John

Interviewee: John

Interviewer: Archie Wood

Date of recording: 28 July 2022

Recording location: on-line

Length of recording: 35:02

Subjects (key words): Athens, Greece, moving country as child, brother, university degree, media, advertising, professional gamer, working hours, time zones, mental wellbeing, remote working

Abstract:

[00:30] Born in Athens, Greece; moved to the UK aged six. Why he uses the English form of his name (Yanni).

[01:30] Family background (Greek, South African); family moved to UK for his brother’s education.

[02:20] Fluent Greek-speaker, but first language is English.

[02:35] Brother’s job for Apple news.

[02:51] Grandparents owned a restaurant; mother doesn’t work; father works part-time, but is mostly retired.

[03:20] Moving to UK; oddity of not having friends at first; age gap with brother.

[05:45] Enjoyed English and History at school; didn’t feel he was any good at maths and science; fan of poetry and art. [07:18] Attitude to academic work whilst at college; disaffection with subjects chosen. [08:55] Why he chose not to go to university.

[08:35] Brother encouraged him to get into media. [08:50] Value of networks and connections. [08:18] Interviewed for entry position at Google; now working for L’Oreal. Monitors how advertising campaigns are doing.

[10:35] Motivation for working.

[11:30] Previously made money via Esports (gaming): didn’t earn enough to make a living. [14:42] Got in to gaming through his brother. Played in tournaments. His rankings. [16:20] Got onto Esports team via a friend; initially a substitute. [16:40] Outperformed expectations in first year; that success wasn’t sustained in future years. [18:10] Lost place on team; moved to another one. Did well, but team was disbanded by its financial backers. John was left jobless. [19:20] Difficulty of looking for ‘real’ job aged 20, when only experience is playing video games professionally.

[19:50] Feels good to have a stable job; value of job security.

[20:37] Work schedule as a professional gamer, covering different time zones. [21:45] Impact on mental well-being.

[22:25] Works remotely; did so even before Covid. [24:00] Enjoys remote working; flexibility. Goes into the office once a week.

[25:00] Competitive, cut-throat nature of Esports; players fighting for limited team places; lack of investment in players in smaller teams; impact of loss of form on wellbeing. [29:54] Lack of down-time whilst a professional gamer.

[32:00] Relationship between education and work. Got average grades. Feels he ‘got lucky’ finding a job. [33:08] Job applications are hindered by lack of a university degree

[33:55] Promotion and progression prospects in current job.

Excerpt

[00:09:57]

JOHN:

And that's what I do, yeah like I don't know how else to explain like media but essentially like if there's any like ad campaigns running, like for any L'Oreal products, I can like monitor how it's performing and like if it's not performing well enough like it's sort of my job to make sure that it does by either like booking up more spots, moving it around, those kind of things. Pretty boring. There's no way to make it sound exciting because it's not, right? It's what I do.

INTERVIEWER:

Would you say, you said it's boring, but would you say you enjoy it overall? Or would you say, you know, you’re not particularly interested or […] what's the motivation behind working?

JOHN:

Not starving to death and having a place to live is my motivation for working. I feel like I don't enjoy working. Not specifically like I don't enjoy my job. I guess I like my job more than I would like other jobs, but I definitely don't love my job. And I definitely if I like, if I won the lottery tomorrow kind of thing. I would never work again, basically is what I'm trying to tell you. But because I haven't won the lottery and because I have a rent to pay and a mouth to put food into, I have to work. And I like, yeah, I mean I guess you can't really tell people that because they want to hear stuff like ‘oh this is my favourite field to work into and motivation’, it's just not true. I work as I absolutely have to and if I just don't work, like, what's my alternative?

ARCHIE:

Do you see yourself in any other job roles in the future of? You got any future plans, aspirations?

JOHN:

So I used to work in Esports, originally, I worked in Esports for a long time, but the problem with Esports is that it's kind of an awful industry, like anybody who you ask who like works in Esports tells you it's a really bad industry to be in because it's still really new. So there's like this huge out, I suppose, it's like top-heavy, like the people at the very top make like ridiculous amount of money and then I think people at the bottom don't make anything so, and there's like so many people, right? So it's not even like, like anybody can be good at Esports, it's not like basketball, where, like, unless you're like you know over six-foot like 66 or whatever, like anybody can just like pick up computer and be good at video games, right? So you're competing with basically the whole world like Asia is so far ahead like skill-wise, like I don’t know if you know League of Legends but there's like this world championship that goes on every year which is like a huge deal like for reference the, the last two League of Legends World Championships had better viewership then the Super Bowl, so they're huge and basically Korea and China take turns winning it they just always win every year because there's so insanely good, so basically getting into it is so hard because you're competing with so many people and unless you are legitimately one of the best in the entire world, it's just not sustainable like you can't do it and I just wasn't one of the best in the world like I felt like I was pretty good. Like I was on a team, had a starting spot. Or whatever. but because I wasn't like, essentially, the top few thousand I was earning like, 14,000 a year which is just like not enough money. And it was cool if I was a kid and, like, living with my parents and not having to worry about anything because I was being paid to play video games, right? Like, it was cool. But then, you know, I start having rent to pay and like move out with my girlfriend like doing all these things that I just can't do off of fourteen thousand a year. So my options are either to magically wake up and be a much better player than I was or to go get a real job. So I had to go and get a real job, which is kind of sad, but I suppose that's how it goes, you either… Hmmm.. because it's like, with something like Esports. It's not just about following your dreams and like being committed. Like, if you're just not good enough, you're just not good enough, right? Like if there's players that are better than you, there’s players that are better than you and this like, because it's a video game, it's not about like your athletic ability, right? I can't be like, Kobe Bryant and like, wake up at 4 in the morning to make sure I'm training extra times a day because it’s just a video game. Like my physical health doesn't really benefit me like my size doesn’t benefit me. Just like reaction time which is like you're sort of born with it and it's hard to improve it, you know.

[00:14:28]

[…] [00:22:20]

INTERVIEWER:

I just want to know how the work environments compared? So now you work at this media company. How was the work environment comparison in this to the Esports?

JOHN:

Yeah, so it was crazy for me anyway, it was. I was at Lotus, like 2019, so before Covid and everything was done like online. Like over Discord. I never – we didn't have an office. There was no like headquarters. It was all online, like I would speak to my teammates online, like my boss was online, whatever. And then we had other contacts who are like lived overseas like my teammates – there was, there's five per team and a manager, three and the manager were all in the Netherlands and then one was in Korea. So just like all over Discord, right? Like I never met these people in real life unless we were going to like LAN events or whatever. So I never went to an office for my first like year and a half and then then when I got the essence job Covid obviously- so it's like work from home. So again, I’m like working online all the time and I’m like- I'm on the thing. And all of the people are, like – like that I work with currently, are like, ‘oh, I miss being in the office like so much different now because of Covid’, and I was like ‘not for me. It's not like, I don't know. I've worked out of my room for the last three years’. Like that's just how it was for me, it's just, it's normal. If anything going to the office is different for me. So yeah, it's funny because like I'm working with all these people who talk about how, ‘oh, I used to work in the office and now I work from home’ but like for me, I just always worked from home.

ARCHIE:

Do you mind working remotely? Does it bother you?

JOHN:

No, I quite love working remotely. It's really cool to have like all of my stuff here. Like I don't know. I just feel comfortable, I guess?

[00:24:07]