In retrospect I think World of Warcraft was the only socializing I could really handle after some really traumatic events in my life. I excelled at the raiding aspects and was in a top guild; I became an officer which was a whole different can of worms.

It’s funny because I feel like the soft skills I developed wrangling talented sixteen year old boys to get them raiding, while keeping them from harassing girls in the guild and instead keeping them focused has helped me more than I knew as a SWE team lead, ten years later. In a lot of ways work politics is EASIER. At work nobody gets upset and tells you all about how intimate they’ve been with your mother.