Charlie Cheever is well known for having a significant role in the development of Facebook, particularly the creation of both Facebook Connect and the Facebook Platform. He also worked as an engineer at Amazon and graduated from Harvard before moving on to found Q&A website Quora. That’s a lot of experience to have had for someone who isn’t even 30 years old, and yet he attributes some of the important life lessons he’s learned to an unexpected source: StarCraft.
Responding to a question seeking life lessons learned through playing StarCraft, Cheever wrote a fairly long answer laying out nine different lessons that apply to both StarCraft and real life. Below are two excerpts from what he had to say on the subject. You can (and should) check out the rest here.
On specialization: “Different people (/units) are good at different things. It’s important to have the right people and put them in a position to succeed. When beginners play StarCraft, they often ask “What is the best unit to get?” and there isn’t really an answer. If you need to fight tanks, immortals are great, but if you are fighting against banshees, they are completely useless. In life, it’s easy to fall into the trap of idolizing individuals that are great at something important and assume they’ll be the best at everything else too. Maybe the biggest life lesson one can learn from this is to put yourself in a position that plays to your strengths.”
