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I recently started coaching - something that I never thought I’d do. When I was an osu! player, I had a strong distaste for coaches as I saw what they do as predatory: feeding new (or very desperate) players basic information, or worse, insane ramblings, often at absurd prices. They often market themselves as able to “solve” whatever problems you had with your gameplay, and some of them aren’t even skilled to begin with (The few osu! players that still follow me would understand.).

Now that I have become a coach as well, and… Not much has changed. I still think a lot of them are borderline robbing people, I still think a lot of them overpromise on their abilities, and I still think some of them don’t have the credentials to back themselves up. However, it is undeniable that a good coach does help people.

What I coach people on is very simple - How to aim and strafe in a video game. All of the concepts, even the most complex ones, would take in total around 2 hours to effectively communicate. What I do as a coach is also very simple, I just look at someone’s VOD, notice the blunders they make, and tell them “Hey, look at how you are blundering here.”. In fact, it’s simple enough that it’s now part of my daily commute, writing nerd essays on “bias” and “reading” on the bus.

The experience has been awesome, it feels great to help people (I also gain some clout doing this, which is also nice.), and I get to nerd out about something I care about. The feedback I get from my “students” is also great, seeing people tell me my tips have made them better at the game is an amazing feeling. People seem to genuinely enjoy and appreciate what I do, which takes off some of the soul damage I get from work - What I do here has real objective value.

I haven’t monetized any of my coaching - the workload is manageable, and it’s my personal belief that knowledge should be free. I only got here because of other people publicly sharing what they know, and it would be very hypocritical for me if I lock the same knowledge behind a paywall. Of course, I don’t HATE money, so I do have a link where people can pay me, only if they REALLY want to - I’ve made it a point to not actively ask for payment when I coach. You may see this as unreasonable and stupid, if I charged something 15-20 dollars per VOD review, I would have made hundreds of dollars already. However, I am not reasonable. (Update: Maybe I should if I want to take this seriously as an attempt to get out of my day job, my friends have been yelling at me for doing this for free… Guess I’ll start charging down the line.)

That doesn’t mean I think coaching is some magical process that just makes players improve instantly though, most of “coaching” work can be done by yourself, as long as you understand the theory and are able to look at your own gameplay with a critical lens. What a coach does is simply just that, filling in the knowledge gaps and providing that analysis, and most of the time that theory is publicly available as well, feel free to contact me if you want links to resources.

As a coach, I also don’t know everything, obviously. My own gameplay is not perfect: Other aspects of my gameplay are lacking compared to my mechanics, which I am trying to fix by grinding TDMs, it’s a good feeling to know I can mostly hold my own against pros, but even better is knowing there’s still a lot more room for me to grow.

Even my mechanics could be better - I notice mistakes in my own gameplay after spending more time analyzing others, I over-commit to a bias, I let a good dodge control my own strafe sometimes, and as with MnK, my aim could always be better. A good coach grows with the people they teach, and I’m happy to know that I’m doing this correctly.

It’s very cliche to say that the journey matters just as much as the destination - not because it’s wrong, but because it is painfully obvious. Nonetheless, I appreciate this side of gaming a lot, because there’s a respect for the craft, and an appreciation of effort and true talent. Top players are respected for their skill, and most of them are willing to give advice back to anyone who asks, and almost everyone respects the grind, no matter the skill level (For the most part, the recent “jade players bad” meme isn’t really funny and is mildly toxic in my opinion.).

That’s why spending my time coaching someone on my way to work, just to get disrespected at said work is incredibly soul-destroying.

That respect of the craft that I get coaching on my way to work immediately evaporates upon sitting down at my desk, where it is blatantly clear that corporate work has no such respect. Even with such short time in the industry, I can tell that developers are treated as expensive WIZARDS who essentially cast spells in VS Code and an entire feature is brought in through a membrane between this and another world where there are no technological and physical challenges.

Consider this following situation: There is a microphone, and right next to it is a speaker. The microphone picks up words, and the speaker plays sound. Very simple. Now what would happen if the speaker is playing and the microphone is trying to pick up words from the user? Either the microphone picks up nothing because of the noise, or it picks up the speaker output, both are undesirable.

This situation is extremely simple, and can be understood if you have an understanding of how reality works, and yet the product owners I work with are so far removed from reality itself that they request a feature where the microphone is supposed to pick up user commands WHILE the speaker is playing on MULTIPLE OCCASIONS. And so, I patiently tell them, much like how I used to teach 7 year olds, that it’s not possible due to how SOUND works, and within a week they would ask for the same feature again. The latest iteration of this cycle included me DIRECTLY saying to them in front of everyone else in the work chat that this feature is “TECHNICALLY AND PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE”, unfortunately I’m not particularly hopeful that this would work.

There are other fun requests that I’ve gotten, since I work essentially as the project manager as well as the sole developer, I’ve received bangers such as “Please fine tune the phrasing returned from ChatGPT”, to “Prevent ChatGPT from hallucinating responses”, and the best one - “Override the Android operating system so that our application can remotely shut down other apps”. Obviously, none of these are remotely possible, so I just smile and nod, and proceed with other tasks since the project is getting scope creeped every day.

I’m not some insane 10x dev - I’ve missed simple things that broke parts of the app, partly because I wasn’t careful enough, and partly because I’m a solo developer doing all the work with no tests and no QA, but either way, it doesn’t feel good when my code has bugs, as much as I hate my job, I have respect for the craft, and try to improve my own skills in coding as much as I can. Unfortunately, I don’t like the craft enough to code as a hobby outside of work, but nonetheless I try when I’m at my 9-5.

I’ve been basically insulted directly for the progress on the project, by of course - Non-technical middle management that has no idea that the entire project was technologically doomed to begin with. My boss is aware of this, but he’s in no position to push back on this, and so there’s nothing he can really do other than to tell me “It happens and it’s unfair”, which is true, and I don’t blame him… I’ll just quit my job somewhere down the line and have the project crash and burn.

Back to the point, it is bewildering how incompetent you can be and continue to be allowed to lead technical projects - My boss and my coworkers have been getting more involved in the project recently, and even they are shocked by how bad this project is being managed, with its endless scope creep, technically impossible requests and complete lack of planning. The disconnect between my development work and coaching work is unbelievable, to the point where I feel schizophrenic - The former completely alienates me and the latter is fulfilling and has a purpose.

However, don’t fret! Corporate has rewarded me greatly by giving me a 3% raise, allowing me to purchase 2 more vinyls every month!

Written 04.04.2024