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Rancidbudgie · 05-19-2022, 05:24 PM

Word Count (Part 1): 6460
Part 2 of 3

General Management of the SHL - A Biopsy of the League’s Most Influential Position

Part 2: On the Health of the General Managers

This is part two of a three-part article. In the previous article, I looked to empirically examine whether or not the team management position is experiencing an increasingly high turnover rate, and if this turnover is supplemented by a suitable amount of replacements or not, and whether it is getting harder for the League to find proper applicants for the opening positions.

In this second part of my article, I take a step away from the numbers, and talk to the real people behind the function of the SHL - Current and past General Managers and Co-GMs of both leagues, Fed Heads, and even users with HO experience. I hope through their perspectives I can attempt to identify some common themes or narratives, and present them in a straightforward manner.

For the dichotomous sake of both transparency and privacy, I would like to let you the reader know that when I reached out to members for quotes, I had a variety of responses, and I wanted to ensure the people I talked to felt safe in sharing their honest perspectives with me. I gave everyone I talked to the option of allowing me to directly quote them, use their quotes directly but without identifying them, or to generalize points and not take direct quotes. It is my clear intent to honour these agreements, as well as arrange various individual’s perspectives into a clear narrative. Rather than post large chunks of quotes from various users one person at a time, I sought to ameliorate common ideas and subjects, and organize them in a way to present the big ideas behind this article, namely; “How is the health of the League’s GM position in the long-term, with the way things are recently?” I received different answers, and many different perspectives on what affected members personally, or out of observation of others as a manager of the league. Some GMs will be quoted, but only with their permission, but most quotes will be left anonymous by me (even if I have been given permission to quote fully), as I find it is the perspective, rather than the person, that we should dedicate our focus to in order to answer these questions around the managerial role in the SHL. Some GMs will be quoted multiple times, and sometimes I have made some of their quotes anonymous while directly attributing others of theirs to them, but only when given permission to directly quote them. I do not wish to betray the position of trust many of the people I have talked to placed me in.

Also, before I begin, I wish to express my gratitude to the sheer number of members who reached out to me, either on the forum or in discord, to share their stories and perspectives with me. It was humbling to have so many detailed and introspective responses, and have people take the time to discuss what is important about a community that means so much, to so many of us. I talked to well over thirty members for this article after all was said and done (and potentially more, if I did not get back to you expressing interest, it’s because I lost track of dozens of discord DM threads, and I apologize), whose combined experiences represent past and current GMs/Co-GMs of over twenty of the currently existing SHL/SMJHL teams, as well as many with IIHF Federation Head, Head Office, Commissioner/Co-Commissioner, and WJC GM experience, as well as a massive amount of the other jobs that keep this site and League running. I hope to do justice to their dedication.

First things first: Is the increase in current GM/Co-GM job postings a sign of concern? Is it becoming harder to attract people to apply for GM roles, and/or retaining them?

Overwhelmingly, the answer was overall yes. Not everyone I talked to thought these trends were indicative of anything, but a vast majority have noticed this trend as well as I, and overall answered “yes” to some degree. There wasn’t really a need for directly quoting anyone on this lead-in question, as I find the following topics will provide quotes that answer this just as directly.

Next, the follow up question: If it is a problem, what are the main causes of this increased hiring difficulty?

This elicited a much less clear-cut set of answers, and most people I talked to agreed it was a combination of some things, and had some similar and unique perspectives on what some of those things were. I hope to break down the main themes one by one, for narrative clarity.

Potential Cause 1: Time Constraints
Real life is always going to be a factor, and it has never been a secret that the management job is one that requires free time from other things, as well as dedication and effort. When I asked the specific question of why managers who had stepped down from a job did so, most of the time it was real-life stress (mental health) or IRL obligations that led them to taking a step back. This is obviously unavoidable from an SHL perspective, as there are always changes in people’s lives, and the fact that they are still on the site and responding to me is a good sign that they made the right choice for their own well-being, taking time where they needed it in order to preserve long-term activity in the SHL in whatever capacity they were comfortable managing. I can personally relate. However, the last article showed that real-life global events (like the COVID-19 pandemic) did not shift hiring patterns away from a steadily increasing amount of job openings, and demonstrated more difficulty to fill those positions as time has gone on. So is this just a not-so-marvelous coincidence that real life is increasingly getting in the way to make these patterns each successive year? Or is there something (or multiple things) different between the management landscape of 2019-2020 and today? One thing that came up in multiple anecdotes was the condensing of the season and the sim schedule, both of which heavily affected time investment into an already demanding position.

“We just witnessed the possibility of the SHL draft and the Challenge cup Finals on the same day. That just isn’t right”.
“Hell, if the J finals weren’t a sweep we could have seen the J finals happen at the same time of the draft, too.” - Anonymous Manager

“When I first started in sim leagues back in 2016, there wasn’t the extensive testing for everything like there is now. That’s put a much higher demand and pressure on aspiring GMs” - @Symmetrik

“The thing I hate is mostly timezones tbf. And HO constantly feeling the need to compress our season and take away the short bit of downtime we have to wind off and get some scouting in between the POs and the draft."- Anonymous Manager

“Not that I’ve won a cup, but it’s got to be the worst for those teams, since there’s barely a week between Game 7 of the Challenge Cup and the SHL draft. ‘Yay you won! NEXT!’” - @Blitz

While many acknowledged that aiming to reduce downtime and boredom for the average SHL user was important, this was a direct contributor to GM burnout. While GM’s enjoyed many of their positions and responsibilities overall, the condensed schedule was impacting the commonly sought-after feeling of celebrating successes, and even just having a week of reduced responsibilities is a mental break for an otherwise daily job. There were some solutions offered, all of them including at least a 9 week season schedule to ensure a proper off-season, as well as a few recommendations for greater “pomp and circumstance around international play… it would be a great way for incoming rookies to see a facet of the league in progress right as they come in”. Emphasizing the IIHF would allow for an increased off-season, and it gives opportunity for downtime to those who need it, but want a managerial role. Also, if you are the kind of person who wants to be fully engaged all days of the week and are willing to not have a day off from responsibility, you can invest in the IIHF as a fed head or other positions while the SHL/SMJHL is on scouting time/draft time/downtime, in addition to your regular season role, with clear time distinctions between the two events.

Potential Cause 2: The switch from STHS to FHM6
Ah, this old chestnut. We’ve heard it plenty of times before, but I was particularly interested to hear the perspectives of people who had used both systems, and why this is still a very prevalent point among those who I talked to. My numbers from part one of this article do seem to indicate the sustained spike in job openings a few months and seasons after S53, the inaugural launch season of using FHM6 as the sim engine. This change, more than one GM asserted, made the time required to successfully GM increase a fair amount. @SpartanGibbles observed, “With STHS, you could easily do your filework in a few minutes. FHM takes a lot more into account and the skill gap that has developed in the league is apparent”. This point was agreed upon by most of those with manager experience I talked to, with @Henrik agreeing on this point, stating “FHM is a time sink that you can throw just about an infinite amount of time into… And it's been kind of a prerequisite for success, at least to some degree.” Many who responded agreed to the time sink analogy, and it seems that in addition to the regular GM tasks like line updates, scouting, drafting, and building a LR and culture, the switch added a much larger chunk of responsibility that was simply blocked into hours you spent running test sims. Having GMed for 8 consecutive WJCs on FHM6, as well as testing for the SHL and SMJHL (as a player on that team or freelance SMJHL test simming) I can personally attest - if I wanted to run a certain amount of tests, I would have to manually re-load the files each time. There was no shortcut for aptitude on the sim, it simply required larger chunks of free time. Given the responses I have heard, it seems that the majority of management who left a position in the last year (not including leaving to a different management job or IRL things) cited this as the main reason for their burning out.
It is fair to say that this wasn’t a universal opinion - I had a few managers note that they spent about the same amount of time (or only slightly more) in STHS than FHM6, and that it was just a matter of perspective:

“You get slightly fewer numbers out of the number machine but you spend about the same time and make basically the same decisions. I don’t find that meaningfully different than running ten thousand games of test sims to prepare for a single game 5 of a playoff series in the STHS days”. - @grok

“If I have to think about the thing people complain about GMing the most I think it’s the time investment. It’s not the most demanding thing in the world but it sometimes needs some time sensitive work, it needs attention, and, thanks to certain events, it also needs some time around the lines nowadays, so spending the time on something that should be very much a light free-time killing hobby in that manner is I think offputting for a lot of people.” - @Citizen of Adraa

Unfortunately, most who held either opinion of FHM agreed that while FHM6 may or may not be a lot of work, STHS had some noticeable flaws that eventually shattered, and led to a “rushed” (a word used by multiple people quoted) FHM6 implementation. Many were quick to point to the 'full-scoring, no passing' build meta that the Hamilton Steelhawks leveraged into immediate and overpowering success was the death knell for STHS, and for the league to have a chance to function fairly, the change was implemented. An unsuccessful change, according to most former or current GMs, but needed after the meta break.
Compared to STHS, FHM6 is noticeably more complex, starting from the increased amount of attributes to the individual tactical sliders for each player, and variable tactical settings, player roles, and individual tactic setups. @Blitz puts the comparison between STHS and FHM6 this way:
“I won’t say a monkey with a typewriter could do it [STHS], since there was still file work and some logic to it, but it was much simpler than FHM…”
“If nothing else, the ability to slot in a 2500 game file to see how the season would play out in testing was nice. FHM, or at least its 6th installment, doesn’t allow for bulk testing like that. You either have to scrap all of your changes entirely by force-closing the game and reloading, or you save as many test files as different names you care to test”.

There was a lot of positive feedback about the FHM switch from the league to start, specifically the larger freedom of player roles to build, in hopes that it would encourage more player agency in regards to build and deployment.
This, however, has led to many GMs to struggle, no longer with a meta-breaking build on its own, but a much more complex system that left little time to learn the ropes - and a LOT of ropes to learn. A couple of Managers described this struggle specifically, and how it impacted the identity of the league:

“With the move to FHM, we saw the league shift from being a player league first and foremost to a GM league, where it didn’t really matter what your player [built] or how much you earned. What matters is that the GM can provide the sim knowledge…and help you build a player that fits [their] system, and I think that is 110% the opposite of where this league should be”. - @Henrik

“I think the main challenges [for managers] falls under the FHM learning curve, if you don’t have someone in your war room with good knowledge, or be able to teach you, it can be difficult” - @CampinKiller

“One [thing] I would wish for is to literally not allow any testing at all, but the logistics would be a bit worse, but I think it would do a lot of good for the site to be honest, to just bring a lot of the GM role to being mainly about the people and not so much about being neck deep in FHM all the time”. - @spooked

“I think the league winds up focusing on team competition more than anything, which is fine. I personally think the league should be significantly more focused on the individual player ‘be a pro’ experience to encourage and maintain growth (simple math says there are nine times as many players as managers), but making sure every team has equitable and fair access to a competitive environment is part of that” - @grok

It seems that even while rushing a system change to bring back some tactical parity opened up a vast chasm of potential tactical complexity, and a steep and punishing learning curve for anyone new to the system or without a support system with considerable know-how. Imparity is back on the menu as the main course, according to many former and current GMs, and working in antithesis with the very thing FHM6 was being lauded to bring in - rather than increasing player agency and build variety, some teams found success by having players buy into a specific build for an optimal system, and spent a lot of time testing to do it. @Grapehead accentuated this difference in required sim knowledge pre and post-STHS - “There was no shortage of STHS knowledge being shared around the SHL, and so the GMs were all on relatively even ground, but the introduction of FHM took the league back several dozen seasons in terms of knowledge inequality”.

This hurdle of learning a more complex system like FHM6 without prior knowledge may very well be keeping passionate and engaged members from stepping into a management role. “I think”, observed @LordBirdman, “the FHM sim knowledge requirement and testing just to be successful is a major turnoff for prospective GMs.”
Agreeing on the point of testing time affecting potential GM applicants, @Symmetrik states “When I first started in sim leagues back in 2016, there wasn’t the extensive testing for everything like there is now. That’s put a much higher demand and pressure on aspiring GMs”.

Some of you reading may note, as I did, the question under these observations. What I first thought to myself after hearing these specific comments on sim knowledge and build optimization, was “So even if we change everything, including the sim, what’s to stop it from being optimized or broken again? What is to stop GMs from building a tactical system, no matter how simple or complex, and optimizing their players around it?” Which leads me into my next potential cause…

Potential Cause 3: Parity/Hamilton

…

...

…*sigh*

I really didn’t want this to be another Hamilton hit piece. I still don’t. But it would be negligent of me to ignore the significant amount of times I saw one SHL team mentioned for unique reasons over all others. So, I’m going to approach this as diplomatically as possible, while attempting to break down the various observations as to WHY one team would possibly have any impact on GM hiring. Anecdotally, I’ve seen a couple of player retirement posts call out a lack of competitiveness, specifically in regards to Hamilton’s dominance (other teams are sometimes mentioned, but there is a clear and consistent presence of the Steelhawks here) as a reason for their retirement and reluctance to recreate at all, and many former GMs (and current) mirrored this in their conversations with me.

First off, the big link to Hamilton here is that they win. A lot. Success leads to haters, obviously, but I’d like to comment as to why Hamilton gets more flack than say, Buffalo, or Chicago, both teams who have also had long-term success. Dynasties can happen, right?
Well, it’s more than that, according to those with managerial experience. First off, there’s some unfortunate history, with Hamilton being blamed for optimizing the meta so hard it killed STHS, referred to in the same revered tone as the Pharisees and Judas selling out (and by extension killing) Jesus Christ. Many inside and outside the management world can easily extend that perception to the thought - If that attitude of ‘win first at the expense of player build agency’ was fine then, what’s stopping them now?

“In the SHL, you have a number of General Managers who will bend the rules in any way possible to get an advantage, including but not limited to breaking the sim engine if it gets them a Cup win.” - Anonymous Manager

I had multiple remarks that ranged from thinly veiled to straightforward and honest, remarks that cited “people who have an IT job” or “those that simply set up a script to optimize lines and tactics to a degree [that is] absolutely hopeless for 90 plus % of the league to catch up to”, or “GMs who game the system in order to win as much as possible”, “teams that test sim from dusk till dawn”, and were “killing the allure of the job for anyone who would enjoy it [GMing]… who can’t devote time to literally coding or hundreds of hours of testing each season to compare.” These quotes were, some direct and some not, references to the management at Hamilton (as well as a couple of other teams, but the solid and constant thread was the Steelhawks, which is why I bother to mention them specifically). With this specific aggrievance of such a tech/knowledge advancement, combined with a perceived 'win at the expense of variety and fun' attitude that simply isn’t conducive with a somewhat casual league like the SHL, some managers I talked to perceived this as going far enough to be unethical to the very philosophy of the League. One manager writes, “The mentality of ‘it’s not illegal so it must be legal’ is used by a number of GMs to do inherently unethical things to accomplish winning, and it can be very, very frustrating and disheartening for any general manager with a moral compass”.
As I mentioned above, the largest reason members of the League left management positions behind, especially at the SHL level, in this last year, was due to a huge increase in the amount of testing to be effective. For many, the breaking point was when they realized that even that heavy amount of time didn’t matter, given the knowledge gaps or lack of technological literacy.

“I left [my GM/Co-GM position] because of teams like Hamilton. In series against them, whole teams [war rooms] would do countless sims, and despite any [test] results positive or negative, [Hamilton] always performed to a near dominant degree in possession, and consistently beats teams far above their TPE range… [Something] that no other team can seem to exploit quite as well”.
“And the fact that the only way to compete with [these teams] is to try and set up something [script or code], or exploit it [FHM6] yourself, is such a demoralizing thing”.

“The recent era has scared a LOT of people off from GMing or even helping with management… [the GM/Co-GM’s] entire war room got disillusioned on the site based on (perceived or real) beliefs that none of it mattered because one team ‘gamed’ the system (re:Hamilton)”

“Unfortunately I would expect no matter what the site wants, someone would go ahead and try to break it like some single player game to be broken. Really the biggest change on the site is that it was much more casual feeling before, and now it has gotten to the point where the competition is probably bringing the site down.”

“You can only do so much to try and punch upwards against Hamilton. I mean, we’ve seen it the past few seasons, Baltimore has had one of if not the highest TPE roster in the league building their players how the meta says you should, running the correct tactics and whatnot and they’ve lost games and series to Hamilton who has had a significantly lower TPE roster*. Sometimes you can do all the right things and still find yourself on the losing end of things in FHM”

*After fact-checking, it seems Baltimore did in fact have the 1st or 2nd highest TPE roster in the SHL at the most recent time, While Hamilton was in the middle range of total team TPE - estimated between 7th and 12th, through personal observation.

Parity (Continued):
In fairness, the majority of responses (with a few direct exceptions) did not say 'Hamilton is bad and they alone should feel bad for killing this league'. Far from it. Most of these grievances were along the lines of, 'An attitude of victory over all else, to the point of weaponizing whatever sim engine we use to generate our imaginary players in an ice hockey season is actively harming people’s investment in the league.', and cited Hamilton as a poster child example of this attitude, not an absolute cause. If people feel like they are hitting an insurmountable competitive barrier, why put the added stress on yourself to attempt it if it won't compete with an alleged computer code?

It seems that competitive success can be achieved in the league without needing user enjoyment, due to the new direct influence the GM and management have on its team’s success. The inverse to this idea, that enjoyment can be had even while not perceiving any achievable competitive success, is simply not true, at least not for the GMs who take on the responsibility of a team. This perspective was expressed well by one GM:

“It was hard to inject positivity into a team when we knew 10 games in that we wouldn’t make the post season and no one would get an award nomination. It made it feel like you shouldn’t care about a season when it just started.”
"I hated how much of a failure it would feel like when season after season you barely saw any improvement. It became really hard to sell the idea of anyone joining our team in FA because they knew they wouldn't even get good stats in FHM on a bad team. I signed a single FA in my 10 seasons as a GM and that was someone I was drafted with and traded away so they could try and win a cup. The amount of times I got told "Your pitch was great but I really want to win/go for an award/don't think the time is right" was frustrating at the best of times. I hated how much my Co-GM tried to slave away just to find the smallest bit of in game improvement. I think more than anything I hate how GMing started to feel like a real life job and not something I did for fun with friends." - @SpartanGibbles

Or, in far fewer words by @Acsolap,

“The main obstacle to enjoyment around the league is finding a parity solution. People get bored when the same few teams dominate the league”

Whether or not it was about time, effort, tech literacy, or sim knowledge, these perspectives sort of went beyond that, echoing the human aspect of the site that shows no one wants to sacrifice their enjoyment of the league to be a punching bag for the same teams again and again. If you aren’t willing to devote an excess amount of time and energy to either learn or exploit those systems, you’ll look for an alternative place than management (or perhaps the SHL as a whole) to spend your free time. Fair or not, that’s just bad business, and not sustainable in the long run.

“Most GMs won’t want to hear this, but the main challenge is that a small subset of management groups are way better than the rest. I respect the teams that work hard to be the best year-over-year, while also acknowledging that it’s hard to stay motivated when there’s a significant skill gap.” - @grok

In my observations and discussions, these feelings of struggling intensely to improve so little are largely blamed on some of the unforgiving complexities of FHM, rather than any individual or organization. Where Hamilton specifically bleeds into this sentiment, I think, is the perception that the management there exacerbates a hyper-competitive environment for the league, far beyond the capability of anyone who does not want to devote an exorbitant amount of time as a GM to succeed. If we expect all of our GMs to enter an arms race to 'git gud', or resign themselves to never getting over the Steelhawk Barrier (trademark pending) that realistically contains maybe three or four team’s management groups, then we will unsurprisingly see a lot of turnover in GM positions at the highest level, simply because those who are the ones who stick around have bought into the upped ante of grinding, or automating, test results.

This perceived attitude of 'win at all costs', either legitimately founded or projected onto some management groups in the league, bleeds into my next point…

Potential Cause 4: Other GMs/GM Chat

This one gets a bit spicy, so I’m going to preface this by saying I’ve kept all responses anonymous, even if the managers in these quotes gave me permission to cite them directly. This is one that caught me a bit off guard, as there was always the meme of “____ chat toxic”, or "_____ LR cancer”, but there were legitimate points of concern brought up by a number of GMs/Co-GMs who responded. Many of the points mirrored the above quotes in regards to the 'winning by any means' attitude, which is something that I think is an ideological quandary for the overarching intention league, that might be beyond the scope of this article. Who knows, maybe I’ll do a specific piece another day on league identity, and what users think the SHL is ideally supposed to be. In addition to these ideological objections, however, were concerns over attitudes that more… directly impacted potential management applications. I’m going to share a few quotes from different GMs and Co-GMs at the SHL level, and afterwards explain what pattern I personally observed from these quotes.

“This league is supposed to be fun, It’s supposed to be a hobby and a way for people to have enjoyment outside their real lives. The way certain people act in this league makes it feel like to succeed you have to treat this like a full-time job, which shouldn’t be the case.”

“There are GMs who will be rude and/or mean to other GMs just to ‘make a point’. This isn’t a secret, and a number of former GMs have said things to this effect publicly, and I do believe this is something that keeps people from wanting to apply.”

“The main challenge [to new/potential GMs] is other GMs and Co-GMs to be fair. We’ve seen all too many GM’s trying to beat down another GM (for instance by trying to ‘fleece’ them with a trade they know is bad value, by using exploits to their benefit or cheating, or by talking shit about other GMs in public) for their own benefit.”

“If you were to chart which GMs focus on winning… over locker room culture with those who are confrontational in GM chat, I think there would be a lot of overlap.”

"If I didn't love my room and was dedicated to my team, I probably would have left as a GM a long time ago, and I know [my Co-GM] shares the same sentiment. I dislike the politics of the job, the constant bickering and arguing over the same old bullshit. Yes, we get it you hate HAM, yes we get it you don't like X person, but I think it's time some people drop some of their petty bullshit and move on."

“Honestly I just didn’t like interacting with other GMs and coaches as a manager. Certain personalities are attracted to those jobs and while I totally get it, the relationship you develop with over 40 other site leaders is shockingly hateful and shitty most of the time. I got sick of the sniping and mocking and being a shithead and saw it as affecting my own personality.”

“It was fun for a time, but other GMs made it a lot less fun for me.”

"There needs to be a balance of other GMs being your peers as well as being your competition. Too many focus entirely on the latter, so it really doesn't feel worth your time to put up with them if you are someone here who wants a healthy community with the goal to have fun. It's why I haven't looked for a GM job since [leaving]. I can enjoy myself a lot more as a player where I can choose what team to play for and what LR to be in."
"I'm not sure if this is a more personal answer, but I think it answers your first question about why people don't stay as GMs and just make players instead, imo."

“[A] factor is definitely how balkanized the league has become, where people just stick to their own LRs and own teams, which I think is part of the reason it’s been difficult to hire new GMs with few applications as a result.”

“Some GMs seem to forget that this is a community, and we need everyone on board to keep the league healthy.”

“Many of them [SHL GMs] are some of the more revolting, selfish people I’ve met on the site, and nothing I’ve seen about the SHL GM job encourages pro-social behaviors that put doing right by your players and others in the community first.”

These eleven quotes came from ten different managers I talked to, and the majority (just over 50%) of the 30+ users with management experience I have, or will, quote in this article at least partially shared these opinions, to the point of it being worth mentioning to me specifically.
Intriguingly enough, this sentiment was largely devoted to the SHL, and NOT the SMJHL. There was a stark difference in GM responses when comparing their peers of SMJHL management to those in an SHL position, and members who got back to me with experience in both levels of management were even quicker to emphasize the difference in attitude between the groups. Some quotes from current or former SMJHL management who had experience at the SHL level as well:

“I enjoyed being an SMJHL GM because I like the people I was a GM with - I respected the other GMs and considered them friends. That level of congeniality is entirely absent in the SHL”.

“I’d like to go back [to management] at some point, I think. I don’t think I’d want to be a GM in the SHL though. The two leagues have very different management cultures and I much prefer the SMJHL”.

“In the J, these problems [Managerial culture], are far, far less apparent… I also think that SMJHL GMs make more of an attempt to build the locker room culture first as a priority over winning Cups, and I think that mentality carries over into GM chat, thus making GM chat a more enjoyable and positive place to be.”

“I’d definitely want to try GMing again at some point, but after having done it in the SHL, I feel like I would want to try and do it in the J.”

“Having done it [held a management position] in both leagues, I can confidently say that the interactions and personalities are night and day. The SMJHL is way, way better at embodying what the league should be… GMs (for the most part) just shooting the shit and helping build a great experience for their users together.”

These five quotes come from five different current or former managers, and overall I could compare the attitudes of managers from both leagues pretty reliably. If a member had GMed in the SHL at all, they were far more likely to comment negatively about Management-to-GM interaction. Those who had experience in both leagues often commented on liking the SMJHL manager culture better out of the two, and managers who only had SMJHL experience were largely positive about the environment, or did not mention or comment on anything positive or negative about the GM-to-GM interactions there. In part 1 of my article, I did observe that the vast majority of open positions in 2022 were at the SHL level, with far fewer positions opening in the SMJHL. While a recent change, the responses here might indicate that this is a developing trend. To sprinkle this hypothesis with a few grains of salt however, it would have to be a very recent trend with a small sample size (around S61-present), as the year prior, 2021, saw a whopping 26 management positions open for the SMJHL, far more than the SHL job postings that year (“only” 19 of them). Trend or not, however, it was noticeable to see the shift in site members’ perceptions on positive or negative peer interactions, depending on which environment they were/are in. This interesting dichotomy of the GM community between the SHL and SMJHL may highlight a direct correlation between the underlying philosophy of each league, and how that impacts user enjoyment, specifically a significant portion of the management population. Through these observations, the SMJHL, by its nature, is a mercurial developmental league akin to the junior leagues around the world, where they allow only a maximum five-year age gap in players before they graduate/move on. This environment encourages managers to accept the view that their focus should be on developing talent for the site, as well as being the main link to introducing new players to the league, and keeping new gens and ancient relics alike coming back through LR culture, engagement, and support. And this philosophy, through observation, simply makes those users in SMJHL management more fulfilled and happier, and more likely to stick around (if they can).

The SHL, by contrast, is a league that encourages maximum player development. Far more teams and TPE gaps is what makes the Challenge Cup one of the most difficult sim trophies to win, and apparently even more difficult to win now if you aren’t one of a handful of teams who have users with significant FHM skills and more free time on their hands. This encourages the philosophy of building dynasties and legacies above all else - why would it not? - as there is nowhere to go up from when you’re at the top. However, the ‘feast or famine’ level of success for some teams lately, combined with the increased imparity of FHM6 testing becoming so prevalent, has led to a feeling of stagnation in the senior league. The newer, harsher regression changes were specifically brought in to address this feeling, in hopes to expedite player peaks and create a more natural dynastic cycle of teams. SHL GMs who have the same philosophical focus as the SMJHL GMs - those who focus on engaging users and building the SHL community - can find themselves somewhat unfulfilled with the position. Once again, a healthy LR culture takes a lot more effort to maintain if teams keep running into a competitive barrier, one that appears to only be surmountable when the GM takes time and energy away from the team members to run a bunch of test sims. As seen by many of the replies, this is something that is discouraging people who want to be an impactful part of the site, and good at keeping users engaged and connected (literally the life of the league itself), away from the positions that put them in the best opportunity to do so.

Thank you again for reading part two of this article. I promise, the next one is the last part! I know this section has likely left some of you reading with a bitter taste in your mouths, so I would like to assure you that the next section is more positive in nature, and looks to the current changes, as well as a bit into the future, to see where the league is looking to address some of the potential causes of management struggles listed in this section. Hopefully, part 3 should be posted immediately after this article!

Thank you to Ham and Sulo for the sigs!

Rotti · 05-19-2022, 06:09 PM

Briedaqueduc · 05-19-2022, 06:10 PM

we need a 5th for league anyone available

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***Hallsy*** · 05-19-2022, 06:11 PM

we have a script? Hmm

Gooney · 05-19-2022, 06:13 PM

[Image: george-pickens-pittsburgh-steelers.gif]

ACapitalChicago · 05-19-2022, 06:44 PM

Part two is just as good, if not better, than part one. Really loving this so far!

S66 Damian Littleton

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ACapitalChicago · 05-19-2022, 06:45 PM

05-19-2022, 06:10 PMBriedaqueduc Wrote: we need a 5th for league anyone available

Is it worth re-downloading?

S66 Damian Littleton

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***WannabeFinn*** · 05-19-2022, 06:46 PM

Good read

***aleks*** · 05-19-2022, 07:03 PM

Hamilton steelhawks be like "executing hack!" Nerdge

***Inf1d3l*** · 05-19-2022, 07:03 PM

Fantastic article man

***hhh81*** · 05-19-2022, 07:19 PM

Snaps for this

Briedaqueduc · 05-19-2022, 07:20 PM

05-19-2022, 06:45 PMACapitalChicago Wrote:
05-19-2022, 06:10 PMBriedaqueduc Wrote: we need a 5th for league anyone available

Is it worth re-downloading?

well not really no its league in the end

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***bluesfan55*** · 05-19-2022, 08:44 PM

i was a co in the j for a couple seasonsish and i admittedly was not very good but i can attest to the camaraderie i felt with most if not all fellow j gms. i can't imagine how toxic the actual shl gm chat must be cause i've heard a lot of bad things about it

ty to @High Stick King @EvilAllBran and @Ragnar for the sigs

Waters · 05-20-2022, 01:12 AM

This is genuinely sad to read. I’m trying to put this in a way that isn’t overly harsh, but a lot of these quotes about why Hamilton is unbeatable are just not based in reality. They don’t sim from “dusk till dawn”, the GMs work during the day and play 5 hours straight of league with me and gooney at night. They don’t “force players to build a certain way”, players ask their GMs what they should put TPE in, which is extremely common practice. The script thing is genuinely close to izzy’s nefarious programmer in terms of wtf. I hope people stop quitting because of parity and recognize that, like grok put it, there’s a skill gap and they should introspectively figure out why it’s gotten so wide.

***Gwdjohnson*** · 05-20-2022, 02:21 AM

05-20-2022, 01:12 AMWaters Wrote: This is genuinely sad to read. I’m trying to put this in a way that isn’t overly harsh, but a lot of these quotes about why Hamilton is unbeatable are just not based in reality. They don’t sim from “dusk till dawn”, the GMs work during the day and play 5 hours straight of league with me and gooney at night. They don’t “force players to build a certain way”, players ask their GMs what they should put TPE in, which is extremely common practice. The script thing is genuinely close to izzy’s nefarious programmer in terms of wtf. I hope people stop quitting because of parity and recognize that, like grok put it, there’s a skill gap and they should introspectively figure out why it’s gotten so wide.

Very troubling read if so many people believe this. The general lack of diversity amongst cup winners is very much a valid problem, but YEESH some of these takes

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