Team building with “I dare you” challenge | Hacker News Reader

Team building with “I dare you” challenge

danlebrero.com

15 pointsdelebe9 comments

Why does this guy's blog always make it to the top of HN? Is he like famous or something? Just seems like another "bad idea" post that's just going to be (rightfully) trashed here. Overall, it's a bad idea for a few reasons:

- Someone made a mistake a long time ago, and now you're tasked with fixing it. That's not fun nor interesting.

- This type of work "gamification" infantilizes your employees. My guess is this would only work if everyone's like 22-25.

- John Cutler's "one day sprints" are a terrible idea, but this one is somehow even worse.

> Why the team did not ask the Product Owner about the proof of concept?

Because the product owner wasn't even around for most of the day ("I happen to be in Amsterdam that day, so I will jump in and out, and generally not available"). Yeesh. How could anyone possibly work under this guy? I would've resigned yesterday.

>"I happen to be in Amsterdam that day, so I will jump in and out, and generally not available"

This was especially egregious given that the CTO insisted that everyone else make certain that there should be no interruptions the entire day and that they are 100% available for the team.

This strikes me as a terrible way to lead people - demand everyone else give it their all, while phoning it in yourself.

I only can judge from the article - I don't know the dynamics of the team. Some people and teams thrive on meeting a challenge and it would be exhilarating. Others would see this as draining.

For the right team, I would do this. That isn't many teams.

This seems really poorly designed and planned. First thing that would have helped would be to make it mandatory, so you could plan to have people from each discipline present, and plan a challenge based around the people available.

First, only 4 out of 13 team members joined, that's a huge difference in manpower. Second, a bunch of the failures he listed point directly to a lack of product/project leadership - because those people noped out. Finally, as dumb as this sounds, you can't team build with 3/4 of your team not participating...

"i have work that needs to be done yesterday, but no team ready to take it on. i know, i'll send a frustratingly cryptic invitation which will make everyone wonder whether it's voluntary or 'voluntary', and then reveal a scenario that offers no reward to them, no risk to me, and masks the highjacking of these peoples' schedule as teambuilding. surely grabbing the people who are willing to jump through hoops to impress me is more effective than assigning this to a team that has internal cohesion and relevant skillsets."

Challenging people to do stuff you won't reveal the nature of until they've committed to it--with no mention of incentives or alternatives--is not a "dare," it's just an inconceivably-shitty contract.

> Neither UX nor the Product Managers enlisted. Why not?

> Seven people joined, two dropped the day before, and when the challenge was revealed, one silently disappeared.

> Four brave souls to face the challenge…

All this shows is that out of his 13 devs, 4 of them will agree to anything.

I think you took away what was the most important lesson:

"One year later, I have not dared to run it again."

Personally I will always applaud little experiments that question the status quo and that may be fun for those involved.

What's the worst thing that could happen?

Well, an obvious answer is that you contribute to a terrible work environment. If this is anything more than an isolated one-off - say, if it's part of a pattern of behaviour - then woe betide you.

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