But I think I'm going to move my blog back to my personal site. Maybe not forever, but for now.

If you'd like to follow along, you can find me at http://www.ftwynn.com

That said, as one who doesn't take my own advice and who tried out the newly released Pokemon MOBA for a few hours today, I figured I would share my thoughts here.

In short, there's a lot that Pokemon Unite (PU) gets right. There's also a lot that may or may not jive with fans of the genre. Let's dive in.

The Good

The Matches are Short

No surprise given the intent to port it to mobile and the targeting of a more casual fan base. As a busy dad, I approve of the 10 minute limit. The goal mechanic (as opposed to destroy the core mechanic) also gives some interesting strategic choices for who should dunk when. More on that later.

The Controller Mapping is Pretty Easy to Grok

As one who has spent more time trying to map a controller to Wild Rift both on an Android device and in BlueStacks than I would care to admit, I have to say PU does a great job of making the controls feel natural.

That said, I can see some of the trade-offs they've made to get there. Only giving two abilities plus an ult means that a a single side of the controller shoulders handles most of the ability set. I'm sure it also affects ability design, with a preference given to AOE and auto-lock abilities over really tricky to time/aim abilities. I know I've been playing the starter set of pokemon so far, but I can't imagine controller limitations not being a reality as they think through ability design.

The Cosmetics are Surprisingly Fun

I'm hit or miss when it comes to cosmetics, but the ones in PU are subtle while allowing for a surprisingly wide range of styles. It's still very mapped to the Pokemon Trainer vibe, but you can tweak a lot of elements and have fun toying around with it. I'd be shocked if they didn't enhance this more later.

That said, the skins for the Pokemon themselves are all wonderful and I could see that being a big draw.

Mid-Game Build Flexibility is Handled Well

While the choices are small, the fact that you can tweak a character's build mid game (especially for the “all-around” class) is a really cool thing. I could imagine this becoming important in climbing the ranked ladder, but more importantly it's implemented in a very simple, clear way. Well done devs!

The Bad

There's a Lot of Button Mashing

Partly as a result of the focus on easy-to-use controller mechanics, the gameplay tends more toward button mashing than most MOBAs. Simply putting abilities on cool-down, instead of tying them to mana, compounds this factor. Now you've got three buttons to mash rapidly whenever a bad guy comes around (attack, ability 1, and ability 2).

I suspect we won't see any ability sets that get really interesting like in other MOBAs (multiple characters, ability modifiers, Abathur, etc) that normally go on the number row because... well... there isn't one.

It also limits how strategic fights can get, since the auto-targeting is going to be doing a lot of work.

The Character Set is Small

With only 20 pokemon, and 5 classes (with sub-categories like ranged/melee as well) there is a real feeling of not quite enough variety here at launch. I'm not sure how long it'll take to crank out new characters, but for those who aren't willing to shell out all the money upfront, character acquisition is slow, and makes character selection feel very limited for new players.

That could be good if you're new to the scene. I know I've complained a lot about learning 80+ characters when switching titles. But this roster just felt a little too small, even for me, an older hand at the genre.

Game Sense is in Short Supply

I know it's day 2 of release, but it's pretty clear that people working their way through the tutorial grind have no sense of MOBA strategy. I've seen tanks steal from carries (which matters a lot with individual leveling in PU). I've seen teammates walk obliviously by easy ganks. I've seen people take stupid goals, mis-understand score mechanics, and ignore group speed effects. The variance is wide.

Maybe this will improve in ranked as part of the climb, but it's rough starting out.

Targeting is Tricky

I mentioned this earlier, but targeting definitely takes some getting used to. It's a bit like a console aim-assist in FPS games. You learn to work with it rather than against it. Because there's a physical controller in my hand (and I'm not at my PC) I don't miss being able to target with my mouse too badly, but I'm actively annoyed at skill shot moves instead of simply planning for them.

The Ugly

The Vibe Might be a Little... Too Familiar

I've seen this homescreen before. I've seen this daily quest list. It's got more polygons characters and less hand drawn art, but I've seen most of this before.

My biggest concern is that it might get boring a bit quickly because of that. Ranked may prove to be a good experience, but I won't know until I get out of Bronze (which there was no placement for... just start from the bottom).

The tutorial climb to unlock active abilities is also proving to be pretty League-level long, which is weird given the number of games I've already played.

There is Some Pay to Win

There are caps on stat-enhancing items you can bring in, and at my current ELO jungle pathing is way more important than items, but this could definitely rub some people the wrong way.

Wish List

I Wish I Could Tel the Game I've Played DOTA/League/HotS/MLBB/Wild Rift Before

I think about this with all the MOBAs, because I know very few players who are into just one. The tutorial phase (which I'm still climbing out of several hours in) is pretty long, and I wish I could give it a frame of reference so it would skip some of the basics and maybe highlight some key differences.

Come from League? We only have one two lanes, one item, two abilities, and everything's on cooldown. Coming from HotS? Levels are trakced per character, there are no creeps, and towers don't shoot at anything.

It boggles my mind that these games wouldn't want to make it easy to switch between them.

I Wish I Could Buy a Starter Pack

And not just standard mobile currency stuff!

Most MOBAs (admittedly once they have a bit larger roster) allow for purchasing a set of heroes to expand the diversity of the early experience. I like it because it let's me put a little skin in the Free 2 Play game, and also expand the play styles I can tinker with right away.

No such thing in PU. Hopefully that comes around soon. Even the ability to just buy 5 more Pokemon at a discount would be great.

I Wish There Were More Maps

They've eschewed the traditional DOTA/League map for one that's much more HotS like. I hope they continue in this vein and really make the map another gameplay element to consider. You can see them starting this with the daily quick games, but even in standard and ranked there's room for diversity among the jungle monsters, map layouts, and goal configurations.

Being “bad” in Obsidian and doing something “wrong” is the correct way to go about things.

There are many systems out there that are more opinionated than what is essentially a wiki. There are plenty of project/productivity/graph drawing/etc tools that are all more specialized at what they do and can put prettier UI's on things with more one-click buttons.

But the hidden value of doing something poorly in Obsidian, rather than the default way somewhere else, is that you get to make it just what you want.

Take CRM. Dave Sivers in his book Your Music and Your People doesn't even talk about using an app, but just calls it a database that you should use to help stay connected to people. What's a better people database than one that matches exactly what you want to capture?

Sure Obsidian does some things better than others. Fields are easy. Tags are easy. Journaling is easy. TODOs are easy. Connections are easy. Updates are... just as tedious as other systems. While on the other hand its connections to social and ability to mail merge are definitely lacking.

But you know what? You probably don't need most of that stuff.

Starting from a blank text file forces you to pick the most important things first. That in itself is already key. Without toying with a few ideas on your own first, you might gravitate toward the prettiest or most/least expensive tool, even if it's not right for you.

The plugin ecosystem gives you a tremendous leg up for specifics, but an Obsidian plugin will never beat a polished alternative at that use case. The Tasks plugin will never be Todoist. This is a good thing.

The rough edges are your personal feedback for knowing what's working and what isn't. Treasure that feedback.

Once you dive into the mindset that being bad (or at least starting bad) is the point, there's a lot of power that's unlocked to you.

Dive in, do something poorly, then tweak. It's more fun, and more effective than aiming for perfection from the outset.

#Obsidian #PKM #Agile

One thing I want to highlight before I even get there, though, is just how daunting it is to get started.

It's not even that the process of turning more temporary notes into your own synthesized ideas is that difficult to understand. It's that a key step in the process, linking new ideas to previous ones, is frightening when you're staring at a blank page.

Does everything have to be bottom up from new material? I do have some ideas floating around in my head, can I scaffold those first? Do I need to flag them to come back to later?

My inclination so far is to do the crappiest thing possible, and fix it later if I have to. Perfection in PKM is far more the problem than never creating and toying with ideas at all.

So here's to diving into imperfection! After all, anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.

#BASB #Zettelkasten #ToolsForThought #PKM

First, it's absolutely amazing to me how fast development is going with the Obsidian space. The number of things that are 1-2 weeks old that radically alter my workflow are just mind boggling.

https://write.as/ftwynn/interstitial-journaling-in-obsidian-with-a-stripped-down-quickadd

I wrote that less than a week ago, and now that script is a proper plugin. It's so hot off the press it isn't in the Obsidian UI yet, but I'm looking forward to when it is (which will hopefully resolve some weirdness I had with the script version).

Current Use Cases I'm Investigating for it:

1. Interstitial Journaling (super helpful thus far)
2. Changelog at the bottom of any notes files (need to toy with it a bit more)

Both are good for the “capturing a quick thought from anywhere in a timely manner” case.

#Obsidian #ToolsForThought #PKM #BASB

The alarm itself was a little finicky, but it took actually putting the device on and off the charger for me to appreciate how nice wireless charging is.

That said... the positioning on the Pixel Stand was always finicky and annoying. My in laws had a different third party wireless charge for their phones, and while it was easier to target, it certainly never felt like I put it in the “perfect” spot.

Switching to iPhone introduces... MagSafe. Finally a nice, clean feedback mechanism for correct positioning in wireless charging. This should be a standard, and it's practically a crime it isn't implemented in all phones.

The gentle tug to get in line. The snug confirmation you're in the right spot. The moderate but not too much effort it takes to pull off. It's all wonderful, and I very much do not want to go back to being without it.

Shame on Apple for hoarding this one for themselves. Make the world a better place and make the phone version of MagSafe something everyone can have, regardless of phone model.

#iPhone

That said, some gestures on the iPhone can go screw themselves.

In particular, whoever decided that swipe up from the bottom but not too much was a good idea should be publicly shamed.

Again, I understand the need to fit more functionality into a less space. If they break down the swipe up gesture into a little and a lot variants, you get two functions for the price of one. It makes sense... on paper.

But in reality? When I'm switching phones and trying to figure out what the distances are on all these swipes? It's really terrible.

On top of that, the animation for close an app looks awfully similar to the end of the animation for dismiss the app carousel. Given that they both use the same overloaded swipe up gesture it's just... incredibly uncomfortable not knowing what happens when I stutteringly swipe up, which happens from time to time on the big phone screen.

I wish they took Android's cue for the three buttons at the bottom. Then I would know when I'm summoning the carousel, and when I'm not. Calling in a HUD also gives you a lot more options to make features visible when needed, rather than overloading a fixed set of UI options.

I know Android implemented a similar semi-swipe up an OS update or two ago, but I immediately found a way to get the buttons back. No such luck for customization on Apple.

Apple keeps trimming UI elements to the point where functionality is now ambiguously hidden instead of just out of the way. To me, that seems like a bad line to cross.

#iPhone

An example that I started working with is chhoumman's QuickAdd, courtesy of Eleanor's Round Up.

While I had trouble getting the script as written, which is way over-engineered for my needs, I stripped out the basics into a simple “add this line from a prompt to the Daily Note” tool, which is absolutely perfect for Interstitial Journaling, which I stumbled on for the first time the other day.

IJ seems like a great combination of multiple factors to help keep me focused on what I'm doing during the day, and putting it in a templater template means I have access to the same workflow across my Windows Desktop and my Chromebook since they're in sync with Obsidian Sync!

I'm looking forward to trying this out, particularly with a mix of lighter and heavier workdays ahead.

Working in technology, I'm used to having things break. I've also been a big Android user since the release of the Motorola Droid, sticking with the OS through a fair share of warts and growing pains. But when my phone broke last week in the same way as my other two Pixel devices, causing a Monday morning scramble to the store, I decided maybe it was time to be less of a tinkerer and more of a user again.

... at least when it comes to phones.

To help get used to the publishing flow on my blog, I'm going to note some of my thoughts here for others to chew on (and spit at) if they're so inclined. I'll admit upfront I did fairly minimal homework, thinking my years at big tech companies and affinity for tinkering would get me through any adjustment pains.

Some things have been smooth. Some have been choppy. Some are mystifyingly difficult. It reminds me a lot of when I had a Mac laptop actually.

As a general rule, a few weeks in now, I can feel the stability I traded for. I'm still frustrated by some limitations, but I think it's been the right call so far.

I just have to come to terms with the fact that I'm now just a user... and be OK with that.

#iPhone

In part because I didn’t get very good career advice when I was there, I like talking to Duke students about their potential careers. Since I jump at the opportunities that present themselves, I end up saying a lot of the same things over and over.

So, I’ve decided to write them down here to make it easier for all involved, and maybe even help a few others along the way. I’ll start with some warnings, give you my suggestions for how to build your career, and then give a brief recap of how mine has been going for reference.

This advice is targeted particularly at Duke students, but hopefully there is enough here that you can apply it to your own life at other schools as well.

Warnings

Your Major Isn’t Your Destiny…. in Most Fields it Honestly Doesn’t Matter

A lot of students I talk to think that their major dictates the job they can get. Or at least, it influences it to such a large degree that it essentially dictates it. In my experience, this is fiction.

There are obviously a handful of fields where your major does matter. Medicine, some flavors of hardcore engineering, etc… but this is much more the exception than the rule.

I graduated with an Econ degree, which I did use in my first job as a econometrics forecaster… but no one else on my team had that major. When I got a job in Professional Services at a software company, we had people whose majors ranged from Chemical Engineering to Biomedical Engineering to Cognitive Science. Good with computers and people? Great! The rest didn’t matter, and in many cases the diversity was an asset rather than a hindrance.

So pick a major you like and that challenges you, more so than maps to any career in your head. Your enthusiasm and the learning/researching skills you acquire will be more important than anything else, regardless of subject matter.

There Are A LOT of Great Jobs Out There You Don’t Know About

Dovetailing from the above, there are a ginormous number of jobs in the world (many many more jobs than majors by an obscene factor), and most of them you probably don’t know about right now.

Even if you think you did the homework, and “basically only these jobs” do what you want, I can almost guarantee you missed at least a dozen in widely disparate fields.

My own job is one I never heard about at Duke. I’m a Sales Engineer. The job requires being able to talk to people and also thinking through technical problems and present them persuasively. It’s a great job for a host of reasons which I won't go into right now, but to reiterate the point the career center never brought it up. The Strong Interest Survey never talked about it. It literally took walking into a random booth at the Stanford career fair and getting asked a strange question before I even knew the job existed.

There’s no silver bullet to fixing this, but one thing that helps is thinking more about the skills and work that put you in flow state, then finding roles that need those skills. Designing Your Life has some great exercises that walk through this if you want to dig deeper.

Also, talk to tons of real people. The Alumni network is good for this, as are any regular humans you know in real life. Even if (and maybe especially if) someone's story doesn’t seem interesting as a career, but it is strange, ask about it. I had a friend who went from manufacturing microchips to designing toys. Another went from physically prototyping designs at an engineering firm to designing new features for the iPhone. Another was doing Professional Sales work at our startup, only to leave and start a company doing the exact same thing for that startup.

People do a crazy number of different things. Get interested and start asking about it.

Beware the Consulting/iBanking Trap

As an Econ major, the Consulting/iBanking recruiting was heavy, and was also an absolute trap. Their pitch is refined, and targeted directly toward young grads’ fears. It goes like this:

Hey, are you smart and accomplished, but unsure about what you want to do with your life? Don’t worry about it! If you take this job, you won’t have to close any doors, because we work with all kinds of industries doing all kinds of smart stuff. Even more than you'd get if you picked one industry to start! You’ll get to talk to important people and they’ll listen to you, because you’re smart! You’ll also get paid a bunch of money. We do work hard and play hard, but you're not afraid of working hard, right? Then line up!

iBanking’s pitch is a little less about influence and a little more “trade your health, sanity, and life force for money” but it’s similar in its goal of selling you an easy choice with a blinking neon light pointing to the upsides and minimizing the downsides.

In both cases I want to say this: the life force tradeoff of working yourself to burnout is almost always not worth the money. When those companies say they work hard and play hard, they’re leaning pretty heavily on the former to the point of non-existence of the latter.

By contrast, I got a 9-5 job out of college, and I remember seeing a friend who went the consulting route on the train. His head was hanging low and he looked barely awake when I recognized him. “Brian? Is that you? How’re you doing man?” He bolted upright like I’d hit him with a cattle prod and mumbled that he was good but working hard. Almost all the consultants I’ve met were this tired, and the tricky part is, once you get that tired, it gets hard to see a way out. Buy whatever sofa and bed you want, you won’t feel rested until you leave.

There's a reason the people leave those industries in droves, and it's not because the new hires get what they need. It's because they hit bottom and realize this isn't how they want to live their life (more on that below).

Follow Your Passion was Counterproductive Advice for Me, and Probably is For You Too

On the other end of the perspective, a lot is written about following your passion and doing what you love. It’s a great idea on paper. I even took some time off finding a job senior year to do a combined career center/CAPS program to help find your dream job. The result: I could be happy doing pretty much anything. I wasted 3 months of job hunting time for that insight.

Anyway, this philosophy is dangerous for a few reasons.

First, in all likelihood, you do not have some innate sense of knowing what your true calling is inside of you. This is perfectly normal and OK. We all have things we like more and less, and those things don't always sum up to a perfect job description. I never really knew what to do next in my career until I just took a leap and tried something different.

Second, even if you know yourself 100% through and through (an extremely high bar), whatever you think might be the perfect work for you… might be something no one pays for. What then? Are you doomed to be jobless forever? That doesn't seem right.

Third, it’s selfish. The follow your passion approach leads to only thinking about you and what you want... and that rabbit hole can lead to madness if you’re not careful. The world already has unfulfilled needs. You’ll be better suited to help people with some needs over others, so start understanding that give and take quickly instead. You’ll be more satisfied helping others in the long run anyway.

Fourth, it’s not a useful career planning tool. It’s a single axis, simple assessment that doesn’t take into account realities like making rent and eating and a family. It also doesn’t account for how you can grow and use influence to get more of what you want provided you plan correctly. All of those things are real world considerations that this simple version leaves out.

Fifth, and underrated in my opinion, following your passion can kill your joy. You might hope that mixing what you love with a paycheck will make everything wonderful. In my experience, it just turns what you love now into work... into a job... into a have to do instead of a get to do. This is not a wise way to live your life. Some passions are meant to just be that, and that's OK.

What To Do Instead

The One Book You Need

Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You is basically the one career book you need. It’s a practical, straightforward approach of doing something you’re good at, building career capital through that skill, and then leveraging that capital into doing more of what you want and less of what you don’t. Rinse and repeat.

The beauty of it is that it almost doesn’t matter where you start so long as you start somewhere with a modicum of interest. Invest in yourself and others, grow, and keep an eye out for where you might want to grow into next.

I won’t rehash the rest of the book here. Just go read it.

The Guide Rails Come Off After College

I do want to add something that can be jarring after college: the guide rails of life come completely off.

It can feel like there’s a fairly expected path as you move through school and to college… but as soon as you leave there is only the jungle, and you’ve got to hack your way through in the way that works best for you.

There is no one way to get into a company you want to work for. There is no one way to get famous, Internet famous or otherwise. There is no one way to succeed in business. There is no one way to “achieve” and “win”.

This can be scary, but I want to emphasize that it’s also liberating, and worth being embraced.

Putting the above another way: There are multiple ways to get into a company you want to work for. There are multiple ways to get famous. There are multiple ways to succeed in business. There are multiple ways to “achieve” and “win”. With that framing, you have an even better chance to achieve what you want the way you want to.

By a similar token, there will be no one pushing you forward in your career like they did through school. I personally got really good at my job a few times, only to get stuck because I wasn't leaning forward into the next thing and making it happen myself. Don't make the same mistake I did.

My Career Path, If You’re Curious

I graduated from Duke in ‘08 with a BS in Economics. I took several months off of looking for jobs senior year to do a CAPS + career center program to figure out my dream job. This led to a completely wasted 3 months because the result was “you could be happy doing pretty much anything.” I frequented the career center for counseling and resume help.

For my first job in ‘08. None of that mattered. I ended up applying to several dozen jobs in Atlanta and did well in the one interview that responded so that I got a job at UPS. Most people were impressed that I’d gone to Duke. The rest didn’t matter.

Eventually I moved to Palo Alto because my girlfriend got a phd opportunity at Stanford and I decided to come along. Shotgunning the resume didn’t really help that time, but surprisingly walking around the Stanford career fair led to an interesting conversation (most tables were looking for CS majors, but some weren’t). They were looking for “people who could talk to both machines and people.” Well I’d dabbled with tech my whole life… so I could probably do that.

I want to add I didn't even mean to go to that table. I was planning to walk by, but there's was a pedestrian slow down in front of the table, and the recruiter literally grabbed me on the shoulder and asked me if I could talk to people and machines. That part was lucky, the showing up to the career fair was a choice.

That led to a Professional Services role at a tech startup called Intapp. Recruiters in Silicon Valley are constantly pinging tech people on Linkedin, so when I got burned out at Intapp I took another opportunity to try sales engineering at another startup called SumoLogic.

When Sumo wouldn’t promote me to the big accounts on request (I heard through the grapevine I basically needed to apply for another job first), I threw in a few resumes at Google and started shotgunning resumes again. Google Cloud was just starting up then, gave me an interview, and I’ve been there since as a Sales Engineer and now a Sales Engineer Manager.