Dota and Corporate Life

Over the years of playing Dota, I have never made it into any competitions. I prefer to yell and laugh with friends in cybercafes than do harsh training for the competitive scene, hence I have never made any money out of Dota. Nevertheless, I have learned several valuable lessons from it that can be used in the corporate world.

1. Mind your own lane well: Some people never take care of their own lane; leaving the enemy to farm up and their teammate to get owned while they go gallivanting around the map trying to gang other heroes or doing god-knows what. This is usually not the sensible thing to do. One should take care of one's own lane properly before going off to others. It is the same in the office; do your work well before you help other people, for the potential gain in helping out others is not as great as the potential loss if your own work is subpar. Help only if you really have the free capacity. I know some of you are going to tell me that you use Vengeful Spirit and roam around - but think back now, how much gold does VS have at the end of the game?

2. Show up when it counts: If you play the whole game beautifully, slaying heroes and farming creeps right and left, but fail to show up when your teammates push causing your team to lose the game, everyone will forget your stellar performance earlier and revile you. It is the same with work, if you do wonderfully usually but let everyone down when a big project comes your name will go bad. Avoid this at all costs.

3. Don't neglect the small stuff: Many new players eschew small items such as Ironwood Branches or Ancient Tangoes in favor of larger, shinier items. This is obviously a mistake. In the same vein, small things like weekly status reports and technical bug fixes can bolster up your image as a conscientious worker to the bosses.

4. Establish intelligence: Pro teams always ward crucial spots to prevent opponents coming from the dark forest and whooping their asses. You never want to be surprised, whether it be in the cybercafe or in the office. How to establish wards in your company? Make friends and cultivate good relationships so that you stay in the gossip vine, this lessens the chances of people backstabbing you, and helps you catch wind of things like a new big project you can stick your fingers in, or who will get promoted soon so that you can butter her up. If you stay out of conversation, or "in the dark" metaphorically, people tend to be less fond of you, which hinders your ability to move up the ladder.

5. Always have a nice attitude: I am always polite and friendly in games, making me welcome on most teams in pubs despite my mediocre skills. Often when I lose and join the next pub game, my gracious compliments upon losing earlier causes my former opponents to tell me to join their side, unless all five are friends dammit. So if you are nice to coworkers and others you meet in the workplace or outside, including people from other companies, it is more likely that if you leave your company they can introduce new job opportunities to you.

May money and first blood flow abundantly towards you my friend.

The horror of Coding

Recently I have had to start doing some programming work in the line of duty. Before this I had prepared myself by watching a set of Youtube videos and doing a few exercises. It is my firm belief that everything in the world can be learned from Youtube, as I know someone who has learned swimming from it. However that is a story for another day.

After waltzing through my Youtube lessons and exercises with decent ease, my project began and I had to do programming work for real.

While I was doing the exercises, programming felt to me like talking to a slave and getting him to do work step by step. However once the real thing started, it seemed like getting a highly stubborn donkey to tap dance. Things which the guide says can be done sometimes cannot be done, and the wretched computer finds every possible loophole in my code, and stuffs errors in it. Truly an ordeal indeed.

I wish people working on Artificial Intelligence could hurry up and progress more. Then if my program doesn't work I can threaten the computer with destruction.

Why I hate Direct Sales

I was talking with a friend of my mother who hailed from China, and he said something about Malaysia being "heaven for direct sales". So I paused to contemplate, and I did recollect countless attempts from friends and acquaintances to drag me into the scene, which I dislike greatly.

One huge reason I dislike direct sales, also known as multilevel marketing (MLM) is, for one, the sheer hypocrisy that it instills into the minds of our youngsters. I have heard the following ridiculous statements over the years:

"It doesn't matter how good our product is, we are selling a business opportunity"

"If you don't have enough money now, you can borrow RM50 from each of your friends, small amount like that no need to return"

"We are not doing direct sales, instead we are doing multilevel marketing"

The last statement makes me want to faint.

An even larger reason why I dislike direct sales is that the entire business idea ABUSES the normal structure of friendship in society to push itself. I suspect the inventors of direct sales had the following brainwave:

1. Usually if a friend asks you out for tea we tend to oblige.
2. This is a good opportunity for pushing the marketing plan.
3. We find it hard to refuse friends, especially close ones.

Voila!

The logical result of this is that we are now all very wary when a friend we do not normally see asks us out. Indirectly this affects the dating structure too - if a guy asks you out it may not be an indication of interest. This applies even more if a girl asks you out.

Therefore, I conclude that the idea of direct sales is indirectly damaging the very foundation of friendship in society. It is akin to driving 20-ton vehicles on roads not meant to sustain such weights. Sooner or later the road system gets damaged.