Can gaming become the happy-hour for remote teams?
fpetra.dev
fpetra.dev
To me, this would sound like "mandatory fun time."
In both cases, parameters should be picked to accommodate the preferences of as many people as possible, the experience should be set up to allow some participation by those unable to participate fully, and it should be optional in the first place.
at an irl event with games, it's not weird at all to socialize without playing.
We also do Netflix night, where we all watch a movie at the same time on fridays around 330 and talk about it in slack
Gaming isn't universal, but neither is drinking alcohol.
They were all during work hours, though.
EDIT: also, the level of "officialness" varied. Some were organized by the company, others by the direct manager of a team, and others by the employees themselves on a more personal basis.
I noticed that animated gifs are increasingly used to "spice up" content, but in reality, their motion is distracting and can make it hard to read the surrounding text. A relevant still image works fine.
I learnt this by coming second in a solitary, competitive sport for the Christmas event, which the higher-ups were into in their free time, and which I had no experience with, as a new, young employee. I came first in a similarly solitary sport we all participated in the following year.
My project manager had been going around telling everyone how good he was at this sport, how we shouldn’t even bother. This encouraged me to make even more of an effort. He came second, his manager third. He and a few others booed me while I received the trophy.
It didn’t last long there. Just let them win.
Better to learn that in an inconsequential game than in a project, where you might weeks or months of work shot down (even at the expense of the company).
Thankfully most of my bosses weren't like that, they had their flaws but I never feared such pettiness. If your local job market is good, don't settle for that crap.
I once had a bet with the CEO that I can implement one very competitive functionality in 10 minutes. I won. The functionality never made it to production and any questions regarding it (even from customers) were deflected. Some people hate to lose and become completely irrational about it.
One thing my company did for a while was a “random coffee chat”. You could opt in and get matched up with someone, and basically chat for 30 minutes about whatever once a month. This was awesome, because I actually met very different roles at the company, like sales engineers or the head of HR. Not exactly the “social time” of happy hour but almost more valuable
We played 1 hour each day in the break time. It was fun, but there were downsides:
- 1 hour later at home
- addictive
- it's very frustrating when you play well and lose
Eventually we stopped it and instead started play ing oing-pong with guys that rent offices in the same building. It takes much less time, it's exercises, and even if you lose it's all on you and there's much less competitiveness than with dota.
Of course it wouldn't work for remote teams. If I can give advice - choose games that can be over quickly (15 minutes not more, certainly not 1 hour), and that aren't very competitive.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/865625/fortnite-players-...
if the game isn't as appealing to women for whatever cultural reasons, it's probably not appropriate to endorse it for team building. if the pervasive harassment is the main concern, this is much easier to work around. very little is lost by disabling area comms in battle royale games; I usually disable it because I don't want to hear fifty people eating their mics in spawn. in games like CS, you can just host a private server for a trivial amount of money.
in general though, I have mixed feelings about company events after work hours. inevitably, there will be people who don't care for the "fun" activity and but feel obligated to participate or worry about missing networking opportunities if they don't. especially when it comes to something like videogames, it's quite easy for people to organize this stuff themselves without an official endorsement from the company. I don't really see any reason why a company should go beyond just giving employees space in slack to organize activities outside of work.
If it's done the way it's proposed in the article then I think I'd think twice about working remotely for that company, this part is a particularly huge red flag for me:
> Also, the founders (or management if it’s a bigger company) should signal that this is something good, encourage it.
It also feels a bit odd that a remote team needs to "foster cohesion". Isn't the whole point that remote work is successful for some companies because the people who are involved with it are good at communication, function cohesively, and hyper-focused when it comes to getting stuff done?
Admittedly I have never worked a truly remote role, but the reasons given in the article are all the reasons that I don't want to apply for a particularly remote role.
Edit: typo (remote --> remotely).
Some people (in SV?) seem to be unwilling or unable to work on a team where everyone just does their job, they want to be friends with their teammates as well. They justify that with "team chemistry is really important."
I don't really get it myself.
Time zones managing is the same, it just add a bit more friction to the process.
When I see people having problem with time zones, it's usually more a symptom of an deeper issue elsewhere: bad organization, unhealthy communication habits, unnecessary coupling between parties, micro-management, people not doing their job and so on.
Super important to mention this when advocating for more team building. If anything, remote workers have a tough time unplugging.
Jim Halpert: "At the Stanford branch they all play this video game called 'Call of Duty'.. and they're all really into it. I'm told it started as a team-building exercise. Unfortunately I really suck at it."
I recommend not to play games like Dota which have a reputation for tilting players, or any games with a particularly competitive atmosphere.
Have you ever been to Japan? They have gaming bars where you play Nintendo and other console games while ordering drinks. They're really fun and better than usual bullshit chats at bars or restaurants.