Chief Operating Officer
Jagex

Rob S

00.00 My name’s Rob S, I’m the Chief Operating Officer, I work for Jagex Limited. So my day to day role is that I’m basically tasked with overseeing over all the activities of the development teams and making sure that all of our games are being developed to become interesting products. I started in Jagex in 2003, so I’ve been here over six years now. I was recently promoted to Chief Operating Officer. I think since taking on the job it’s obviously bought along a lot of new challenges but actually the work I am doing is even more fulfilling than in the previous role. There are a lot of things which are challenging but for the most part they are very interesting. I think that’s my greatest motivation.

00.38 I think as a six year old what I wanted to be was probably Ian Rush. I had sort of a full Liverpool kit and I remember I used to embarrass my parents and go into town and I’d be there sort of walking around with my shin pads on, I would have worn football boots if I’d been allowed to, so I definitely probably wanted to be a footballer at that age, never had the ‘tache, no or the talent.

00.58 At school I was quite laid back, I didn’t take school at all that seriously. The sort of subjects I enjoyed at school were sort of the design and the art based subjects, I really liked the creative, the creative side. The subjects I was better at though was sort of science based, talking to teachers, talking to careers advisors really round the subject. I sort of happened on human computer interaction and understand almost from a design perspective what made a good programme, what made a good bit of software. And I think when I had that realisation I could start to see well okay, this is something I want to learn more about this is somewhere I want to study more about and I could see maybe a career in it.

01.36 I suppose what bought me to Jagex was just really needing a job after leaving university. I had this good degree, it was a two one and I thought wow, I can get any job I want now, and actually the reality is you’re up against people with five or ten years worth of experience. My big break really came when Jagex advertised a job in a local Cambridge paper for an office assistant and I thought it was a great, great way to sort of enter into the computer game industry. I didn’t really expect a career out of it at the time, but quite a lot of it has sort of come from there.

02.04 In terms of influence for how, what career path I’ve chosen I definitely point towards my parents who’ve given me a lot of support in terms of the studies that I was following and pursuing. My parents came from quite traditional backgrounds, my father’s an accountant and my mothers a music teacher. They were a little sceptical about the computer games industry and they did wonder what I was doing with my career. I think since then they’ve had a very different opinion of Jagex and they’ve seen sort of how they’ve managed to develop me as an individual, the training they’ve given me and the support they’ve given me to sort of really build me up as someone who now has a very strong career.

02.41 Getting the job at Jagex really started me on a good path, but I’ve had a lot to learn. I came in, I was quite naive, the big turning point I think was really having strong individuals in the company take me under their wing and show me sort of the error of my ways, show me how I could improve things, how I could develop things and then once they’ve done that give me sort of the authority and empowerment to go and do that myself and sort of act on everything I’d learnt from them.

03.07 Outside of work I think sort of big passions are, travelling, I enjoy sport, sort of watching and doing, I’ve recently started running with a number of the guys at Jagex and we’re sort of slowly going up the distances. I enjoy watching movies and obviously like most people at Jagex enjoy playing computer games. It’s a nice sort of break from reality, it’s a nice way to unwind but it’s also interesting to see what other people are doing.

03.33 So I think in terms of next steps for my career are really sort of mastering this new role. I’m really new to it and I’ve only been doing it three or four months and I really just want to become very good at it. I think its something that’s going to take a lot of work, it’s a brand new role within Jagex. It’s really sort of about carving out the role for myself. I think the environment at Jagex is one that sort of allows you to build a long, strong career, we’ve got a lot of people who’ve worked with us for many years and I think that actually the working relationships you can build with these people allow you to further your own career.