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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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?

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

[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".

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?

From orbit...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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...

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.

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???

[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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!)

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

[Fumus]

You keep your shares in your bed?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.