

What happened when a software company stopped working for a week - bensummers
http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2010/04/down-tools-week-the-results.html

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maukdaddy
_Rather than write up the results, here’s a video that Anthony put together._

WTF? Some of us are busy and would love a quick write-up. Not everyone is a
teen that can spend all day watching YouTube videos. Hell, some of us work
places where we can't even see the video if we wanted to!

~~~
patio11
You're kind of darned-if-you-do, darned-if-you-don't with content creation for
certain audiences: text is rarely remarkable because it is quickly consumed
and (if you're lucky) maybe retweeted, which produces nearly no value for the
business. Video is harder to duplicate and might actually attract some links,
and is easier to consume for the average Internet user than text is (oh
goodness, if you collect stats on online attention you might as well start
popping Prozac now), but it doesn't fly with the group that wants to get in
and out of your article in 45 seconds or less.

Decisions, decisions.

~~~
tjpick
audio + digital dictation = text?

Just a suggestion.

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GFischer
Why a video with no summary? (I don't want to view a video, unless it really
advances the point)

~~~
doki_pen
I agree. Does anyone have time to watch and give us a summary here on HN?

~~~
adamhowell
Basically, everyone worked on either internal tools (better reporting for
testers, etc.) or new initiatives ("SQL Pony" or some such). Plus they fooled
around some and made a video.

So not really a "down tools" week as much as it is a "work on something
tangentially related to work (with your tools) and have a little fun" week.

~~~
bcl
So they really didn't stop working for the week. They just re-focused on some
of the things they should have been doing all along in order to make
development easier. Everyone seems to forget that tools and infrastructure
should come first.

~~~
adw
Because they shouldn't - at least not in the early stages.

Once you know what you're making, shipping product comes first through about
fiftieth. If tools get you on the shortest path to shipping product then do
that, but _ship_.

It's Jobs' biggest contribution to theory. Real artists ship.

If you don't know what you're making, or should make next - which is a real
challenge for big companies - then what RedGate do (and they're an awesome
company) makes a lot of sense.

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euroclydon
This idea always struck me as a little childish. Do developers who are
creative enough to make useful tools need to be constrained to some one-week
window in which it's allowed to do so?

~~~
tpz
No, but in the real world of deadlines, collaboration with teams that have
their own different schedules, priorities, etc., they very often need a one
week window not constrained but instead _opened_ such that they can actually
get something done about items in the important but not urgent quadrant.

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mrkurt
Red Gate's doing a bang up PR job.

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crad
A easy takeaway for me from the video was that people are more productive when
they work on things that interest them. This just makes sense.

What was interesting to me is that it wasn't as much of Google's famous "20%"
concept. All they highlighted were people working on new commercial products
that they wouldn't have had the freedom or option to build in the normal
course of their jobs. There didn't appear to be diversity in scope or
direction.

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newobj
i would hardly say they "stopped working", yeah?

this really does look like a recruiting video -- nerf guns? check. balloons
floating away into the blue, blue sky? check. generic downtempo house musak?
check. "why do i like working at redgate"? check.

they also all look really tired and i would too if my "fun week off" was
compromised of building a "object-level recovery tool for sharepoint".

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Estragon
This must be part of their recruitment drive[1]. I guess something like this
is necessary when it's so hard to get excited about your company's
products.[2]

[1]<http://www.red-gate.com/careers/free_ipad.htm> [2]<http://www.red-
gate.com/products/index.htm>

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edralph
It's worth watching the video - if you [maukdaddy: "work places where we can't
even see the video if we wanted to"] then don't watch it - you'll just get
very jealous because you'll have no hope of getting your organisation to do
anything remotely this good.

