Ask HN: Work Gamification
Does your company/team has adopted or tried some kind of work gamification (leaderboard, prices, specific rules, perks, etc.)? What do you think about it?
The best thing you should take from game design in terms of how to improve work is the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic reward. Most gamification focuses on extrinsic rewards such as leaderboards, levelling and achievements. But really they should think about the intrinsic rewards of work and how to improve those. Doing the latter without the former is just running people on a treadmill towards burnout. Focusing on extrinsic rewards also has a lot of negative consequences more generally. People focused on them as individuals often do so to the detriment of the wider organisation. You see that with bonuses as well. And extrinsic rewards can result in lower creativity, less intrinsic motivation and even less satisfaction from social rewards.
Basically do the hard thing and make the work inherently better rather than the easy thing of adding hoops to jump through.
I was involved into a project for subway operator efficiency increase. That was packed as a game where one gets points for braking as less as possible. Union stepped later in and closed the show. Nobody needs extra tension in already stressful job.
Software development lacks good metrics, though.
Here's how that goes.
"Daryl we have deadlines and we need you to make sure these tickets get completed!"
You burn the midnight oil and then a month later:
"Daryl, your productivity metrics are lower than last month, why aren't you a team player?"
It's a trap.
Goodhart's law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law) gets repeated a lot in threads like these but it's for a good reason.
That is just bad gamification.
I think gamification has to be progress toward completion, and the difficulty of completion has to be set deliberately so it isn't either easy or daunting. So every 1000 tickets you get a day PTO. More like that.
Tickets aren't good metrics, it means prioritizing easy tickets and incentivizing creating more tickets than necessary.
There are no good metrics for software work really.
They are most helpful in hierarchical environments when subordinates are reluctant to voice their thoughts against a person's in power opinion (manager, a more senior employee, etc.). Turning the discussion into a game enables everyone to participate without fear of breaking the social tabu of speaking up against the highest-paid person in the room.
"Six thinking hats" by Edward de Bono, psychologist, is another tool that helps to "gamify" discussions.
I have used Six Hats with excellent outcomes, usually when the team could not agree on a solution. They worked well in fast ("production is down, do we restore from backup or continue migration?") and slow ("what is the next most important thing to do") discussions.
Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to explore much of "innovation games." The reluctance usually comes from the business folks.
Curious to hear if anyone has experience with those methods or knows other collaborative decision-making tools!
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation_game - https://www.slideshare.net/emte69/innovation-games-14009295 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Thinking_Hats
We're still on the fence though because we want to encourage everyone. Every time there are winners, there are also losers
The only way I've seen it promote positive behavior are when the goals are shared, and when everyone's participation actually meaningfully contributes to the goal.
Otherwise, some people just have a natural leg up by virtue of some aspect of their work that lends itself to getting more "points" in whatever system you devise, and everyone else either becomes resentful or manipulates the system in a way that the points are no longer encouraging the behavior that you would hope they are.
The exceptions here might be things that are only work adjacent. I've enjoyed gamified health challenges, fantasy sports, and actual games with coworkers. Because then it's for fun, and not something that's going to impact my paycheck or my perceived value in the organization.
but most of all it was a great experience to play with defi, talk strategies. great team building.