Of all the changes brought on by the Covid pandemic, perhaps the least appreciated is the impact on what it means to be an information worker.
Whereas the best tech talent migrated to the West Coast over the past four decades, that impetus has now been interminably kneecapped. In the past, the sheer inevitability of West Coast companies’ market caps meant that it was virtually impossible to have a long and prosperous career in tech without working at either a TMMAANG (Tesla, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Alphabet, Netflix, Google) or “the next big thing,” from Airbnb and Uber to Slack and Coinbase.
The career advice dispensed by luminaries like self-made billionaire Chamath Palhipitaya was that the Bay Area simply had a higher ratio of successful companies. If you worked a few jobs in the area, you were bound to work for a successful company that could propel your career. It worked. From IIT in India and MIT in Boston to Stanford in the heart of it all, the brightest and most highly compensated tech talent lived and worked in the Bay Area.
That was already shifting since about the year of 2000, from which time we have seen the rise of Seattle, LA, and NYC. The three cities have been growing into legitimate tech super centers over the past two decades, spawning scores of public tech companies and tech millionaires.
In the last decade, we began to see the further broadening of tech opportunity. Recently, second tier tech ecosystems, like Austin, Salt Lake City, Boston, and the Triangle have begun to push their weight around. By 2019, large companies were relocating there. Others were going public from there.
Then, in 2020, the Covid pandemic hit. It forever changed everything. Suddenly, every company from TMMAANG to the next big thing, and every startup in a rising hub, saw its workers working virtually. And the big surprise? It worked. Well, in fact. Much better than most executives had hoped.
It is hard to understate the importance of this demonstration. While select companies like GitLab and Automattic – techie to the core of their cultures – could effectively work remotely, the average tech executive did not have the same level of confidence in their companies. Cultures were built differently, so the story was told. The DNA of workers was different, did everyone argue. Executives felt like their talent would forever fumble with the switch to a Slack and Zoom world. It would be like the 50 year old fat fingering a Facetime closed.
But workers adapted. Certainly, the workers fumbled the first few weeks. We were all dealing with the emotional scars of being locked in our homes, after all. But eventually, the workers not only adapted, but they thrived. In the classic case of human adaptation, the vast majority of workers were able to increase their productivity.
That is not to say there were not traumatic road bumps along the way. Many struggled, and still struggle with, the haunting mental consequences of not having real human interaction at work. The dim future of interacting through a little green light on their webcam and a gallery of colleague’s faces on their monitor became increasingly dystopian.
And that is because life has now become a game. To be fair, life was always a game. But now, life is fairly indistinguishable from your 10 year-old’s Fortnite video game sessions. What does he do?
During breaks in the school day, he watches Fortnite TikToks and YouTube videos. He gets a push notification for last night’s cash cup and hears his favorite streamer got 2nd place, so he hops onto watch his Twitch stream. This is you reading work emails during the weekend, signing up for industry newsletters, and checking in with a successful friend from your network.
When he gets home from school, he grabs a gatorade and Clif bar, then jumps on to warm up. He is honing his skills to perform well in front of friends. This is you reading the industry newsletter with your breakfast in the morning and brewing your coffee pot for the day of Zooms.
He then hops onto a Discord with his core friend group. They discuss what they want to play that day – the new mode or more competitive grinding? This is you dropping into your daily standup or first meeting, creating your prioritized to-do list for the day.
He then rolls up his sleeves and gets to work, playing. The whole time, he is connected by audio and visual avatar with his friends. Who he plays with changes, and he has breaks in between. This is you going through the day’s Zoom calls. You have to quickly do great work in between hopping in and out of communication with people. Your son has to have a high kill to death ratio, by doing work on his unfortunate enemies.
At the end of the session, he hops into a chill, fun chat with his best friends. He gets feedback on his play from his good friend. This is your review process. Your manager gives you feedback on your work.
During breaks in between doing his homework after playing, your son reads about other good Fortnite players, and interacts with a few potential friends to play with over Reddit and Discord. This is you going on LinkedIn and browsing other jobs, expanding your network.
The modern life of a technology worker is the same as that of a moderately serious Fortnite player. Life now mirrors a video game.
While the consequences for your son are merely prestige and fun, though, the consequences of our real life game are very real. In fact, the best players of this game are amassing generational wealth. They are buying sports teams, revitalizing their communities, and changing the trajectory of human history.
And they are doing so not unlike the best Fortnite players. They have the same amount of time to play the game. They use the same high level strategies. But, they simply do it much better. They make better use of their time. They manipulate the keys on the keyboard, and what they say into the Zoom calls, so much more effectively that they rise to the top.
To be fair, top Fortnite players do net over a million dollars a year. But, the top real world game players – like the founders of IPOing tech companies – net over 10 billion dollars a year. The very real world consequences of how we manipulate keyboard input and speak into our computers have never been greater.
The world has forever changed, and astonishingly few people have understood this. How are you going to play the game differently than everyone else to get the results of those top few? Life is a video game, with no ceiling.
How would you be the best Fortnite player? Practice better? Show up in your Zooms better? Have a higher kill:death ratio? Perform at the world cup?
