I am a huge soccer fan. As a kid, I watched World Cup but that was about it. It wasn’t until my son started playing competitive soccer 7 years ago that I really got into it. I am in Canada and watch a lot of MLS and CPL. I know “true” soccer fans watch the big 5 European leagues. So do I, but there is a bit of time difference you know…

Being in IT, I noticed something the other day I thought I would share. There are similarities between some positions in soccer and in IT. A coder is a lot like the striker position.

Here how a coder and a striker are similar:

Both are Lazy

It really boils down to being efficient. A coder looks for patterns and similarities of function which translates into less lines of code. Then they can spend time where it is needed. On writing code for the more difficult parts of the program.

A striker has one job and that is to score goals. They won’t be very effective at that if they are running around the field like a center mid or a fullback. They efficiently use their energy and put themselves in positions to make runs or to receive the ball so they can score.

Both Seem Dumb

This could not be further from the truth. The term that should be used is “Hyper-focused”. They really have one job to do. Coders have to create streamlined and efficient code and as I mentioned before in the last point, strikers need to score goals. If they act like they are too smart or over confident they will start to do two things:

1. Stop Learning
2. Stop being critical of their work / performance

No matter what you do in life, if you stop doing those two things you will never continuously improve.

Both Honed Their Craft Over Thousands of Hours

They make it look easy but how do you think a coder was able to get that complicated process to run in such few lines of code? How did a striker like Zlatan Ibrahimović make that “karate kick” goal in the 18 yard box look so easy? Hours and Hours of practice that’s how! I am sure you have heard of the 10,000 hour rule. It rings true here. Like they say…there is no such this as an over night success.

Happy IT’ing

Dan

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Dan

I am an IT professional with over twenty years experience in the field. I have supported thousands of users over the years. The organizations I have worked for range in size from one person to hundreds of people. I have performed support from Help Desk, Network / Cloud Administration, Network Support, Application Support, Implementation and Security.