micahsaul

Wrote this last week for the Metaweb Company blog. Pasting it here, now:

More than just a bunch of geeks

by micahsaul

I’ll be the first to admit it. I had no idea what I was signing up for when I applied for a job at Metaweb. I was merely sending off a resume so that, were the EDD to check up on me, I could show them that I was “looking for a job” and they should keep sending me unemployment checks. When I came in for an interview, however, I knew within five minutes that this was where I wanted to be.

So, what was it that changed my mind so quickly? Simple… my then future manager saying, “Metaweb is the sort of company where you can grab a random sampling of five people, and be assured that you are not the smartest person in the room.”

See, I used to work in the video game industry, as a tester. The conversation was… not exactly stimulating. If your idea of exciting lunchtime banter went beyond, “Dude, did you see the new screenshots for Call of Duty 16: Nazi Zombie Apocalypse?! So tight!” you were pretty much out of luck. There were some people interested in talking about something meatier, but they were few and far between, and the likelihood of someone else derailing the topic with something like, “Oh that totally reminds me of that scene in Eternal Fantasy X7A where Ragnar gets the Sword of Everlasting Uberness” was disconcertingly high.

Imagine my surprise when I started work here. Intelligent conversation about a myriad of topics, not just what we’re working on. Not even just tech. And everyone is well informed, or interested in becoming so.

We’ve discussed at length the problems with the modern American educational system, and several of us have experience as teachers. We’ve talked about sprawling post-modern literature, and one of us has a masters in lit. At an average Metaweb lunch, the conversation can jump from politics, to religion, to esoteric programming languages, to music. And sure, we’ll talk about video games. Because though we’re well rounded — and though we’re far far more than it — we’re still a bunch of geeks.

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