Scott Hartsman - Off the Record

“What did people do before Google and LinkedIn?  This is like cheating.” – Conversation with a friend earlier today

I happened back to LinkedIn today for the first time in a couple months to 40+ recommendation requests.

Requests for LinkedIn recommendations are a pretty frequent occurrence.  I do explain to people who ask me for them why I won’t be recommending them, but that ends up not happening more often than it does.

I genuinely do like most of the people that I’ve worked with in the past, and would work with many of them again.  Whether it’s with me or not, the vast majority have a realistic position out there they’d be a perfect fit for.  Nothing would make me happier than to see them find their perfect job.

To those with whom I haven’t had this conversation: In my mind, I’m actually doing you a favor.  I wrote a few recommendations in the past, and I did mean every word that I typed.  Then I realized how I was making use of the site after mapping hires (of both mine and others) to their recommendations - LinkedIn turned into a filter of which pieces of information to discard instead of what to take seriously, especially after seeing how many recommendations were mutual.

Skill at the social game that is LinkedIn does not map to utility in the workplace.

This is doubly so when there’s a mutual recommendation in place.  A LinkedIn recommendation swap doesn’t have any value - It’s two people agreeing to say nice things about each other, true or not, to increase an artifical count.  Whether intended or not, that’s what the system has turned into.

Make no mistake - LinkedIn is an online, social game.  The domain just happens to be people and their careers instead of avatars with swords, sorcery, or spaceships.

As a hiring manager/team builder I have a simple rule about LinkedIn recommendations:  If you give me a reference who is also recommending you there, I’m not going to call them.  I’m going to look for someone else who might say something that I can’t already read in public.  Someone you’ve worked for or someone who’s worked for you, or ideally both.  The fact that the games industry is as connected as it is tends to make this a fairly trivial exercise.  This is the backchannel reference.

If I’m the one doing the evaluating (assuming you’re not still employed, since I would never knowingly break someone’s “cover” - confidence remains crucially important), I know that those are infinitely more useful in making sure that we’re a good match than what someone is willing to scream from the hilltops about you.

That’s the real goal here - Ensuring that any relationship that occurs from here forward is genuinely mutually beneficial.  If we aren’t going to be, in skill set or personality, it’s best if we both know that ahead of time so no one ends up with a disappointing career step as a result.

If you’re applying with me, I might just know someone else who has something you’d be perfect for — I’m always happy to make connections for people that way as well.

I have to assume that other hiring managers are as smart as me, or moreso.

Given that, by not putting up a public recommendation I’m increasing the chances that a smart potential hiring manager (the kind you probably want to work for in the first place) will get in touch with me to hear about you.  Further, I can think of at least half a dozen nice things to say about any given person that I’ve worked with.

So far, this has proven out.  It’s resulted in a number of highly positive, long-term placements with people who are thrilled in their new positions.

It seems like the smart way to play it.

If we worked together in the past, you’re trying to get a job somewhere, and want me to say the nicest things that I can - Let’s talk.  Let me know.  We can talk positives and negatives, and use me as a reference.

Or let me know where you’re aiming to go.  As quite a few people can attest to, I’m happy to make phone calls and say genuinely nice things ahead of time for people who’ve done well in the past.

In terms of not recommending you — If I like you, I still believe I’m doing you a favor by abstaining from the game.  Please don’t take it as an insult.

Instead, let’s talk.

This is a non-sequitur that came up in a recent conversation, and it’s something that many experienced MMO developers and players are well aware of.  

In online spaces, emergent play is as important as social play.

Emergent gameplay behaviors (”unforeseen interactions outside of the original intent, which frequently provide an unexpected result”) can exist between players and the system, between the players and the AIs, between AIs and AIs, and so on.

They can exist between anything that interacts with anything else.

A game system that fosters emergent behaviors is more likely to give users the ability to entertain themselves in your 3d world/2d interactive environment/web based spreadsheet game for many more minutes/hours/weeks/months than you’ll be able to create content to keep them engaged in a way that’s mutually beneficial.

Emergent play lets people experiment “harmlessly” with pushing the boundaries in a way that the same behaviors in social play would be unacceptable or detrimental.  (e.g. NPCs don’t walk away from a product or brand with a negative impression when they’re “experimented upon” by curious players.)

Degenerate gameplay is generally undesirable.  I use that in a literal (not moral) sense: “A strategy/path of action/combination of resources or interactions that is both unforseen and so beneficial that it becomes the sole way to play.  Not partaking in that specific, narrow path of activity either outright precludes “success” in an environment, or drastically reduces the amount of fun a person can derive from an experience.”

Degenerate gameplay is a small subset of emergent gameplay.

Given this relationship, attempts to systemically pre-empt degenerate gameplay frequently have the unfortunate side effect of outright preventing beneficial emergent behaviors.  In a multi-player online environment, this can be a significant contributor to a failure to thrive.

It’s important to address the worst of the worst ahead of time — That’s one place where knowing where to strike a balance comes in — but with targeted solutions, despite the fact that targeted solutions frequently require more effort over time, both in maintaining an awareness and and being able to address the correct problem.  However, that cost is variable, and never guaranteed to occur.

The other place balance comes into play is having a good sense of which potential problems are safe enough to address if and only if they become real problems.  Fixing some problems before they actually exist often comes with an immediate cost that’s best left unpaid until (and if) you need to.

In short - Creating an environment that maximizes its potential to succeed as a whole is far more important than creating one in which all potential for degenerate play is pre-emptively stamped out.

There are a lot of things about startup life that I’ve loved being around again.

Plastic tables from office depot in a spare bedroom for half of a year.  A house strewn in network cables across two floors.  Moving across a state to work with new friends.  Building a new home for all of us from scratch and spare parts.  Integrating even more new friends into a team, watching them develop into far more than the sum of their parts.

Observing brilliant people develop products amazingly well. Seeing (and occasionally helping) people deliver beyond what they thought was their best.  Being able to identify a problem in the morning and have it dealt with by the afternoon.  Figuring out creative ways to push forward that don’t break the bank.  Finding yet more people, from across the globe, to help us do what we need to do.  Conceiving of ways to balance the old and the new to create something truly special.

Meeting a new community of enthusiastic and friendly players.  Witnessing them interact with a new kind of truly engaging, social entertainment for the first time.

Best of all, being there to observe the first “lightbulb” moments as they exclaim: “This is FUN!”

Seems like a natural time to grab on and hold tight forever.

As counterintuitive as it might sound, once you get it running, sometimes the best thing you can do is step down and make way for a vision for where it goes next.

I don’t make decisions like this lightly.  When a company’s doing well, I stay in one place for years.  When it doesn’t work out, I’ve been the last one to turn out the lights.  This is an entirely new kind of decision for me.  It’s of course painful and difficult, but it’s the right one.

Never in my career have I seen such a small group of people accomplish so much, so quickly in this space.  Products, pipelines, systems, processes, relationships — you name it.  I remain entirely in awe in many different ways.  I’m extremely proud to have played my role in building it up from nothing, and value the new friendships that have been made in the process more than I can say.

I have nothing but the utmost respect for the people who’ve consistently overdelivered and continue to go beyond giving their all, day in and day out, revolutionizing what online games are and how they’re made.

There’s a huge success story ready to burst out there, and I look forward to seeing it happen.  Give ‘em hell, ohai!

What’s next?

This is a great time for online entertainment.  Every day there are more people online looking to have fun with their friends and make new ones in the process.

There’s an ever-widening spectrum of exciting things waiting to be built.   Some of them are games in the classic sense, others are purely social devices, and a massive range of opportunities lie between them.

At the end of the day, they all have the same goal in mind - Bringing people together.

Time to figure out which one sounds like the most fun to build next.