What they can’t teach you in school 1 | General

Something you grow accustomed to at FullSail is that everyone’s a gamer. Everyone plays games, reads about games, studies games, and makes games. You get spoiled. One of the hardest challenges I’ve faced at my new job is dealing with “bosses” that don’t know anything about games or game development. And, dealing with this problem is something that you can’t learn at school.
Just yesterday, 2 months into the project, the owner of the company I work for said to me, “I just don’t understand why it doesn’t work. Why is there bugs? I mean, when I paint something, I don’t let the paint run and mess up the painting.” That was probably the stupidest thing anyone has ever said to me about programming, and it is a perfect example of how completely ignorant these people are when it comes to programming and games. So the question is how do we deal with these people?

The hardest thing to do is to not lose control and start yelling at them. There will come a time when someone completely ignorant about the number of hours you’ve worked or the complexity of the piece you’re architecting will say something like, “Why isn’t it done? It should have been done a week ago? This is unacceptable.” I’ve been in many of these situations in the past 2 months, and it’s taken all of my willpower to not deck the person talking. At one point I even said, “I quit” to his comments. Everyone thought it was a joke, but I was dead serious. Don’t let this happen. You have to keep a calm head and slowly tell the boss why it’s taking so long. Don’t take the easy way out and start blaming other people. Your job here is to ensure that the boss understand your commitment to the product. Tell him you’ve put in extra hours, and you will continue to do so until the task is accomplished. Don’t speak programmer jargon, say in plain English that the piece is more complicated than it first appeared to be and it’s taking longer than anticipated to complete it. He will have to believe you.

The worst thing that can happen to you when dealing with a boss like this is for you to lose your confidence. You must be strong and proud when he tries to tell you your work is horrible. Don’t let stupid things ignorant people say convince you you’re something you’re not. Let the boss rant, and when he’s done you list off all the reasons why what he thinks is wrong. All the boss wants is to believe in you. Seriously that’s it. He wants to have faith that he can say to you, “Do this” and you get it done. It is impossible for him to have faith in you if you fail to fight back. You have to be calm, clear, and vocal. If you show confidence in these situations, then the boss IS going to trust you. And, defend the other members of your team even if they don’t really deserve it. If you do this, you will be perceived as the leader. When you’re perceived as the leader you get more trust and more rewards.

FullSail can’t teach you how to function in these environments. All of our teachers are brilliant, understanding, and know programming. It’s impossible for them to pretend to not know how much work/effort you’ve put into a project. This is a lesson you will have to learn in the real world. I hope for your sake that you don’t ever have to. But if you do, hopefully this helped.

Booker

Tags: boss, fullsail, school, teach