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A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

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Re: A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

#131

Post by thequadehunter »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #63
michaelteter wrote: post #52

> easy to confuse physical presence with productivity Early in my career I worked for the US division of a giant Japanese company. On the occasions that executives from Japan would come visit, we were expected to periodically stop working (programming) and carry papers to and from other cubicles and manager offices. This apparently gave the impression that we were working very hard, when of course it was really makin…

Maybe management knew you were faking and it’s the thought that counts?

This is just Japanese culture. A lot of time, people know it's less efficient, but the Japanese idea of efficiency in itself is different than in the US.

In Japan, it's not about doing things in the most efficient way. It's about being on the same page as everyone else. The mindset is that even if this way is less efficient, if everyone does it the exact same way every time, you can guarantee quality and consistency. Hard work is also held in high regard even if it's dumb work, because you're signaling to everyone that you're a team player-- as opposed to a rockstar who wants all the credit and recognition.

The upsides to this are what Japan is famous for-- quality and consistency. It's why the train is always on time and the convenience store is always around the corner. The downside is that you're often punished for innovating or thinking on your feet. I personally think this is why Japan is famous for quality products rather than innovative ones.

Re: A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

#132

Post by rafaelvasco »

nofunthrow93822 wrote: post #79
light_hue_1 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> usually picked on the basis of the highest compensation because that's what pays the bills, not out of which is most fun. I think you should reconsider some of your life choices then. You're spending a large part of your life working. Why wouldn't you choose a job that's fun? > job and tasks at work also happen to be an activity that's fun to you but that's super rare, and it's best not to spend your life searching…

> Why wouldn't you choose a job that's fun? Unfortunately, nothing is fun (for me) when done 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for months or years. Not to say there aren't better or worse jobs, of course. But there isn't anything (including any of my favourite hobbies) I would spend that much time doing, if I didn't need to earn money.

Almost nothing in my career (13 years) was ever really fun. Very discrete moments. Only consistent fun I ever have is on my personal projects... Actually the more the things I'm working on on my clients projects resemble my personal projects (I'm into game dev) the more fun I have. Which is very very rare.

Re: A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

#133

Post by pavel_lishin »

the_sleaze9 wrote: post #118
Aurornis wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weirdly, I've been asked to do the virtual version of this with a remote job. The company's business analysts started tracking everything in dashboards, including our Slack messages. Apparently they would pull up charts of things like messages sent by team or by person, and charts showing when people sent Slack messages. They tried to claim it was just for fun, but then someone slipped up in a meeting and said that t…

good managers in a bad ecosystem. Sounds like you were lucky to have them. Y'all should've written some automation to send random buzzword paragraphs and system diagrams at a regular, random cadence.

They should have broken the dashboards by writing automation to increase the "baseline" to ludicrous levels. A towering spire to the moon, with all other conversations merely pixel-tall bars on the graph.

Re: A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

#134

Post by qup »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #116
helloplanets wrote: post #103

Out of all the games that would be closest to WFH, EVE Online takes the cake. Most people who play the game seriously are part of a bigger organization, usually climbing the ladder by being trustworthy throughout the years. A lot of important things take place outside of the game itself, on Discord and sometimes even face to face. The end game is basically you being able to effectively operate within an organization.…

For anyone interested in learning more, Into The Deep recently released a 6 hour documentary on the history of EVE Online [0]. [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BCSeISYcoyI

I have an interest, but I'm not sure if I have a six-hour interest. Wow.

Re: A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

#135

Post by numpad0 »

tessierashpool wrote: post #125
jcpst wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that’s why it’s so important to get out of the office by 6. They don’t want anyone to get hurt.

does that really count as improving? another way to make sure nobody gets hurt by the robots flying randomly around the space is to not set robots flying randomly around the space

Has to be an extreme one-off case, but not completely implausible. Self reported overtime pay and cramped condominiums incentivize especially white-collar workers to slack and stay, and strong economy traditionally meant weaker incentives for management to control it(before factoring in that middle managers themselves might have slow cooking divorce too).

Nowadays many organizations have overtime pay caps, monitoring, and enforcement/encouragements - e.g. MDM on laptops, SSO login histories, or by turning off lights and HVAC. It is improving at a rate and in that kind of spirit, perhaps just not using glass breaking drones.

Re: A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

#136

Post by numpad0 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #24
wheybags wrote: post #23

Seems kinda backwards. I would say a video game is like a job but (hopefully) without the bad parts. I'm making a puzzle game, so the comparison to dev work is pretty obvious. The difference is when you play a puzzle game, you know there is a solution, and the world is crafted to make finding it as fun as possible. The real world is messy. Questions like "should we even do this at all" come up. There are edge cases,…

>> when you play a puzzle game, you know there is a solution, Not in my solitaire game. It actually shuffles the cards, dealing them rather than working backwards from a solution. I have been dealt games with no legal first move, and many more with only one or two dead-end moves. These deals have no possible solutions. Similarly, I have run across more than a few sudokus with more than one solution, meaning there is…

For Tetris: keep two rightmost columns open, and always prioritize on laying flat than plugging every holes. That way, any blocks can be just hard dropped to that slot to immediately clear two rows on average, and keep depths of notches and peaks to around two as well.

Funny thing about this is how knowing these tricks completely change gameplay, and that everyone who knows always reserve up to ~15% potential for immediately presentable and tangible results, and it's naive hard working players who gets punished, and it has no promises that it always works, and that these facts adds so much Soviet-ness to the game!

Re: A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

#137

Post by financltravsty »

iamcasen wrote: post #81

I still find it hard to believe that fully-async working style is more productive in the long run. My experience with it was that the pace of synchronous collaboration and decision making is about 5X faster than async. A group of engineers or a product team standing around a whiteboard in physical space is going to win the day every time IMO. Perhaps if a company has reached series A and developed a lot of in-person…

I think the major assumption is that collaboration is synonymous with productivity.

Candidly, in my experience, the results of collaboration, a lightweight version of "design by committee," have always come back to bite in the long-run. Primarily the issues are: diffusion of responsibility and accountability (i.e., since we all came up with it, then if it goes wrong it was bound to happen and someone else is responsible for fixing it vs. if I came up with it and it goes wrong, it's all on me) and lack of cohesive vision (i.e., the designs and decisions made are incongruous and lack cohesive vision; they're the result of slapping together everyone's, one could argue what would be in isolation, good ideas, but without the necessary steps taken to connect them altogether in a proper fashion).

If we assume the latter, rather than the former, then all that's increased is the speed of sub-optimal processes. One could even go so far as to say it's mostly theater similar to having everyone in the office: the appearance of work is more important than the actual outcomes of the work.

When everyone's together it's very difficult to get a quiet moment to yourself to really think things through and plan things out thoroughly. Instead you default to a more social, collaborative process.

From my own career, I've found I don't need collaboration often. I trust my ability to gather all the information I need, deferring to and asking for the help of experts that know more than I do, while still having the good judgement to synthesize it together into a cohesive and practical plan. In other words the buck stops with me.

Re: A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

#138

Post by titanomachy »

dingnuts wrote: post #47
titanomachy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t that pay less than minimum wage?

does every country have a minimum wage? WoW is a bit old now but this kind of thing is still happening in eg Venezuela https://www.polygon.com/features/2020/5/27/21265613/runescap... who knows where the person you're responding to was living when they needed to farm gold to get by

Good point. Referring to university as “college” is very American so I assumed USA, but that’s not conclusive evidence.

Re: A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

#139

Post by zo1 »

Gormo wrote: post #121
enneff wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who in 2023 is under the illusion that we live in a classless society??

People differ from each other in countless particular attributes, but it's entirely a subjective and value-laden activity to select a small subset of those attributes and define a "class" against them.

It doesn't have to be quantifiable and easily-defined for it to be true in some abstract sense.

I'd compare it to multi-dimensional clustering analysis.

Re: A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

#140

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

sandworm101 wrote: post #24
wheybags wrote: post #23

Seems kinda backwards. I would say a video game is like a job but (hopefully) without the bad parts. I'm making a puzzle game, so the comparison to dev work is pretty obvious. The difference is when you play a puzzle game, you know there is a solution, and the world is crafted to make finding it as fun as possible. The real world is messy. Questions like "should we even do this at all" come up. There are edge cases,…

>> when you play a puzzle game, you know there is a solution, Not in my solitaire game. It actually shuffles the cards, dealing them rather than working backwards from a solution. I have been dealt games with no legal first move, and many more with only one or two dead-end moves. These deals have no possible solutions. Similarly, I have run across more than a few sudokus with more than one solution, meaning there is…

> Famously, what made Tetris so different was it's soviet style. There is no end let alone a solution. There is no second chance. Your mistakes just pile up until you fail.

This is the central theme in the Tetronimia (Tetris clone) description:

> "The only winning move is not to play"

And later:

> I don't like computer games. They:

> Steal your time

> Replace meaningful activity

> Show how easy it is to manipulate a human into doing silly things

> Deceive you into thinking you're in control

> Disappoint you in the end

> Tetronimia does all of the above. Nothing more. It's ideal. Did I mention you can't win?

https://github.com/indiscipline/tetronimia

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