How To Deploy a Game Console In the Office?

SkydiverFL writes "Does anyone have an idea for a good solution for using a game console (Xbox 360, PS3, etc.) with a laptop and / or external monitor? I am planning to set up each of my developers at the office with a shiny new Xbox 360, surround headphones, and Gold memberships. The only catch is that I have to do it 'gracefully.' I would be grateful for any input on the technical setup and politics (how to get it in and how to work through the politics)." Read on for further details on the situation. SkydiverFL continues, "Long story short, I am the MIS Manager / Lead Architect for a blue collar non-tech company. My team needs to be happy, but the folks in the rest of the office do not really understand what that means for the types of personalities that exist in our department. Even though my team is tucked away in a different part of the building, we do have clients and employees come back here from time to time. I cannot set a monitor on their desk. The console can be here, but it needs to be not so 'in your face.' Each developer currently has a maxed out Dell Latitude D830 laptop, docking station, and a wide screen 20" LCD. The LCD has a dual-input configuration — one for SVGA and one for DVI. The DVI port is in use by the laptop. It would be preferable not to feed the console directly into the monitor. We have employee monitoring software in use and need to track the usage of the console. So, it seems best to use a capture card along with some type of viewer utility. This would allow us to have a record of when and how long the console was used, in case anyone else in management ever has a problem.

Comments

you are wasting company money.

[DragonTHC]

productivity will tank.

you will look like a moron.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[prlucas]

Classy response.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[fat_mike]

I agree. Why not make up a proposal for one Xbox and a moderate sized TV? Tell your people they can only use it on breaks or during their lunch. Giving each person an Xbox is expensive and my boss would laugh me out of his office if he didn't fire me first.

Is this your first manager type job?

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is one opinion, and rather pathetic control freak one... Some people can actually ignore distractions when required and do their work. It can actually be a huge motivation to come to work and make the day go faster. If you have a goal to meet plus a reward when it is met it can improve productivity for the uninteresting tasks at hand.

If you are worried about people not working, then you have already lost, by either hiring bad or not putting people in positions they will excel. Folks find plenty of ways to burn time if they are not motivated, and recognizing that is important.

This may fail miserably, but not because it is a bad idea, but it must be done in a way that aligns with the culture.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Ethanol-fueled]

Limit game-playing to lunch and break times in a common or break area and have a trusted associate keep it in a locked cabinet otherwise. Have the same trusted associate manually enter the time played on the console. About keeping track of the minutes of console use: don't. What kind of control freak micromanages break activities?

Re:you are wasting company money.

[TooMuchToDo]

If your employees' productivity will tank by giving them an Xbox, you have poor employees who can't manage their time (and probably are already producing poorly).

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people can actually ignore distractions when required and do their work.

The rest of us post on Slashdot!

Re:you are wasting company money.

[n3tcat]

This from a guy posting on slashdot with a username of "toomuchtodo" There's irony afoot at the Circle K.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[strathmeyer]

This only says things about your productivity; maybe his employees aren't morons?

Re:you are wasting company money.

[karnal]

I was going to respond originally at the parent level, but I want to add to this post since it seems to make the most sense.

1. Put limits in for breaks/after hours only use.
2. Put the system in a place that other employees cannot get to.
3. Do not advertise the area to anyone but whom should know about it.

Those being said, a long long time ago I worked for a company that had a few tech people playing Age of Empires during lunch. In the beginning, they'd play after hours but over time it migrated into an hour+ long lunch time of having all of the on-site technicians playing. This caused a few problems I'll highlight:

1. The game was being played using company resources (computers) and utilized the company network.
2. There were instances where customers were turned away at lunch time because the employees claimed "break time."
3. Management had some approval on this, but high level management had no clue it was happening.

What I'm guessing happened is someone complained to the higher ups that they got turned away from support even though the techs were at their desks. You CANNOT show your customers that a game is more important than supporting the business.

In my opinion - if there are clear lines of support hours, then outside those "core hours" you could probably pull this off. During business? Well, I'd have to think unless it's an all or nothing (allowing ANY employee to use the systems during a break) you'll have severe people issues. And there's no amount of technology that will help you overcome a jealous employee.

Side note: Used to smoke. Building is smoke free, have to drive off the lot to smoke. Co-workers complain that the smokers get more break time because they take >15 minutes to get off property, chain smoke 2 and come back. Be all end all is that someone is always going to be pissed about something like this, and it's probably better off without even having the option to play games during business hours.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[DrEldarion]

Tell that to Google, who has consoles, arcade games, pool tables, foosball, swimming pools, and just about everything else you can imagine. They seem to be doing okay as a company.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[tzhuge]

This may fail miserably, but not because it is a bad idea, but it must be done in a way that aligns with the culture.

It most certainly does not align with the 'culture' of any kind of functional workplace, so I think it's perfectly appropriate to call it what it is, a bad idea. As your said, distractions or no distractions, motivated employees work better. Not every one is motivated by the employer giving them a perk. No way is a whole group of non-clones going to all be motivated by getting their own console at work. Personally, I would question my manager's judgment and consequently lose motivation. Hell, I don't think anyone would gain any kind of sustained motivation out of something like a game console. It seems to me that this guy asking the question doesn't understand the personalities in his own department either. Of course maybe they really are a bunch of people barely in the real world and also happen to share the exact same obsession with video games. The only reward that is likely to be welcomed by a diverse group of people is vacation time or cash bonuses.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[omeomi]

Or nobody will use them because they know they are being monitored. The summary says usage will be tracked...it's like some sort of sick science experiment. Here's a game system, but we're going to monitor your usage. Oh, and the Company execs may be egainst the whole idea, so next time layoffs come around, the guy who plays the most games loses his job. Brilliant. Why not just hand out the game systems as bonuses, and let them bring them home?

Re:you are wasting company money.

[RulerOf]

As an IT professional, I have to say you show a lot of insight into this kind of situation.

I occasionally play video games on the clock--won't lie. But then, so does the rest of the IT department. Gaming is not exactly condoned in our environment, and the boss explicitly states that you do it at your own risk. The difference between our environment and the one you highlight though, is that gaming on the clock has to be treated the same way as casual web browsing. If, during the course of your game, you're needed, you drop what you're doing and take care of it, consequences of the game be damned.

It's the breaking of that rule that can really cause a problem in a way that is definitely hazardous to company productivity. After all, you're not being paid to game, much in the same fashion others aren't being paid to smoke, browse the web, or call their spouse.

On the whole though, overlooking something like that can help increase employee morale... but there are some people and some cases where you cannot.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[CastrTroy]

Company seems to be doing ok. However, they seem to be producing very little in terms of new products for the sheer number of people there. People probably thought Nortel was doing pretty good when their stock price was $120 and they had all the same perks. I'm sure it will come back to bite them in a couple years.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[flithm]

I work for IBM, and we have a bunch of PS3's, ping pong, pool tables, shuffle board, fooseball, etc., that people can play whenever they want.

No it doesn't hurt productivity, in fact quite the opposite. Sometimes you just need to decompress, go do a few laps around a track, shoot a few balls, or get in some socializing with co-workers over a friendly game of ping pong.

The motto at IBM is that management trusts their employees. As long employees get their work done who cares what people are doing or when they're doing it!

You can just as easily slack off at your desk as you can in front of a game console. What people notice is results, and happy people produce better results.

I don't think you need to give every developer a console, and I think that would ruin a perfectly good opportunity to create more social interaction. Put all the games in common areas where people can gather.

I've solved more problems while chatting with colleagues on a break than I could begin to count.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Kugrian]

Why not make up a proposal for one Xbox and a moderate sized TV? ... Giving each person an Xbox is expensive

Agreed. One is probably too few, but enough so they'll be a spare controller slot for each employee. Playing in close quarters should (hopefully) improve team skills.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[rarel]

What kind of control freak micromanages break activities?

You've obviously never met Terry Tate *shudders*

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is made up of over acheiving programmers that work an excess of 55+ hours a week. Comparing google to a blue collar non-tech company is as dumb as this idea

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Grimbleton]

If I'm at my desk and on lunch, and someone comes to me, I tell them to shove off too.

My lunch = my time.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Bodrius]

I don't think even Google has a *private game console for each engineer*. For good reasons, all companies I know of use rec areas, and communal games, for these things.

Seriously, I'd have to agree it sounds like a bad idea. As fun as it sounds, I couldn't help but see it as a waste of the company's money. Even if everyone has good self-discipline and no one spends half their time playing instead of working - there is no good reason to think this will increase productivity commesurate to the cost and risks:

- 1+ Consoles on a COMMUNAL area (usually Good Idea): it acts as a nerd watercooler / smoking room. People take breaks, relax, chat and play games together. Increases morale and helps team building with a (relatively) cheap, *flat* cost.
Also tends to self-regulate by social pressure: the guy who plays games all day instead of working will be noticeable to his peers (who would be picking up the slack if he goes on).

- 1 Console FOR EACH Team member (Bad Idea): people take breaks and play games by themselves - or with their usual online group. Increases morale, but at a relatively high cost *per head* - that adds up over time. You'd also need monitoring, hardware setup per office, etc. so this is part of your 'new team member' logistical overhead.
Perhaps more important, you don't get any of the expected side benefits: no team-building, because team members don't need to interact with each other if they have their own console online. And the one guy who does play games all day instead of working is not obvious to his peers - until it is too late to prevent the damage (or worst case, repair it).

So best case, this may be a way to buy individual worked morale - at a higher cost and the risk of reducing your team's interactions outside work meetings. It begs the question of whether this is the most efficient way to buy that morale.

Worst case - just a couple incidents of privilege abuse by one employee could erase whatever morale and productivity gains this approach had - and if you need to take the consoles away due to cost-reductions / abuse, the morale will be even worse than before.

E.g.: Having your boss "take away your console" because "Billy didn't finish his hom...ehem... *work*" sounds profoundly demotivating - it reduces the employee to the status of a grounded teenager, on the company's eyes, and their own.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[certain death]

I don't work for Google, but I work WAY more than 55 hours a week...I don't play games tho, so maybe I should STFU! Anyway...if people have something to pull them away from work on occasion, it is a good thing, if it takes a game console to do that, so be it, but you WILL undoubtedly have some who abuse it.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[KZigurs]

Make it even simpler - a bad-ass TV, a console or two [or three, althou wii is ... not as interesting in long run - had my personal in the office for a while] and a fixed budget for games that team can wote on how to spend on. No Strings Attached.
If you have a slack moment at 11AM - fine, have a 30 minute break at GT with half the office guiding you trought the line. If you have a spare minute at 4:30pm - brilliant, show us how your tekken skills are doing. And then, maybe, get back to your desk for that all-nighter making sure your T/SQL is perfect.
Any condition implies distrust. Any distrust clearly spells out: "so what that there is a deadline tomorrow noon, they don't trust me to know what I do, so I stick to 8 hours".
Small things (from a budgeting perspective - bad-ass setup is what - 1/10th of small-sized teams' payroll?) goes a long way. Do not fuck it up by conditions. If you are in any sense concerned that it will be abused - you have already failed. Badly.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[JudicatorX]

Except it's on a saturday. Not all companies expect people to work 170 hours a week...

Re:you are wasting company money.

[karnal]

While I don't disagree that your lunch is your time, there are expectations in larger business environments that this kind of attitude would not tolerate. I've not worked for smaller companies full time - however, I do have a side business doing small network cabling and computer support.

Long and short of it is that if you want to keep your job and your customers, you do the best you can to not tell them to shove off. I've had small business customers that I'd rather not have done business with - but I tolerate them because they do make me money and every small business knows other small businesses. References are king. I've learned long ago that I'm not the only person out there that can do my job, so I do it the best I can 100% of the time - even if that means that I only get a few minutes for lunch every now and again.

I've learned too that if you do want to truly have an uninterrupted lunch, you don't stay at your cubicle/place of employment. Ever eat lunch at a company cafeteria? While that can be good for getting the whole team to get together with non-work related chat, it can get pulled back to work with the statement "I know you're eating lunch but..."

Re:you are wasting company money.

[SilverJets]

Add to that, that he'll probably get fired as well. Someone will see all the Xboxes and complain that one department is playing games on company time. There will be no way to logically justify it to the higher up bean counters.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[SilverJets]

Yeah but that stuff is available to the ENTIRE company. Big difference between telling every single employee in the company to enjoy the games, etc. than giving Xboxes to ONE department. As soon as someone from another department sees that, he is toast. There will be no justifying it to the higher ups.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[easyTree]

Uhh.. maybe they're game developers?

Re:you are wasting company money.

[theeddie55]

a non-tech company with game developers, now that would be interesting.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[theeddie55]

Unless they're developing board games, which negates the need for a games console anyway.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[fortapocalypse]

"No way is a whole group of non-clones going to all be motivated by getting their own console at work."

Agreed. I personally would think that anyone who tried to pull off such a stunt should be and will be fired. It would be acceptable to have a shared game area, but not have each employee have their own console.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[philspear]

I like it how everyone assumes they know the corporate structure and atmosphere of this anonymous company which appears to have at least one manager thinking outside of the box. No, you're right, it's 100 percent sure that his boss is an idiot who is going to lay him off because of this. And there's absolutely no way he ran this past anyone else first who signed off on it.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[cailith1970]

Bingo! Last place I worked we had a ping pong table set up (small company). We found that most of us played ping pong at lunch time, it was a great way to decompress. But it was also a fantastic way of not only the development team to bond, but also the support team, because we all played together. It was the single best way to cross team boundaries and get us to actually become a single "team" rather than just a dev and support team.

It wasn't even intended, we just found this old pong table when we moved premises, and the bosses wouldn't have believed the productivity gains they got from it.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[elrous0]

I gather that a lot of the services at Google (stuff like free laundry, a cafeteria, etc.) are there as a not-so-subtle hint that they expect you to work a lot longer hours than just 9-5. It's not their way of saying "Hey, we're laid back" so much as saying "We expect you to almost live here." Personally, I'd rather work an 8-hour day and pay for my own damn laundry and food.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Jack9]

This is the setup we have.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[MMInterface]

It most certainly does not align with the 'culture' of any kind of functional workplace

That's not entirely accurate. It would align with the culture in a tech company who's products are related to digital entertainment or gaming. I have seen consoles in people's offices and in lounge areas. The idea was to create an environment at the work place that would keep the employees comfortable and give them less reasons to leave the office. The same can be said about some of the companies that provide Starbucks coffee machines in their break rooms. Most likely this guys workplace just isn't the right fit for this kind of perk, especially if he wants to hide it from customers.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[i_ate_god]

It most certainly does not align with the 'culture' of any kind of functional workplace

That's not entirely accurate. It would align with the culture in a tech company who's products are related to digital entertainment or gaming. I have seen consoles in people's offices and in lounge areas. The idea was to create an environment at the work place that would keep the employees comfortable and give them less reasons to leave the office. The same can be said about some of the companies that provide Starbucks coffee machines in their break rooms. Most likely this guys workplace just isn't the right fit for this kind of perk, especially if he wants to hide it from customers.

These are the offices I'm most afraid of. If I find out that the office has on site showers, I run for the hills. I need my life outside of the office and would rather the office not try to be my second home.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[easyTree]

a non-tech company with game developers, now that would be interesting.

I'm starting to suspect that reading the summary would be beneficial :S

Re:you are wasting company money.

[easyTree]

Agreed. I personally would think that anyone who tried to pull off such a stunt should be and will be fired.

Keep an eye on 'Ask Slashdot'. In the immediate future you may see an entry along the lines of "My subordinate has spent his budget on games consoles; now none of *his* subordinates ever do any work; What flavour of punishment would be most suitable?"

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Bensam123]

I agree. What we have here seems to be old business practices vs new, better, business practices.

Old bosses still believe employees should slave away at their desk for the entire 8 hours, taking a 15 min lunch break instead of the whole hour is the right thing to do, any distraction will 'tank productivitiy' so you stare at your clock for a good half hour before the answer comes to you, employees are akin to children and have absolutely no time management skills so they have to manage them theirself.

New bosses believe in their employees and was said in the posts above, look for the results rather then the method. Most employees know that if they don't work they'll get fired. If they're overly unproductive then that is the end result and they get fired. They dont believe in the illusional perfect employee and know that they're people, just like them.

I agree though, giving every employee a console is a bad idea. Not because you're giving every single one a console, but because you aren't encouraging socializing. You know how many places you have to socialize after you leave school (college or high school)? Bars and work. Friends usually start to mellow out as they get their own families and lives. It can really brighten your day if you get to spend part of it talking to others and maybe some of that talk will relate to that half hour problem... which is then cut down to 10 mins.

Socializing produces amazing results and productivitiy. Never underestimate the importance of morale.

Now, unlike the above posters I work for a company every summer, a very small company. It has two full time employees, one part time depending on workload, 'the boss', and me during the summer.

The boss is a no show and one of those that believes after they setup a good system they don't need to do anything, but reap the rewards and come in once in awhile to do administrative work.

Which leaves one of the full time employees to do all the work they're supposed to and part of the bosses workload as they either expect them to do the work or they get pushed into doing it over the phone.

Now he has a computer, his desk, a window(!!!!) the usual setup. Nothing outside of the ordinary and makes the day slow as hell. He comes around and talks all the time when he has nothing better to do or is bored. I found out that he used to play games of some sorts so I decided to hook him up with a copy of Flight Simulator X and a joystick for his birthday.

Now our talks everyday usually include where he was and is flying to and what aircraft he is using. Keep in mind the sort of work we do is pretty straightforward and easy to finish when you're on task.

The thing about Flight Simulator, sims in general compared to other games, is you can just let them go and don't require that much interaction. He actually uses the game as a screen saver while he is working becaues it takes time to get somewhere and if you've seen how scenic FSX is, it's a very good dynamic wallpaper that changes.

If you're that concerned about tanking productivity, just start them out with a simulator. It's quite a bit better then working at your desk, but doesn't grab your attention nearly as much as something like a FPS.

I would have to disagree, the company that had people playing AoE at lunch time would be amazing. Even if they go over their lunchtime a bit, miniture lan parties like that will shoot your morale, productivity, and comraderie through the roof. I can almost guarentee they didn't take breaks for the rest of the day if that was at lunch time and I'm sure they didn't before that. Going to work is a drag and usually there isn't much of anything to look forward to in the day.
Regardless of motivation, being excited to go to work each day is something rather... extrodinary.

I would also like to point out that if you're on break, regardless of playing games or sipping coffee while browsing slashdot, you aren't required by any means to help customers. I guess that's why you have a break area so it doesn't look like anyones home.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[raju1kabir]

If I find out that the office has on site showers, I run for the hills.

If I find out that the office doesn't have showers, it means I will stink all day after cycling to work, so I look for a different job.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[onionlee]

Plus, I'm pretty sure that communal console will promote more casual gaming to relieve stress, etc. On the other hand, personal consoles will more than likely lead to a few people getting into the realm of obsessive gaming. And if I need to tell you why that is a bad idea in terms of productivity, you shouldn't be managing. Or posting on /. >_>

Re:you are wasting company money.

[raju1kabir]

I agree though, giving every employee a console is a bad idea. Not because you're giving every single one a console, but because you aren't encouraging socializing.

+1 Insightful

Re:you are wasting company money.

[HangingChad]

It most certainly does not align with the 'culture' of any kind of functional workplace...

Thank you, Mr. Conventional Wisdom. I've had video games in the office with few problems. In the old days, we'd have a frag fest after hours and we played another team game called Netrek. We still got our work done.

And I'm going to have a game consoles in the new office. Planned on having it in by now but I had to slide it two quarters due to budget issues. Ping pong, foosball, Wii...as long as we're hitting our production deadlines and I can make my numbers nobody's questioning my judgment.

In my first couple months I managed to slash production and licensing costs while shortening delivery schedules. So, right now, with the numbers I'm putting up, if I wanted to install a brothel and could convince them it was legal, I could probably get away with it.

I don't want to hire people limited by old-style, conventional development methodologies. We couldn't find a framework that was just right for one of our projects, so the guys wrote one. Those are the kind of people I like working with. If you want someone who thinks out of the box, why would you want to hire someone comfortable in a box?

Re:you are wasting company money.

[PachmanP]

No you help them quickly then when you get back to work you count all the time before you were interrupted as work time and you proceed to take your lunch break. Repeat until quitting time. If nobody interrupts you, well you were "on call" so that doesn't count as lunch time either.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[rtb61]

The description makes the employees sound like a bunch of lawyer accounting types coming up with new and imaginative ways of of screwing billions of dollars out of the government, hmm, I thought the normal perks in that case were drugs and hookers, yow, I don't think game consoles are really going to cut it ;).

Re:you are wasting company money.

[91degrees]

Google are successful because they have the world's most popular search engine and revenue based directly off that. They'd be raking in the money if they insisted that their programmers wore suits and sung company songs.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[westlake]

Tell that to Google, who has consoles, arcade games, pool tables, foosball, swimming pools, and just about everything else you can imagine. They seem to be doing okay as a company.
.
wretched excess is the sign of a bubble about to burst.

The productivity of the geek may be difficult to measure. but there is something to be said for not putting temptation in his path.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[aliquis]

Or a projector to make it easier for everyone else to follow the action if their is some competition night / guitar hero style gaming and so on.

Or he could just let a couple of PSPs/DSs lay around at the sofas / whatever in the lounge / dinner room.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[dangitman]

These are the offices I'm most afraid of. If I find out that the office has on site showers, I run for the hills. I need my life outside of the office and would rather the office not try to be my second home.

But the truth is that you don't take showers at home either, and you're simply afraid of washing, isn't it?

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Firehed]

170 hours a week? I should certainly hope not. Then again, if you work for a company where that's physically possible, then it can't bother you too much since you have access to the company time machine.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[stephanruby]

I'm sure I'll be modded down for saying this, but gamers are usually the worst developers/IT personnel (although, I do agree that gamers are the most likely to enter our field). This move would only attract more gamers to your company. And by gamers, I mean people who play computer games at home every night.

That being said, I'm not speaking about the Techie who occasionally plays computer games once in a blue moon. And I'm not talking about the Techie who occasionally makes computer games (usually I find, there is a difference between the person who makes computer games and the person who constantly plays computer games).

Re:you are wasting company money.

[GrayNimic]

I interned in an office for two summers where the company culture was to play Quake. It was a small company, ~11 people. Most days during/after lunch, the entire office would engage in a deathmatch (usually about 20-30 minutes). For stress reliever / brain refresher / break, people would engage in smaller deathmatchs throughout the day (typically 1 or 2 people, in the afternoon). Sometimes people would have a game in the evening. It didn't tank productivity, it helped productivity. It gave people a simple, easily accessible, well-accepted method to take a break in the small, cramped office, and provided a way for people to bond over something besides shop-talk. People made sure to put in at least an 8-hour day aside from the Quake play (ie play an hour of quake, stay an extra hour late, etc) and it would often lead to very long days for some, in a good way - that "evening deathmatch" tended to result in people thinking of ways to solve problems they'd been dealing with, and so they'd go back to work afterward to either note down the idea or to implement it. I only ever saw the system abused by one other person, another intern the second summer. They were there to pay back a debt (broke something of someone's), and had little interest in the job, so they played Quake single-player all day for a while. They got some firm talks from the boss a couple times and things improved a little, but .... The point is, this kind of system only works if you have employees that will 1) benefit from it and 2) not abuse it. When it's good, it's great. But if it's a bad match, it can tank the office. Just make sure it's a good match.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[PitaBred]

I'd think the Wii would be a better idea. It's got many more games that are multiplayer on the same console, as well as games that are designed for shorter session play. A 10-15 minute game of Mario Kart or Wii Sports bowling or whatever with your co-workers is easy to do, whereas you can't do that with most PS3/360 games as far as I know.

But overall, I agree with your suggestion... a single break space that isn't in the workstation is the best idea, and it'd cost a lot less overall.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[tzhuge]

Thank you, Mr. dotcom Wisdom?

I'm sorry but I find your post incredibly disingenuous. There is no way you really believe that what distinguishes your 'unconventional development methodologies' from 'conventional development methodology' is the perks. You yourself said you could put in the brothel and 'get away with it'. Have you considered that maybe that's exactly what spending company money on game consoles is? Something you get away with, and not something that actually contributes to making your numbers, or making your team happy. Have you considered that maybe 'the guys' enjoyed the challenge of writing the framework, and they didn't go the extra mile because there are video games at work (and the company paid for it... certainly it's impossible to game with co-workers on someone's personal property)? You really want to defend a culture of perks as the key to your success?

I'm going to propose the crazy idea that maybe, just maybe, you can create a fun, casual, and flexible workplace without spending company money on game consoles. Oh, and conversely, you can buy all the game consoles you want for a code-mill and still not create a fun and creative workplace.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[HangingChad]

I'm sorry but I find your post incredibly disingenuous.

You're fired.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Blakey Rat]

You don't need more than maybe 2 game consoles per floor. At most. Where I worked, there was one Xbox 360 for a 4-story office building on a nice big TV, and it's not like people were waiting in line to play. (Of course, there was also ping-pong and foozball.)

Plus, with just one console and a big TV, you get to play split-screen multiplayer games which could build teamwork.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[theNAM666]

Somehow this reminds me of the week that LinuxCare instituted a policy that all employees were expected to shower at least once weekly...

Re:you are wasting company money.

[LBt1st]

"I know you're eating lunch but..."

And then I say, "Sure I'll get right on it once I'm clocked in."
If they have a problem with that I'm happy to remind them of CA state laws.
It is illegal to make an employee work off the clock.
It is illegal to not provide a 30-minute or longer meal time during a shift which is 6 hours or more.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Taint Bearer]

We have a Wii at my work, and it is very easy to have a quick game against someone in a 10 min break. Its just set up with a LCD TV set off to the side of the lunch room, and is very non-intrusive.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[maharg]

You CANNOT show your customers that a game is more important than supporting the business.

These guys are *developers*. I usually find that routing support issues to the *support* team is the most effective way to get them resolved.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[passthecrackpipe]

Ah, so not only do you have a horribly skewed idea on how to create and manage a productive team, you are also one of those weird people that fire anybody that disagrees with you. You are not smart, clever or intelligent, you are simply a dumbass with delusions of cluefullness.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[geoskd]

These are the offices I'm most afraid of. If I find out that the office has on site showers, I run for the hills. I need my life outside of the office and would rather the office not try to be my second home.

I used to work at a place that had all the perks... Gym and game room in the building, showers, the whole 9 yards. It made a big difference when waiting for a 2 hour compile / simulation run to finish. I understand that these days, that isn't so much of a concern, but having something to do while waiting made it easier to handle the need for long hours when they occurred. On a side note, there is nothing so embarrassing as having your ass beaten severely at basketball by a bunch of middle aged Caucasian and Asian engineers...

The point that I am getting at was that the company understood that making things happen at work was about keeping the troops productive, and that was a lot more likely when everyone knew each other in more than just a cube-farm mentality. While I was there, we never missed a deadline, and we were almost always the first to market with our products. Qual generally went quickly and effectively. I can't imagine that much has changed, the company is still around, and still putting out top notch products.

-=Geoskd

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Grimbleton]

You don't have to have an 'attitude' to be able to tell someone to shove off.

You can do it in the absolute most sweetest way, make them think you're happy to be helping them some other time, and still be thinking "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!"

But hey, I'm glad you'll never be my manager. You sound like a dick. Leave your employees alone on lunch, ffs.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[porcupine8]

Any condition implies distrust. Any distrust clearly spells out: "so what that there is a deadline tomorrow noon, they don't trust me to know what I do, so I stick to 8 hours".

Definitely. I just heard about some "revolutionary" new book (Work Sucks or something like that?) that suggests letting employees 100% set their own hours, as long as the work gets done it doesn't matter when. The comments about it were all kind of in awe - and I'm thinking, uh, this is how it's worked in academia pretty much forever. And the professors I know are just about the most productive people you could possibly imagine. Is it really taking business this long to figure this out? As long as the work gets done, why does it matter what time people come or go, play video games or write a report?

Re:you are wasting company money.

[xrobertcmx]

Odd. I currently run a small shop, and we have pretty much the run of the place and complete freedom so long as the work gets done and we aren't browsing porn on the company internet (webfilters are the only check they have on us). When I took over I didn't change anything that had been in place, and one of the oddities was that games and movies are allowed. So it isn't uncommon to find movies being watched late in the week, and the occasional multi-player match of Supreme Commander or the like. We've even had someone bringing in a PS3 or Xbox 360 on Friday. But Monday - Wed when the work needs to be done, you won't see any of that. Also if a request comes down the pipe on the down days everything else gets dropped. We also don't provide the consoles. More then anything else, I think the downtime, and the fact that the guys know this is a privilege that can vanish, is in and of itself the motivator. Not the games or the chance to sit in an office being payed to watch DVR'ed shows. As long as productivity and quality stay high I won't change a thing. (I do enforce one rule, keep it clean and keep it legal. No NC17 or pirated material in the office, period) and this isn't my first gig, just the most relaxed. We also have almost 0 employee turnover, do you know how that looks at the end of the year?

Re:you are wasting company money.

[macwhiz]

Customers turned away by employees who were on their lunch break?

In the U.S., depending on the state, that could be a legal obligation of the company. For instance, in New York, most day-shift employees are entitled to a half-hour lunch break sometime between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. during which time their employer may not permit them to work. The employee cannot waive this. It's part of the state Labor Law. It even applies to salaried workers and managers.

If the company needs to serve customers during the lunch hour, it's on the employer to make sure they're staffed adequately so that they have people who aren't on lunch break to provide that service.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[pianoman19403]

Just get a decent lcd projector, an xbox, and a surround sound system and put it in the break room.
Let everyone know that anyone can play, as long as your on your break.
Its fair, cost effective, and the fact that its in a common area will help prevent people from abusing it.

Any developer worth their salary will tell you that sometimes you just need to walk away from your computer for a few minutes to clear your mind.

You will find that it encourages developers and staff in other departments to mingle together.
Thats what my company does.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[karnal]

And then I say, "Sure I'll get right on it once I'm clocked in."

I applaud you for that; that's a much better answer than shove off.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Blakey Rat]

Well, nobody says it had to be co-op, it could just be multiplayer. I learned a lot more about my colleagues at my last company from playing Call of Duty 2 at lunch than I ever would have during work hours.

That said, Xbox 360 has a decent co-op selection, although you're right that there's a lot of games that should have co-op but don't for whatever reason. The most popular co-op game we had before I left was Rainbow 6: Vegas.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Rary]

Not every one is motivated by the employer giving them a perk. ... The only reward that is likely to be welcomed by a diverse group of people is vacation time or cash bonuses.

Absolutely.

The company I work for emphasizes the balance between work and life. One should enjoy their work, and want to do it, but should also enjoy their life, and want to participate in it as well.

I don't think it does any good to try to tip the scales in favour of work by providing perks in the workplace. If you want to reward your employees, treat them to something that enhances their life outside of work.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[sumdumass]

IT's probably more like

"My subordinate has spent his budget on games consoles; now none of *his* subordinates ever do any work; How do you tell your wife that you have to fire her brother?" Or maybe, "how do you tell your boss that you need to terminate his nephew". I somehow think that the type of balls he is showing by spending the company's money (which can cause problems with investors) on something like this can only be had from someone with connections and little fear of losing their job.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[sumdumass]

Perhaps you should think about driving to work or putting a motor on your cycle.

When I owned my business, if I had to offer showers and such for employees, I would charge them for the use in the way of reduced pay. Your probably going to find that driving to work will get you a hirer pay which will give you the opportunity to ride your bike at other times.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[sumdumass]

If you was working for me, all your time would soon become your time. I don't hire people for their convenience. Although if your lunch is interrupted, you will get the time back or the opportunity to take it again (even if that means your on lunch for 1 hour longer then you should be). But when an employee decides that their time is more important then company time while at the company, they will soon find themselves at another company.

You should keep that in mind when telling people to shove off. If your getting away with it now, you have a boss that is a lot more tolerant then me or any I have worked for.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[sumdumass]

Does the law say when the 30 minutes or longer has to be during a shift longer then 6 hours?

I don't think it does. So as long as they allow you to take your lunch later or at a different time, then I'm not sure you have to much to stand on. If your taking your lunch after 4 hours (halfway through an 8 hour day), who is to say that it can't wait until 5 hours or 5 1/2 hours if need be?

Re:you are wasting company money.

[sumdumass]

The problem is that the law says between 11am and 2pm.

So if I take lunch at 11am, 15 minutes into the time something happens requiring my attention (something broke, a customer has a problem that only I can deal with, an employee walked out or got injured, whatever may happen), as long as I can get the 30 minutes some time before 2pm, the company would still be in compliance with the law.

Just because you have a scheduled time doesn't mean that time is set in stone as long as the letter of the law is obeyed. This is where use of a law seems to fail people's interpretations of the law. In CA and a few other states, the laws are similar in that a shift over 6 hours will get the employee either a 30 minute or 60 minute lunch but it almost always gives a "window" of when that will be.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[sumdumass]

No, your completely off on this. People do certain things in certain environments better then others. Changing the environment can and often does change how productive they are or can be. Try studying with the TV on... Now ask a bunch of others to do it and see how productive they become.

I know plenty of people who do just fine until certain distractions get introduced. This could be a number of things and isn't indicative of anything specific like an Xbox but it is readily seen with them. There are plenty of kids who are/were A students until they started getting distracted by games or the TV or something. I know two kids that within 6 months of getting an Xbox for their birthday, went from A's to C's and D's. After their time on the console was limited (and removed for a short period of time), they returned to A's. Of course if you ask them, they were being punished, if you ask their parents, their distractions were being limited.

But this isn't limited to just kids. I have employed web filtering and proxy services at several sites that stop employees from going to yahoo games or Popcap games and the productivity of the office increased by 35% or better in most environments (not to mention that repairs and service needs slowed too). I have seen things as simple and innocent but necessary as construction going on in offices that have decreased productivity. Look what happens when the fire department gets called to the building across the street and there are enough windows that the employees see the fire truck in the road. There is a reason that office cubicles block your forward and side views. And that reason isn't so you have a place to hand a picture of the family cat.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Mr. Slippery]

When I owned my business, if I had to offer showers and such for employees, I would charge them for the use in the way of reduced pay.

Did you also charge employees who drove to work for the use of parking spaces? Or are you just hostile to people who bike?

If it's big a deal to you, put in a coin-op shower. Then you can literally nickel-and-dime your employees.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Cederic]

Good to see you living up to your name.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[DerWulf]

It's a mistake to think that those two people needed the games to waste time or would have worked if they couldn't play. I think the OP is overshooting a little with giving everyone their own console but still monitoring their play time. I'd set it up in communal area and judge peoples productivity by their output. If somebody pulls their weight while playing quake 6 hours a day why should anyone care.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[raju1kabir]

You're probably going to find that pointlessly alienating cyclists (or any other segment of the labour pool) will give you lower-quality staff, as you have fewer of them to choose from.

Also, showers are cheaper than parking spaces.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[LBt1st]

Actually it does but I forget the details. I think it has to be before 6 hours in an 8 hour shift but I could be wrong.
Your also required two 10 breaks. These are not required to be paid breaks although most employers pay you anyway.

Again this is in the state of CA. Also, this stuff does not apply to IT positions and several others. If your sitting on your ass all day then no, you are not entitled to all of this stuff.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[sumdumass]

Nice stretch of reality there but it is a totally different scenario. The drivers, as well as the bikers are perfectly fine parking their vehicles of choice in the parking lot. It's when they decide that I need to provide them with something extra because of a choice they made outside the working environment that warrants the charge.

If it's big a deal to you, put in a coin-op shower. Then you can literally nickel-and-dime your employees.

How about I don't put in a shower at all and expect employees to practice personal hygiene of that nature outside the work place.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[sumdumass]

Is that the best you can come up with? Lol.. Do you actually think attempting to attack me over a moniker I picked on my own is going to do anything but make you look stupid?

Serious dude, if you got something to worth saying, say it. You shouldn't need to use personal attacks to do that unless there is something wrong with what you want to say.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[sumdumass]

Your probably going to find that making unreasonable demands on your employer limits your opportunities of employment.

This isn't singling anyone out pointlessly. It is simply saying that everyone needs to take care of their personal hygiene of this nature in their own space. If you expect me to provide it, then expect to either pay for it or work somewhere else.

As for limiting the staffing pool, well, there isn't that many people who bike to work in my area. The impact isn't going to be that great.

Also, showers are cheaper than parking spaces.

That's not a valid argument. Zoning codes require X amount of parking spaces based on the size of the building, type of business, number of employees and so on. It doesn't matter who bikes to work, the required minimum amount of parking spaces will be there regardless. More often then not, the parking lots are larger then they need to be because once you deal with the setback requirements and all, your limited in the size of the building for the lot.

Of course you can get variances but parking is really hard to bend away from unless the building is old enough to be grandfathered in. I remember one location in which our Use unit for Zoning regulations was limited (even though the zone allowed the business type) because the property we purchased had limited parking. It took 6 months to get a variance and we had to buy a half lot next door and tear the outbuilding on it down to come up with another 16 parking spot to get it. Other area might treat it differently but on new builds (something where you would have a choice in the number of parking spaces), it is set in the zoning codes which make the arguemnt of how many paring spots a bicycle take up pointless.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[Mr. Slippery]

Nice stretch of reality there but it is a totally different scenario...It's when they decide that I need to provide them with something extra because of a choice they made outside the working environment that warrants the charge.

No, it's not a totally different scenario. Choosing to drive a car to work (rather than walk or take public transit or a taxi) is just as much a "choice they made outside the working environment" as choosing to bike to work. (Presuming your employees don't work in the parking lot.)

If you're willing to "provide [drivers] with something extra" by providing parking without charge, and to only provide facilities (less expensive than a parking space, considering land and maintenance) to bikers if you charge them, that shows you're just hostile to people who bike. Got it.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[sumdumass]

Well, that's interesting. I was thinking that as long as you got the break within a time window, it wouldn't matter if that break got interrupted or not. Of course you would have to get the entire time in one block so if your lunch was interrupted after 10 minutes, you would still get 30 minutes when it resumed.

In my state (Ohio), the minor child labor laws state that a minor must have a 30 minute break after 4 consecutive hours of working and cannot work more then 6 hours on a school day, 8 hours on a non-school day 10 hours during a designated school break defined as more then 5 consecutive days off from school and in all cases they cannot work more then 20 or 25 hours a week including the breaks (it's been a while since I employed minors or worked along side them so this might have changed in the last 10 or so years and I could be remembering something wrong).

That is pretty specific in timing except that if the break is after 2 hours, then the next four hours in a 6 hour shift is covered already. The breaks can come at any time as long as they don't work more then 4 hours without one. This allows a window and flexibility to when they need their breaks which makes managing them little easier. I think there is a 10 minute break after two hours part to the rule too.

Those can be paid or unpaid too but I would assume that the 10 minutes would be difficult on the wage tracking.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[sumdumass]

You don't understand, I'm not providing the employees who drive or ride the bus or whatever with something extra. I am forced by law to have parking spaces and if I were to allocate some of them to bicycle parking, I would already be providing something extra or at minimum, the same. The opportunity is there for them, it isn't my fault if they don't take it up.

The Zoning laws require a certain amount of parking for the building based on a number of things including it's use, the square footage and so on. There is also a requirement by law to have a loading dock if it is over a certain size. Some older building will have a variance grandfathered in but all this is besides the point.

When I hire someone, their transportation to and from work and their personal hygiene is their responsibility. However they choose to do that is up to them. Once they arrive, they are to clock in (or sign in) and work even if that work is the act of preparing to work, not showering or hanging out somewhere pestering other employees or customers or messing with the equipment. They are expected to be ready for work when they arrive. It's really that simple. If I have to install showers (the one I did have was for a chemical wash in case of emergency when I did electroplating) for them to use, it costs me in not only the space and plumbing and such, but also in cleaning and towel services. This costs will have to be weighed against a person's productivity and raises or bonuses would be adjusted accordingly.

Frankly, employees are a dime a dozen and not too many of them ride to work. At least not in my area. If there is an alternative to providing a shower at a cost, it would probably be to replace the employee. It wouldn't be too far from firing someone for refusing to use deodorant or not shaving or whatever other hygiene problems might arise. I have had to dismiss or reprimand people before for not shaving or using deodorant, or wearing inappropriate shirts or clothing, I've even had to address one woman who wouldn't wear underwear and the effect was a camel toe that showed plenty of details (try doing that without getting a sexual harassment suit against you).

I'm not hostile against bicyclist in the least. Giving them a place to safely and securely store their bikes is enough as far as I'm concerned. Outside of that, they are treated just like every other employee who is expected to be ready for work when they arrive.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[dintech]

First of all, can I have a job? Secondly, are you mad?

Re:you are wasting company money.

[mattack2]

You haven't heard about it? The Beatles even wrote a song about his work situation, "Eight Days a Week". He even has 22 hours/8 day week spare.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[JohnnyComeLately]

"employees are a dime a dozen".

Wow. You now rank in the top 5 of worst quotes I've heard, when it comes to leading or managing people. I'm half tempted to quote numerous organizational and behavioral case studies and research that directly proves the quote to be false, but I'm so struck by such a stark assertion that I also really doubt it's authenticity or sincerity. Meaning, you can't be serious, or I completely took your comment in the wrong context.

That said, although hygiene is important and done at home, I work out in the gym during my lunch and shower before returning. The employer gets several benefits. A happier employee (less turnover), I'm more alert (more productivity), and while running I often get much better clarity on long-term problems (better decisions being made). If you offer health care, you'll also see reduced health care costs because studies also show a fit employee is less likely to have serious health problems.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[6Yankee]

why would you want to hire someone comfortable in a box?

Because otherwise your shiny new office brothel would go to waste? *ducks*

Re:you are wasting company money.

[sumdumass]

Wow. You now rank in the top 5 of worst quotes I've heard, when it comes to leading or managing people. I'm half tempted to quote numerous organizational and behavioral case studies and research that directly proves the quote to be false, but I'm so struck by such a stark assertion that I also really doubt it's authenticity or sincerity. Meaning, you can't be serious, or I completely took your comment in the wrong context.

You probably didn't take that in the wrong context but I think you might have taken it too far into the context. You may not like the idea but it is a fact of our reality. Each person's job should be set up so it isn't dependent on one person to do otherwise your setting your company up for problems down the road when the employee gets sick or died in a traffic accident or takes personal time for the care of a family member or gets a job offer from a competitor that you can't match or for whatever the reason is. That being said, I'm not one who thinks you should treat employees like shit and work them to death just to replace them when they wear out. I also fully understand that seasoned employee will be more productive and valuable then a new hire that needs trained and all. But there come a point in time when the employee is more trouble to keep around then a replacement would be. At that time, you fire him, lay him off, convince him to get another job or whatever, promote from within and then hire someone to start at the bottom and work their way up. It's just a fact of the nature of business. Someone demanding I install a shower so they can ride their bike to work will eventually end up in that situation.

That said, although hygiene is important and done at home, I work out in the gym during my lunch and shower before returning. The employer gets several benefits. A happier employee (less turnover), I'm more alert (more productivity), and while running I often get much better clarity on long-term problems (better decisions being made). If you offer health care, you'll also see reduced health care costs because studies also show a fit employee is less likely to have serious health problems.

You can never keep everyone happy with the same thing. You can't keep everyone happy with different things. You have to pick and choose what will effect the majority of people the most otherwise you will find yourself spending all your profit attempting to keep them happy. What is the point of being in business if your not making a profit? The most direct way we do (or did seeing how I don't have employees any more because I sold out), was to give a holiday bonus at the end of the year. This bonus was calculated by 5 cents to 25 cents (depending on how long you were there) for every hour you worked that year until the second week of December. With no overtime, that would be around $100-$500 and with overtime, I saw them go as high as $700. Raises were another source of happiness and the people who bought me out instituted a profit sharing plan.

We offered health care and gym memberships but they were the discounted versions we got through he local chamber of commerce which meant that while it was cheaper then buying it on your own, it was probably a little more expensive then getting it through a larger employer who soaks up the costs with a plan written specifically for them. Although you can find deals through the chamber of commerce and if anyone is in business for themselves or owns one, they are worth the cost of membership. I saved more then my membership dues in liability insurance alone when the CoC member discount was calculated. A note though, there are showers at the gym.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[rcallan]

Have you met any humanities graduate students lately? Saying professors are productive depends on what metric you're using for productivity. If you can make your own goals(which I would argue many professors can), it's much more easy to be motivated (and to say you've achieved your goal), no?

Re:you are wasting company money.

[ivan256]

By your logic, paying his employees a salary is something he's "getting away with" too... However that's probably more accurate than I'm letting on, since the company *could* be outsourcing the development...

Creative compensation is nothing new, and has nothing to do with "dotcom" anything. If it helps him retain employees without increasing their salary, he's doing the right thing for his company.

Re:you are wasting company money.

[porcupine8]

a) Graduate students =/= professors. Especially not tenured professors at PhD-granting universities. Trust me - as a graduate student, I am not nearly as productive as my professors; that's what I'm here for, is to learn how to be!

b) I was really talking more in the sciences, etc; I know little to nothing about humanities, and besides, we're on slashdot. I'm in a social science, and I think that most of the professors in my dept are pretty productive by almost any metric someone in the business world might use - even if you're talking profits, they bring in a hell of a lot of grant money.

Hire me

[Anonymous Coward]

Please :)

Confused

[Idiomatick]

Are you trying to be their manager or their friend?

Re:Confused

[rtfa-troll]

More generally: Why?

I think the most important thing is to be able to answer why. I do pretty wierd things with company money, but since I can generally show a business case and since I've mostly been right (==directly, provably, profitable) in the past I tend to get away with it.

If you want to motivate them; make them happy and so on, I suggest a ping-pong table. This will bring them together and make them interact. At the same time it will encourage fitness and movement which will counteract the rest of their job. There must be lots more sports equipment which would really help.

Re:Confused

[nine-times]

Whether or not this is a good/bad idea depends on a lot of things. In most situations, I agree, it's not a great idea. On the other hand, there are some jobs with genuine down-time. I mean, lots of jobs have some amount of down-time, and lots of times there are other productive things that people can be doing during those times, but sometimes not. Sometimes there are genuinely jobs that, when there's nothing to do, there's nothing to do.

What some people don't always recognize is, sometimes the job is to sit around and wait. Helpdesk jobs can be like this, for example. It may be that a person's job is entirely reactive, and on a day that nothing breaks, there might be nothing to do. Unless you actually want to create a task for yourself of finding things for them to do, you have to accept that they're going to surf the web, play flash games, etc.

Now you might say, "Fine, let them do that. But why would I spend extra money that's going to distract them?" To that I'd say, it depends on the people, and it depends on the work environment. Sometimes you might do something like this just for a perk, to keep good people around and keep moral up. Also, I know for myself, sometimes I can be more productive if I get a genuine break. If I can get up, get away from my desk, and get engaged in something else for 10 minutes, then I'll come back more productive than if I sat in front of my computer playing flash games. It actually helps to have a clearer distinction from when/where I'm "taking a break" vs. "working".

So because of these reasons (and some others) I let me people play Rock Band in the office. I know when people have work to do, and I can see when they're playing Rock Band. It's a little bit of team building, keeps people happy, and in the past 6 months or so, no one has neglected their work in favor of Rock Band to any noticeable degree.

Beyond all that, with regards to the question, "Are you trying to be their manager or their friend?" I agree that sometimes being someone's boss/manager means you can't really be their friends. Once you have some kind of power over someone, they're going to hate you a little. Still, you have to manage that hatred. Sometimes, if they hate you too much, it gets to be counter-productive, so it can be worthwhile to do nice things for the people you manage.

Re:Confused

[Dutch Gun]

I suggest a ping-pong table

You're kidding, right?

pik-pok!
pik-pok!
pik-pok!
pik-pok!
pik-pok!
pik-pok!
pik-pok!
pik-pok!
pik-pok!
pik-pok!

I mean, who *wouldn't* want to listen to that all day?

If you're going to give each developer a console, then actually give it to them. No strings attached. Let them take it home. I work for a game development company. Last Christmas, my company gave everyone a PS3, Rockband, and a copy of Ratatouille on Blu-Ray. Some people elected to keep it in the office, most took it home.

But even in our work environment, you generally don't see too many people playing games during the day. We work hard, but we go home after eight hours to be with our families, play games, and live our lives however we choose to. It's understood that when we're at work, we have a job to do, and we're very focused on that. In general, I don't care much for playing games at the office. I'd much rather get my job done, get home faster, so I can relax in my *own* home.

If you really want people to be happy, then treat people with respect, and encourage your people to work hard for eight hours, five days a week, then get the hell out of the office.

Re:Confused

[wild_quinine]

I mean, lots of jobs have some amount of down-time, and lots of times there are other productive things that people can be doing during those times, but sometimes not. Sometimes there are genuinely jobs that, when there's nothing to do, there's nothing to do.

If you have nothing to do at work, then you probably have very little responsibility at your company. If you have very little responsibility at your company then it is probably because you are new, awful, or not trusted with responsibility. None of those reasons earn you an Xbox.

Re:Confused

[rtfa-troll]

Okay; I think your comment is completely legitimate in the modern office environment and I don't want to criticise at all, so please see this as directed at the designers of open plan offices everywhere and not yourself. They, after all, are the architects who should be able to study historical buildings and explain the concepts I put below to you.

There are these things called interior "walls". Invented in the stone age, but recently forgotten by office designers (except at Google and Fog Creek Software), they are difficult to explain, but they consisted of an solid object which filled an entire vertical plane between two areas (called "rooms") which divided up what we might, today, call an "open plan space". By consisting of vibration absorbing material they could entirely intersect noise and reduce it in such a way that nobody outside the "room" would be able to hear the activity inside. If you placed your ping pong table in a "separate room" as it used to be called, you could then use it without any influence on other users of the (now divided) "open plan space".

Re:Confused

[YttriumOxide]

It's not a case of "nothing to do", but instead "downtime between things to do". I don't work helpdesk, but I do know the sort of thing the GP is talking about.
I spend most of my days writing code. Sometimes, I have to attend meetings. Sometimes, these meetings are scheduled for stupid times like 1pm. If I finish eating lunch at 12:30, there's NO WAY I'm going to try to get in to the coding mindset just to write a couple of lines and then get out of it again for a meeting, so instead I'll just "play around" for 30 minutes.
Also, being a programmer, I sometimes need to "step back" from what I'm doing, clear my head and relax in order to move on to the next bit of code. Generally, I'll just go for a smoke in these cases, but sometimes I'll post to Slashdot, reply to personal emails, or just get lost following semi-random Wikipedia links for awhile. My boss has no problem with any of this - I write good code, deliver on time (or often WELL before) and fulfil all aspects of my job to a very high standard. Why should it matter if I "waste" some time during office hours?

Re:Confused

[nine-times]

Maybe.

Or maybe you're a skilled worker, very good at your job, but just have a slow day now and then without much to do. Ideally, in those cases, you'd be able to just take the day off. With the people I manage, I don't want people taking the day off just because they think they're having a slow day. I need people to be there in case something comes up, in case a client calls, or whatever. I need them there just in case I need them for something.

So I make them come to work and stay there every day, they're skilled in general and trained for their particular jobs, they're very valuable employees, and some days they still have a light load of work. It happens. If I can think of another project that they could be working on, I'll ask them to do that. Otherwise, I don't care very much how they spend their time as long as they're present, willing to get to work when it comes up, and not interfering with others' work.

Re:Confused

[grahamd0]

I'm very good at my job, and have a lot of responsibility at my company, but I still occasionally have a day where I have very little to do. I haven't recently and won't soon, but my schedule tends to be light during the summer months.

Granted, I'd generally prefer to simply be allowed to go home over getting a gaming console, but occasionally having down time doesn't necessarily mean you suck.

Re:Confused

[nine-times]

I don't work helpdesk, but I do know the sort of thing the GP is talking about.

For the record, I didn't mean to claim that this was in any way unique to helpdesk jobs. It was just meant to be an obvious example of a tech job where you're effectively "on call". When starting out, I had a couple helpdesk jobs where I was literally paid to be present in an office in case a problem came up. I would ask my boss if he wanted me to do anything during that time, and he said he didn't have anything for me to do except to be there. It was my job to sit at my desk 9-6 every day, regardless of how slow the day was or how bored I got, and look professional. There were plenty of days where I had a few uninterrupted hours of "nothing to do", and could have played video games, without hurting my performance, except that it violated the "look professional" part of the job. In a different work environment, video games might have been fine. It's pretty clear-cut.

Now almost all jobs have some kind of occasional downtime, but I would imagine being a developer makes the issue a little more obscure. Even if your job is very project-oriented, there might be cases where someone very productive might finish their project early, and that person might just need to wait for coworkers to catch up. Like let's say you and I are working on interlocking parts, I finish my part before you finish yours, and I can't continue my work until you finish yours. You only need another hour to complete your job, which given the workflow of the company means that I don't have time find another project to work on, and I've already finished a lot of my side projects. So maybe I take an hour break. What's the problem?

Being productive and getting other people to be productive really isn't that simple. Being a good manager requires being creative and adapting to the situation. It's difficult and complex, which is why there are so many bad managers out there-- and even decent managers screw things up often enough.

Re:Confused

[tepples]

If you have very little responsibility at your company then it is probably because you are new, awful, or not trusted with responsibility.

I'm responsible for Python programs that pipe data around in a small business that sells toys online. Sometimes the plumbing breaks when our suppliers change the format of the data, and I fix it. Sometimes the owners want new features or changes in policies. But when neither is the case, how should I become more proactive in seeking out more responsibilities?

Re:Confused

[Dutch Gun]

Heh, sorry about that. My comment probably came across as a bit snarky, when I was going more for funny. In truthfulness, I think things like ping-pong/foozeball/pool tables are a fun diversion for employees as long as they can be located out of the way, where they won't be a visual or audio distraction to people trying to work.

I happen to be fairly sensitive to noise distractions - I'm most productive when I have silence to concentrate on my coding. If it gets too bad, I found that listening to movie/tv soundtracks or classical music on my headphones works moderately well, as it is not too distracting to me and can help cover up other noises.

Re:Confused

[im_thatoneguy]

We bought an Xbox at my last job.

It kept people in the office longer. The longer they were in the office the more likely they were to stick around and work longer instead of leaving the moment it became convenient.

It created an environment where people would come during their free time and actually worked longer hours.

It improved morale dramatically. The project was under NDA to the point where we had to black out windows on doors, secure site etc etc. As a result it converted the room from a prison to a 'hang-out'.

It kept people around during long renders. As a visual effects project you often have 30minute to an hour long blocks of time where you are just waiting to see if your work is looking right. You can't run software because every computer is rendering. So you play an XBox through the Dell 24" LCD without taking up any company processing cycles. So instead of "going to get a coffee" and having to find something to do for an hour it kept you in the same room watching progress and being ready to jump back into work as soon as it was done.

The company that I'm working at right now just added an XBox this week. It does a couple of things. One it keeps clients around. The more clients are around the easier it is to communicate with them. The happier they are. The more they want to work with us. A happy client is a return client. It gives us the workers something to do again when we're rendering or literally have nothing to do. Sometimes it's a slow day and we're waiting on approval for something. The only thing we can do during these times is sitting around or internal speculative projects. But after working through the weekend. Working 10 hour days and quite honestly putting in many more hours than expected it's nice to be able to unwind. As people get 'burned out' they get less and less productive. There have been numerous studies where groups who worked straight with minimal breaks perform less efficiently than those who take numerous breaks and work "less hours" but still accomplish more. That's why we have weekends and try to keep work less than 50 hour weeks. It's just more productive in the long term. You don't have employees half asleep at their desks.

Re:Confused

[Blakey Rat]

Regardless of this, it's a bad idea to give EVERYBODY their own Xbox hooked up to their own monitor. There should be one communal "break area" with a large TV or two and an Xbox or two. This gives a lot more advantages:
1) Team games would actually involve teamwork and real communication, instead of talking into headsets.
2) Games like Guitar Hero wouldn't be horribly distracting to everybody else trying to do their actual job.
3) People could watch TV if they don't enjoy video games, or you could keep it tuned to CNN for guests.
4) They'll be social pressure to not spend all day playing video games, since other employees could keep track of this.

So the real question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you hiring?

Reason?

[DeadPixels]

What's the reason behind this? Without knowing why you want to do it, it's hard to find a way to help you justify the idea.

Re:Reason?

[Anonymous Coward]

He asked slashdot for a way to *implement* the idea. If you prefer to answer justification questions, then go hang out on a managerial forum.

Re:Reason?

[91degrees]

His idea is presumably a solution to a perceived problem. There may be other solutions to the problem that he hasn't considered. We're all about creative solutions here.

Re:Reason?

[DeadPixels]

He also said that he wanted advice on the "politics" of getting the Xbox into the office, and it's kind of hard to justify the Xbox to management if you don't know what it's for.

wtf, carot AND stick?

[Project2501a]

ok, it's nice to think that someone understands that i need to space our for a while. and it's a good thing you're giving out consoles.

so why do you then monitor their use? it's like taking the consoles back?

Re:wtf, carot AND stick?

[DeadPixels]

Chances are that upper management wouldn't go for it unless there was some way to monitor the use. Can't have the employees playing games all day, right?

From orbit...

[Anonymous Coward]

...it's the only way to be sure.

First off,

[lol slashdot]

Are you hiring? And if so, can I apply?

tv input card

[larry bagina]

use a tv input card.

Re:tv input card

[homesnatch]

The video capture delay will introduce too much latency to make pretty much any game unplayable.

You are monitoring productivity and you want to introduce XBox 360's? Seems like two ideas that don't mix.

Re:tv input card

[CastrTroy]

Actually, only a good TV Tuner with onboard MPEG encoder will cause delay. You can get a crappy tv tuner that doesn't do anything on board and just converts the signal into a raw video stream. It won't be any good for a PVR, but it will probably be better for playing games.

You have got to be kidding me...

[tekiegreg]

Employees have enough distractions as is (the Internet in the office...), but you want to give them all a game console? If your company is publicly traded, let me know so I can sell now if I have any....

Re:You have got to be kidding me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Have any Google stock? You might want to sell that. OMG people having fun at work, bad for productivity!

Re:You have got to be kidding me...

[Fumus]

You keep your shares in your bed?

makes no sense

[jollyreaper]

I'm the last person to be advocating nose to the grindstone blah blah get your work done, Cratchet behavior. That being said, what's the possible point of having gaming consoles in the office? I much prefer the idea of get in, work hard, get out after 8 hours, don't put in more than 40 if you can help it. Time spent at home with family is worth more than any sort of office camaraderie, fakey or othewise.

When all the dotcom stuff was going on, I never could quite understand their idea of having game consoles in the office. If I worked there, I couldn't imagine playing on it myself because I would feel conspicuous, like I was goofing off on company time with a big sign over my head saying "pay attention, this is more flagrant than slashdot!"

Personally, I think goofing off for a coffee break on slashdot is great. Checking the news while waiting for a report to generate/program to compile/etc is perfectly acceptable. Maybe setting aside a night every week or two to play department vs. department FPS is cool. But for the most part, the best thing you can do for your people is make sure they can get in, get their work done quickly and efficiently, and get them out the door at quitting time. That does more for sanity than all the perks in the world.

Re:makes no sense

[SanityInAnarchy]

I'm the last person to be advocating nose to the grindstone blah blah get your work done, Cratchet behavior.

I should start by saying that this is exactly what's going on where I work, right now. It's Saturday, and I'm stealing a few moments before I get to work again.

That being said, what's the possible point of having gaming consoles in the office?

First and foremost: Morale. It's kind of fun reading these comments that say things like "Are you hiring"?

We've got one Xbox 360, and one Wii, both hooked up to an HDTV, in a room with comfortable chairs (no couch yet). We have less than 10 employees, most of whom aren't avid gamers, but at the very least, it's a way to celebrate a major milestone.

More recently, we've got beer fridays. I stick to root beer, but I appreciate the sentiment -- we aren't just a bunch of people thrown into an office by chance or by cruel HR decision. We are human beings, working on something we believe in, and we genuinely like working with each other.

Time spent at home with family is worth more than any sort of office camaraderie, fakey or othewise.

First: You assume there's a family involved.

That said, some do have families. It's not the point. If the work is important, then the people you work with are also important.

Personally, I think goofing off for a coffee break on slashdot is great. Checking the news while waiting for a report to generate/program to compile/etc is perfectly acceptable.

Which is something you can't do as well with coworkers.

I should also point out:

Do NOT rigidly monitor its use. Just make it conspicuous enough that if someone's on it, you know about it. Wait for a problem before you start that...

If most of your employees would always rather be playing games than working, it can't be very interesting work.

It's a bit like monitoring Internet usage at work -- if an employee is really spending all day on Slashdot, that's a problem which should be addressed separately. If you're worried about them doing something illegal, make that their own responsibility. But if you're firewalling and logging everything pre-emptively, you're punishing those of us who are otherwise honest employees, and are probably more productive when we can get our Slashdot coffee break.

Now, back to work...

Re:makes no sense

[nine-times]

I much prefer the idea of get in, work hard, get out after 8 hours, don't put in more than 40 if you can help it.

Well that's you, and that's probably based on the job you have, your view of "work", and your home situation. There have been times when I felt the same way as you. And then I've had situations where I was willing to work some extra hours, but I needed to be able to take breaks and work at my own pace in order to maintain sanity.

I'd say it really depends on the job and the situation-- there's no single right answer here. Some jobs you just have to be there for set hours, whether you have work to do or not. As I mentioned in another post, sometimes part of the job is to be there, just in case something goes wrong or some work comes in, and the rest of the time you're sitting around waiting. In those cases, what's the problem with people playing games when they're sitting around waiting, as long as they're willing to drop the game when work comes in?

In other cases, it's not the hours that are important, but it's more about achieving set goals within a timeline. In those cases, what's the problem with people playing games during work hours, so long as they're achieving the goals set for them within the deadline?

The problem isn't really that there's something inherently wrong with keeping a console in the office. Even if you want to come in, work as few hours as necessary, and get out quickly, you still have the option of not playing and keeping your nose to the grindstone. The real problem here is that lots of people don't have a lot of self-discipline and aren't great at managing their own time. People won't drop the game when work comes in, or people won't reach goals before deadlines.

People give into distractions and don't get their work done, and so as a manager, it can be a really bad idea to introduce more distractions. That's why I would say that letting people play video games on the job is often a bad idea, but not always a bad idea.

Re:makes no sense

[philspear]

I much prefer the idea of get in, work hard, get out after 8 hours, don't put in more than 40 if you can help it.

Maybe it's one of those rare companies that realizes that one guy can be on the job for 40 hours and still not accomplish as much as another guy who is only there 20 hours. IE you do X work by the end of the month, we don't care how many hours you're in or how many hours you're actually productive.

Crazy that in some jobs, people could be more concerned with output rather than not goofing off!

How about

[JustOK]

starting with my cube and try some options there first before risking it at your own company?

Quake worked

[dwat001]

I was in an office where we had a culture of approx 3 10 minute Quake games a day, multi-player all in.

With the occasional after work longer session. We found a quick 10 min game increased productivity reduced stress and was good for the team.

part of what worked was that we all played at the same time so we could yell and woop and curse.

bad idea

[gEvil (beta)]

If you have to ask how to do something like this, then it's probably a bad idea.

You're kidding, right???

[Gybrwe666]

Okay, I've been in IT a while, and I know plenty of developers. I'm unaware of a developer "Needing" a console at his desk in order to do his job, unless he happens to be a game developer on that console.

That being said, you mentioned this was a blue collar company.

How long, roughly, do you really think it will take for the rest of the company to find out that their co-workers are being paid to play games? I guarantee you, I'd be *PISSED* if I found out one department had the company paying for time (whether salaried or not) that was spent on games. Imagine what happens when Joe Plumber (insert favorite and/or appropriate profession here) finds out? How long before one of your developers brags about it to someone outside the department?

Not only that, but a console per person? Are you kiddng? Assuming its a modern console, that's at a minimum $199/person. That's a lot of money. Are you buying them games, too? If one dies, are you going to be spending time and money to send it in for warrantly repairs? How about 2 days after warranty runs out? You got budget to repair/replace? How about when the controller breaks? You payin' for that?

You buying the games, too?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about making the workplace fun. How about you buy one console and put it in a common area, and maybe give the "blue collar" guys one in their lunchroom, too? If someone is gone from their cubicle for 4 hours a day, should be obvious, right? Less money spent, more accountability.

Or, and here's a crazy idea, I know, how about you expect them to actually work 8 hours a day since they get paid 8 hours a day and let them blow off steam in other ways. You could just give it to them to take home. Or have after hours lan parties or console parties. Go to a bar.

Bottom line, you are not just asking for trouble, you've actually gone out, started blasting its mating call at the top of your lungs, and smeared its favorite food all over your body and genitalia while naked. This is a half-baked idea at best that won't last very long, for a variety of reasons.

Bill

Re:You're kidding, right???

[91degrees]

I'm unaware of a developer "Needing" a console at his desk in order to do his job, unless he happens to be a game developer on that console.

Even then we don't need them. We use a dedicated devkit, which is functionally pretty similar but many of them won't play actual commercial releases of games.

Re:You're kidding, right???

[SanityInAnarchy]

Assuming its a modern console, that's at a minimum $199/person.

Minimum wage is still going to be over $10k/year. Developers don't work minimum wage.

I've had a company laptop that was easily $1-2k. Conservatively, a decent beige-box workstation is still going to be around $500.

If a company is balking at spending an additional $200/person, that company needs to have its priorities examined, and very likely, some heads need to roll. Even if you consider the games, warranty, etc, there's no way it's going to add up to any significant fraction of the money spent on a good employee, or the value derived from a good employee -- especially a happy employee.

That said...

How about you buy one console and put it in a common area, and maybe give the "blue collar" guys one in their lunchroom, too? If someone is gone from their cubicle for 4 hours a day, should be obvious, right? Less money spent, more accountability.

That is, in every way, a good idea. Maybe more than one, maybe more than one common area, depending on the size of the company, but the principle is the same.

But in no way should price even enter into this.

Re:You're kidding, right???

[rugatero]

If one dies, are you going to be spending time and money to send it in for warrantly repairs?

No, if one dies you just give his console to someone else.

Re:You're kidding, right???

[EastCoastSurfer]

Okay, I've been in IT a while, and I know plenty of developers. I'm unaware of a developer "Needing" a console at his desk in order to do his job, unless he happens to be a game developer on that console.

I agree. And people wonder why companies are trying to outsource development work to India. They are tired of dealing with prima donnas who consider themselves better than anyone else in the company.

Re:You're kidding, right???

[JNighthawk]

Except everything on PartnerNet (the developer version of Xbox Live) is free :-)

Funny enough, the two games I've actually played on PartnerNet at work, Braid and Puzzle Quest, I ended up buying at home, because I really liked them.

Re:You're kidding, right???

[Blakey Rat]

Used to be Blue Badges could get Xbox Live Arcade game activation codes for free from a CorpNet site... is that not the case anymore? Or are you (ewww) Orange?

Re:You're kidding, right???

[JNighthawk]

I have no idea what you just said.

Re:You're kidding, right???

[Blakey Rat]

Sorry, I assumed since you had PartnerNet access you were a Microsoft Games employee. MS employees are designated, somewhat, by badge colors: Blue is full-time, and Orange is contractor. It was a lame joke.

Re:You're kidding, right???

[JNighthawk]

Ah, nope. PartnerNet is available to all Xbox developers, as far as I know.

Re:You're kidding, right???

[Gybrwe666]

The problem with your assumption is that you obviously don't understand bottom line costs to company. Most small companies that I have worked with/for have very tight margins on their products. As this guy said "blue collar", lets assume its manufacturing or something similar.

A manufacturing company is unlikely to make 5% profit on sales. But lets be really generous and say they make 25%.

Lets assume there are 5 developers, and the only thing the company will pay for is the console. (This is patently untrue, but I'll get to that in a moment).

So, minimum outlay is $1000 dollars. Which means that the company has to recoup $4000 in sales just to cover the cost of the consoles.

This is a bottom line hit. Its a ridiculous use of money in a budget that could likely be spent in better places.

Not only that, but its likely that there will, at some point, be a productivity hit directly related to the consoles. I can't imagine a developer worth anything that can't in some way disable/scam the monitoring software. So if they slack off, their salary is also a bottom line hit to the company.

Of course you're next argument will be that they are likely working overtime and such, which is likely (although not certain) to be free, as they might be salaried. However, if others are working that overtime, and the overtime directly affects productivity, this is effectively time that benefits the company in product and revenue, which, again they must make by selling 4x the amount of product completely on top of what they already sell.

In other words extraneous hits to the budget can have a dramatic affect on profitability, with little or no demonstrable gain to the company.

And please don't throw out the strawman on this one: that the company shouldn't expect its employees to work free overtime. That may or may not be right or wrong, but if that's part of their job, its happening and arguing about the morality and ethics of such things won't change the reality on the ground.

And I won't even go into litigation costs if someone sues over the myriad number of issues this would raise in a company.

Bill

hard to find cheap HD input

[erase]

content owners have made it difficult to obtain hi def tv inputs for computers. all the cheap ones you can get will only import SDTV over the wire. the cheap HDTV ones only bring in OTA HDTV, which is useless for your purposes. you'd have to move up to professional input cards (and prices) to get HDTV input over the wire.

perhaps instead of trying to monitor the video output, you could monitor the power output (with intelligent power bars and the xbox power cable somehow locked into the power bar).

Re:hard to find cheap HD input

[PunkOfLinux]

Actually, this could work. You could, for example, have a computer that runs all of these "smarter" power outlets, with the console locked in somehow, and have it so that, in order to turn it on, they have to, say, click a button on their computer. The 'server' sends a message saying "open it up" and then the power works. There's just one problem with this method: if a worker leaves the console on, or forgets to turn it off (Such as, say, when they pause a game so they can get to it later). Maybe a better method would be to having something like a little plug to monitor when the *controller* is being used?

Expresscard tvtuner

[aldeng]

Just use an Expresscard TV Tuner and feed the 360 into it. If you didn't have the requirement that you be able to track what they do I would suggest picking up a 360 VGA cable and going directly into the monitor so they could game in HD, but I'm guessing that's not much of a priority.

Social console playing only

[forsey]

A console in the office can be good, but I can't see giving every person their own as being good. It's better to have just one or two setup in a lounge area so it encourages the employees to play it together in the same room (as opposed to on XBL with each other) and encourages them to build stronger relationships with eachother. You want your employees to view their desk as a work area, so when they are at their desk they will focus on work. If the console is at their desk then the barrier between work and play blurs and they'll end up being much less productive. In short, a console in the office (in my experience) works best as a tool to encourage socialization. At their desk it just another way to avoid work, and even a good employee could fall into that trap.

Re:Social console playing only

[Chelloveck]

Amen. Don't give everyone a console, just stick one in a common area. We have a Wii in our office and the lunchtime Mario Kart races are a good way to build camaraderie. If everyone had a private console they'd hardly ever get used. For the most part we're not hardcore gamers; we're doing it for the social aspect. Even the ones who are hardcore gamers get their fix in outside of the office.

Whatever console you get, make sure to get some brain-candy games which are easy for non-gamers to play. In the office no one's going to be able to get into a huge RPG. They're going to have 10 or 20 minutes here and there. You need games that anyone can pick up a controller and have fun, without a major learning curve.

BTW, the idea of monitoring the console usage is awful. If your company routinely does that sort of thing, I think you probably have deeper morale issues than can be addressed by video games.

Why does it need to be at the office?

[Pahalial]

Give it to them for home as a bonus. Management won't really care, in-office productivity won't take any hits (except maybe right after hyped releases) and other employees won't see it and so won't care.

Plus their families can enjoy it as well, where applicable.

Re:Why does it need to be at the office?

[jcoleman]

Mod parent up, this is the only reasonable solution.

Employee monitoring...

[homesnatch]

I have never been a fan of monitoring employee activity. Employees should be measured by output, not by how often they spin their gerbil wheels.

Not sure how I got into the gerbil analogy, but I'll continue with it.

Gerbil 1 runs his wheel all day and is slow... Generates 5000 revolutions per day.

Gerbil 2 runs his wheel half the day but is fast enough that he generates 6500 revolutions.

If I were to monitor these gerbils I would be disappointed by Gerbil 2's work ethic.

If you could only keep one gerbil and send the other to Richard Gear's house, which one would you keep?

Re:Employee monitoring...

[homesnatch]

> Richard Gear's house

Names have been changed to protect the innocent... I swear it wasn't a misspelling. (Yeah, that's the ticket)

Re:Employee monitoring...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a conspiracy!

Richard Gear Solid: Gerbils of Revolution

Re:Employee monitoring...

[rk]

Drink -> Nose -> Keyboard

Damn, another keyyyyyybr? bite thhhhhhhhhhhe dst

Re:Employee monitoring...

[jollyreaper]

If I were to monitor these gerbils I would be disappointed by Gerbil 2's work ethic.

If you could only keep one gerbil and send the other to Richard Gear's house, which one would you keep?

I guess it would depend on whether I did the things with gerbils that Richard Gere does.

Re:Employee monitoring...

[paintswithcolour]

Can someone tell me what 'employee monitoring software' does? Does it track your activity through the building? At your desk? I've never seen or heard of it before here in Japan, it does sound terribly sinister though...

Re:Employee monitoring...

[jagdish]

Nights in Rodents?

Not such a good idea

[MadCat]

Bad news if you want to give all the devs their own console. You'll find that productivity will tank. In our office we've got a 360 and a PS2 sitting in the break room, and we're free to wander off and play it for a while if we feel the need for it; this way at the very least someone will notice you spending hours on end at it and will tell you to stop being a dick and get back to work.

Ofcourse the competition for the thing during break time is immense but hey, adds to the flavor.

Use one as a team activity

[Talsan]

Seriously? You really think that an Xbox 360 is a good idea?

Get one for the team and put it in a break room or meeting room. Besides, consoles are more fun when you play with others.

A console _each_?

[jonaskoelker]

You're planning on giving _all_ the developers a console _each_? Some way that makes my head assplode. Isn't one of the points of consoles that you gather a bunch of people around the same machine and trash-talk while playing (i.e. the person-to-person socialization)? Oh well, if you think it's a good idea, go ahead.

I can tell you what my former employee did: put a big TV and a wii in the conference room. According to local tradition, we play a game or two after lunch, and a few friday afternoon while having a beer. If we spend too much time on the wii, the boss-man can probably see it on our weekly productivity reports.

In general, we were trusted to not slack off, which seemed to work fine. I saw the occasional emails saying "I'm sick, so I'm gonna work from home to the best of my ability today." When I was out of tobacco, I went to the nearby supermarket and bought some; I felt no need to tell the boss I'd be out for a few minutes.

Treat people like responsible adults and they will act responsibly.

foosball

[j1m 5n0w]

I'd recommend getting a foosball table (or similar) instead. It's a group activity. If it's in a common area, any employee can play whenever they like and you won't have a lot of employees bitter that some of the others have their own personal game station, and games are generally pretty short. Most employees aren't going to waste half the day playing foosball the way they might playing a game console.

Don't do it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is your company working out of a member's garage? Is your company just a handful of individuals who are already putting in ungodly amounts of time?

No? Well you'll be stupid to try and put a game console in a workplace. The whole reason for all those video games and snacks was that a lot of companies were formed out of garages and the founding members lived in them. As the company got bigger, they brought their homes into the workplace. You'd be stupid to do that in an existing workplace. Your group will look like slackers. Don't do it.

Our solution at a game dev co

[UnknownSoldier]

Everyone has a Nitro (DS dev kit) so they can play the current game we are working on anytime.

Gaming on the XBox, and PC Gaming (i.e. Call of Duty) is usually reserved for lunch, or after 6pm)

As long as you get the work done, gaming is a non-issue -- its only when things get out of balance is there a problem.

Get a 1 or a few Pinball games they are fun to pla

[Joe The Dragon]

Get a 1 or a few Pinball games they are fun to play.

The only question I have...

[MahariBalzitch]

Are you hiring?

MOD PARENT UP

[LrdDimwit]

This is a much better idea. But if you really must do it your way ... Hire me. I'll take care of everything.

Display delay

[TBoon]

All analog capture cards I've ever tried this with have had a slight delay in showing stuff on-screen. (I've had 4 in the last 10-12 years.) Not much, just enough to notice it's there, especially when looking for it. I've never tried to play fast-paced game on it so I can't say if it's enough to affect gameplay, mainly because the picture quality suffered too much (due to de-interlace/resize/etc) for my taste.

Seems to be a diconect already

[Anonymous Coward]

You want your employees to be happy but you use employee monitoring software, wtf? I work for Google so I think I know what you are kind of going for.

Why are you putting these at everyone's desk? Half the fun of a console is playing with other people. Rock Band is almost exclusively what we play at work. GTA4, GoW, etc all gather dust. In addition it if's not at the work station people will be self regulating. It's a lot easier to just "play for a couple of min while this compiles" if it's at your desk. And we have clients/tours come through our office too, and the game room is a stop on the tour showing it off. We are geeks, it's kind of expected. And don't reserve it for just your devs, let everyone play or people will bitch. Don't worry after the novelty wears off the sales people won't touch it much. :) If they do, hey that's great, it's team building between business units and might help moral (less isolated) and might spur some innovation for one side or the other of the company.

Also, productivity will tank to start with. They will be playing with their new toys and will get less done. Be ready for this, you will probably want to let your manager know and try and get some kind of grace period. But if it's not at their desks people will self regulate eventually and those who don't will just be more obvious. People like that will find ways to screw around, might as well give them an obvious way.

So get a conference room and turn it into a game room. Get a nice big TV and a xbox and some social games. Maybe a Wii too (Mario Cart does get some play)

From a computer gamer that works at home...

[betamaxV2.1]

I am an extremely avid computer gamer. I spend 15+ hours a week playing computer games (TF2, Crysis, Sins of a Solar Empire, etc). I also work from home as a Sys admin and DBA. Having my game machine also double as my work machine made focusing on work extremely hard as I am expected to be available from 8-5 most days M-F. (old school corporate culture slowly creeping into 21st century).

When I first started doing this it was very difficult for me to resist the temptation for firing up TF2 while I was waiting for some SQL to finish exporting data or an application to finish rebuilding. The problem is as with any game. You get sucked in. 5 minutes can easily turn into 1.5 hours.

So unless you are going to spend your time wondering around everyones desk and making notes on how long they have been playing, I would listen to others ideas. Put the console in the lounge. Plan after hours lan parties or trips to the bar. I am sure that it would be ok to work through lunch one day and fire things up an hour early.

The problem would never be that your employees would be irresponsible with the console. The problem is that anyone that is a gamer knows it is very rare to spend just 5 minutes on a game. For me it is even harder on flash games like bookworm or tower defense much less a more engaging game like Halo or whatever else is popular at the moment on the 360.

Connecting them to the monitors is the way to go.

[Bobartig]

Most capture card solutions are going to have one of two problems:

1) Horrendous latency problems due to encoding time

2) Limited to SD resolution capture (720x480)

3) both of the above.

Problem #1 literally makes games unplayable, as it ads about a .7-1 second lag between the video output and when it is displayed on the screen.

Problem #2 removes a lot of the benefit of having an HD console. A lot of X360 titles lose a lot of their visual quality when playing at standard definition, it can reduce the field of vision for game play, and some titles, the developers actually did a crap job with the standard def assets, and the game has unreadable objects at standard definition (Dead Rising).

Devices that can capture video real time at HD resolutions, such as component capture tend to be really exotic hardware requiring fancy IO (like firewire 800, or eSata, or PCIe), or, they have internal compressors that add that horrible lag time to the video. Some of them, are still rather immature for commercial products, as well, with driver errors and such.

For the best gaming experience, I'd use the SVGA input, or use monitors that that have component in to connect the X360s to. That'll give the best gaming experience.

Instead of monitoring a capture utility, just monitor network activity from the consoles, which all have unique mac addresses.

I think any sort of monitoring scheme is going to require an element of trust on the part of your workers because smart, employees will always find a way around these things. Also, the addition of a free-time "perk" of any sort should adjust your existing productivity metrics. That is to say, whatever you use to measure work quality and completion now, should work just as well after adding consoles. If you don't have these metrics in place yet, then you just don't know what your people are doing.

In the game industry, we all have piles of consoles on our desks, along with rigs built specifically for gaming and software development. For the most part, people "get" when they're working and when they're not, and they do the right thing as long as expectations are set correctly. People occasionally get fired for getting nothing done and being addicted to WoW, but that is relatively rare.

My work

[JMZero]

At my work, we started playing Starcraft at lunch. It was cheap, it's very social (I'm getting to know guys I didn't talk to much before), and it has been great for morale.

Having a micro-managed game console... I mean, I like games, but I would feel like a child turning on my special toy for 15 minutes before bedtime. Whatever good will may have come of this is being squandered by your micro-management.

Humor Them...

[killmofasta]

Get a few 'Training films' on Blue-ray, tell them that its just as cheap to get an xBox 360 as to buy a blu ray player. Then have a few xBox games as giveaways at the office party. Then find out who is using them.

Also get a few people interested in Team Building with Counter Strike and Halo 2...

Umm... Where is this? Can i send you a Resume?

Re:Humor Them...

[killmofasta]

Ya, It doesnt work yet, but will soon. ( in a matter of days )

A Lie of Omission is Still a Lie

[grondak]

... and there's no room for lying in business.

Hiding the consoles like you are and tracking their use "just in case" is the same as failing to inform management, which makes your acts lies of omission. Think twice. Make sure your management actually understands what you intend to do. They should see the reports of developer gaming time that I think you're going to produce.

Of course, the monitoring will make the developers quit gaming, so I think you should just abandon the effort. Do something more constructive with your time and theirs: write the software your shareholders pay them to write. If they have a problem with work/life balance, tell them to cut out all goofing off at work and to go home when the whistle blows.

(Yes, I'm making a lot of assumptions! Chastise below!)

Two consoles=team building

[Palal]

Set up one to two console(s) in the office with a 40" plasma screen. Great team-building exercise.

Is this for real?

[lunartik]

"My team needs to be happy, but the folks in the rest of the office do not really understand what that means for the types of personalities that exist in our department."

Honestly, I think this is bullshit. The idea that programmers are some social recluses who need to be coddled in the workplace and given special privileges that other employees don't get is pretty bunk. You know, I bet a lot of people who work in other parts of the company have hobbies and interests outside of work too. What's next? An auto restoration garage? A knitting room? An art studio?

If you are seriously thinking about putting a personal game console at every desk, maybe you should instead pitch to your boss the cost savings of contracting out your IT work.

Sorry to rain on the parade.

Re:Is this for real?

[Shados]

I agree. That just shows how a lot of teams are filled with fucking spoiled little brats who still think they're in college.

If someone wants to make developers "happy" to keep them productive, make sure the projects managers aren't acting like idiots, and that the devs have the tools they need to do their job (Doing business application development on a single 17 inch monitor = painful. Fortunately that doesn't seem to be the issue of the person who submitted the article).

Beyond that, its a fucking job, not a party. You can have fun while doing your job, but there are god damn limits.

Re:Is this for real?

[EvilIdler]

An art studio?

I sometimes work for a place where it's OK to bring your paint and canvas. It's not so silly.

Re:Is this for real?

[stilz2]

17" CRT monitor here using 1024 x 768--anything bigger makes text hard to read. I most quite a bit of time making stuff fit on screen.

Don't

[PhotoGuy]

Unless you're a shop developing XBOX games, don't do it. Period.

I've had bad experiences, all around, with allowing gaming in the office.

We used to have Friday afternoon pizza parties and gaming sessions at work. The gaming-at-work habit grew (whenever my back was turned), and it seriously hurt productivity. Gaming can be addictive, time-consuming, and distracting. Endorsing it in any form, opens the door for rationalizing gameplay when people should be working.

We stopped doing that, and actually had to let a couple of people go (turns out their PC's were loaded with 95% games, 5% work). Things were much better after we broke that habit.

Also, spoiling people too much gives them a sense of entitlement which can be hard to deal with later.

Have a Christmas Party or summer gettogether with a bunch of network games set up; that's a lot of fun, and keeps it separate from work. That always worked well for us.

Jealousy within the company

[syousef]

Take a look at the rest of the responses here. There is no way you can do this without making others jealous, which means there's no such thing as graceful. It's unfortunate that human nature works like this. (I've personally been affected by such silliness, though it has nothing to do with console games, and it's made my workplace experience much less pleasant. C'est la vie).

So either give them X-boxes to take home and call it a work bonus or as others have suggested put it in a common lounge area. Either will STILL result in some jealousy but particularly the take home solution won't have everyone in the office scrutinizing productivity and babbling about being paid to play games.

Human nature's a son of a bitch sometimes.

Dual Input Monitors

[Smith55js]

I use my Xbox 360 at home on my PC using my Dual Input Monitor. I have the Xbox 360 using the VGA input while the PC uses the DVI input. The Xbox 360 parental controls built into the console will allow you as an employer to set limits on when it can be used as well.

Well..

[mikkelm]

We have an XBox 360 in the office, hooked up to a nice 52" Samsung TV, and it's used perhaps once or twice a month. Once the novelty wears off, they'll probably be wanting you to go get them a new expensive gimmick.

You've missed the point

[gmccloskey]

The detail you provide in your question is telling. You discuss mostly the technical aspects (laptop spec, ports, etc.). You barely describe the rationale, or address how it will be perceived, only claiming that other in the company don't understand. You fail to set out the business benefit, or how you will pitch it to your seniors. You fail to set out the personal benefit - apart from the fact you've given everyone a shiny console.

So it's not clear why anyone would want it, or why anyone would approve it. it is clear that by failing to communicate to the rest of the company, people will arrive at their own conclusions, and they are likely to be ones that do not reflect well on you. This is not shaping up to be a McKinsey case study in how to execute an innovative reward scheme that will meet universal acclaim and cure cancer.

Have you had a bunch of your team actually ask for this? I thought not.

Go back to the basics. What are you trying to achieve? What are the potential solutions of meeting your goals. How much will it cost the company? What are the benefits for your team? What are the benefits for your company? What are the drawbacks for the team / company?

And anyone who says "google does it!" doesn't understand that (a) google hires a very very particular type of personality and (b) google has a very particular corporate culture which is geared to using alternative reward schemes. If you want those things, go work for google, or another company with similar values.

Just one question

[pvera]

Where do I send my resume to?

silly

[nEoN nOoDlE]

It takes around 2-3 minutes to start playing a game on XBox after console startup, disk loading, and going through the game menus. Since it takes that long to start, a person will probably be playing for at least 10 minutes. That's 13 minutes already gone when a person decides to play. This will cause people who work to either not use the console at all, or maybe once a week, or it would cause too much time being wasted. It's lose-lose. Especially since the people playing know you're monitoring their usage.

The best bet is to have an employee lounge where they could play on one console together. I've worked at a game company, and we didn't have consoles at each desk, and the lounge where we played games brought everyone together better.

I really don't understand this mentality...

[Lazy Jones]

We have employee monitoring software in use and need to track the usage of the console. So, it seems best to use a capture card along with some type of viewer utility. This would allow us to have a record of when and how long the console was used, in case anyone else in management ever has a problem.

Must be because I'm European, but this just seems so absurd to me. Why don't you just switch off your monitoring software for 30 minutes per day, I'm sure many people will appreciate it more than being allowed to play on a console while being monitored.

Gracefully?

[Eadwacer]

I'd suggest pink leotards and toe shoes.

Tech Support Guy

[CopaceticOpus]

Integrating video games into the work day: A great idea!

Google doesn't do any real work...

[Joce640k]

Outside a few core developers there's very little work done at Google. It's all about meetings and impressing visitors.

Re: How to deploy

[BriggsBU]

Step 1: Hire me.
Step 2: ...
Step 3: PROFIT!

WOW! You're all fired!

[The Real Dr. Video]

Work at work. Put in an 8 hour day and go home. Play on your own time. What isn't obvious about this? And yes, I manage technical people, first as a Manager of IT and then as a CIO. My employees are happy. Maintain a decent work/life balance for your employees and nobody will want outrageous crap like this. Don't promise clients the moon and make your people work 80 hour weeks.

Use Gefen HD Mate for the job...

[Quebec]

http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/13/gefen-hd-mate-scaler-and-switch/

I personally have one and I wrote an article on this thing:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/meantux/2188250245/

At home I got my PS3, my obsolete HDDVD player and my cable top Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD connected to my HDMate inputs.

PS3s in research

[cashman73]

We had a student in our laboratory this summer doing some work on molecular simulations using the PS3, so we really do have game consoles in the office,...

Oh, and I'm really gettng a kick out of these replies,... ;-)

Gaming in the office? No problem!

[DakkonFury]

It's perfectly plausible to set up a gaming system in an office as long as it's properly monitored. That being said, it's a LOT easier to control abuse of priviledge if it's not at the desks of the employees. If there's a way to set up a gamer's lounge for this type of thing, then that would likely be preferable. If it HAS to be at the worker's desk, let me tell you, you're better off just going straight to the monitor instead of trying to go through capture cards through the laptop. I've tried running just the sound through a computer before, and the delay was something along the lines of half a second. If the video lagged that badly as well, it would be nigh unplayable.

Suggestion: Just hold onto the power cables and have a sign-in/out sheet for whenever your team wants to use their 360.

Good idea

[Orion Blastar]

Playing video games is a good stress reliever.

What you might need is an office conference room with a TV set and game console. Then let the employees take turns playing the game. Then have a supervisor watch the clock to see how long they spend on the game and tell them when time is up. That way you only need one game console and TV and have a supervisor or manager keep track of time.

Give me the cash instead

[Rastl]

Did you even think that perhaps, just perhaps, not every developer likes playing computer games? Personally I don't want to spend my extra or decompress time at the computer.

Add that to the fact you're trying to do this on the sly and circumvent corporate policies says that it falls into the Very Bad Idea bin.

Negotiate for extra vacation days, flex work hours, telecommuting, or other things that the individual developers might find helpful.

Of course, I didn't see anywhere in your brief comment that you asked your staff what could be done to make them feel more appreciated. To be honest I don't see why you feel your staff deserves to be 'happier' than the rest of the company? This just encourages the misguided belief that the techies should be coddled and held separate. Think through what's going to happen when (not if, when) other managers and employees find out that your people get extra perks. You're even asking this crowd how to handle the politics of doing it in the first place. I don't think you're in a position to handle the fallout from actually pulling it off.

Sorry if this seems overly harsh but all I'm seeing here is problems and more problems. I think a regular paycheck, training, and the ability to ply their craft are more than enough 'perks'.

wii / Fitness room

[ACMENEWSLLC]

Get a WII with the Fitness games and accessories. Put it in your departments fitness room. Put an AXIS camera in the room with network recording - for the reason of monitoring for theft.

That would be the closest to a PC solution I can think of. Though if I even mined in Eve online our chatted in Second life on MY laptop on public WIFI while at work, I'd risk getting canned.

While the NVS 140M may not be a gaming card, it can still run some older games. Just get them WoW accounts and let them play WoW together..

"Are you hiring?"

[kiracatgirl]

Why anyone would want to work for this company is beyond me. Why?

"We have employee monitoring software in use and need to track the usage of the console. So, it seems best to use a capture card along with some type of viewer utility. This would allow us to have a record of when and how long the console was used, in case anyone else in management ever has a problem."

Sure, I don't have a game console at work. But I don't have anyone breathing down my neck if I play some flash games or watch youtube videos or whatever during downtime. I'd much rather work someplace where I'm trusted to get my work done on my own (which I do) without excessive monitoring than someplace where they keep tabs on what their employees are doing "just in case". Free game console or not.

Buying milk or cows...

[copponex]

You prove his point. If the company did as every other company does, and just released "new" products, they wouldn't be doing what makes them successful, which is releasing innovative products. They even make better mousetraps - search engines, webmail, mapping, application hosting...

In a way, Google does something far more sinister, and pays people for ideas that they may have. When you've got a crapload of perks, a steady paycheck, and you still get to do what you want, it makes it a lot less appetizing to start your own company with your own new idea. You don't have to pay hundreds of millions for smaller companies who have the best ideas - you've already hired the brains that will produce them, and they already belong to you.

Re:Buying milk or cows...

[kesuki]

well, all the perks at google hasn't stopped people from jumping ship and 'starting up' cuil. "pronounced cool"

in fact, from what i've heard, 'cuil' has many of the same perks as google, despite being an unproven startup, and despite google and yahoo already dominating the search space.

i really, really miss the 'fucked company' website, because it seems like the typical tech startup is hell bound to become one.

Most of our employees have consoles at our desk

[BaShildy]

But that's because we're a game development studio. No one uses their consoles for non-work related games in-hours because it would be a heavy distraction. We have a separate big screen and console setup for social gaming outside of work and that separation prevents distraction. Having games at work is great and can boost morale. But the work desk is for work. Morale wise you'll be hurting the team by having people play games at their desk because no one will agree on when its appropriate.

Take your budget and buy a poker table and beer instead. Each week we play poker on Friday in the conference room at 5PM on the mark with company provided beer. Fridays are sometimes the most productive as everyone is in a hurry to get their stuff done because the game always takes place on-time. The non poker players hang out in the president's office which becomes a lounge. Everybody talks to each other, new employees are instantly thrust into the company culture and social life, and everybody lets off a little steam. Playing for small stakes lets boss and subordinate interact at the same level.

Use your budget for activities that can be done in groups or in teams. Sports, Poker, even multiplayer Video Games are great for team building but a "toy" on everybody's desk would be disastrous in any school or work environment.

I get a console at work

[volvotom]

I work for a 9-1-1 ambulance company and to bolster employee morale each station has a TV and either cable or satellite with basic+ and HBO, showtime, skinemax. The new stations also have dsl with wifi and playstation 3. Even though they promised all of services will be spread out company wide within the next year, we still get a lot of complaints from other crews that our station is better equipped than theirs is. We also have a lot of downtime, whenever we are not training or responding to a 9-1-1 call or cleaning our equipment we are free to enjoy what the company has provided us assuming we can go from notification to enroute to an emergency call in 1 minute. Because of the nature of this business, I see no issue with them having provided us consoles to use on their time. However, the employees who work in the IT and billing departments at the company who work standard 8 hour days are not provided consoles as it would not make sense given the nature of their work. In the situation the original poster described, I see more issues than benefits arising from providing the consoles.

despite my earlier post

[DragonTHC]

http://www.amazon.com/XtremeMac-XHD-4HDS-00-Xtremehd-4-PORT-Switcher/dp/B000OU7MVQ/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1224974967&sr=1-4
this xtremeHD hdmi switch box supports HDCP (hope your monitors do). It also supports DVI seamlessly. I use one.

with these cables
http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Unlimited-PCM-2296-06-Single-Cable/dp/B0007MWE1E/ref=pd_sim_e_7

Ever heard of telework?

[wikinerd]

Just let the devels work from home. Their morale will be boosted big time and you will save on office space costs.

Crazy

[dogzilla]

I think the fact that you're looking for a way to be "low-key" about this should be an indication to you that your gut is trying to tell you something - you should listen to it. If you can't be fully above-board with this, then your company really isn't accepting of it. Try to be a little more creative in your rewards. It sounds like your solution isn't a terribly good one, and will inevitably cause more problems than it's worth. Also consider that this isn't the best business environment in which to be painting yourself and your department as spoiled - deservedly or not. You might not be doing anyone any favors in the long run, especially when it comes time to review departmental budgets and productivity and who gets trimmed back. Perception is more important than reality in these situations.

Try being a little more creative with your rewards.

Connect Xbox 360 through VGA HD

[ctrlF4]

The xbox 360 has an hd cable that can plug into the back of a computer monitor to give HD quality game play to the user. The cable costs around 30 usd and comes with same sex connector.

Perhaps the problem isn't due to a lack of an xbox

[SpacePunk]

They can't have a monitor on their desk, and they are the IT staff? That's the most ignorant, stupid, and idiotic thing I have ever heard of.

This...

""Long story short, I am the MIS Manager / Lead Architect for a blue collar non-tech company. My team needs to be happy, but the folks in the rest of the office do not really understand what that means for the types of personalities that exist in our department. Even though my team is tucked away in a different part of the building, we do have clients and employees come back here from time to time. "

Is the problem. What they don't understand is what IT needs in order to efficiently do their work. The first thing you need to do is kick the ass of the person that doesn't want IT STAFF to have monitors on their desks. The second thing you need to do is either kick the asses of the people that are dragging customers through your area, or find a security reason to declare the area off limits to everyone except for IT staff. An XBox isn't going to fix the problem that is fucked up management.

For the capture card...

[Jorophose]

Adaptec makes a "Gamebridge", works great according to a friend who bought it; I've seen it in action, but since it's limited to s-video at best it's likely not too hot.

With most devices you're going to suffer lag; the tradeoff I observed with the gamebridge is that TV quality was crap.

And why exactly are you gaming in the office?...

Follow-Up / Thanks

[SkydiverFL]

First of all, a huge thank you to everyone that took the time to reply. Whether they were positive or not, I do appreciate all of the input. I initially had hoped on receiving a few comments on how do do this TECHNICALLY (ie. using a capture card, maybe someone would mention a model number or two). The political items were secondary. However, I must say, I am very glad for the responses in that area. You may have just helped me dodge a bullet... fired from my own gun. ;-)

Just a few words that might clarify my reasoning a bit...

As for money, my plan was to use my own personal money for the consoles, headphones, and memberships. I have already installed individual Sirius radios at each desk, and pay a monthly membership for each, all out of my personal income. I also keep a fridge fully stocked with Dew, Vault, Coke, and whatever else anyone on the team enjoys. There is no way our company would be okay with me spending corporate dollars for this.

As for a common area, I absolutely like the idea of installing a single unit, or maybe even two, in a common location. As someone pointed out, it really would lend to a more open environment. In fact, our team is kinda thought of as "elite" (as one employee recently told me) and having the common area may help break down some walls. Unfortunately, we do not have such an area available to use.

My goal behind this type of initiative is to create an environment were solid technical people will enjoy working. It's quite difficult to attract a developer in our industry. Most are dreaming of the ivory tower and have heard the tales of the high-energy fun-loving start-up environments. Because of what we do, all of our offices are primarily large warehouses, with built out office space, located in rural areas of the state. Still, our company has a desire to develop new technologies and remain WAY ahead of the competition. That dictates a certain type of person... young, energetic, creative, productive... someone who actually ENJOYS developing and isn't just chasing a paycheck.

One more item on that note... there are unique situations that develop in our line of work. Whether it's because of the "blue collar" environment or not is irrelevant. However, our guys overhear and are exposed to things that they normally would not be in a typical office environment. I guess another reason I do all of this is so that they realize that, even with the occasional nonsense, they've still got it pretty dang good.

Overall, management has given us a lot of leeway to do what we want. Our guys are required to put in a MINIMUM of 50 hours per week and generally put in around 60-70. That is solely because we have produced so much in the two years that the team has existed (30 year old company with very new desire for the technology we have given them). Two years ago they had three clones as their servers in one office. Today, we have a new hardened datacenter, brand new infrastructure and hardware within all of our offices, and are developing technologies that nobody else in our industry has.

All of this being said, I think the majority of you are correct. It's a bad idea.

Correction...

It's a good idea but not one that can be implemented in a good way. It really should be in a common area. Until one is available, it should wait. If we're gonna break down that elitist image, then this is not the way to do it. Whether our guys are productive or not is irrelevant. In short, if we don't have enough to share then we probably should wait until we do.

Maybe we'll start off with a monthly FPS round-up in the conference room... setup and put on by our department. We could always hang onto the equipment and do it regularly... three or four projectors and consoles in our training room.

Thanks, again.

Re:Follow-Up / Thanks

[billcopc]

our team is kinda thought of as "elite" (as one employee recently told me)

Okay... slow down cowboy. Exactly how "non-tech" is this place ? I mean, if I were the only I.T. guy in a car wash, everyone would think of me as the Stephen Hawking of PCs.

And who the hell uses the term "elite" outside of warez groups and awesomely bad 90's hacker movies ?

It sounds like you're bending over backwards for a handful of techies. Hey, I'm a techie, and I'd like to not be dealing with angry/insane people on a daily basis, but if you're in a non-tech business, exactly how much value does this royal I.T. department add to the company's bottom line ?

If the company doesn't want to spend mad money on their techs, maybe there's a good reason for it, and maybe you shouldn't go around behind "the company's" back with your own funding. There are far easier and cheaper ways to get laid.

Re:Follow-Up / Thanks

[billcopc]

Congrats on trolling Ask Slashdot. I'd like to point out that you failed to generate lulz. Back to Kuro5hin you go!

Re:Follow-Up / Thanks

[SkydiverFL]

There's no "going behind the company's back." Everything we do is in the open. The company just isn't at a point where they've ever really had a significant investment in tech... until now. Bottom line is that they see what we're doing, and what we've accomplished, and they want more.

As for the actual bottom line, what we HAVE developed so far as had a huge financial impact. Obviously, I cannot go into facts or figures, but let me just say that we've cut enough waste and redundancy out of the normal environment to easily pay for our most of what we've already spent building the department.

And you're right... it's a decent size company (six offices... couple hundred employees in the field) and a very small MIS group. In the end, spending my personal money to keep my guys worth it and motivated is worth it.

Re:Follow-Up / Thanks

[SkydiverFL]

Huh?

Re:Follow-Up / Thanks

[Blakey Rat]

Your own pocket? Seriously?

Wait, you're buying Sirius subscriptions for people who have Internet access? Out of your own pocket? Why not just use the speakers on the computers to play music through this new invention called the "Internet."

Is your office managed by schizophrenics? Seriously. "We want high morale, but we have monitoring software. We have Internet access (presumably!), but we provide Sirius radios." So weird.

Re:Follow-Up / Thanks

[hattig]

You're overworking your employees and they will burn out eventually. Never mind installing the spy software on their systems to monitor what they do.

50 hour weeks are okay for short bursts, once or twice a year to meet a deadline, etc, with appropriate time off in lieu.

70 hour weeks will burn them out, probably very shortly. 70 hour weeks are for people who can gain massively from their work - startup creators and highly paid consultants who will take 3 months off over winter each year.

If you want these employees to feel happier then let them work the industry standard hours - 9 - 5.30 Monday to Friday, with some flexi-time.

Re:Follow-Up / Thanks

[Qzukk]

Sirius subscriptions for people who have Internet access?

A Sirius subscription allows you to listen to the music online as well. Presumably paying for the subscription out of his pocket is cheaper than paying the RIAA out of his pocket.

Re:Follow-Up / Thanks

[Blakey Rat]

There's a dozen places to hear music online for free. Pandora, Yahoo whatever-cast, the 200 radio stations listed in iTunes. It makes sense if you're listening to something ONLY available on Sirius, but other than that it's just throwing money in the trash.

Video out + Capture Card

[cowtamer]

Of course, the quality won't be that good, unless you've got an HD capture card and the appropriate playback utility. Your staff are going to figure out how to plug it directly into the DVI input very quickly in any case, so you might be better off plugging them directly into the monitors.

Even at game development studios, developers get XBox360 devkits at their desks, and the real consoles in the shared areas--just something to keep in mind.

Re:Perhaps the problem isn't due to a lack of an x

[SkydiverFL]

Sorry for the confusion. I should have been more clear.

When I said that I cannot install a monitor at their desk, I meant a SECOND monitor just for the console. That would be just too "in your face." Also, by piping it through the laptop (using a capture card, etc.) my hope was to be able to prove that the consoles are not being abused.

Our management is great. And, our developers are hard workers. It's the rest of the departments out there that I worry about. ;-)

Re:Perhaps the problem isn't due to a lack of an x

[SpacePunk]

OH, ok. That makes sense now.

The capture card direction may not be workable. I have three capture cards here, the old ATI PCI tv card is the only one workable with game systems since there is no noticible delay. The other two are Hauppauge type cards, and have couple second delay which makes it difficult to play any sort of console game.

You want happy employees?

[Confused]

You want happy employees? Send them home at 5 o'clock every day, instead of having them play at work. Wasting time at work with games is a lot worse than giving them the opportunity to have a private life. That show a lot more you care about them and gives a bigger boost in productivity than any other measure I've seen.

If your guys have no life and the XBox is really an incentive they care about, provide some for private use at home, although most likely a visit to the local doll-house would be more educational for them.

It can be done, it's called freedom at work...

[caramuto]

I worked for a company (not Google) that had everything you could imagine to chill, like a music studio, ping-pong, gym and much more... The result was that employees were more motivated to actually work, because we felt like the freedom was there and we could go take a break any time we wanted. The point I am trying to make is that if you install the game console in the office, is to create an cool and relaxed atmosphere, eliminating the controlling "big-brother" feeling, which is difficult sometimes for management to get used to the idea of complete freedom at work.

Some Suggestions

[OverflowingBitBucket]

Firstly, don't pay too much attention to the naysayers who are knocking back the idea entirely or saying to just give them a console to take home. I'm guessing the reason is to give your devs something to do to unwind from time to time, and possibly get them playing together occasionally to bring the team together.

Unfortunately, you are setting yourself up for serious resentment by monitoring console use. Sure, it might seem fair from your point-of-view, you don't want people abusing it. Fair enough. But consider it from the devs point-of-view. They know there is a fun toy there. They know they can play it. They also know *if* they do, a note is being taken somewhere, and it could damage their career in the future at some point. Do they have exact guidelines as to what is allowed? Are they risking trouble if they are actively seen playing games for a few hours a week, even if they restrict it to certain hours? By including this monitoring, you are effectively tormenting your devs by giving them a toy they dare not use. They will end up resenting you for it.

I know that if I was in such a place, the instant I knew that usage was monitored, I'd set the console aside, under my desk, and use it as a footrest. There's no way I'm risking my career to play a game from time to time. If anyone asked, I'd just say I was caught up in my work and didn't really feel like playing then. I'll just wait 'til I get home and play games then. Seeing the console there would make me resent my employer.

If you must monitor, is there some way that you can set a "sensible" limit, and "monitor" use only insofar as making sure that each dev doesn't hit the limit? And if they do, let them know they'll get a warning first, not be reported to the higher-ups? And also let them know that usage information isn't being retained or used against them, it's just being checked to make sure it isn't excessive, then discarded?

I think a better solution would be to tell people to limit their time to x hours per week, or outside of certain hours, or similar, and then leave it at that. If it's getting abused, people who are following the rules are going to kick up. You've got bigger problems to deal with if you can't trust your employees to track their own time.

Another possibility is to set regular "team-building" times, where you all get together and play games together to unwind. If your office also need to be on-call, you might need a standby roster where one person (known well in advance) covers for everyone else in case a client comes by.

As for video capture, can you just track how long the console has been powered on instead? Why do you need screencaps of the console? The only possibility I can see is if they used it as a media player (ie. listen to music whilst working).

As for discretion, could the console just go in a tray with a lid, so that when it isn't in use, it is just a blank box on the desk? If anyone asks, it is to keep dust off the unit. The real reason is so that you're not giving the impression that all your area does is play games.

And last of all- why a console per developer? Why not just set up a rec area, with a comfy chair, console, and good headphones (or give each person their own headphones). Then track the time they spend in the rec room, instead.

Alternatively, have a game console box, where each of the major consoles is present. Set all the cables up for each employee at their work area, with controllers inside their desk drawers. When they want to play, they go to the console box, check out their console and game(s) of choice, and take it back to play. You can then track the console checkouts instead.

Hire Me

[cervo]

Wow can you hire me. It took a year of complaining about a monitor that was blurry and flickery before I ended up with a 17 inch LCD display. And I didn't get the display because of complaining, I got it because the company got a good deal on displays for everyone.....

Even now I can't convince the manager to get me the tools I need to actually do the job (it is a MS shop and they are too cheap to even get proper licenses for SQL Server 2005 Developer edition [ultra cheap] so we have to dev for SQL Server 2000 and deploy on 2005 or use express where possible).

Your developers all have 20 inch displays and you are looking into X Box's. I'm sure they definitely have the tools they need to do their job. Sign me up!!!!!

it will do more harm than good

[matang]

several people have touched on this, but i'll speak from personal experience: even if you get over the hurdle of them doing their work instead of screwing around, you're alienating your team from the rest of the company. i promise. as soon as everyone else hears that your people are getting stupid non-job-related stuff like that they are going to resent your team and that will trickle down to inter-department performance. i just got done dealing with a year of this at my former place of employment. we hired an interactive manager who took a few months to hire four developers for a web site project. almost immediately he started throwing gobs of money at all sorts of ridiculous stuff his team didn't need but that could "motivate" them. $1,000 chairs, lamps, painting the room red, large monitors, endless food, etc. are some of these arguably motivators/ok for the office? sure, until you realize that the rest of the people in the building had old machines, crt monitors, couldn't get reimbursed for travel appropriately, job cuts, etc. it was nothing but complete resentment that these guys got tons of perks while everyone else had to fill out forms for basic office supplies. i'm not saying it's right of fair, but it absolutely fed into constant disagreement and bad work environment between that team and everyone else. it also gave a heightened sense of entitlement to the development team who were really impossible to deal with. they were given specials perks, they felt special, and they acted like none of the rules of the place applied to them. i'm not implying causation entirely on this, but when i left the project was a year behind schedule. your mileage may vary, my 2 cents, etc, but i'd think long and hard about how what you're giving your folks can impact not only their production within your team but their ability to be productive in the rest of the organization.

If you are on lunch and don't want to be bothered

[Vandil X]

...don't take lunch at your desk!

(No, really. If something melts down during your 30mins/1hr break, make them page/call you. Life will not end if your desk is unmanned for lunch.)

Take your lunch:

• at an outside table.
• in your car (in the lot)
• in your car (drive someplace and park)
• at home (if reasonably close by)
• at the less often used break room.

Need entertainment during the desk-less break?

• Get an iPhone or something else with a real browser and internet access.
• Get a Nintendo DS/PSP.

Communal gaming area with communal games

[hattig]

In order to encourage people to take breaks from their workstation (for health and safety reasons) it is a more sensible idea to set up a communal gaming area (Wii + cheap LCD/Plasma TV) than to set up each employee with their own console at their desk.

The former will increase team interaction. You could have an inter-team tournament after work hours, etc, which would improve intra-team communications. Rayman Raving Rabbids 1 + 2, Brawl, Sports, Kart, etc. Hell, put a Wii Fit board in and get the (possibly hot) marketing chicks upstairs.

The latter will engender jealousy amongst other departments once they (inevitably) find out, and it would probably be a very quick way to get booted out of the company.

The other thing is that you have issued fairly decent laptops to the employees - so why not play games on these? As long as they don't have integrated graphics (the D820s have, my colleague's D830 has discrete) you should be able to set up some games for team play without any of the additional costs (hardware, subscriptions, setup, cables, you getting fired) that your solution would entail.

Re:Communal gaming area with communal games

[gujo-odori]

We have one of those where I work, it works out pretty well. It's popular with those who choose to use it (which isn't most people, so it's also waaaay cheaper than trying to put that stuff on every desk), and it's in a fully sound-proofed room so it doesn't bother anyone else. Rockband is the most popular game these days, and we have a Wii, an Xbox 360, and a Playstation 3 in there, along with an HD projector to put the stuff up on the wall.

If everybody had a game console at her/his cube, hearing people constantly pounding controllers and clicking away was I was trying to work would probably result in a homicide, and I can think of a number of people who would join me. Putting a game console on every desk is insane, unless everyone is in a private office. A reasonably soundproof private office.

Building a dedicate game room is the way to go. I'll be impressed by anyone who can get the budget for that in these tough times, though. Belts are a bit tight everywhere.

Re:WOW! You're all fired!

[hattig]

Don't promise clients the moon and make your people work 80 hour weeks.

Great answer, especially given the original question asker posted below stating that the employees have minimum 50 hour weeks and have to work 70+ hour weeks (and when this happens, it is because of under-staffing, poor management, and a big brother/punishment culture in the workplace).

why does it matter what time...

[Organic Brain Damage]

I'll tell you, if you just get an assignment, in writing, every week or two and you go off by yourself and do you work without ever communicating with other employees, then it absolutely does NOT matter what time you do your work. Very few organizations run this way, so it probably matters what time you work.

Re:why does it matter what time...

[porcupine8]

Well, of course you've got to coordinate with other people in order to collaborate. Do you think most scientists at universities work alone? Of course not, but they do set their own hours and decide for themselves what they'll be working on and when - within the needs of whatever projects they're currently working on. Which means that if they're done with their meetings for the day and they need to go pick up a kid from school, they can just go do it. Or if their brain is fried and they need a break, they just go take one. Maybe yesterday they ate lunch at their desk while working, but today they decide to take two hours to meet their spouse downtown for lunch. If they need to get a document to a collaborator in an hour, they can't do that, obviously. But once the document is sent, they can.

"Blue collar non-tech" ain't Google

[thebiss]

We need to carefully differentiate the "blue collar non-tech firm" from Google and IBM Research.

1 - Is your department developing products that generate significant revenue for the company? (I suspect not, as you call yourself MIS. MIS is cost, and not usually P&L management.)

2 - Is your department researching and generating patentable technical assets that keep your firm ahead of your competitors? Do you frequently work with legal to track and manage your IP?

3 - Is your department focused on day-to-day operations of company servers and systems, upgrading software as needed and maintaining custom-code that drives manufacturing equipment?

If you can't answer yes to #1 or #2, I would be careful.

- An asshole consultant (not me) might see your staff as IT operations not core to the business, and recommend outsourcing to the IBMs, EDSs, and Wipros of the world, to cut cost.

- A union rep for the company's "blue collar" staff might see your non-unionized department as the true source of waste, and try to leverage that during the next contract round.

In the EU...

[Nick Ives]

According to the Working Time Regulations you have to provide at least one unbroken twenty minute break that's not near the start or end of the day. There are additional health & safety concerns too, i.e. if an employee has an accident and says on their report form it was because they were knackered due to not having sat down for a brew for 4hrs that can cause problems. That's why most firms here in the UK give at least a thirty minute unpaid lunch break and a paid fifteen or twenty minute tea break.

Re:In the EU...

[sumdumass]

Well I understand the need for a break and all. I actually got in a rush when making that reply so it looks a little different then I intended. I'm not disputing the need for a break nor do I think it is a bad Idea. I'm thinking that there is some leeway in the timing of the break to where the law doesn't say that you must have a lunch break every 4 hours.

But lets say you work from 8-5. With a half hour unpaid lunch break, that's 7.5 hours a day. If the time for lunch is between 11am and 2pm and your scheduled for a lunch at 11 am. The letter of the law as well as all the concerns pertaining to why it might be a good idea to have a lunch break is still satisfied if your brought back to work at 11:15am and then given your lunch again at 1:00 pm.

SO it could be possible to be required to work during your lunch break as long as you still get it later. The key being still getting it.

Something else...

[Karem Lore]

I would have to agree with the majority of the comments on here, this is a bad idea. I have seen companies where consoles are in the lunchroom, untouched...A rather well-known British brand at that...

Having said that, I have also worked at a company that had a games room. In it was a pool table, a vending machine, and 2 arcade machines, Gauntlet and Street Fighter...Both better played with colleagues/friends. Yes we used them, mostly after work and sometimes at lunchtimes...And the pool table was used by FAR more often than any game machine.

However, the most exciting place here was the stairwell where a large group of 20 or so smokers would congregate to discuss ideas...and this was a Games company...

I would look at getting a pool table...Or even better (and here is a spark of genius), a membership to a local sports centre where you can go swim, pull weights, play squash/tennis/badmington etc. By far the best would be to give them once a week 1.5 hours for lunch and they can go trash out their frustrations in their given sport...And being developers...well, you know...

And then people here.....

[jotaeleemeese]

... ask themselves why their jobs get outsourced to India.

I assure you IT workers in cheaper localities don't get a console for a whole team, forget about one for each of them, most likely they put 16 hours/day of straight work for a fraction of their game playing counterparts in other places.

Honestly, did you notice a recession is going on?

Hooking it up!

[Zaphod1620]

I haven't seen any replies other than it being a bad idea, so here is my experience with this problem. I tried to do the same thing; I wanted my Xbox on my PC LCD monitor, it is much better than my TV. In the end, I had to hook the console directly to the monitor. I tried several methods of feeding the video into my PC, but all them, including both an internal ATI All-In-Wonder card and an external ATI video input. All of them had a lag time of a few seconds, making playing the game impossible. In the end though, I just hooked the Xbox into the VGA port on the monitor, and the PC uses the DVI. The sound I have going into the line-in on my PC, there is no lag.

Re:If you are on lunch and don't want to be bother

[euxneks]

As a corollary, don't work from home, they will come to expect you to work from home at a moment's notice. I mean, you may like work, but no one likes to work all the time.

Lag

[HTH NE1]

It would be preferable not to feed the console directly into the monitor. We have employee monitoring software in use and need to track the usage of the console. So, it seems best to use a capture card along with some type of viewer utility.

That won't be viable. Capture cards can't capture and redisplay fast enough for gaming. Try passing a console's video signal through a TiVo for an example of the problem. You'll need something that will split the video signal.

Luckily, cables are available for most consoles that have both S-Video and Composite connections which output simultaneously. Let the player have the S-Video and record the Composite with whatever system you prefer. Audio splitters are cheap too.

Consider something else

[GWBasic]

Console games tend to suck people in for hours at a time. My employer (VMware) has ping-pong tables, foozball, pinball, air hockey, and DDR littered throughout the campus. They're much more effective then consoles in common areas because the games tend to be short.

The problem with console games is that they tend to be designed for extended-time play. It takes me at least 10-15 minutes to get into a game of Zelda, and when I play Super Mario Galaxy, sometimes an hour will go by without me noticing it. Furthermore, once people get sucked into online games, there sometimes is no "pause" button as the other players don't care about the fact that the boss wants something finished by the end of the day.

If you really want video games, stick with something cool, like an arcade cabinet. It makes your workplace look fancy, and the games don't last forever.