Video Games Taught Me To Grind

When I was in high school, I played Counter Strike: Source (or CSS) competitively. Back when I played there was a vibrant online community around playing competitively, with leagues such as CAL (now defunct), CEVO, ESL, ESEA and others providing a structured way for teams to compete against each other. There were different tiers of competition, relegation, seasons and pretty much everything else you would associate with sports leagues. Once you had a team together you could sign up and try and make your way to the professional level.

Unlike a lot of modern competitive games, there was no matchmaking built into the game itself. The leagues provided a de facto standard for your skills, as you could link your Steam ID to past participation in them. But there was no way to directly find a team through the game. So for me at least (and many others I’m sure) doing that meant sitting in IRC, mostly in #sourceinvite. Teams would spam the channel in all sorts of bright colors with messages like “TEAM DOMINATION CAL IM LOOKING FOR RIFLER 7 DIGIT OR LESS”. There was an entire vocabulary to learn just to try and figure out whether or not to even bother trying to get a tryout with a team. These would be flying by nonstop — if you weren’t one of the first few people to message them, you might as well have not messaged them at all.

Fast forward to last year, where I was looking for my first job out of college. I had a couple of internships under my belt and my Github page was adequately filled with half finished projects, but there was nothing that instantly said “hire me”. I didn’t have my own side business which was pulling in 10k a month or anything like that. So I just started applying to anything.

I knew I wanted to work at a startup but past that everything looked good to me. I started in October and by the end of the year I probably had applied to over 30 companies. I got phone screens with most of them, a few in person interviews, and finally in March, a job. The only thing that got me there was my perseverance and relentlessness in pursuing every possible lead, no matter how improbable. In fact I got my job following up after two weeks of radio silence, which was usually the point I assumed they weren’t interested. But I kept on chopping and got to where I wanted to be.

It might not be exaggeration to say that I learned all of that from trying to find Counter Strike teams in high school. There are a few things in particular that stick out to me now that I learned about grinding towards a goal.

Don’t sell yourself short

Much like I didn’t have eye popping credentials when trying to find my job, it was the same way when I was trying to find a team. I had some experience in the leagues but nothing past entry level stuff. And the posts teams made were written to be as intimidating as possible in the hopes that they would find that one ringer that would carry them to victory.

But honestly most of the people making those posts were about as good as I was. We could all make our shots more often that not and follow pre-planned strategies. Thinking back, it was very much like the job market for a programmer today — not enough good people to fill the ever expanding and changing rosters of teams.

So I messaged everyone I thought I might have a chance with. Sure I sucked during some of my tryouts and was flamed as a noob or just someone wasting their time. But I also found a lot of great teams this way who were better than I expected. If I had only tried to get involved with only the most entry level teams I probably would’ve quickly gotten discouraged or bored and quit early. No one wants to work for the Verizons of the world.

Don’t go above your pay grade

There were times I was tempted to try out for teams way above my skill level. These guys had all been around for forever and had success at higher levels of tournament play. In most non-league games they didn’t need to plan, they just ran around and outshot everyone

I was not one of these players. And most of the time they wouldn’t even bother responding to my messages. But every once in a while I would weasel into a game with them and believe that I would finally have the game of my life and be accepted among the elite.

But it never happened. Every single one of these games I played in I quickly tanked and was unceremoniously kicked and never talked to again. It was a waste of everyone’s time and just took away from trying to achieve my goal of finding a team to grow and develop with. I see HN job posts every once in a while looking for a CTO level person or someone who can machine learn in their sleep. And while a voice in my head tells me that maybe, just maybe, I can get the job and figure it out as I go, I have learned to ignore him. Being ambitious is good, but being delusional never got anyone anywhere.

You should appreciate what you already have, because it’s probably pretty awesome

As I said earlier, I was proactive enough to eventually make it onto a team that I liked. And more than just playing the game these were people that I enjoyed just hanging out with. We joked around, stayed up late into the night just chilling, and for a period of time I probably interacted with them more than anyone else I knew. But somehow I was always on my way out, abandoning these people and looking for the next best thing. I would just stop showing up online (back then it was easy enough to not be found). This was why I spent more of my time trying out for teams than playing for them.

This is probably my biggest regret. I had a great time with just about every team I played with. We all played the best we could, and even though we never got very far, always had a blast doing it. But I would drop them at a moments notice — I would rarely leave with a proper goodbye. It was just one day I was there and the next day I wasn’t. I never appreciated how much fun I was having because I could never stop thinking about how much fun I could be having somewhere else.

Right now I work for a startup and I love it. My team is awesome and I am learning every day. But there is always that pang of restlessness that tells me to keep looking for something else. Check out that job posting on HN, try and pitch a startup idea at a meetup, just go off on your own and do some contracting work. There are days I am bored at work and wish I could just be working on my own, choosing whatever projects I was passionate about. But then I realize that it would never end. I would get bored again and again and again and I would ultimately end up doing nothing at all. So I simply push on and think about all the awesome things I could be and am doing now. Video games taught me to grind to the start, but now I need to learn to grind to the end.