it would be it would be slick. So that's, that's where I am. And as you can see from the from the resume I you know, I've been around I've done nd I've done mobile, I've done PC console. All predominantly in lead roles other than back when I first broke ground and in history when I was working in mobile, it's been a ride full show. But if you you know if you just want to have Yeah, if you if you just want to have a look and you know, tear it up a bit for me I just got some feedback from a number of people from Aamir sat that's like, he's he's got that great resource. There's a massive list of like, Allah knows, like, 100 plus people that are mentors and I'm brilliant. I just I picked some I picked the only person I could find that was actually a systems designer. So I reached out to her. I
left my cell phone I remember correctly but
yeah, very good. Yeah. As I was saying, I reached out to a few people got some got some feedback. I haven't folded all that feedback into the into the resume just yet. But I saw your post and I was like Alright, well let's let's get some let's get some more feedback on this if at all possible. I'm not I'm not afraid to burn the ships try it again. You know, burn the whole thing down. Some things my LinkedIn profile. I think I got some feedback on that as well. I've got I've got a rev into my latest iteration. So how do you guys want to do this you want to go through take some time. do some reading, you want to write stuff up to you, I'm gonna leave the call and then you can dump your feedback in a format now. Yeah.
So yeah, I mean, I can already start off after looking at your resume here. And again, if any of this advice you've already heard, since you've already gotten this looked at or is contradictory, there are a lot of different ways of going about it. So my first thought is I would not use a header with the ATS systems specifically. And although the header doesn't really have any information next outside of the role you're looking for, that's really going to be picked up by the ATS system, I still want to use it because it can't be copied, you know, like, I can't go in here and just copy this information from the header. Yeah,
I suspect the ATS won't be able to parse that Yeah, and I'm with it, I'm with it.
So and also the fact that the header automatically puts it on both pages your resume having been first the eye as far as since you have such extensive experience. My usual recommendations is try not to go out of outside of one page, but you've been in the game a long time clearly. And so you got a lot of stuff that you want to showcase. So at this level, I don't think going to pages is bad, but you still want to fit as much as you can on each page and have a header on the second page takes away a lot of space that you can be using. Yeah,
real estate consumption. I get it. Okay, take a notes doc asuran.
And looks like you actually did we post this I see on LinkedIn the resume or know your birth event? Oh, yeah, I
reposted it. Oh, he's just no
I mean you do. Oh, yeah. What do you mean I just looked up your profile and your your last post was the repost of this.
Oh, yeah. Okay, very good. Yeah, I've just I'm just smashing buttons, I just I tear through the feed try and spend as little time as possible on on LinkedIn and other socials. Because I've been with the majority of my day, I do a little bit of time obviously looking for work. But I prefer to spend the majority of my time either working out or training in Unreal Engine five like that. That's that's the focus. That's the main thing. It's it's easy to get caught I think in the in the LinkedIn rabbit hole and just get sucked in. So like
those social media, Doom scrolls, they're just so designed to,
well, even even even LinkedIn that even like
LinkedIn, it's social media. It is 100% social media. Yeah, sucks
my world to live. Okay, so ATS can't parse real estate consumption, no header.
Digging. So the about section kind of suggests leaving for a cover letter. Since you do want to just like the resume, you do want to submit that cover letter you want to spend, I mean, there's, people tend to fall into the trap of because there's so many job postings. So be easy, so easy to post, and it's so many applying for a job that they just want a shot can every shotgun job posting, just send everything out there. So the actual the contract contract is much more true, you really want to be way more focused on your resume and your cover letter. So we suggest keeping an about section to your cover letter, since you're probably going to be writing one anyway. And again, that frees up more real estate, show your experience show your skills, because those are gonna be the top three things, especially for lead positions. So when you're going for lead and then higher level positions. At this point, your your skill set and the tool set is going to be the first thing you want people to see. When it comes to resumes you got about 30 seconds for to catch that, that hiring manager or person's attention, right? So you want and then on top of that, you have the ATS, which obviously goes through the whole thing, but you still want to have the tools and skills on top for more senior level positions, because that's what people want to see. First they want to see that you're experienced Jira, MS Office and all that stuff. And you want to get to 468 here. Typically, LinkedIn allows 10 skills but on your resume, you want to put you want to pack it full of those skills keywords, because again, that's what ATS is looking for. So I would recommend using that the tools and actually naming skills to the top
also, I I am taking into account systems design, it's like not necessarily a super metric. See, I mean, it isn't on the actual work, but it's like you don't necessarily have like specific metrics to know, in a way for me like, something you
do, like, for example, I'm just check this designed and tuned to Spline System Drawing supply lines on the world roadmap. That's, that's actually good, because that tells me a lot.
Yeah, but I like that
one. Now, you can still, even as a systems designer, make a portfolio. And what I would do is, I would grab some images of this design system that you made and throw on some, like arrows or some kind of quick directional, just like quick blurbs about what's going on and assist them. And that way people can get a visual idea of how of of your design skills and yeah,
it's, you know, it's interesting, it's, you know, you talk to any systems designer, and and they'll tell you that, during the course of development, this system doesn't really come to life, the team can't really see it, they don't really get it underneath their fingernails per se, until you partner up with UX and some wireframes are drawn up and then the team can see it and then they can see the skill tree and then they can see the progression and then they can understand it. So I'm gonna say you're not wrong there. You know, the visual aids are certainly key people can't see progression. They can't see motivating systems. Despite the fact that they're described there's there's something about you know, the whole picture's worth 1000 words. Alright, that's it. I did that I'm gonna write that down.
Now that just thing to work out in terms of visual aids. While it does I think there might be a free version but I don't remember for sure. But you may have heard of it. Just gonna make sure that I found that right
I haven't seen people on the systems fight Taco
Bell machination machinations is brilliant. I've worked on that now using using while I'm using it for personal, like a personal project project could
be could be good way to be more illustrative for portfolio purposes to Oh,
yeah. Okay, I see what you mean. Interesting. Okay, so I come up with a case study build it out. Now put out machinations and then Bob's your uncle of that portfolio. Okay. Yeah, I never thought of that. That's that's like, That's good feedback. I did get okay. So and I guess theoretically, I could I
also Oh, have shown people like if I was doing a systems design position, what's on our shelves of times? Some, like if I have like, spreadsheets or things that I can like, redact like, I sometimes shown that just as a reference of like, for sure that I know what I do. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, no, with you. I'm with you. Yeah. I love working on vaccinations. And they've really improved it since since its launched. I mean, they've monetized the hell out of it. But yeah, it's, it's certainly improved.
Yeah. Spreadsheets, I would say.
You know, there's, there's, there's nothing a studio or team dislikes more. It's not entirely true. But you know, when when the producer shows up, or when the data expert shows up, and they're like spreadsheets and you got 200 People sitting you know, either at home or in studio watching someone present on spreadsheets. Yeah, you gotta be an Excel nerd to really appreciate that. But yeah, that's, that's another good point. It should be on my tools list. I really went when I built this thing out like eight months ago, seven months ago, or whatever it was eight months. I wanted to be concise on point I didn't really want to have a lot of extraneous information. You know, like there's something to be said for saying okay, yeah, I'm skilled with Excel. But I just felt like it was really industry tools. I wanted to showcase knowledge and I guess so she bumped that to Unreal Engine five two because it's all I do right now. It's my whole life. Unreal Engine five. Okay.
I love how you put that you work out and kind of like you work out and then you work out in Unreal. I love that kind of that concept. It's like you're working out your your mental muscles in this tool and then working out your physical muscles at the gym, right? I just That's That's such a great way to look at things. Yeah,
you got to do it. I mean, I I feel like I've got reached level five in, in the in the profession of unemployment. And working out is like, it just keeps me so sane. You know, it's been a long journey. It's been a long road with a lot of really weird behavior in industry, as we've seen, right. Crazy layoffs studios being shuttered. But beyond that, I'll say that I've never seen such a poor showing from recruiters in terms of like follow ups in terms of ghosting people. Well, you know, this is going back months, like several months, now, we're talking about, you know, somewhere between, I want to say May and September, you know, like, I would say, close to 70% of all the leads, and I'm not humble bragging here, but I'll say that all of the job opportunities, I had all the interviews, I got all the applications I've had up until now. Were not me applying through websites, or ATS systems or whatever. It was all like internal referrals from former colleagues and friends and things like that. So, you know, met with recruiter had a great conversation, you know, got the line, you are a great fit, team's gonna love you, you know, so on and so forth. This this, this narrative that seemed very promising. And then they would just drop off the face of the planet. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's more like, I'm certainly no, I don't take it personally. Because, you know, it's not my first rodeo, as you guys have observed. But it's, it's just business etiquette. Like I would, I would never do that to anyone, whether whether it was someone I was working with in a contract or freelance. Like, even when I had a bunch of work done in my home, same thing, you know, like, the foreman has contacted me about one problem or another, you know, I got back to him right away, regardless of the fact that I was busy with work or whatever it was at the time, I still valued the fact that this guy needed support, he needed me to make a decision for him, as it related to whatever the renovations were that were being done. But, you know, I got back to him and in a timely fashion, I didn't leave him hanging, and I just, I can't I can't imagine doing business like that. I
you know, sometimes I fail. But I try to get back to people like on LinkedIn, within 72 hours, email is sometimes I mean, it's weird. These days, I actually find like, more business gets done in the LinkedIn or this wood mill, I should say, I do check my email. But I actually tell people, like, if you want to get a hold of me, do LinkedIn or discord because yeah,
easier to go real time. But the whole ghosting culture that's that we've kind of established lately is yes, I mean, I think a lot of people experienced it on many different levels. I mean, not just from recruiters, like I've had, unfortunately, experiences where it's like, Okay, let's start working together. Like I had a developer that we pushed out his product. And then his it's sitting there on Google Play, even right now, with a lot of potential, but he just vanished. Never heard a word from him again. It's like, we had we had an agreement or revenue share. And, you know, it's like, if the game had been actively supported, we totally could have done something with it. But he just literally disappeared fell off the face of the earth. And it's like, that's just how a lot of people are doing it these days. Yeah, yeah. Well,
I mean, I think also to selmak then pandemic, like, it's not as easy to like, check on people. If your champ like, mean, now, now we can actually like, you know, maybe go knock on somebody's door again, but
it's not. Yeah, yeah. There used to be some barriers there to like a physical connection. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah, regardless.
I know. Like, that's not necessarily always a good thing.
Yeah, I can. I can just imagine you guys walking up and knocking on this person's door. Yeah, I don't think that we go over to all. But yeah, I think
my boys were a bourbon album. Yeah, I
think but, you know, in summary, I'll say, I just think we need to do better. Everyone needs to do better candidates, hiring managers, recruiters. It's just it's not. It's not really how we should be treating one another. I'm reminded of that. It's an ancient film, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Great Have you got split? Three? Yeah, exactly, man. Exactly. I guess, especially in this in this? Yeah.
I mean, 72
Yeah, for sure. And I mean, if if I shoot anyone a note on LinkedIn, I don't have any expectations that I'm going to see a response inside of a week, to be frank. Because not everyone looks at LinkedIn, not everyone has the notifications on so that they get an email or a ping or, or, or something, to bring them back to the platform to remind them that they've got this outstanding message or whatever. And in some cases, it is a week before I hear back from someone, but whatever, like, you just you have to roll in with that expectation. It's more about, I think, to my earlier point, that after you've made what seems to be a human connection, you've been on the phone with a recruiter for 45 minutes to an hour. And then you follow it up and you've exchanged some emails, you've potentially had a second call, or you've got a second interview, where you're now meeting with the creative director or the executive producer or both. Art Director, whatever that might be. And then and then it's nothing, right? And then like, no feedback, no email, no response. It's just it's just seems so uncharacteristic of of the business. I can't put a finger on it, to be honest with you.
I feel that to some extent, is just getting totally swamped. What's happened to me a few times in the past two months, since we've started rafter, like, mean, Rafter is kind of crazy, because like we've still early stage, we're still fundraising. But like the response in the last two months, has been crazy. Like, up over 1000 followers with no marketing. Yeah, posting on LinkedIn. Yeah.
But everyone loves the underdog story. Everyone wants to see the end, right? I mean, look at the story of the developers that what is it iron gate for Valhalla, right? I mean, it's for Peter, for people hammering away, it started with just one person. I think just sharing out some of the prototype really concepts in in one form of social media or another, whether it's discord or whatever. And then someone else stepped in and said, Hey, I could help you. And we could maybe work on this together. And then two became three and three became four, and then four became Valentime. Right? There's,
there's one that I'm following that's quite similar to it. Let me find it. It's been on.
Yeah. Quick question, too. Yeah. I also know this we do have another person that joined.
Okay, good. Yeah. So let's wrap up here.
But just quick question, I lose somebody who use X was rude and has been kind of sending me the products that could potentially use a systems designer, so if you like, I can make info. Yeah, I mean, if it's, if it's been a lot of I know that kind of skelding to help connect teams working.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the challenge I have with Activision Blizzard King APK is I've applied for many roles for all three of those publishers studios, first party publishers, first party studios, and many of them with a few exceptions have shifted their their work policy to be either hybrid, or get your butt in studio five days a week and so I had many interview processes I was in the middle of that kind of got kibosh or killed because of that that policy change last year so I'm not interested it's not that I want to accept your offer I'm still interested but you know, that's that's a pill I have to swallow whenever I see an opening at Activision Blizzard king as I say there's a few exceptions like I know Raven, they they do remote and there's people I used to work with that are now working for Raven. And they work out of Vancouver here here in British Columbia. So there's exceptions but for the most part I think Activision Blizzard King is you know, get up studio.
Yeah, this guy. I know. He was out but through the and then he was gone. Semi in the butt. Nice, you know, for the folks that are building either strategy games or games that need systems volume, so I can definitely have a chat with
him. So yeah, I wanted to comment back on what you guys were talking about when like ballet, and stuff like that is this the same this is the one that I'm this I put in chat this game called Moral crux, which is literally billion developed by one guy for the past couple of years. But he's got so much interest and keeping his team lean. That's the way to do it. Now. I mean, you can get the say, I mean, as long as your you don't have to pay a huge marketing team, and you've got the virality. This is one dude making a game that so many people are interested in. And he's just taking his time and like people are champing at the bit for this one, you know. So
there's just lots of examples of this. And I think we should talk about this but probably in another call. Because as you say, we've got a fourth person in the call and I don't want to take up all of the time. So you guys gave me some great feedback on considering expanding and building out a portfolio grabbing some some screen grabs of work I've done adding some some memes and low quality artwork to those screens to illustrate where my systems design work is has been featured. In general support with visual aids. We talked about adding machinations potentially as a portfolio item also as a tool or skill. We talked about adding Excel Unreal Engine five, we talked about removing the about removing the header to create room for more content, moving tools and skills, got moving tool skills up to the top. And I think I've got a note here around just the idea that we're removing the header because ATS is can't parse that that information. And I think that's it. Yeah. Okay. All right.
Yeah, I am connected with you on LinkedIn, I probably connect the because I go through that slack. Put him outside where they only connect to new people. Nice. Nice. Nice. I'll
go ahead and shoot mine in their cases. Feel free to connect with me as well. Yeah,
we'll do we'll do Thanks.
Hello, palmful if you're there.
Thanks for being patient.
Yeah, I'll mute here while I finish up my notes. Thanks again, gents. Yeah, no, thanks.
I'll be in touch. I'm actually meeting with my
kick ass. Alright. Thanks again.
So did you have a resume that you wanted to look at yours? Check it out. are
just listening in or do I have anything but ASCO to have about?
Please, shoot us a link. Yeah.
Link or drop in downloadable afterwards.
All right, pulling up.
All right. First thing is that's good. Everything looks selectable here. You got it to one page, it's gonna give you a little kudos because a lot of times people searching for art director sort of positions, like very make very artsy resumes. So it's good, you've, you've made a very standard textual based resume, because that's, as we said, at when ATS is gonna be looking for, it's gonna be jumping in there trying to parse this information. My first quick feedback is, you don't need to put your name so big, once again, because the ATS system is in there. And it's, it's mostly what's gonna be looking at it, that's taking up a lot of space, a lot of real estate on top of your resume, having had your new name really large like that. So I would recommend starting off by reducing the size of that. I love how you have the columns here. There are some kind of contradictory feedback when it comes to having the columns. I think it's good for person because when you get your resume looked at you got about 30 seconds. And right now I can see in just at the very top of that in the scroll or do anything in the first 30 seconds, I can see your your description, I can see your for your most recent game experience, and I can see your skills. So that's great. I would recommend taking off the description and keeping that to your cover letter. I don't mean you probably weren't here when we were talking to Drew about that. But because of the way you're basically going to have to focus a lot more on the jobs you're applying for and do both a cover letter and focus your resume on that specific job. You can keep the the just the intro or the description in your cover letter. I'm seeing a lot of drop off. Andrew taken off. You have any questions so far?
Alright, great. Yeah. One thing I noticed also is while your email, email is a link, you're going to
only hold on. Just copy. Yeah, that's correct.
So yeah, let's see, you got a game director, lead animator, lead artist who got a lot of good lead positions. Game
Director, also actually co founder like, I would actually put game director and co founder in your title.
Yeah, that's, I didn't even get that far. Yeah, that's very good. Negotiate. So this is definitely a very good candidate for the STAR method. And if you want to jump into that,
I question is igloo soft still active? Like, the reason that you're looking to step away from it? Or what's going on?
Because I remember seeing that Game of Thrones. I think it will stimulate Xbox. I see. So that the odds not not go well enough. Men? I asked, because that might be an area that we could potentially help him but
looks like he moved around quite a bit, too. That's crazy. Washington to Canada, to London to Georgia?
Well, I mean, if I see ya. Well, I know that's not that's probably a different conversation. But if you want to talk more,
I would be would be definitely curious to hear more about it. Yeah. But anyway, to to your resume, I would put more skills in especially leadership skills. I mean, you include leadership. But I mean, you want to include like people management kind of like the skills that you that leadership entails not just lead, I mean, you break that up into a few others, but I typically, excuse me, typically. LinkedIn allows for 10 skills, when you apply to a job, you have a lot more room, or you want to try to have a lot more room on your resume to include more skills so that the ATS system can parse those and get you into the pool, because you actually have more. So you want to have as many relevant skills on your, on your resume as possible. So as many as you can stuff in there. And so if you were to keep the same format, I would say cut out the the intro, move up the experience, and then try to pack more into that skill section, like reduce the space and actually put more keywords in there. More skills? Yeah. So do you have a portfolio outside of the ship titles here?
I'm just looking at the three.
All right, that that in itself is a portfolio.
Yeah. Well, I mean, mainly what I was going to get at here, and sorry, I'm just don't let me talk over your typing too much. But you have producer, art director and product manager. So this is kind of a you've worn many hats, but you're kind of not very, haven't narrowed down your search very much. Product Manager and producer can kind of be the same thing and art directors kind of not unfortunately, that's kind of a different direction. And when it comes to people hiring in the industry, like for small businesses, being able to wear many hats is so helpful and you use it in larger business. This as well. But that's not what they hire you based off of, they're going to hire you based off of one specific thing. So you may want to consider focusing your resume on one of these three things, or making three different resumes for one for producer, one for art director, and maybe not necessarily one for product manager, because like I say, that kind of can be rolled into the same skill sets, producer. Yeah, kind of focus it more not necessarily narrow it down, because you want as robust information as you can. And you still want these job experiences as relevant and recent as possible. So you know, you go from Game Director to lead animator artists, that's, that's fine in your experience, but you want to be focused on what you're targeting with each resume. And then if you do have different experience that is more targeted toward that specific job, then even if it's like, you have 2014 to present, and then you have something that was like 2008 2011, that's more relevant to the art director position, then you want to would want to put that as opposed to something that's more focused on product management, even if there's a gap, because at this level of what you're looking at, people are going to understand that you are probably working that whole time. And if they don't understand they will ask about it. And you can just explain. Yeah, I had other jobs there. But this is this is what's relevant.
Check out farewell pioneers. I am super curious when you say it broke, even how many people you have working on it such because breakeven can be very, yeah,
I mean, I I totally understand that for another conversation without being something but we'll get sued. So Oh, sorry. Yeah.
This has been recorded. Yeah, totally. I wouldn't answer.
But, yeah, I'll be in touch. Yes. Okay. Yeah. I will definitely be in pubs. I'm into this.
This was cool looking. I mean, Chip, part of my friend show over 500 500 reviews, even if they're mixed. You know, the thing about STEAM reviews, you know, it's, it doesn't matter if they're positive or negative, the more you get, the more you're going to be in people's watch McCall it a recommendation queue. So even if you're getting a lot, I mean, I see that your most recent reviews are mostly positive. But even if you're getting negative reviews, as long as you're still getting reviews, you're going to be still recommended to people. So that's good
too, but as far as your resume goes, I can see what kind of went again, I didn't see if you responded to the having a portfolio with images and such especially if you're going for some kind of art, any kind of art position, you want to be able to show off a portfolio as well
I have so many windows open right now.
Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, definitely want to have something that people can see. When it comes to setting that up, give you some quick advice and events try to make as few clicks to get there as possible, so that people don't have to go through a whole bunch of different stuff to actually be able to see your work. So you know, if you can set up a website or your art station, make sure all you get can get as many as much on the top page and a grid view as possible. So people can see a variety of your work and then they can start getting interesting click sent me the zips of their email. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Anything that makes anybody do more work, more clicks that somebody has to do the more the more you're going to lose more people you're going to lose along the way. So for each layer that you that you got you don't have an exact percentage but you know, 90% of sticks are made up anyway right? So each layer that you have to have someone go through for example, a click or you know, like an email or something like that you lose a large chunk of of your audience. To one everything right up front. It's easy to get to as possible.
That's pretty much all I got your resume looks good. And it just a few little tweaks and that should help. And yeah, now get yourself in that system. Are you currently in Georgia? Oh, we I guess it says there. Yeah. Your address is Cliff Clements Georgia. Yeah, just curious as far as referrals, obviously, it's easier to refer people to jobs in the US who are in the US. But anyway, do you have any other questions for us?
I'm glad to help. Yes.
Now that's reaching the end. I definitely got a lot of work I need to do. So I'm gonna hit 12 Five, now I'm gonna hop out. Okay. As usual, please shoot me. Put a post to that. Yeah. Thanks for joining us. And yeah, I have my Lincoln again here. Please connect with us on LinkedIn. Yeah,
I'm already connected. Awesome.
Not to brag too much. But yeah, one of the people who posted I don't know if you saw my post, my one of the people who was actually having the resume reviewed last week actually started a new producer job this week. So I don't know if you know, we actually helped but you know, hey, coincidence, maybe, maybe not.