Ask HN: What kind of fun did you use to have before the HR-organized joy?

4 pointsbogomil2y ago5 comments

After three days at a metal festival (in Pilsen), I realized something sad. In the software world, we don’t have fun at work anymore. I am not talking about the HR-inspired fun; I am talking about the joy that comes from the inside.

Do you remember the chair rowing?

Do you remember how amazed we were to crash a keyboard or two on each other backs? Do you remember us singing songs about Java while writing fake protocols?

What kind of fun did you use to have in your teams before the HR-organized joy of playing volleyball and drinking beer from PHP-shaped mugs? Help me inspire more people with a talk I am building.

Thanks!

5 comments

defrost2y ago

Not sure I ever worked anywhere that had a formal HR department although now I'm a bit emeritus consultarse for projects that do.

I always enjoyed dull mundane stuff, pre dawn musters to launch and run calibration stacks up to 12,000 feet to compute cosmic parameters, jumping in to clear heli sites | landing strips, having to scale peaks to set mag|gps base stations.

All the fun and games of geophysical code development.

john_the_writer2y ago

I remember lan parties in the board room. And the spontaneous pizza party. It was a geeks wonderland. And often it was company sponsored.

Never had the crashing of keyboards, because well mechanical keyboards are not cheep.

I do remember the "every OS sucks" song.

bogomilOP2y ago

I was not aware of the song. Wow Thanks!

tssva2y ago

"Do you remember how amazed we were to crash a keyboard or two on each other backs? Do you remember us singing songs about Java while writing fake protocols?

What kind of fun did you use to have in your teams before the HR-organized joy of playing volleyball and drinking beer from PHP-shaped mugs."

None of those activities sound fun, but if I had to choose I'd take the HR organized volleyball and beer drinking.

mintaka52y ago

remember, when people actually listened to what you had to say?!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse