Dukes: How has 2020 been for you when it comes to creativeness?
Koob: It all depends on your perspective on how you look at it and how you frame this year. It has been a year where I have recognized my privilege more than ever. I have been more in tune with things that I care about and the people I care about more than ever.
Getting down to what matters to me helped me have freedom during my day job or daily interactions with people—being confident and understanding of what I want to be doing with my life and how I enjoy helping others in my life.
It allows me to have a little more creative freedom to make a piece of content, send an email, and reply to a text. With everything that is happening, you do your best to help people, contribute to causes that want to contribute to, and have your voice heard in ways that you can make it heard. In all of that, you started to become more confident in yourself; at least, I become more confident in myself in my daily routine.
Dukes: When you talk to your team about mistakes, what do you share with them?
Koob: If we are not making mistakes, we are not moving at the pace that we need to be. We need to be moving so fast or that we mess up every once in awhile, and we must be okay with that. The more transparent we are with our community when we mess up, the more freedom to give them content at scale.
Dukes: How do you get a job in the esports/Gaming industry?
Koob: When they ask me that question, the first thing I tell people has nothing to do with the type of education or the degree courses. I say go to Angel. Co and find a startup to work for because there are tons of esports startups.
You might not get paid the best but find a paid position. Sometimes there are some circumstances but find a paid job and work for a startup. But, working for a startup, especially in the game industry, you will feel so much pressure coming at you in so many ways that you will find out if that part of the industry is right for you, whether your work is right for you.
Because you are put in those pressure situations and cannot be comfortable, you cannot be content in your day to day work. If you expect to get a raise, grow, and expand your professional well-being. When you work for a startup, you are forced to do a lot of that. I experienced a lot of that. “Oh damn, I was going to get fired type of mindset into companies that I worked for in the past.
When I came into SteelSeries, I knew more about social [media] than anyone else in the company, and I knew that right away. I was able to take reigns right away, and I was off; that is because of the people who trusted me.