Hey everyone, really happy to share this one! Tom Miles is someone I've worked with closely, and honestly, doing this conversation made me realise how much of his story I'd never properly heard.

Tom grew up in the middle of nowhere in Norfolk, fell in love with games through a brother's Spectrum, spent years trying to get into an industry that kept not quite opening the door, and then spent 18 years at Creative Assembly building everything from weather systems to multiplayer backends once it finally did. He's the engineer who'd always say "anything is possible" in a meeting, which, trust me, you want to hear from your engineer.

Highlights:

• How typing game listings into a ZX Spectrum as a nine-year-old set everything in motion
• Why he nearly became a musician instead (and still might have wanted to)
• Building the entire UI for Rome: Total War as a junior — solo
• What eventually pushed him out of Creative Assembly after 18 years
• Why being a generalist felt like a weakness for years, and how it turned out to be the thing
• His competitive Pokemon TCG habit (yes, seriously — tournaments in France and everything)
• Why his current role at Antstream feels like the job he's always been suited for

This one's warm, funny, and a bit honest about the messy middle of a long career. Go give it a listen.

• Spotify
• Patreon
• ⁠RSS⁠
• ⁠Instagram⁠
• ⁠Bluesky⁠
• ⁠YouTube⁠
• ⁠Blog⁠
• Email: DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.com

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-miles-99031b31/
• @pokedaduk.bsky.social — Bluesky