In mid 2010, when the big game project in Stardock Entertainment was floundering, I had to take over the reigns of designer, producer, and lead developer. And while I can design games, I’m not even remotely in the league of say a Derek Paxton or a Jon Shafer so it’s a non-ideal situation. And while I can project manage, it’s insanely non-cost effective for me to do that given the sheer number of projects going on company-wide. And while I can do software development, I’m no where in the same ballpark as some of our top developers on the non-games side of the business.
So what exactly is it I do? What is my value-add? Basically I’m an oxymoron. That is, I’m the technologist-bean counter. I live my days in evaluating balance sheets, revenue projections, consumer trends, marketing analysis, technology reports, you name it. In a pinch, I can inject myself into any part of the business but it’s a last resort.
Running a business is a lot like playing a strategy game. You have resources, you have obstacles and you have goals. The object of the game is to use your resources to overcome the obstacles to achieve your goals. The “hard” part of this game is that there’s a lot of unknowns (a lot of fog of war), a lot of math, and a lot of dealing with human allies and opponents who are of various degrees of skill or ineptitude depending on what you’re dealing with.
Over time, I’ve used my generalist knowledge to recruit people who are a lot lot lot smarter than I am in a particular area and let them do their thing. I think that’s one of the reasons we have no voluntary turn-over here at Stardock (Mittens left I think 3 years ago or so) which is a pretty impressive statistic for a technology company these days. The key here being we let smart people do what they do with as little interference as possible. My job is to count the beans and know the tech.
