Moving Up the Metaphorical Ladder

At every company in the past ten or so years, while working as an engineer, I've inevitably been offered a position as technical manager. I was usually praised for my work, then told by my superiors that given my success to date, I would no doubt make a good manager. Usually I was told by HR and my management that it was my responsibility to "grow my career", "get ahead", and "climb the corporate job ladder", and that this was to be the perfect opportunity to do so.

There are always exceptions to every rule, but over the past fifteen years in the industry I've seen so many of my strongest technical peers, knock one out of the park, then instantly be offered a promotion and a free pass to the management track. It could be my imagination, but it feels that the people best at what they do ultimately are promoted to a position that has so little to do with their personal area of expertise and passion that they are essentially rendered a "watered down" stepford version of their previous self.

I guess my biggest frustration is that companies attribute career success to how many promotions one can attain as they become more senior. Or how many employees report to that person, or how many strings they hold in their hands to pull.

To date I have never accepted one of these offers, but when I don't I'm left feeling as if I've let the company down - or my family down. The culture doesn't allow you to feel proud to say your are a senior engineer as much as say, Director in charge of the ACME division. Why promote someone who is one of the best at what they do for your company, and into a new position, essentially leaving where they once were, a gaping hole - and in most cases reducing greatly the effectiveness of the individual. Why not give them a big pat on the back, and even more encouragement to get better at what they do for you, perhaps a bonus or two, and recognition would suffice as well. But nix the thought process that promoting a solid engineer to the management track is best for the company in the general case.

The overwhelming push towards management as the "successful" route in a career path is just plain idiotic. What if the person was happiest doing what they were doing, and best at doing what I was doing? Writing code, exploring software ideas, engineering products to market, making things easier for the average Joe for instance. What if it isn't their cup of tea to attend management offsites, hire, fire, and deal with the day to day personnel issues and politics of the people leaders? Why is there such a pressure for those that are good at what they do, and have been recognized for it, to suddenly put on the management hat? If a technical leader is effective for a company (strong engineer, thought leader, or fearless code warrior), why pick them up and drop them off in a foreign land?

It's as if you've honed your engine in your car to a point where its purring like a kitten, winning all your races for you - then you shelve it to serve as an example for other engines. Problem is you're left with your car on the blocks.

I can count on one hand the number of engineers that I've worked with over the years that I've considered true visionaries in my life, - muses of sorts - thinkers that were obviously born to write the most ingenious code and think the most profound thoughts. The ironic thing is these peers that I look up to and admire for their vision and skill, and aspire to learn from - ultimately end up taking a senior leadership position in the company, and letting this sorcerer side to them slip away...

I'll be honest and say my current SVP happens to be one of the "wise men" I've been inspired by - and someone I'm truly sad to see put his canvas aside. Another example - Herf - when I met Michael Herf in 2001 he introduced me to the world of pixels and I could have sat and talked for hours about what he and I were both passionate about - user interface - Picasa having just been released, an application I felt was groundbreaking at the time. He too, after the grand Google acquisition, has been capped, stamped and branded as management - what's the last article you've seen on Stereopsis? ;o)

But I digress... it's time we shift the corporate culture a bit and find a means of allowing the engineers at heart to be recognized and to feel as though they are succesful in their careers doing just what they do. And not be so quick to land them a spot in the business side of the company or in the day to day political chess game.

In simpler terms....why the hell are the best engineers, coders, artists and designers at AOL, LLC. either in a management, director, or VP position !!!!!!!!

Hollywood, Metaverses, and Web 10.0

In 2001 Scott Totman and I proposed an AOL metaverse. (Blueprint snapshots of our conceptual demonstration included).


For those that have not read Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash (1992), a metaverse is essentially a world within a world; a virtual reality, allowing hundreds of thousands of users, even millions, to interact with each other within an online world much like our own (sans strife).

At the time (and not much has evolved since then unfortunately), AOL was a place to meet up with friends either via one on one threads of instant messaging conversations, or as groups in chat rooms. As members chatted and interacted, they would surf their favorite "keywords" and the world wide web, or message those outside of the "walled garden" with email. As basic as the experience was, it was a very appealing, sometimes even addicting social habit that millions of subscribers bought into. The "online" experience was in full swing - but was primarily centered around interaction with static text - and information overload via words and pictures. Personalization and presence was limited to a "screenname" or alias, and a tiny buddy icon.

The walls of the garden were beginning to crumble in 2001 however, as the seeds of the legacy "America Online" vision, like those from a bad weed, blew off into the landscape beyond, and most of the value that was perceived in the service became freely available from the internet at large. As long as one found an alternate "on-ramp" to the info highway as it was coined, the AOL subscription based online service was no longer novel.

Scott and I wanted very much to keep a member community focused model moving forward, but it was clear we'd have to innovate to justify the subscription based service. We worked to dream up a new paradigm - one that would be compelling primarily to the youth of the day - as well as those with imagination and a desire to interact socially. We decided on a metaverse for several reasons...

At the time, Everquest was demonstrating that a virtual world, offered as an exclusive subscription based membership, was a powerfully addictive concept. As evil as it sounds, without the addictive quality - keeping folks coming back for more month after month is an uphill battle. EverCrack as it was soon coined showed just how gripping and addicting a virtual reality could be when architected as a metaphor of the real world. An escape of sorts, this world would allow users to take on a new persona, become pretty, become rich, make a mark on the "world", create a fresh social start, dabble in new personalities, lay claim to land and build a personal space, start a new economy, etc.

Our metaverse was not focused on slaying dragons, questing for gold, or battling orcs...but we wanted a canvas and open environment where members could "be someone" in this new universe and convey more about their personality, passions, and interests than they could with a simple icon and the written word.

The AOL metaverse took the form of a city. Zoned to allow folks to easily find the information or the experiences they wanted. There was the residential zone, which allowed members to allocate real estate of their own, personalize their space, and pick and choose the information they wanted pushed directly to their "home". The home base could take the form of a suburban McMansion, a tree house in the park, or a high rise apartment, but whatever was chosen it was a place to view your personal information privately (check mail, read feeds from personal favorite list, surf the web in private), or hang out with close friends.

Gone was the text based chat room, you could invite friends into your home base, or meet up in virtual coffee shops, the park, or in the city square and chat away. Your persona was your own, you could customize your appearance (tall, skinny, fat, blond, brunette, old, young)... If you wanted to take a conversation private, you simply walk away from the group as you would in the "real" world.

The entertainment "district" would allow you to meet up with other members and compete in online games, watch Time Warner television shows, movies, or member creations (art, photos, homemade videos) with others in one of the many theaters. Walk up to a newstand in the park and read actual back issues of your favorite magazine or newspapers.


The financial district would allow you to trade real world goods, (ala ebay or craigslist), take part in a virtual economy, or monitor the real world stock markets while you interacted with fellow "traders". The shopping district offered virtual versions of real world malls and store fronts where you could walk around and interact with merchandise before purchase.

Travel around the metaverse was completely left to the user. You could fly and explore the virtual world from a birds eye view, take the tram and meet other members on the way, or if you were in a hurry simply zip immediately to your destination.

The possibilities were endless - and being a "world" within a world, many real life metaphors would translate - such as ads. I would argue that a virtual plane flying over with a banner, billboards poised high on virtual city landmarks, or posters on the walkways within the metaverse, are much more natural and non-invasive than say popup ads, and page banners in the real world!

AOL was (and still is) one of the few companies that could have pulled off such an endeavour. After having just merged with Time Warner we had a barrage of proprietary broadband centric content that nobody else could offer. We had (and have to this day) a massive server infrastructure capable of hosting millions of metaverse users, and simulating the worlds largest virtual world, and of course...we had the millions of subscribers ready willing and able to experience something new and wonderful.

Since then of course, having been a very poor and sketchy experience in 2K1, Second Life has materialized as the leading metaverse community on the net. "There" is close behind. There in my mind is much more mainstream, marketable, and less "cyber" and futuristic than 2nd Life. Back in the early days of There AOL was even considering an acquisition of the little guy. What a great head start that would have been. (NOTE: Ever read Snowcrash? Remember the "Black Sun", the exclusive members only zone within the metaverse which drew the curiosity of passerbys but only those in the know could enter? That was the plan. AOL would invest resources to build up a walled, premium, "fun zone" within There that folks could enter and join - the cool kids hangout if you will.)

To this day I believe strongly that if AOL put their collective mind to it, it could blow the experience of There and Second Life out of the water. AOL has the technology and resources to shake up what it means to be online all over again - to provide a hi-def, hi-voltage service that justifies the broadband pipe. It takes a Hollywood UI and Hollywood resources to build content and experiences of Web 10.0 - no doubt. Just as it is next to impossible to build the next great video game in your garage these days, going forward it will be just as difficult to build the software experiences of tomorrow without the technological and financial backing of a brute such as AOL.

Just suppose...

New Book Has Arrived!

(Yes, I know, it's 04.06.06 not 04.01.06, procrastination has always gotten the best of me).

Kyle Gabler - Entertainment Programmer

Flipping through my old notebooks, ran into a couple pages where I was playing around with various quote "mashups". My favorite to date is:

"Imagination is the air of mind. Build castles in the air."
- Phillip James Bailey + Robert Burton

I'm jealous, awed, intrigued, energized, and most importantly inspired when I find someone who truly embodies the philosophy of building castles in the air of mind.

Today while partaking in my many diversions I ran across a small group of academic game coders and experimenters at experimentalgameplay.com. The site, hosted by Carnegie Mellon U., allows folks passionate about video game ideas and concepts to test the waters, obtain feedback, and inspire others. Concepts aren't necessarily flushed out to completion (given the 7 day deadline for completion of an idea) but are enough to allow peers and interested parties to interact with, then rank the various creations.


Amongst the most compelling creations are those put together by Kyle Gabler. To someone like me his work is truly art in every sense of the word. If you have an OpenGL friendly PC download a few of his game sketches and you'll see why I feel he's a standout. My favorites game prototypes out of the bunch are Tower of Goo (physics is phun!), Super Tummy Bubble (so much more gritty than those addictive Gems games - reminiscent of Michael Herf's circle packer demo), and Darwin Hill (only the beautify survive). But all of his creations are unique and original. Not all of them are necessarily games - some motion dynamics and physics toys (my favorite of which you evolve a Tim Burton-esque tree called Big Vine) are also included in the bunch. The Swarm holds so much potential!


His collection on EGP is only the beginning. Based on Kyle's personal website and CV his talent is not limited to pushing pixels and particles around. His art (qualified as stylistically "crappy" in his own words) is fantastic - especially his DROOL comic strip whose artistic style carries into his technology as well. (Don't miss his collaborative spin on Pong).

I'm very eager to see what this talented individual's mind dreams up next! "Oh the places he'll go...".

PS. Speaking of collaboration, Kyle has teamed up a few times with Shalin Shodan on some other EGP gamelets. For a truly trippy experience give On A Rainy Day a spin. Dali meets Monty Python!