Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Engineer rigs nerf gun to shoot himself when his stories are rejected in Pivotal (evantahler.com)
88 points by petenixey on Feb 15, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 13 comments



We hung a rotating nerf missile launcher upside down from the ceiling that shoots folks who push broken tests to our staged for deploy branch (we use TeamCity). It's a work in progress and not a perfect system (we pair a lot so there's no guarantee someone is at their desk), but it's fun and gets people's attention.

Basically this, but automagical: http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/ilaunch-thunder-iphone-controll....


Dodging bullets is one way to become more "agile".


Slightly-OT nerf hack: The best nerf sniper weapon is 18 inches of 1/2" PVC tube and your lungs. ~30 yard range, and super-accurate.


Not sure how I feel about being sprayed with someone's spit...


That's fine if you're doing it to yourself. If management were to try to impose this, I would look for a job that has more regard for the dignity of employees.


I think if I were an employer, I would be looking for an employee with more of a sense of humor!

Seriously though, I really think the atmosphere in a work place is really important. I can't imagine working with people who wouldn't consider this a neat hack and overall quite funny.


I believe PaperCut Software have a system that fires foam rockets at any developers who fail unit tests[1]

[1] https://github.com/codedance/Retaliation


Don't worry, no humans were harmed in the making of this hack.


My coworkers and I have nerf-like turrets that we control wirelessly from our computers (and constantly relocate to various hidden locales). No one is safe -- least of all management.


That's neat but it seems counter productive to me. I consider rejected Tracker stories to be a good thing. Better for a story to be rejected and provide feedback than to sit ignored or remain unfinished longer than necessary because the developer wants to avoid any possibility of rejection.

Now firing nerf weapons when CI builds fail makes much more sense.


At my company we have a purple lacrosse helmet that is placed on one's desk - like a trophy of humorous shame - whenever someone breaks something. It's all in good fun and helps to lighten the mood when things happen. And they always do.


Those phidget boards are pretty great. I bought some flashing lights from woot that we had kick on via the USB phidget interface anytime our pingdom checks failed. Now everyone hates the yellow lights :)


I swear I don't work for phidget corp, but they have some spiffy LED displays as well. Think scrolling signs letting you know the status of the latest CI build and the commiter...

http://www.phidgets.com/products.php?category=15




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: