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Alumni News
A Fire Burning Within Damp Kindling. A Prelude to Fire In writing this article, I had an odd recollection that I think is worth sharing here as a fitting introduction to my story. A strange foreshadowing of my life to come encapsulated neatly into the memory of going to the beach as a young child. On my family’s infrequent visits to the beach, (Scottish weather being somewhat prohibitive for such outings) I would stand there in the harsh cold of the grey waters at East Sands and stare down the waves coming at me. A fierce defiance surging through my veins, determined to never be knocked down by the force of the current. With each successive wave I survived I would move further and further into the water fighting indomitable nature in its own domain. I think back to those times now, my bizarre opposition to the immutable forces of gravity and a billion tons of water. What made me want to fight that? Why is it that I was so concerned with competing against something that I could never hope to defeat, when my brothers and friends were further out splashing and playing? 25 years on and the intransigent nature of that angry little seven-year-old still resonates strongly with me. I find that whatever quality that drove me to challenge the biggest thing I possibly could, to put myself into an unwinnable situation, just for the sake of seeing how I would fare, has had a truly profound impact on my life and everything I have done and achieved. Some people call this nature Grit, or Drive, or Determination. Regardless it is the relentless force of will that drives the desire to achieve what you set out for. Driven people are the ones that never stay down, never give up and always bring the full force of themselves to bear. They are the relentless. They can be meek or powerful, shy or boisterous, introverted or extroverted. Anyone can have that fire burning in them and it is important to realise that being driven is not a masculine trait and being driven is not the same as being competitive. Many driven people, like myself, do not try to compete with others, they compete predominantly with themselves. It’s easy to put this down to an innate self-discipline that is bestowed by mother nature, but actually self-discipline is still a challenge for me as it tends to be for most people. Our brains are distractible. They have weaknesses no matter how passionate or driven you are. A key part of being successful in life and in your career is not just playing to your strengths, it is understanding your weaknesses and mitigating the situations that manifest them. My weaknesses are distraction, absent mindedness and an overactive imagination. In school I struggled for every medium grade I got and was devastated by each failure. I struggled to read and write as coherently as everyone else or understand the concepts put forward to me and trying to learn things that I didn’t understand was torture for me. Dyslexia, dyspraxia, visual perception and visual memory problems and a venerated seat on the intangible autism spectrum have stymied my academic exploits for all of my life. I had to work twice as hard for half of the result, but the joke is on life because working hard is what I’m good at! School and university didn’t resonate with me. I found I needed more support than other kids and boy did I suck at asking for that support. (Ok maybe another one of my weaknesses is a bit too much pride). I worked diligently and despite the efforts of some excellent teachers I never quite felt like I was hitting my stride. I had a defiant determination, but the fire was missing some key fuel or catalyst. It wasn’t until a few years later I would find out what I was missing.
Finding Fuel From my very first job, at my very first company, on the lowest possible rung of the lowest possible ladder I knew something was different. Something clicked as a key environmental variable slid into place. At that moment it was like someone stoked my fire with jet fuel. My job at the time was to test video games and write bug reports for them. It was low level work, intensive but with direct metrics. The harder and longer I worked the more bugs I logged. Over the weeks and months, I could see my total bug count go up, and I could see that number relative to every other tester almost like a leader board. In addition to that very clear metric I found the harder I worked the more recognition and opportunities I received. This recognition and reward cycle, along with increases in my pay, meant I had very conspicuous reasons for putting everything I had into my job. There was finally a tangible reward function, something I could see and grasp at the end of every day that gave me direct feedback. There were long term goals, there was recognition from my bosses on a regular basis and for the first time I felt like I knew where I was going. It didn’t take long for me to start scrambling up the aforementioned ladder. After six months I moved to a company nearer where I lived and within three months I was promoted to Lead Tester; another three months after that I made the big move into a development studio. My job there was no longer just to write bugs; it was to manage the migration of code and data to over a hundred developers. I still had to test the game, but I was given the time and opportunity to do whatever else I wanted. I found that the game I was testing didn’t really need me very much. Before long I had automated half of my job away by writing simple programs to do everything for me. This freed up time for me to take on more responsibilities.