High Tech Vending Machines Transform IT Support At Facebook

Hugh Pickens writes "While getting power cords, replacement keyboards, and other sundry computer accessories to employees who need them sounds easy enough, at many companies the process requires filling out order forms that can take IT departments days to fulfill. That's why Facebook CIO Tim Campos decided to take a more user-friendly approach to this common problem, installing custom-made vending machines around the Facebook campus that dispense computer accessories instead of snacks and sodas. When Facebook engineers spill coffee on their keyboard (a common mishap), they head to a nearby vending machine instead of hitting up their IT guy or just grabbing a replacement from a nearby cabinet. They swipe their badge, key in their selection and voila — a brand new keyboard drops down for them to take. According to Campos, they've reduced the cost of managing replacement accessories by about 35%. While products found in the vending machines are free, items are clearly marked with price tags so employees can see the retail value of each accessory they take. The new vending machines also require all employees to swipe their badge before making a selection. That means each and every power cord, keyboard and screen wipe they take can be traced back to their name, ensuring that the system won't be abused. 'I like the assumption that employees will do the right thing,' writes Alexis Madrigal. 'The swipe means that everyone's requests are tracked and I'm sure some algorithm somewhere is constantly sorting the data to see if anyone has pulled 10 sets of headphones out of the system.'"

Comments

Same Typical Vending Problems?

[Umuri]

Do employees have to trek across campus to get the vending machine they like that stocks their particular favored model of headset, mouse or keyboard?(Model M preferably)
Do they sometime get stuck requiring quickly looking around to make sure no one is looking then banging the machine a few times?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[Molochi]

Model M keyboards were removed from the machines because they don't need to be replaced that often.

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[spokenoise]

Hey Fred? Can I borrow your badge for a sec?

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[wonkey_monkey]

To use the hardware vending machines that everyone in the company knows about? No, you can't.

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[Anonymous Coward]

Model M keyboards were removed from the machines because they don't need to be replaced that often.

Model M keyboards are the only type which have a 100% failure rate for me. Three, from Unicomp, all failed in sequence. Just ceased working in normal use.

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[ygslash]

Now Logitech can produce a commercial in which a short Facebook employee gets four or five Microsoft mice out of the machine, then stands on them in order to reach the higher-up button to get a Logitech mouse.

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[Ed Avis]

Yikes! How long is the warranty on Unicomp's keyboards?

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do employees have to trek across campus to get the vending machine they like that stocks their particular favored model of headset, mouse or keyboard?(Model M preferably)
Do they sometime get stuck requiring quickly looking around to make sure no one is looking then banging the machine a few times?

Inquiring minds want to know!

OK, now we know you're pulling this out of your ass.

Model M keyboards do not break.

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[MrNemesis]

Sorry, you're wrong. We removed the Model M's from our vending machines because when the keyboard dropped into the out-tray, it broke the vending machine in half and then dented the floor. :)

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[Andy Dodd]

"Do they sometime get stuck requiring quickly looking around to make sure no one is looking then banging the machine a few times?"
Weak. Where I work, no one looks around any more. They just do it. There are frequent exchanges of "get it to give up the goods" strategy at the vending machines, which are in a relatively high-traffic area.

One machine (candy) just needs the simple "push machine backward and release" technique.
The soda machine is evil. The only way to win is to NOT choose anything from the top two rows. These manage to get wedged in a way that requires 5 minutes of banging on the front plastic window to dislodge. (Each row in the machine is slightly forward of the one below it, I'm assuming to prevent items from hitting lower rows - but it means the top row is too close to the window.)

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[tlhIngan]

Do they sometime get stuck requiring quickly looking around to make sure no one is looking then banging the machine a few times?

Modern vending machines often have sensors now that detect if a product gets stuck and either choose to refund the money or try to issue said product. I've had it happen to me once - the candy bar didn't drop but hung on. The machine detected that nothing dropped so spun around again. I ended up getting a two-fer that time.

Of course, said machines rarely get stuck and generally are designed that even the worst product will fall down reliably without edges or other things that would catch products. Unlike machines that don't which often have internal edges to catch products. Several times I had one jam the door so you couldn't even push it open. If you applied enough force you could break the packaging and use it to bounce the product around to at least get the door opening again, and then maybe bounce it so it could fall properly.

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[Anonymous Coward]

The loud *THUNK* of a falling Model M wasn't well-received by the staff. It could be heard 3 floors away.

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[Immerman]

From what I've heard Unicomp is known for very poor quality and the buckling spring switches are the only redeeming quality of their keyboards. The IBM M is the only true M. (actually I think there was another decent manufacturer as well, but I'm not an M-thusiast and the details have grown hazy)

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[Immerman]

Smart design. I'd bet the losses from the occasional two-fer are still a lot cheaper than the increased maintenance on a machine that gets "helped" instead.

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[LinuxIsGarbage]

I was at a supplier's manufacturing site last week and they had a vending machine with a place to swipe your badge. Only this machine was stocked with work gloves, safety glasses, knives, etc. I guess it can't be called a "high tech vending machine" because it didn't have keyboards.

At work I've never seen a high rate of keyboard failures. If it did happen it's normally pretty easy to scare up a keyboard. People either replace the Lenovo OEM ones with a wireless set they expensed, they're using a laptop and can go back to the built in keyboard, or there's keyboards kicking around that weren't returned when the lease was up on the last computer.

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[toddestan]

There are Lexmark-branded Model M's. They are basically IBM Model M's with a different badge on them.

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI

Unicomp owns the patent for the mechanical bits, but they never seemed to grok the origonal keyboard's design. A proper Model M should be usable after JB Welding it to a hilt and then braining your PHB with it.

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[lsatenstein]

Or, as one friend to another, I forgot my card, I spilled coffee on my keyboard, can I borrow your card?
The way it would happen is "I forgot my card, I need to go out to smoke, Lend me your card, I will be back in 10!".

Love technology or abuse it.

Re:Same Typical Vending Problems?

[Molochi]

I don't really think keyboards fail that often and when they do they get replaced with the same POS that you and your users (and my users) are used to using. That's where we are basicly. I also don't imagine keyboards really being something you could dispense from a vending machine. I don't think the OP did either.., he was making a joke and I was expanding it.

I wonder what the savings are?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Going through IT for every goofy little peripheral isn't terribly sensible(and IT generally doesn't love spending time being the supply cabinet); but I'd be curious to know whether the additional complexity and cost of the vending machines are sufficiently defrayed by the 'surveillance effect' and inventory tracking they provide.

'Just have a supply closet' is not a sexy strategy; but it sure is KISS-compliant.

Re:I wonder what the savings are?

[isopropanol]

Acklands Grainger actually rents these machines out stocked with whatever you want that's relevant to your business... the display model in our local distributor has boxcutters, pens, high-viz vests, etc...

Re:I wonder what the savings are?

[Lumpy]

as opposed to just having the receptionist have a cabinet with the stuff who can hand it out? yeah. We did this same thing at Comcast 10 years ago, except instead of vending machines we used the receptionist at each office as the vending machine... worked great.

Re:I wonder what the savings are?

[Inda]

I prefer the method at my company.

1. Order whatever I like using a form on the intranet

2. Boss gets an automatic email that says "Click this link to authorise..."

3. Boss calls me over to ask what the email is about.

4. "Just click the link" I say.

5. Hardware arrives a week later.

Re:I wonder what the savings are?

[tipo159]

5. Hardware arrives a week later.

So when your keyboard or HDD craps out, you can sit around for a week twiddling your thumbs?

Re:I wonder what the savings are?

[roc97007]

Going through IT for every goofy little peripheral isn't terribly sensible(and IT generally doesn't love spending time being the supply cabinet); but I'd be curious to know whether the additional complexity and cost of the vending machines are sufficiently defrayed by the 'surveillance effect' and inventory tracking they provide.

'Just have a supply closet' is not a sexy strategy; but it sure is KISS-compliant.

No kidding. Especially when mice are like seven bucks in quantity. No inventory system will be cheaper than just giving the part away.

Re:I wonder what the savings are?

[roc97007]

as opposed to just having the receptionist have a cabinet with the stuff who can hand it out? yeah. We did this same thing at Comcast 10 years ago, except instead of vending machines we used the receptionist at each office as the vending machine... worked great.

For Fudd only knows what reason, we put the receptionist at each floor in charge of supplies, but she is forbidden to stock phone headsets and computer peripherals. Lead time for these items are one to three weeks, a little longer for monitors. Good luck getting work done in the meantime.

Re:I wonder what the savings are?

[roc97007]

"Boss, my monitor has crapped out. Completely black."

"Ok, order another one online and I'll ok it."

"I'd love to, but I haven't yet mastered the art of navigating the intranet blindfolded."

Re:I wonder what the savings are?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are smashing monitors, then you deserve to just sit there. It's your punishment.

Intel has had these for years

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel has been using these, at least in our campus, for a few years now.

Re:Intel has had these for years

[frglrock]

So has Facebook apparently. The first article has the timestamp: "July 6, 2011: 8:55 AM ET"

The point the author of the second article, some two years later, seems to be making is that they actually trust their employees.

Re:Intel has had these for years

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel has been using these, at least in our campus, for a few years now.

That sounds at least as fun as vigorously scraping with great force one's own penis with a cheesegrater.

Re:Intel has had these for years

[dinfinity]

Mod parent up, please.

Re:Intel has had these for years

[Lumpy]

No, that is working at Microsoft. Intel is a far nicer place to work... more like velvet ropes and furry handcuffs.

Re:Intel has had these for years

[Anonymous Coward]

So has Facebook apparently. The first article has the timestamp: "July 6, 2011: 8:55 AM ET"

The point the author of the second article, some two years later, seems to be making is that they actually trust their employees.

Or, perhaps proving nothing if no one actually reads the audit logs.

But hey, I like the assumption here of trust. At least that's rather refreshing, whether it's actually true or not.

Easy resale!

[Artea]

The price tag idea is fantastic, I can steal Frank's badge, and grab myself 10 of everything. List it on ebay at the tagged price and make a nice bonus every week.

Re:Easy resale!

[Shimdaddy]

Yeah there's no way that's gunna backfire and get you fired / thrown in jail.

Re:Easy resale!

[lightknight]

Amazing, isn't it? All this technology, education, and one hell of a legal system, and people still steal. Weird, right?

And here's the funny thing. Most of the time they get away with it.

What more, there's no sure fire way to prevent theft, even if everyone had a chip in their heads, and a supercomputer was dedicated to thought crime. Even the most dedicate, read-only AI with the best intents would, IMHO, go completely nuts after several generations of exposure to humanity; you either have a drift of values from the time the AI was initialized (what was once a social vice is now not), or you have an accumulating error (good luck with that), or even spontaneous errors (a problem that the designers never imagined the AI would encounter, and CANNOT adapt around). Those are just a few of the possible error conditions.

Finally, we haven't considered, though this is way out here on the fringe branch, that morality is a weapon, used by groups to subjugate individuals to their agendas, whether it benefits them or not. I say this, because the first thing any would-be aggressor does is establish the moral high-ground in any given scenario, nullifies the current set of group beliefs and replaces it with their own, then directs the group against those now outside the group.

On the other hand, I am currently taking some migraine meds which have some fairly horrific side-effects (feels like my skin is on fire right now...like I'm in an oven), so perhaps I am not in the best frame of mind to consider the more philosophical points of civility tonight. Topamax is a crazy drug.

Re:Easy resale!

[Grayhand]

The price tag idea is fantastic, I can steal Frank's badge, and grab myself 10 of everything. List it on ebay at the tagged price and make a nice bonus every week.

Except Frank borrowed your badge and is selling a 100 per week at a lower price on Ebay. FYI your boss wants to have a word with you.

Re:Easy resale!

[flyingfsck]

Hmm, I always end up buying parts for the company on my own credit card, because the purchasing process is too slow and cumbersome. So what is that, reverse stealing?

Re:Easy resale!

[SuricouRaven]

I've had to do that on more than a few occasions too. Some of the things we've needed are so specialised they can't be obtained from the 'approved suppliers' list. A few of them are only readily available through ebay stores.

Re:Easy resale!

[JosKarith]

And the chances of a discreet camera being fitted either in or near the machine are...?

Re:Easy resale!

[peragrin]

then your accounting dept needs to stop hobbling the purchasing dept.

as a company purchaser i have access to a company credit for such things.

Re:Easy resale!

[ixidor]

When i was in the USMC, i worked for a time in the "Aviation Information Systems Department". One of the things we handled were System V 486 servers. ( back when the top end desktop processor was a Pentium 400mhz). as you might expect we were looking for ways to use newer hardware. Ended up got approval to order 10 SCSI cards from ebay. ( ONLY place to get what we needed).

Re:Easy resale!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a begging war of attrition. The same process of wearing down the weakly committed from utilizing Technical Support lines, is used by your employer to control cost by discouraging employees from using the official channels.

The expected productivity level asked from you is inconsistent with the formal processes you are expected to use to accomplish the tasks. You can either work unpaid overtime for pennies on the dollar(an effective pay decrease) by adding paperwork to your list of responsibilities when you have a supply requirement, or you can take an effective pay decrease by becoming your own supply cabinet.

So the CIO or IT employee that got a raise for the brilliant plan of acquisition forms has "controlled costs" by displacing them on to salaried employees or billable hours of labor in the case of hourly workers. This is still probably more efficient though because it eliminates the inherent waste you see with the tragedy of the commons known as "office supplies". A sense of ownership goes a long way towards reducing frivolous behavior, and shame for being dependent on handouts goes even further.

This only counts as exploitation in the case of employee turnover where the expectation of employer provided supplies is not met and the subsequent request for a raise is unmet as-well. As a business priority, depending on the organization and employees tax situations, one or the other may be a more efficient location to accumulate business expenses.

Facebook's Irish tax scam may make it more cost effective to pay their employees in e-Bay-able office supplies which can be written off as a business expense than as labor hours which are subject to many dreary payroll taxes.

It's a complex decision and at the end of the day, the automation benefits likely give the vending machines the upper hand over dead trees, and the tax incentives just seal the deal. You've eliminated 2 layers of human data entry intervention between supply rendered and the accounting spreadsheets. This is why these machines are popular in "Lean Manufacturing" environments.

Of course, in a government or union shop a worker can make an entire career out of walking 10 minutes to the supply room featherbed, filling out a separate form for each pen and pencil they need, going to the bathroom and stopping at the watercooler on the way back, and then realizing they forgot the eraser/whiteout once they get back to their desk.

Every time they invent email/paperwork make-work for themselves to do, they are taxing the efficiency of the organization with their laziness. Because at the end of the day, someone has to deal with the mountains of dead tree this lazy ass produces in a week.
Some possible reactions:
-Don't blame the lazy ass. Blame the enabling manager playing bureaucratic dueling games with them.
-Forgive their enabling manager because that manager is probably conscious of the cause/effect but is forced by the distribution of funds amongst their budget pools of money to spend as much as possible on labor and as little as possible on staplers.
-Public floggings of anyone who doesn't meet their quota of un-reimbursed work expenses.

     

how do they track jam's and double drops?

[Joe_Dragon]

how do they track jam's and double drops?

At least it's free so you have some kicking the shit out of it when it eats your cash.

Re:how do they track jam's and double drops?

[DigiShaman]

Favorite IT story: So back in 1999, a traveling sales engineer drops his laptop off at my desk in a huff stating "it's broken, damn screen broke". Looking at the screen, it looks like something fell on the LCD screen and cracked it in three places. Oh, something fell on it alright. His fist! The angle and placement of three knuckles lined up perfectly with a right hand punch. My shock and dismay quickly followed by laughter. Ya right, broken my ass! It sure is now tough guy.

Re:how do they track jam's and double drops?

[antifoidulus]

You just push the button for a keyboard, hoping that it will fall on top of the mouse you wanted and dislodge it.

Re:how do they track jam's and double drops?

[Stormthirst]

Most top of the line vending machines can report to central command when they are jammed, along with their apparent inventory level.

Eventually a real life human will have to go re-fill the machine and at the same time do a stock take. When there's a big enough discrepancy between the stock level and the inventory level an engineer goes and checks the machine out to see why it's double dropping. And perhaps fits a camera at the same time to look for employees who are being less than honest

Re:how do they track jam's and double drops?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's when you take 3 weeks to get it repaired and make sure to clue in their manager as well.

Re:how do they track jam's and double drops?

[DigiShaman]

Actually, because of how valuable of an employee he was, he got a shiny new IBM Thinkpad with the latest Pentium III, RAM, HDD space, and DVD playback. The whole nine yards. I didn't care one way or the other honestly. My boss said the funds were approved from accounting and off it got ordered. Meh. Whatever.

Re:how do they track jam's and double drops?

[Quirkz]

One of our company employees wanted a new laptop, so he ran over his with his truck. He got a new laptop. At least that was the story I was told from the tech. The tech is a bit of a joker, so it might have been an accident and not intentional. But the laptop was U-shaped and pretty definitively run over, and I'm struggling to imagine a sane person who would put a laptop that close to a car wheel.

Mix up both systems?

[khasim]

Have a supply closet behind a locked door so you need your badge to open it up and a motion activated camera taking shots of you while you take whatever you want.

If inventory starts to drop then look at the photos to see if anyone is abusing the system.

Re:Mix up both systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of sooo many things going wrong with that idea

Re:Mix up both systems?

[nospam007]

"Have a supply closet behind a locked door so you need your badge to open it up and a motion activated camera taking shots of you while you take whatever you want."

You'll end up with a lot of sex-tapes and hence, sticky keyboards.
Vending machines can prevent both.

Re:Mix up both systems?

[kiddygrinder]

people might put their pants on upside down so their butt is their face? maybe one example might make this comment not sound retarded.

Re:Mix up both systems?

[isorox]

I can think of sooo many things going wrong with that idea

Care to share?

Re:Mix up both systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

In a building full of nerds, ending up with a sticky vending machine is just as likely.

Re:Mix up both systems?

[Stormthirst]

Supply closets aren't just used for storing supplies? Although I'm not sure Facebook (or any other company) would agree to allowing their employees to have sex on company time.

Re:Mix up both systems?

[alexander_686]

Scott Adams / Dilbert work a how to book call “Build A Better Life by Stealing Office Supplies.”

The thing about this system is that there is accountability and trust – so I would be in favor of an experiment like that.

Cost savings

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing that 35% cost reduction figure was pulled out of his ass or relies entirely on the the assumption that these vending machines are stocked all at once and only replenished when empty, saving on shipping. Otherwise it costs just the same as having the IT guy order it, with less of a lead time and a hell of a lot more of an up-front investment. As an added benefit, hey, more metrics! I guess working at Facebook, you tend to obsess over that kind of thing...

Re:Cost savings

[chaim79]

"Reduced the cost of managing replacement accessories by about 35%."

They are reducing the overhead of talking to a support person, them getting a part off the shelf, marking down that it has been removed by whom for whom for what reason, and all the rest. Something mentioned in the summary.

Re:Cost savings

[hazem]

If they're smart, they probably do some kind of vendor managed inventory and just like the way soda machines are stocked, some dude from the computer parts supply place comes in and makes sure its full of stuff. The vendor owns the inventory and they have an incentive to keep it stocked so that there's product to be bought. I think office supply companies like Staples and Office Max offer services like this for traditional office supplies.

The dumb way would be to have someone in IT manage the vending machine and spending their time ordering things in ones and twos to keep the machine stocked.

Re:Cost savings

[shitzu]

Marking down who got what (same amount of info as a vending machine collects) can be accomplished by swiping the said id and product barcode. Takes two seconds.

Re:Cost savings

[Anonymous Coward]

Marking down who got what (same amount of info as a vending machine collects) can be accomplished by swiping the said id and product barcode. Takes two seconds.

The problem here is that a keyboard is perfectly repairable after a coffee spill. The reason it's cheaper to just get a new one is that we do not have to pay the true costs of disposing of plastic waste. As long as you do not have to include the environmental cost of plastic products in their price, disposable is cheap and you get plastic spots in the world's oceans that are the size of nation states. We could solve alot of environmental problems by making manufacturers pay for the post disposal environmental costs of their products. It would motivate them to find improved bio degradable materials.

Re:Cost savings

[shitzu]

Leave it to an AC to take a random sentence as a quote and start a rant totally unrelated to said sentence.

Re:Cost savings

[ls671]

and you get plastic spots in the world's oceans that are the size of nation states.

Still, I do not how it occurred, but he just made me realize that it is the part that floats and that we do not see what has been dumped that doesn't.

Re:Cost savings

[Anonymous Coward]

"Reduced the cost of managing replacement accessories by about 35%."

They are reducing the overhead of talking to a support person, them getting a part off the shelf, marking down that it has been removed by whom for whom for what reason, and all the rest. Something mentioned in the summary.

Yes, but the ironic part is finding that the worth-a-shit threshold of tracking every expense down to the penny likely stopped somewhere north of most MSRP accessory price tags. And are we not talking about the same billion-dollar company who basically paid zero taxes last year? Seems their tracking and auditing burdens are clearly not the same as ours.

In a lot of companies, that accessory-managing overhead is in the rather cheap form of an unmanned supply closet and a clipboard. Same trusting concept, hell of a lot cheaper.

Re:Cost savings

[Anonymous Coward]

There won't be any savings, when the person puts new keyboard on top of old without unplugging it, then calling tech support for beeping pc.

Re:Cost savings

[Andy Dodd]

Let's say that there are enough people in the office that this person services 10 requests per hour.

Assume they make minimum wage - $7.25/hour.

So that's 72.5 cents per transaction.

Yeah, you can potentially also fill that employee's spare time up with other tasks - but once they start multitasking, their productivity is compromised and they might not service replacement hardware requests as quickly.

Google's been doing this for years...

[Anonymous Coward]

and in many offices they just stack the stuff on racks with an honor system to take whatever you need...

Recycling/refurbishing?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are the employees supposed to do with their old keyboards, cables, etc.?

Re:Recycling/refurbishing?

[JosKarith]

You know how there's often a recycling bin near normal vending machines for cans/wrappers etc? There's your clue.

This is *Facebook* people, you're missing it

[TaoPhoenix]

Vending Machines, hmm?

How long until the vending system gets a Facebook page? Then when everyone orders Such&Such keyboard and headphones, the machine can post "Joe Smith Likes this!" Then they can sell that data to advertisers!

Do Vending Machines have Friends?

The fun never stops!

Re:This is *Facebook* people, you're missing it

[supersat]

You might be joking, but they already implemented this years ago on the office keg: http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/27/facebook-buzz/

Re:This is *Facebook* people, you're missing it

[LordNightwalker]

Do Vending Machines have Friends?

Yes, they do.

Re:This is *Facebook* people, you're missing it

[cbiltcliffe]

Probably not, but how much fun could somebody in IT have if they rigged it to automatically update your Facebook status when you got something...
Bob: "Damn. Spilled my coffee again. Need a new keyboard" (walkwalkwalk...kchunk..walkwalkwalk...plug
Bill: "Hey Bob! Your status says you jizzed on your keyboard again! How can you still see to type?!"

Will it get stuck?

[WaterDamage]

Great, I guess the keyboard or whatever shitty peripheral will get stuck and then after beating and shaking the vending machine for 10 fucking minutes you'll end-up calling help-desk to complain that you swiped and you never got your item so they'll send out an vending service guy and spend $400/hr to fix the fucking crappy vending machine rather keep a stack of $2 dollar keyboards in a closet next to the receptionist or secretary. Then again It's Facebook, so I guess their developers/admins must jiz a lot all over their keyboards while they porn surf through user profiles of hot bitches.

Re:Will it get stuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you! you loser and coward. I think the parent is hilarious.

Re:Will it get stuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent Troll

Why would you do that?! It's hilarious!

It deserves the Funny mod I gave to it.

Re:Will it get stuck?

[Samantha Wright]

I can do better than that: the photo supplied shows what appears to be standard SATA hard drives in no more protection than an anti-static bag. On the second row. Near the top.

*clunk*

*smash*

Re:Will it get stuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize that posting after your mod erases the previous mod, even if it was as AC.

Try it one time. mod someone, go post AC and then check the mods, yours will have been undone.

Re:Will it get stuck?

[Apotekaren]

If those hard drives experience a 250G+ shock(shock tolerance of modern hard drives when not powered) when hitting the bottom of the vending machine I'd be surprised. Especially since it seems to bottom is slightly padded, for sound deadening and protecting against damage.

Or did you mean using them as a means to unstuck other items?

Re:Will it get stuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope.

Re:Will it get stuck?

[samwichse]

I'm pretty sure they'd have just maybe thought this through.

A SATA HDD isn't an external peripheral. It's something that needs the case cracked open to install, I don't see anything else like that in there. My conclusion: it's something else in the bags. In fact, that row has two things on the left, which aren't rectangular enough to be HDDs, and something in a standard impossible-to-open bubble package that's probably a USB key or memory card.

Re:Will it get stuck?

[dcollins]

"keep a stack of $2 dollar keyboards in a closet next to the receptionist or secretary"

Sure, because then the secretary gets to play gatekeeper with the key to the closet, and take out her aggression with power-plays against the higher-paid developers whose work she doesn't understand, refusing to open the closet for insane reasons or claiming it's empty or the key's missing to anyone who hasn't properly sucked up to her recently.

Re:Will it get stuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize that posting after your mod erases the previous mod, even if it was as AC.

Try it one time. mod someone, go post AC and then check the mods, yours will have been undone.

Don't post from the same browser.
Post from a different virtual machine.
Post from your phone.
Post from a different computer on a different IP.
Sign out and delete your cookie and post.

Jebuz Fing Christo, I thought of 5 different ways in 10 seconds to avoid that.

Re:Will it get stuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would hope they would use the roboarm thing, like how coca cola does in their newer vending machines. keeps the can or bottle from breaking and fizzing when you open it.

You keep using that word...

[niftydude]

'I like the assumption that employees will do the right thing,' writes Alexis Madrigal. 'The swipe means that everyone's requests are tracked and I'm sure some algorithm somewhere is constantly sorting the data to see if anyone has pulled 10 sets of headphones out of the system.'

I do not think that the word "assumption" means what Alexis thinks it means.

Re:You keep using that word...

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree, if you "assumed" that they did the 'right thing' there would be no need to track the transactions. You track the transaction because you "assume" that they will do the 'wrong thing' if not surveyed.

A cheaper, old school way

[CQDX]

Everyone gets the same computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and choice of supported OS so IT has a limited set of hardware/OS combinations to support. You break something, you get your ass to Fry's and buy the replacement on your own dime. You want something new and cool to try? You pay for it out of your own pocket. Need something different for a new project? You get your boss to budget it and work up a PO or buy it from Fry's and expense it on petty cash. You can save buy not having vending machines and paying IT staff to supply trinkets.

Re:A cheaper, old school way

[grouchomarxist]

You mean the slower, inefficient way? Yeah sure, you can stick with that.

Re:A cheaper, old school way

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost to the company of having an employee dealing with a broken keyboard is probably as high or higher than the cost of a standard issue membrane keyboard, or corded mouse.

Re:A cheaper, old school way

[jamesh]

Everyone gets the same computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and choice of supported OS so IT has a limited set of hardware/OS combinations to support. You break something, you get your ass to Fry's and buy the replacement on your own dime. You want something new and cool to try? You pay for it out of your own pocket. Need something different for a new project? You get your boss to budget it and work up a PO or buy it from Fry's and expense it on petty cash. You can save buy not having vending machines and paying IT staff to supply trinkets.

How is that cheaper?

If my keyboard on my work supplied computer breaks then it needs to be replaced. If I have to argue with someone about who's fault it is that it got broken, and therefore who's 'dime' needs to pay for my time to go down to Fry's and buy a replacement then a whole lot of time and money is getting wasted. And thats without factoring in the cost of the thing that broke, which most likely doesn't change the equation in any significant way.

I bet Facebook already did the math and your way isn't cheaper. You'd have to be a large enough company to make this idea scale, but Facebook is that.

Re:A cheaper, old school way

[JaredOfEuropa]

Having to deal with budgets and POs is what drove the switch to these vending machines in the first place. In some companies is it what drives employees to such desperation that they actually prefer to pay for small items out of their own pocket rather than follow the process to have the company pay for it. Budgets are notoriously inflexible, and dealing with POs is costly in terms of man-hours; these are costs that might not appear on your balance sheets as specific items, but they sure affect your bottom line.

Re:A cheaper, old school way

[ultrasawblade]

Seriously, these days there's a plethora of keyboards and mice available in any department store, or online, and they are all USB. I'm a full proponent of BYODID (bring your own damn input devices) and UBI-URI-ALMTHA (you break it, you replace it, and leave me the hell alone).

Re:A cheaper, old school way

[jedrek]

So I have an employee whose time costs me $100/hour (100k salary + another 100k in overhead), and if his $15 keyboard breaks, he should spend half an hour to go buy a replacement?

Re:A cheaper, old school way

[Joe_Dragon]

so software devs or media arts people are stuck with a basic low end pc

also what if marketing wants to have macs?

Re:A cheaper, old school way

[CQDX]

You'll have fewer broken items if an employee has to pay for his/her carelessness. That's where the savings come from.

Re:A cheaper, old school way

[Anonymous Coward]

Same computer, monitor, and O/S?

I'm a software dev working on distributed systems...

I bring my own keyboard -- and any place that won't let me bring my own had better have ergonomic split ones in office (and it had better actually be comfortable), or I won't work there.

If you give me the same computer the guy in accounting has, I *hope* you're wasting money giving him 16-32G of RAM and 2TB of storage. More storage would be handy, so you'd better have fast networks and a good SAN. Don't worry, I *will* email the boss and IT and talk about backups.

Otherwise you've got a very expensive developer that's bothering IT every time they need to clone a VM to test scale out. And worse than me bothering IT -- I'm sitting idle while I can't run tests. I can develop with less, but you're wasting everyone's time -- and I'll just have to reprofile them hot anyway.

Same monitor ? Monitor? Two or I don't take the position. Three or it costs you more (a laptop is acceptable as the third monitor). Wide screen, at least one capable of rotating to page mode. Dynamically.

I'm willing to work based in the same OS (windows) as your other people provided there's VMWare/Virtualbox or similar -- but you better believe it will just be a waste of CPU Time and power. Most of the data and source will never be there, and there'll be wasted loopback traffic running samba mounts.

You want to keep me in windows because that's where your corp antivirus, keylogger, and support client runs? Did you hire a distributed systems guy or an ASP.net developer?

Look, it's ITs right to run how they want, save cash how they want -- but if your cheapness gets in the way of hiring (or worse, causes a failure-to-retain after the cost of search and hiring), you've done nobody a favor.

I'm specialized, but I'm not *that* specialized. Nobody's going to hire me if I'm a pain in the ass -- but I'm not going to work for them if they clearly are inflexible and make my day to day experience miserable.

The boss can budget and PO whatever they want and I'm fine with that... but I expect IT to /support/ my desktop. If a drive unexpectedly dies, a NIC goes bad, or I get that once in a million error I can't figure out...I expect support -- otherwise you add no value for me.

Frankly though, I kind of agree with your last sentence, if we changed 'trinkets' to 'core tools'. A knowledge worker without a preferred keyboard is like a carpenter without a favorite hammer. Just because they can use any or all of them doesn't mean one doesn't suit them better. I even currently have a preferred monitor -- but I'm not *that* picky as long as dimensions and lack of glare works.

Oh yeah... you *do* supply lint-free (disposable or otherwise) monitor cleaning wipes, right? Do you really want me removing dust or the occassional sneeze from that $600 piece of glare-free coated hardware with bathroom hand towels?

Re:A cheaper, old school way

[chakan2]

It's still cheaper than using a support deskin that case you get 30 minute wait for the keyboard that's going to cost you 50$ (1/2 original employee), 15$ (1/2 hour for IT Support, cheap), 15$ for keyboard. So you're out 50$ for the employee’s time, or 80$ for professional support.

Take that with a grain of salt, I work for a HUGE IT department for a Fortune 50 company. If I were still at a 50 person start up, then yea, talking to Bob the CTO to get my keyboard is much faster and cheaper.

I'm in a monstrous cube farm, and in reality, were I to break a piece of hardware on my station those dollar estimates are very low. For me to call into support, and have them send someone down to fix whatever is wrong with my station easily takes half a day and 12 people. I call in to support, they escalate through 3 levels, then they allocate the resources and prioritize my request, and finally, either a guy shows up or they interoffice mail me the part. That half-an-hour of my time in going to Wal-mart to get a keyboard just turned into a couple hundred dollars of man hours.

Cliff notes to stay on target: The vending machines are a slick idea. Fast and you get all the metrics the multi-headed support demon gives you.

Re:A cheaper, old school way

[jmitchel!jmitchel.co]

No. The employee's lost time and productivity of an employee dealing with a broken device will almost certainly cost the company more than just replacing the device promptly, without any fussing. A new standard keyboard or mouse is on the order of $20. I'd imagine that the cost to a Silicon Valley tech company of having an employee with a broken keyboard for the day, or away from his/her desk fetching a new keyboard is on the order of $50-$100. No brainer.

Re:A cheaper, old school way

[GuB-42]

This is horribly inefficient, at least in big companies.
First thing : if something breaks, it is not necessarily the employee's fault so why would he have to pay for it. Second thing, if 10 keyboards break, it is more efficient to send one person buying all 10 then 10 people buying their own. Third thing, if a company hires let's say a developer, it is because his development skills are valuable. Anything they ask of him that isn't related to development is a waste of such skills, especially if there is someone else more suited for the job.

I find it more effective

[Osgeld]

when people spill coffee on their keyboard to dock their pay for destruction

people stop spilling coffee, course I come from a time when computers and time cost money, and drinking coffee at your desk is prohibited if your a dumbass spilling your drink on a production machine.

Re:I find it more effective

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is a time when keyboards and mice don't (for practical purposes) cost money, but management dickswinging like that most assuredly would, as people would go to all sorts of productivity destroying lengths to avoid being punished for destroying essentially worthless things.

Re:I find it more effective

[Kreigaffe]

I just don't understand spilling coffee on a keyboard to the point it ruins it.
I drink a great deal of coffee at my computer. It's the first thing I do in the morning, if I'm to do anything for the first 3 hours after I wake up..
I think I can count on one hand how many times I've dribbled coffee onto my keyboard. It's usually into my lap, if anywhere, or a small splash from overly-groggy pouring of the water into my french press.. yeah that happens.

Keyboard? Just fine.

Now, BEER? I've spilled me some beer into this keyboard. Tasty dopplebock, gone.. Had I been in an office the keyboard may have died, but I launched quickly into shutting the comp down and (drunkenly) shuffling my keyboard into the bathtub.
And whiskey. Well. When shots are being shot and you're trying to pour the next shot with one eye so there's only one shot glass.. your keyboard drinks, too.

And it's full of ash, because I'm a filthy human being.

I just don't understand how people can break keyboards so easily. I've got a groove worn halfway through the ALT key on this thing thanks to my thumbnail and the nubs on my F and J key are worn to pointlessness, and it still works fine.

Best I can figure is people think spill = broken, and to hell with trying to recover what may be a perfectly functional piece of equipment (disposable economy kids..)

Either that, or milk and sugar are really really ungodly bad for keyboards, worse than beer, and so my plethora of black coffee droppings are an M80 to the mochaccino's Tsar Bomba

Re:I find it more effective

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's full of ash, because I'm a filthy human being.

My keyboard is full of ash because my I am one of damned, condemned to have a job in Hell.

Re:I find it more effective

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't understand spilling coffee on a keyboard to the point it ruins it. I drink a great deal of coffee at my computer. It's the first thing I do in the morning, if I'm to do anything for the first 3 hours after I wake up.. I think I can count on one hand how many times I've dribbled coffee onto my keyboard. It's usually into my lap, if anywhere, or a small splash from overly-groggy pouring of the water into my french press.. yeah that happens.

Keyboard? Just fine.

Now, BEER? I've spilled me some beer into this keyboard. Tasty dopplebock, gone.. Had I been in an office the keyboard may have died, but I launched quickly into shutting the comp down and (drunkenly) shuffling my keyboard into the bathtub. And whiskey. Well. When shots are being shot and you're trying to pour the next shot with one eye so there's only one shot glass.. your keyboard drinks, too.

And it's full of ash, because I'm a filthy human being.

I just don't understand how people can break keyboards so easily. I've got a groove worn halfway through the ALT key on this thing thanks to my thumbnail and the nubs on my F and J key are worn to pointlessness, and it still works fine.

Best I can figure is people think spill = broken, and to hell with trying to recover what may be a perfectly functional piece of equipment (disposable economy kids..)

Either that, or milk and sugar are really really ungodly bad for keyboards, worse than beer, and so my plethora of black coffee droppings are an M80 to the mochaccino's Tsar Bomba

Keyboards are very resiliant, I've seen people wash them out, a guy I know even puts his in a dish washer and they still work after you place them on an oven to dry them out. I'm not saying you should be that radical but making people clean the thing out might re-educate them on the fact that these things cost money.

Re:I find it more effective

[aussie_a]

How grubby are facebook employees? I've had maybe five broken keyboards in the past 3 years. One of them was from a spilled drink onto the keyboard. That's 0.3 people a year due to a spilled drink. Now sure, we only have 250 staff. So let's assume facebook has 30,0000 staff. That's 40 keyboards a year. I can't believe these vending machines are cheaper then ordering 40 keyboards a year.

Just how messy are facebook employees to need enough keyboards due to coffee spills? Is it an American thing?

Re:I find it more effective

[PlusFiveTroll]

5 keyboards in 3 years for 250 staff seems way to low a number. Random failures due to no fault of the employees themselves should be higher then that. Either you have a bunch of really nice expensive keyboards that are at the top of the bell curve for reliability, or the employees are not calling you and replacing the keyboards themselves.

Other recommendations

[Grayhand]

Mountain Dew, Hot pockets and Xena DVDs. For the geek reference on the last two refer to the movie "The Core.

Re:Other recommendations

[Anonymous Coward]

Mountain Dew, Hot pockets and Xena DVDs. For the geek reference on the last two refer to the movie "The Core.

No one cares.

Re:Other recommendations

[mjwx]

For the geek reference on the last two refer to the movie "The Core.

Please dont.

borrow someone's badge

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the vending machine take a photo or some other biometric identification? If not, just borrow someone's badge to steal extra keyboards...

phones and PCs seem like some that the older way w

[Joe_Dragon]

phones and PCs seem like some that the older way works better and a keypad / touch screen is not the best to fill out a report on why you need or to get a sign off that you need it for project X.

Also stocking PC's when it's easier to keep them the older way so you can add ram bigger HDD's without having a vending system with different 4-10+ configs and if your needs are not part of the system then you going the older way is not at X2-4 of the time it used to take.

Overheard at Facebook

[Culture20]

"Want to see something hilarious? Get Tim the intern to check out a Monster HDMI cable; he's only $400 away from tripping the employee-theft algorithm."
Seriously though, interns will have much larger "bills" on these machines.

Re:Overheard at Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

Or interns will not have sufficient rights on their "badge" to use them in the machines...

so some outside vender can control hardware

[Joe_Dragon]

so some outside vender can control hardware and change it at will and only have the configs / parts they want to sell.

Just thing of dell or some other 3rd part selling a 4GB to 16GB ram upgrade for $175 when you can buy 16GB ram kits for $100 = A $75+ base ram price of the build in ram markup.

and no you don't get to keep the base ram with upgrade.

also the dell ram is not the same as ram kit's at newegg.com.

Re:so some outside vender can control hardware

[hazem]

It sounds like they're vending accessories like mice and keyboards, rather than internal components like memory and such.

I suspect it's pretty easy for the company and the vendor to agree in advance to a list of parts/accessories that will be supplied and what the prices will be.

If Facebook is letting the vendor screw them, then that's their stupidity to allow that.

Re:so some outside vender can control hardware

[Joe_Dragon]

Not talking vending internal components like memory and such. they said some about wanting to vend full pc so that where a vender owned system can screw them.

Look at other Vending Machines (run by a outside vendor) with candy that come at high prices.

Ya, right.

[fahrbot-bot]

'I like the assumption that employees will do the right thing,'

If only that assumption could be applied to the company itself.

The swipe means that everyone's requests are tracked and I'm sure some algorithm somewhere is constantly sorting the data to see if anyone has pulled 10 sets of headphones out of the system.'"

Ya, like Facebook can track user data... :-)

Common mishap?

[fahrbot-bot]

When Facebook engineers spill coffee on their keyboard (a common mishap),

I've been a system programmer/administrator for over 25 years and routinely eat and drink at my desk and have *never* spilled anything on my equipment - computer or otherwise. What kind of monkeys do they hire at Facebook?

Re:Common mishap?

[DigiShaman]

Fresh grads from the top Universities. Duh!

Re:Common mishap?

[dcollins]

Jittery ones. Really jittery, privacy-hating monkeys.

Re:Common mishap?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the best... monkeys that is.

Re:Common mishap?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing my example of killing a keyboard or mouse every 5-10 years is more representative. Assuming a 10,000 person campus, that would be 1-2000 peripherals zapped a year. About 2000 hours in a standard business year, so every hour or two somebody is looking for a new peripheral.

The law of large numbers turns rare occurrences in the life of any single person into an every day hassle.

Re:Common mishap?

[the_B0fh]

Again, how many times do I have to tell you about using common sense on the Internet...?

Re:Common mishap?

[fahrbot-bot]

Fresh grads from the top Universities. Duh!

• Indiana Jones: Which universities?
• FB HR Person: Top universities.

Re:Common mishap?

[fahrbot-bot]

... so every hour or two somebody is looking for a new peripheral.
The law of large numbers turns rare occurrences in the life of any single person into an every day hassle.

That explains my sex life...

Re:Common mishap?

[eth1]

Fresh grads from the top Universities. Duh!

One of the first things I learned at college was to eat pizza and drink Dr. Pepper while working without getting my computer greasy/sticky.

How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[HockeyPuck]

Ok. So I'm assuming this is for people that aren't supporting datacenter based equipment. Y'know the guys that have to plug in thousands of powercords...

So if you're outfitting your cube/desk area, how many keyboards and power cords do you go through? Also, do most FB employees standardize on the 'vending machine' keyboard, or do they have their own personal preference?

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[Grayhand]

Ok. So I'm assuming this is for people that aren't supporting datacenter based equipment. Y'know the guys that have to plug in thousands of powercords...

So if you're outfitting your cube/desk area, how many keyboards and power cords do you go through? Also, do most FB employees standardize on the 'vending machine' keyboard, or do they have their own personal preference?

I can tell you I wear out a keyboard in about three months and before I switched to "cheapie" Logitech mice, $10 a pop, I was burning through expensive mice every other month. It all depends on how much work you do. After two months the "A" on my keyboard is badly worn and at three months a dozen keys are showing wear. I would say keyboard wear is a good sign of how much work you do. If you can last two or three years on a keyboard you are probably over paid.

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck do you do to keyboards? I type like I learned on a model M, because I did. I mostly write shit (whitepapers is the polite term) and proposals now. Neighbors in the cube farm mention the noise. I don't "wear out" mice or keyboards.

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[Anubis350]

Ok. So I'm assuming this is for people that aren't supporting datacenter based equipment. Y'know the guys that have to plug in thousands of powercords...

So if you're outfitting your cube/desk area, how many keyboards and power cords do you go through? Also, do most FB employees standardize on the 'vending machine' keyboard, or do they have their own personal preference?

I can tell you I wear out a keyboard in about three months and before I switched to "cheapie" Logitech mice, $10 a pop, I was burning through expensive mice every other month. It all depends on how much work you do. After two months the "A" on my keyboard is badly worn and at three months a dozen keys are showing wear. I would say keyboard wear is a good sign of how much work you do. If you can last two or three years on a keyboard you are probably over paid.

I hear you, I absolutely obliterate keyboard, something about the way I type. It's the main reason I switched to Model Ms (and one F) at home: Not being retro, not coolness, but the fact that they actually survive me.

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say keyboard wear is a good sign of how much work you do.

That's probably true if you're using the keyboard to pound in masonry nails, but the rest of us use keyboards for typing. In all seriousness, in software development the amount of typing you do is totally unrelated to your productivity. Using a bad framework, language or library can increase the amount of typing required, while reducing your productivity. Using proper code factorization, the right language or the right library can increase efficiency and expressiveness, leading to less cruft and less typing. If this isn't already obvious to you, you are probably overpaid and trying to keep your head above water by increasing the rate at which you churn out more LOCs.

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[sconeu]

I suspect keyboard obliteration is more common among older devs, who learned to touch type on a manual typewriter. For you young'uns, that's somehting that looks like an integrated keyboard/printer without a cord, CPU or monitor.

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have seen plenty of younger devs mash keyboards pretty good while wearing earphones. A combination of fast typing and poor feedback can obliterate any keyboard pretty quick.

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[Anonymous Coward]

As most Facebook engineers are die-hard nerds that use vim and emacs, most people buy their own keyboards according to their personal preference to make them super-productive. I have friends that use the HHK, the Das Keyboard and some other weird and less known brands. The vending machines only have the usual Mac and PC (Logitech) keyboards.

The vending machines are more useful for small things like phone chargers, display adapters, etc.

~ Anonymous Coward who doesn't have a Slashdot account but reads it often

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[Anonymous Coward]

imagine if they had to supply these ones:
http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/advantage.htm

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[Anonymous Coward]

what the fuck are you doing to your mice?
I've had the same mouse for 3 years used for 8 hours a day 5 days a week.
I do 3d work and my mouse is in constant use.

have you ever held a kitten, did you squeeze it till it bled?

As the internet says, "You're doing it wrong".

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear you, I absolutely obliterate keyboard, something about the way I type. It's the main reason I switched to Model Ms (and one F) at home: Not being retro, not coolness, but the fact that they actually survive me.

They are also helpful at work if you are out to get a private office of your own.

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[Anonymous Coward]

what the fuck are you doing to your mice?

Probably he has not quite understood just where the power for a wireless mouse is supposed to come from.

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[serviscope_minor]

Without meaning to be an ass, might I suggest you examine your typing style. You might be letting yourself in for a world of pain in RSI.

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[Anonymous Coward]

With sounding like an ass. what the fuck is the GP doing to his keyboard? Did he train his fingers to be dangerous weapons like in the old Remo Williams movie? Considering I know plenty of people who've written at least a couple hundred thousand lines of production code (using a line counter to count only legit code) over the course of years without keyboard problems, does this guy write millions of lines of code in a few months?

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[HockeyPuck]

How do you wear out an optical mouse?

You do know that you can replace the batteries for wireless keyboard/mice instead of throwing them out.

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[blackraven14250]

I bought a pair of used Logitech G9 mice about 3 years ago. I carried one with my laptop, and the other on my desktop. The laptop one failed about a year ago from the cord being tugged too much, while the desktop one is still going strong. I'm on the computer at least 8 hours per day.

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[Olivier Galibert]

In my experience, it's the buttons and/or the scroll wheel that die.

    OG.

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[LunaticTippy]

I've noticed that people who use moisturizer regularly blow through keyboards like crazy. I think the oils are slightly corrosive to the plastic and the ink. Our receptionist uses her keyboard less than anyone else around here, and her keyboards barely last a few months before many of the keys have no legible text and are pitted and eroding. Meanwhile I hammer 140WPM all day long on my $10 3 year old thing that looks like new.

Re:How many keyboards do these guys go through?

[Anubis350]

I'm not particularly old, unless mid-late twenties is starting to count as old around here....

Not so custom.

[floodo1]

Fastenal uses the exact same vending machine (minus all the photos of course!).

Re:Not so custom.

[Animats]

Fastenal uses the exact same vending machine (minus all the photos of course!).

Right. It's an Edge 5000 Industrial Vending Machine from Apex Supply Chain Technologies. Fastenall has about 30,000 installed. Facebook, not so many.

These industrial vending machines look like candy machines, but they're more versatile. They can be configured for a wide range of item sizes, they have an IR beam system to make sure the item actually is dispensed, and there are options available for soft handling of fragile items. The machines have an Internet connection, report who got what, and tell the supplier what needs refilling.

Fastenall has offered this for years.

[Animats]

Facebook isn't being original here. Fastenall, which sells cutting tools, bolts, and other useful things used by people who make Real Stuff, has special vending machines for industrial plants. Employees use their employee badge or a PIN to get tools and supplies. The machines report back to Fastenall, and they restock the machines. The customer only pays for items when they're vended.

Here's the Youtube video. Fastenall vends electric drills and WD-40, rather than keyboards and cables. They have little machines for things like drill bits, and locker-sized bins for big items. So they're already doing what Facebook is only talking about.

Re:Fastenall has offered this for years.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting side note: I've worked at a Kentucky Amazon warehouse for 3 straight Christmas seasons now and the last time around I noticed they've turned to Fastenal vending machines to provide employees with free bottled water.
Dehydration is a real issue at all times of the years as some sections of the warehouses are permanently 'too hot'. The vending machines are a big improvement over 100-300 people crowding around a few coolers full of water after breaks/lunch. As I recall that particular warehouse went though about 10,000 bottles of water per week during the peak Christmas season.

Re:Fastenall has offered this for years.

[dcollins]

Interesting to see that Fastenal was rated as the 24th worst companies to work for in the country (by nonscientific employee survey).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fastenal#Worker_satisfaction_survey

What? There is no "trust' here

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

'I like the assumption that employees will do the right thing,'

Does this guy actually believe that bullshit? All they've done is increase the monitoring (insert obligatory facebook derogatory tracking comment) - there is less assumption of doing the right thing in this system than there is a with a human IT department.

With a human from the IT department in the loop that human has discretion in accounting for the costs of the hardware. If he knows a group has a tight budget but really needs a replacement doohickey, he can fudge the reporting - push it to the next quarter or put on another group that's got a budget surplus. This system removes all slack.

Maybe right now while facebook is flush with cash it ain't economical to bother looking at the reports from these vending machines beyond crazy outliers that would indicate fraud. But when budgets get tight, this system has the potential to be be far more rigid than one with that extra layer of humans in it.

This way may be a good thing, but lying about its strengths is not a good sign. Don't roofie me and call it romance...

Re:What? There is no "trust' here

[PlusFiveTroll]

Some would consider the slack a form of lying, or bad accounting. There is no more or less assumption of doing the right thing either way. If you have to wait 3 hours for an IT guy to show up to install a keyboard or some other little thing that's quite a large productivity loss, you can afford to lose two or three actual keyboard and still come out ahead.

Re:What? There is no "trust' here

[swb]

I'm sure tracking is a part of it, but do you really think that a manager with a deadline and a tight budget is going to block purchase of a keyboard or mouse or some other inexpensive peripheral that keeps an employee from being producing? That's shoot-yourself-in-the-foot stupid.

Further, I don't think the tracking here is particularly onerous. I don't think this is a vending machine filled with expensive stuff, it's filled with inexpensive stuff that is largely disposable. The tracking is probably more valuable from an inventory control and ordering perspective than figuring out if Jane Q. Office is using too many mice.

The people with a gripe are probably the IT people because it does remove the discretion they have, although in my experience, the IT people are the ones who abuse the discretion -- people they "like" (no Facebook pun intended) get *good* replacement items -- wireless mice or keyboards, and the people they don't like get shitty, used items.

It's how I operated, although I used it more to sweeten pissy users instead of greasing people I liked, but you always played a little politics with it.

The algorithm is written on the window

[SlashDev]

".. algorithm ... if anyone has pulled 10 sets of headphones out of the system" If you they really need an algorithm to make that determination then they must have a shitload of engineers twirling their thumbs.

Re:The algorithm is written on the window

[Anonymous Coward]

A+B=C is an algorithm...

Re:The algorithm is written on the window

[Anonymous Coward]

A+B=C is an equation.

I suspect

[codeButcher]

The swipe means that everyone's requests are tracked and I'm sure some algorithm somewhere is constantly sorting the data ...

So there's a screen on the front of the vending machine that displays targeted advertising then?

And if the vending machine breaks?

[wonkey_monkey]

There will, of course, be a vending machine vending machine, in case any of the vending machines break.

Re:And if the vending machine breaks?

[dcollins]

The CEO of the Fastenal company (someone posted a video above) does in fact call the corporate support structure for vending machines like these "the machine behind the machine".

feel sorry for the people

[Anonymous Coward]

facebook plastered pictures of all over the damn thing.

Another definition of swipe?

[jklovanc]

One could just "swipe" the desired accessory from someone else's desk. That would be much more difficult to track.

Re:Another definition of swipe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah. HP employees are way ahead of you on that.

(Captcha was "collects")

Re:The Truth About Al Gore

[hawkinspeter]

I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Sloppy writing by Slashdot

[Futurepower(R)]

They are not "High Tech Vending Machines". They are normal vending machines loaded with computer accessories. "Facebook CIO Tim Campos decided to take a more user-friendly approach" should be "a computer support employee recommended using vending machines", according to the story.

Re:Sloppy writing by Slashdot

[PlusFiveTroll]

Modern vending machines are high tech devices. Normal vending machines (like when I was a kid) took a few quarters and shit out a twinkie or a coke which then became jammed in the mechanisms. The new machines do inventory control, report on their status (am I jammed?), and in this case report which user got the equipment rather than payment processing.

Re:Sloppy writing by Slashdot

[cbiltcliffe]

Coke vending machines are not Coke vending machines. They're normal vending machines loaded with Coke.
Do you realize how stupid that sounds?
They're vending high tech, not made of it.
Although this being Facebook, they're probably aggregating the data for marketing...
"Bob, you've used 3 keyboards in the last month! How would you like to try out.....

ACME keyboard protector!!!!!!11!!1!1!@@!!1"

Re:Sloppy writing by Slashdot

[blackraven14250]

I'd even say they're made of high tech. They're interconnected via a IT resource management system, which itself is linked with a Facebook-wide employee management system.

Re:Sloppy writing by Slashdot

[markxz]

They are not "High Tech Vending Machines". They are normal vending machines loaded with computer accessories.

A "High-Tech" vending machine would 3D print the required item.

I wish

[Anonymous Coward]

they had this at the data center.

Smart move.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked in a company at one point of time where the mom of several head engineers was responsible for handing out stuff like floppy disks, pens and so on. She was annoyed at the frequency of requests, so stuff like that was just handed out during some hours on Wednesdays. Seriously.

Of course, everybody taking his job seriously started hoarding which was not exactly helping for keeping unnecessary expenses under control.

In other companies, it was "equipment first, paperwork afterwards". Basically, you immediately got whatever you needed (and nothing else made sense), but had to follow up with a paper trail. It would appear to me that this is Facebook's approach here, just automatising the paper trail (which after all only got filed as long as nothing out of the ordinary happened).

waste

[Anonymous Coward]

All the more reason to not invest in facebook. People spilling coffee on keyboards? What a pathetic excuse not to do work.

Assumption

[DaMattster]

[QUOTE] 'I like the assumption that employees will do the right thing,' writes Alexis Madrigal.[/QUOTE] The system they have set up with recording the number of times a keyboard or mouse is replaced is NOT assuming employees will do the right thing. Rather, the assumption is made that an employee will abuse accessory replacements necessitating a system to record accessory replacement and track it down to the individual user. This system is in place precisely because the company does not trust its employees to do the right thing. If Facebook trusted its employees to do the right thing, they would have open bins for you to just grab a replacement mouse or keyboard. By the way, I hate corporate double speak. Don't put a system in place to benefit the company and then tell me how it's going to benefit me. Just be honest!

When Facebook engineers spill coffee on their....

[ls671]

When Facebook engineers spill coffee on their keyboard

A company like Facebook doesn't need any engineers although some might work for them. Engineers typically work for companies like Intel, Cisco, etc.

I am a software architect but not an engineer by trade. The "engineer" term is abused a lot. The funniest thing I have heard is the "engineer" driving the locomotive on a railway train. His title is "engine man" in realty. Apparently, if you say it quickly enough many times, "engine man" becomes "engineer". Michael Schumacher should be called an "engineer" before anybody driving a train !

Just see how the following links do not add up if you believe a locomotive driver is an "engineer" and apply the same to Facebook engineers :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_engineer

Isn't this commodity hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would they need to maintain expensive vending machines for commodity hardware like keyboards and mice? Why not just put a box of them in a cabinet someplace? I mean, who would want to steal keyboards and mice? Seems like utter overkill, especially if you trust your employees - who are mostly developers who already probably have a basement full of spare computer parts at home.

I can think of one exception: a lot of keyboards now have non-standard key layouts - if I found a vending machine with traditional-layout keyboards I'd take a sledgehammer to it and hoard them...!

Re:Isn't this commodity hardware?

[moeinvt]

The cost has got to be linked back to a PO with the proper authorizing procurement officer's signature. Then, it has to be allocated as an expense which comes out of the budget of the appropriate product group, then tracked down to the individual people manager for tracking purposes and other bureaucratic BS. Not to mention the logistics of finally getting the item delivered to the right person.

Nothing is simple in a large company. Last time I changed offices, I brought a piece of CAT5 cable from home because it wasn't worth the trouble of going through official channels. I like this idea of the vending machines.

Re:how much work you do

[TaoPhoenix]

Hmm. Sidestepping that "GUI's mean you aren't doing work", my keyboard of choice for some 5+ years now has been a couple of Microsoft wireless keyboard-mice combos. (Just something about the layout and action speeds.) It's dirty as all get out, but the letters aren't wearing out. I think that's because mice don't show wear in the same fashion, so when your workflow all day consists of some mix of running reports off the accounting software, exporting the data into reports, and then on other days messing around with spreadsheets, you aren't pounding on the letters in the same sequence as typing proposals or maybe programming.

Stupid human problems

[smooth wombat]

When Facebook engineers spill coffee on their keyboard (a common mishap)

So instead of NOT drinking coffee over your keyboard or leaving your cup/mug right next to the keyboard, the solution is to let people randomly go to a machine to replace a part they broke/misused and get a free replacement.

If someone can't grasp the simple idea of NOT eating/drinking/cutting finger/toenails above a keyboard, one can only imagine what kind of work they do and how much they cost your organization.

Once again, we're using a technical solution to solve a human problem. Granted, we can't stop or breed out stupidity, but we should be able to use a bat upside the head to mitigate such things.

Re:Stupid human problems

[ledow]

Or, the cost of the occasional replacement keyboard is nothing compared to the 5 minutes of time it makes that person out-of-action while they arrange a replacement, or even that the cost of replacing it is NOTHING compared to the lost time, effort and money spent telling people - who earn a relative fortune - not to drink coffee over the keyboard.

Sometimes you just have to accept the trade-off. I'm run the IT for schools. I have a large cup of cold water next to my laptop here. The cost of any potential mishap (that hasn't happened in all the time I've worked her) is less than that of having to carefully place a cup somewhere "safe" each time (Where? My office is full of computers, cables and plugs) I want to sip from it.

The kids? If they do it, I will not be happy as there's a rule against it. But it happens, still, and other things are more important than faffing about over a keyboard. It's just not worth the lost lesson time to even lecture them about it more than the teacher already has. It's not worth the cost of the keyboard to make the computer unavailable for that amount of time. It's not even worth the time for me to walk to the room when I can just pass the keyboard to a passing child and tell them to take it for the teacher to install themselves.

Some things just aren't worth worrying about, and as a company grows to have larger and larger budgets - you know what? Who cares if the $100,000 a year programmer likes to drink coffee to keep him alert through his overtime, even if he might spill it and cost the IT department - what? A few dollars? Once a year if that?

Hell, it's hardly worth the "vending" hassle, which is why they have a machine that just holds the stock of keyboards they already kept - it's cheaper to buy a machine and let the IT guys do some real IT instead of having to chase broken keyboards and damaged mice around the whole campus.

Re:Stupid human problems

[PlusFiveTroll]

How about this instead. I'm the hot shit designer that is helping make your company millions. If I can't eat at my desk I'll go work for $other_startup where I can, and they'll accept the risk of some small losses due to coffee damage. Your odd beliefs that drinking at ones desk is in any way a modifier of their work quality or creativity borders on religious fundamentalism.

Re:Stupid human problems

[smooth wombat]

You're in the middle of a heavy coding session. You move your hand and pow!, your drink spills all over your keyboard (and possibly you).

You now have to stop what you were doing, remove the keyboard, clean your desk and yourself if it spilled on you, go the machine, get a new keyboard, wait for the system to recognize it, then, after all that, get back to where you were and maybe get back to what you were doing at the same level.

I want people to do their jobs, not think that they're the be all and end all of a company. If you can't follow that one simple rule, don't eat/drink over your keyboard, what coding rules are you not following that will cost me money down the line to fix because you thought you were a hot shit designer?

Why WOULDN'T Facebook use something like this?

[jedrek]

I don't understand why everybody assumes that there's some kind of sinister going-ons behind having users ID themselves when getting equipment. Facebook is a data-driven company, why wouldn't they want to have this kind of data? You can automate procurement, so you effectively never run out of equipment. You can see what kind of equipment your users prefer. And the realization that you're not completely anonymous keeps people honest - not just as far as theft goes (and I can assure you, it doesn't matter how much people make, they will steal the most trite, insignificant crap), but general absentmindedness or practical jokes.

Somewhat common?

[Cainam]

We have something very similar at NVIDIA, as well.

If we did that here...

[Anonymous Coward]

They would get the keyboard and be unable to figure out that the rectangle does into the rectangle.

Why not just bring your own laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, give everyone an annual pc allowance, and make them responsible for their own equipment. My guess is that they will be slighly more careful when eating over the keyboard.

Even if you have the best PC / LAN support in the world, you still end up using a significant amount of end user time to transfer data to new machines / update / etc. So this way, the company gets reduced expenses, and the users get equipment they want to protect.

In other news, Lincoln was just elected president

[Xemu]

By Michal Lev-Ram, writer July 6, 2011: 8:55 AM ET

Seriosly. A cnn story from 2011. NEWS for nerds?!?

Trust but Verify

[TTL0]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify

Also FB as a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to act responsibly with their investors hard earned cash. So I'll give FB a pass on this one

The company I work for...

[Anonymous Coward]

well, at least in the department I'm working for, daily-need computer parts are simply available from the same shelves that provide paper, staples, etc.. HIDs, USB-sticks, empty media, ... all just simply available.

Assumptions

[EmagGeek]

"I like the assumption that employees will do the right thing"

Tracing accessory use through badge swiping does not equal assuming employees will do the right thing. It's assuming they won't.

What's the big deal?

[frank_adrian314159]

Hospitals have been using similar systems to dispense oft-used, non-controlled drugs and devices on hospital floors for the past dozen years or so. Many of the recording studios and practice spaces I've been in have used them to dispense strings, drumsticks, picks, etc. (these were cash/card operated). The concept just doesn't seem that unusual.

Besides, if you're a sizable shop, IT usually just has stacks of keyboards and mice taken from decommissioned systems sitting about anyway. Where I work, we just walk up and grab one.

And, finally, if you're hiring people who regularly dump coffee into their keyboard, classes and or training on basic hand-eye coordination might be in order.

On migraines

[Okian Warrior]

I used to suffer from migraines, and discovered that they were caused by Chocolate.

It took a long time to figure this out, because the migraine came 3 days later, so the correlation wasn't obvious. It's very accurate - I can time it to within about 2 hours. I've since found other triggers, such as the fumes from painting my house, but they're rare.

Perhaps making a log of food and environmental factors would turn up a trigger for your migraines. If you want a quick experiment, take a couple of vacation days in a spot that has few environmental triggers (Arizona, say) and eat bland things for the duration (rice, water, oatmeal - whatever is unseasoned and unsweetened).

You might get lucky, like I did.

I wonder how they deal with old equipment.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they go back in the vending machines? Do they all get disposed? Does tech support get them for here and there? Guessing sorta the last one.

Who plugs in the keyboards?

[Viewsonic]

Because people are still too scared to do this. Or haven't any idea where it goes. Same sort of people who actually spill coffee on the keyboards.

Maybe they have techs in the dispenser?

HighTech?

[wb8nbs]

If Facebook is so high tech, how come the back button hardly ever takes you back to where you were?

Re:phones and PCs seem like some that the older wa

[gravious]

What you wrote is incomprehensible.

Nothing new

[Bartles]

Machine shops have been doing this with cutting tools for years.

Same at NVIDIA

[Anonymous Coward]

NVIDIA has been using vendor machines at their Santa Clara campus to dole out cables, flash cards, headsets, etc. You put in your employee badge number and your boss is billed for the purchase. (it takes your picture to avoid fraud0

There's a similar system here

[roc97007]

There's a similar system here. When a keyboard or mouse becomes nonfunctional, the user will replace the functional accessory in one of the conference rooms with the broken one. This gets the user back online immediately, and eventually someone will notice and put a replacement on order for the broken one in the conference room.

Of course that isn't at all the way the system is supposed to work. But Life Finds a Way. If you have an end-of-day deadline and the helpdesk insists on a one to three week lead time for common accessories, the only choices are (a) buy it yourself (which violates some kind of rule involving approved vendors, so you may get in trouble when you try to get reimbursed) or (b) scrounge it from somewhere.

Consoles in the computer room are zip-tied to the desk to discourage this kind of "borrowing".

The high tech vending machine idea is cute and I can see value in it, but the *real* finding here is that the company stocks commonly used peripherals. This is incredibly valuable to maintaining workflow, something that a lot of companies do not understand.

ah but

[ILongForDarkness]

Who rights the algorithm and manages the server? :) Trusting a computer system not to be abused by nerds capable in not responsible for building the system is a bit silly. It is just that the support cost is so much higher (and you are in a visible place so you might grab 1 extra set of headphones but not one for everyone in your family) that it works out in FB's favor.

There is a better way. User pays

[RubberDogBone]

My cheap employer has a better way for dealing with supplies. Mostly, the employees buy their own.

You figure out what you want, you go to Walmart or Staples or whatever and you buy it. That's it. No reimbursement either. You buy it. It's yours. You own it. You take it home at night if you want.

If somebody leaves or gets fired, the coworkers descend upon the desk and strip it of any goodies left behind. In this way, the desks are self-cleaned by ravenous office supply cravers.

Now the company will supply some very cheap pens, but they are crap nobody would want to use. So you are better off buying your own anyway.

Cool, but won't work everywhere

[HideyoshiJP]

I think it's quite a cool idea, but sadly it won't work just anywhere. I can tell you that no medical staffer where I work would be willing to swap anything out themselves, for fear of thinking they'll break something or end the world.

Very similar to Company Credit Cards at HP

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was at HP I had a company credit card. The cost overhead, even with misuse, was FAR CHEAPER for the company. We were told the cost to issue a PO was $1000 in overhead labor costs PER PO. Expense reimbursements were similarly crazy-high. HP did have some modest checks and balances in place: certain SIC-codes were blocked so you could not use the card at a girly bar or buy alcohol with them, and you still had to review the months purchases with you manager and get their sign-off ex post facto, so you knew you needed a reasonable justification for anything you bought with it. But for anything I used it with that really wasn't a problem if I got the job done faster and more effectively. From a management point of view, worst-case you'd have 1 month of abuse that your manager didn't know about and it would quickly end at that point - your boss had say-so to take it away. And compared to processing an expense report the accounting costs was radically cheaper to administer. BTW my limit was $2K per transaction and $10K per month. I seldom came close to those limits but I did buy computers, software, services and such for my job.