Games can fix remote team building | Hacker News Reader

Games can fix remote team building

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71 pointsmasonhipp66 comments

I always felt that most "enforced-fun-games" were excellent at team building. Being "asked to cross an imaginary river" etc is a great way to unite the humble employees in their universal loathing of their woefully mis-guided management. Always had a niggling feeling that the 'bad games' couldn't be that bad by accident. ("Look, everybody hates everybody - could we push some more hate towards us, so they at least talk to each other?")

Or there are the "split into small groups to do a task" tasks, which are usually won by teams where one person 'just does it', whilst the rest are bickering around how to break down the task and assign r&r. Again, not sure if this is the point, but you very rapidly notice which of your colleagues are both loud and useless.

Oh and final whine, 'the prizes' There doesn't need to be one - but if there is, could it please be something that's actually wanted? Branded merch, $100 Apple voucher, ask the CEO a question etc...

..actually, I wouldn't mind asking if his bonus is an f'in polo shirt.

> the 'bad games' couldn't be that bad on purpose.

Is it the same reason that hazing create shared trauma which we cope with by forming bonds?

Exactly - wish I'd plucked that word.

Team-building is the only legal form of hazing allowed by companies. Now that's not to say all Team-building is hazing - but...

Ask the CEO a question as a prize? Can I forefit my winnings?

Maybe it's me but I can't think of any question that would produce an answer of information I didn't know and actually want to know. From any CEO.

What would you ask Musk? Or your own CEO if you had the chance?

I would ask, how he can sleep at night knowing that women earn significantly less than their male counterparts. Or how he would explain around 100% difference in salaries for the exact same job depending on the person.

Asking that question after winning an employee game wouldn't give you much insight. He or she would say they are working towards some goal and ask you to join the committee on women's pay.

If you asked HR they will probably give you more of an honest answer. We are trying to pay people as little as possible.

How about something like “How can I get from here to _____?”. Asking for the CEO’s perspective on moving up in your career.

They might not be good advice, or they might not have insight in to you as an employee (though I would challenge them to get that first as part of the question), but you just might uncover some unknown unknowns and open some doors.

“What keeps you up at night”. The answers to that are usually pretty honest in my experience.

There's a subset of employees who really like games. Many places I've worked, those employees stay long after hours pulling out board games, video games, etc.

But there's another (probably larger?) subset of employees who like casual conversation, coffee, drinking, little 5 minute chats in the kitchen, and who have little to no interest in games. I don't think the proposal is going to do much for this subset.

The game isn't the point, and to that end, picking the right game is critical. I mean, if you don't like games, but are interested in chit chat, you can make small talk over a game of war or go fish. That might not be possible over a game of league of legends.

The point is to provide a light filler activity than can be set aside when necessary, plus a rich communication medium that uses virtual objects and space.

I'm firmly of the belief that if there is genuine social interaction to be had, it will be had for the most part.

Forcing social interaction (corporate mandated fun) is just another tool to tie employees to an employer to make it more difficult/less desirable for them to leave for better opportunities.

What if the work event allows for the first social interaction? If there’s no opportunity to get to know people from work, you may not discover common interests, etc. I’ve certainly been surprised a few times about colleagues I realized I didn’t know much about.

A more natural way would be to arrange for people to work together in smaller groups on tasks as part of the normal work. If you provide this then I agree with the parent poster if there is a social interaction to be had it will come. If not that's OK as long as we can work together in reasonable harmony. I value professionalism, if I can make a friend through work that is great but it should not be the norm that we all have to be friends to get along.

I agree. If companies just treat employees well and provide a good working environment the employees will be happy and work hard and feel good about their co-workers.

I think there's an emphasis on forcing the employees to do things rather than creating the evironment where employees do it naturally.

To me the issue is blurring the lines between work and not work.

Companies are not your buddies. They are not your friends. We make a deal. You pay me. I return value. That’s it. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

You’re not family. You won’t be there when things go south. You will not hesitate to fire, if it’s in your interest.

Don't sugarcoat the relationship.

Totally agree with that. You know what I like to do with my friends? Bitch about my work. Vent about how idiotic our sales people are, mock how delusional our roadmap for the year is. That's for my friends, not my coworkers, not my manager who's trying to be my buddy.

Yes, I will occasionally have true friends at work with whom I can talk about that on a private channel, but that's the exception.

> Vent about how idiotic our sales people are, mock how delusional our roadmap for the year is

that's like half of my conversations with colleagues. Personally I don't see that many downsides with getting along with my colleagues, though it doesn't usually happen via mandated team building

The thing is you don’t want HR catching wind of things. It’s not that people rat on each other. But people are known to blurt things out when prompted (someone divulges a “secret” and often the other person divulges a “secret” in return. It’s just conversation.)

I guess it depends what's being said.

To take the "Delusional Roadmap" example above, the only thing that is every going to resolve this, is the quiet gossipy whispers.

e.g. Possible answers 1) No it's not - you're fired. 2) Is it? I was told it wasn't. Could you jot down some notes I could raise? 3) Yes, sorry - we all know what, but we have to go along with it to get budget, so we're not all fired 4) I know it looks a stretch, but somebody's been working on x, and y's about to be signed.

Any conversation or response, gives you some context - to better understand/accept that slide that just left you spluttering, speechless and outraged.

I don't think anything that we said was a fireable offense (or HR would need to fire the whole group). We might get an official reprimand for some of the dissing, though.

There was a guy hanging out with his work buddies. Other people within hearing distance. A recent graduate and uncultured, he referred to someone as a chick. So long!

Was it professional to say chick? No. Is it a fireable offense? I’ve heard much worse, but on the other side so it doesn’t even register with people.

Sometimes they fire whoever they think the ringleader is.

Kind of like when unions are forming, if you get rid of the leader then the rest of the employees, who were pro union a moment ago, might quiet back down and fall in line.

You need better co-workers. Your friends and family will listen and politely nod along to your complaints, but only a co-worker will truly appreciate your wrath, deeply sympathize, and then one-up you with some scandalous piece of gossip they heard about the target of your rage.

I think the exception to this rule is Partnerships and even LLPs. But otherwise I generally agree with this sentiment. Let's not sugarcoat the exchange of monetary remuneration for value added.

Family is a straw man, nobody's saying you have to marry the company.

However, note that you're spending 8 hours most of your days with these people. It is undoubtedly easier if the relationship is cordial, friendly, and if you can banter with them during the off moments.

There is a human element to every interaction and people are not robots.

"You pay me, I return value, that's it" reduces you to a nameless, faceless, replacable, fungible resource.

I would not like to work in a place where that's it.

I’d restrain from banter with colleagues. You never know who’s listening or who will catch wind.

Don’t mix biz and pleasure.

All workplaces are this place; some disguise it better.

This is an extremely cynical take.

There's a middle ground between "we're family, I'll sacrifice everything for you" and "I'll stab you in the back as soon as I possibly can".

I think it's perfectly reasonable for the vast majority of people to enjoy work more if they have a friendly relationship with their coworkers. Does it benefit the company to have happy employees? Sure. Does it benefit the employees to be happy? Sure!

It’s okay to form superficial relationships at work. Some may become real friendships, but that should be outside company influence.

I don’t want the company serving as intermediary. It becomes friendly “-ism”.

At the same time, I want to do good work while I'm on the clock, and that requires collaborating with people. In my experience, that collaboration goes better when I have some "casual rapport" (not sure if there is a better term) with my colleagues--people are more willing to work with me, exchange favors, etc. In a physical environment, the requisite social interactions happen more naturally, but in my new remote role it seems like it requires a certain amount of intentionality. And provided that social time is "on the clock" or otherwise compensated, I don't see how I'm being exploited.

In other words, I agree with everything you're saying, but I don't see how it rebuts team building.

I'm sure a lot of companies are like this but not all. The one I work for is huge (50k+ emps) and is very much like a family. One of our engineers got a really rare, debilitating disease and they kept him on even though he couldn't work for 2 years and they helped raise thousands of dollars for his medical bills. My manager even helped me find external jobs when things weren't improving here. Probably rare but it happens. My coworkers here are easily my best friends.

Companies aren't, but this is a relatively small community, especially in some niche languages. That conversation with a coworker might lead to a job years down the line. As a manager, I may not always be a manager. The next job, I may be a manager or engineer and knowing someone on another team that might be the right person for the job - and that conversation might start at a happy hour.

> I'm firmly of the belief that if there is genuine social interaction to be had, it will be had for the most part.

I'd agree with you any day except the current ones. Given recent events, do you not Counter Strike Fridays might bring some much needed social interaction? Yes, making them mandatory would be stupid, but what company makes socializing events mandatory?

Not mandatory, of course, but lots of managers love to peer pressure employees into these sorts of social events by frowning heavily on people who miss them.

There's something to be said for a little social lubrication humanizing the people you work with and making actual work interactions better.

Hard disagree.

Leaving people to their own devices, you will have a couple of go-getters who hobnob with managers and everyone else cut out of the cliques.

Liking your coworkers is a mutually beneficial relationship for everyone and setting aside structured time to do it makes it more egalitarian.

I agree.

I think the ideal would be that it just happens organically - your employees get along, groups want to spend time together outside of their employment, you reap the benefit when they're working in it. It's invaluable to know what makes people tick and how best to work with them.

If the groups don't form naturally, maybe try to 'seed' some. Stick some cash behind a local bar, ask if anybody wants to go karting after work, pop along for an informal 5-a-side on Sunday morning etc. Never force it, though.

I was made aware of a 'fun event' that didn't get enough uptake to hit it's KPI. Therefore people were encouraged to press-gang their people - and you end up with a bunch of miserable people all resenting the intrusion into their personal time and everybody involved.

I've built such strong relationships through games, with people I've never met, that I can't agree more with that.

The limit is that games will have the same effects as other "offsite" activities. Some people will be into it and it'll work for them, but others will just not be interested (whatever their reasons).

For example the first picture of the article shows basketball. That could be seen as a great team building exercise (for non-remote teams) but some people just don't like basketball or sports.

Unfortunately there are no silver bullets.

I agree with you!

I also find that team building can be stressful depending on how your work is fluctuating. If it’s under a heavy load, then it feels frustratingly like a waste of time when you could be getting things done. While I think team building is important, I think it’s so hard to get right. Frankly, the best teams I’ve worked in are ones where everyone had a similar work ethic.

> If it’s under a heavy load, then it feels frustratingly like a waste of time when you could be getting things done.

On the other hand, companies/teams shouldn’t force you into such high workloads that being human with your coworkers feels like a waste of time. You’d be surprised how many wasteful discussions, long meetings, bike shedding debates, and managerial overhead melts away when people talk the same language and understand each other’s quirks.

Was that snark or is the person just tired? Are they rude or busy? Are they slacking or dealing with a newborn? So much easier to understand nuance when you know the people you work with.

Unfortunately there are no silver bullets.

Maybe this is a good use for the "shotgun approach", then. Basketball for people who want it, games for people who want it, etc. If you want people join team building events, I don't think the right approach is to mandate one thing, but to give people choices & let people own their team building experience.

I also think the flip side of this is that management also has to understand that it's fine if not every single team member contributes to every team building activity - my team had to give our manager that feedback recently.

definitely, but then you also miss the opportunity to build relationships between someone who loves basketball and someone who does not. So everything is a trade off :)

I try to do this with my team at least once a month for a couple hours. Some games we've enjoyed:

Among Us: https://innersloth.itch.io/among-us

Telephone Pictionary: https://rocketcrab.com/game/drawphone

Codenames: https://codenames.game/

Among Us is a great laugh, we did that as a team last week. Getting your colleague thrown out an airlock for a murder you committed yourself never gets old.

+1 on codenames. I played the board game pre-covid and the current online version is browser based, robust, free to play with no ads whatsover (except for the phyical game itself) and no required signup.

Is it mandatory? If you assume a staff member has x hours available each week for work, is this coming out of x (at the expense of company business) or is it coming out of 168-x (and thus reducing the staff member's time for sleep, shower, cooking, family, et c)?

In my experience these things are usually scheduled during working hours as a meeting, and optional.

I do them as part of work hours, and while not mandatory I do strongly encourage everyone to participate. I think the increased team cohesion is well worth 2 hours a month of "lost" productivity.

Counter-point: I hear from a lot of women that I work with that too much video game talk makes them feel excluded. And many of the die hard gamers I work with don’t want to play casual games. Video games aren’t appealing to everyone, so carefully choosing the right games for your team would be very important.

I’ve been making time for more one-on-ones and mentoring, which has been going well for my team.

It doesn't have to be something complex like playing a game of League of Legends. Just playing something more accessible and simple like Codenames or the Jackbox games works too.

>remote work makes it dramatically harder to socialize with your teammates

That's a key feature of remote work that I enjoy.

No group hugs for you!

Whenever I hear about 'Gamify-ing work' or anything similar I think of the movie Brazil.

I like to imagine that those exercise bikes/puzzles are an example of this morphed into something horrible.

We work in a small, seven person company. And with a small company, we assumed working remote would be fine for us.

We found that everyone has become quite a bit more miserable. The outgoing people are spinning their wheels furiously, and the introverted employees got in these really bad mental funks.

I think we often forget that for a LOT of people out there, work is the primary source of friendships and human relationships.

We started setting aside time specifically to do something fun once a month and even as corny as it is, it really helps.

We've made a bunch of new hires since transitioning to remote. We tried many things to help new employees feel a part of the team.

A few months ago we started playing Among Us twice a week for 30 minutes in an optional happy hour. It has been a ton of fun, and has made a huge difference. You can't force people to socialize, but if you give them something fun to do, it happens organically.

How about organizing a collective bargaining agreement for team building instead?

I've always joked that company software lags behind game development by 10-30 years. One time, in a rather silly mood, I ponder this weird idea to add a game to the employee toolkit. I imagined it to grow just like all in-house developed software and ideally make a caricature of the business process. Then I remember how many people I met and hung out with in online games like Diablo 2. One would stand in town and chat about the game, life the universe and everything. The silly idea didn't seem all that silly anymore.

A subset of my team (~8/20) plays One Night Ultimate Werewolf (https://netgames.io/games/onu-werewolf/) each Thursday afternoon. We've found that it's a very good fit for a video call, and gives a good balance of cooperation and competition.

It's not mandatory, but it's fun for the people who attend and I think it does bring us a bit closer together.

Maybe a naive question but has it been proved that teams of friends are more productive than teams of coworkers who simply respect each other and enjoy working together?

I can confirm it is true. Often when meeting new teams i get Summon The JSON decks with me. It is great to just hang out a little bit, play and talk. It takes away the steam from official team formulation.

I am strong believer that such creating human relationships between teammates solves a lot of trouble down the road.

I want to strongly recommend the game Wavelength (there is an app and several online knock offs: https://longwave.web.app/)

It's very casual and doubles as a wonderful conversation starter.

I absolutely refuse to take part in these kind of primitive experiences. If life has gotten to this dire point, spare the team members time and do a course on management as it is likely you need it.

Great. During work hours.

not surprised games bring bond happiness and laughter which can cure cancer, but the problem is a lot of games have fragile net code, you sometimes have to rely on the "big" online multiplayer games cuz a lot of indie / small games prob won't work or can be frustrating to work with. I was looking for a multiplayer game to play with my little brother who's in China, I have a 1000+ steam library and Portal 2 is the only one I found that's playable through the wire.

That's more China's great firewall's fault than the indie game's fault. Also try more strategy/turnbased games than fps if the lag is an issue.

It's not, China's great firewall don't block all foreigh servers they only block a few, it's more of a distance and internet infra problem. Not saying it's indie game's fault but it's true very few indie games have online multiplayer and very few really made it awesome, most of the time networking is not worth it for smaller games, a lot of awesome local multiplayer games won't even consider online. And yeah strategy/turnbased games definitely will be better.

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