Would you not hire a programmer because of excessive game playing outside of work?

Question

Saw an article on this forum thread and wanted to get people's opinions here. Should hiring decisions be influenced by someone's game playing habits? Is this a fair reason to exclude someone from employment as a programmer? Do you feel that the concerns raised about productivity are valid?

See the original posting at http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=15577.0

I met with a recruiter recently (online media industry) and in conversation I happened to mention I'd spent way too much time in the early 2000s playing online games, which I described as "the ones before World of Warcraft" (I went nuts for EQ1, SWG and the start of WoW, but since 2006 I have only put a handful of days into MMOG playing - as opposed to discussing them - I've obsessed over bicycles and cycling instead).

He replied that employers specifically instruct him not to send them World of Warcraft players. He said there is a belief that WoW players cannot give 100% because their focus is elsewhere, their sleeping patterns are often not great, etc. I mentioned that some people have written about MMOG leadership experience as a career positive or a way to learn project management skills, and he shook his head. He has been specifically asked to avoid WoW players.

Answer 1

I once had an interview where the interviewer was concerned that my being in a band would be a liability as I might "hit the big time" and leave. I assured him that there was no chance of that.

Whether it is fair or not is not particularly relevant. We all know that ideally, what we do in our private time should have no bearing on our employment, but we also know that this is not really a realistic expectation, no matter how much we wish otherwise.

We should always expect there to be an effect on our employment prospects, either positively or negatively. Whether it is volunteering at the local children's home, running marathons, smoking, playing online games, or some other extra-curricular activity, a prospective employer will be influenced by it, rightly or wrongly.

Answer 2

If it's clearly affecting the person (i.e. they can't get through the interview without bringing it up uninitiated) or clearly affecting the person's work performance, then yes, it's a fair reason to exclude someone or terminate employment. If on the other hand it isn't affecting their work performance or their ability to pass the interview, then it's ridiculous to exclude them from the hiring process. You might as well say football fans not allowed, as they tend to drink too much on Sunday nights and show up late on Mondays.

That being said, if your WoW playing comes up that early in the interview process, you might have a problem. That would sound to me like someone is bringing it up out of the blue because they can't stop thinking about it, which could be an indicator of a negative, addictive pattern of behavior.

Answer 3

On the contrary - some of the best programmers out there are gamers. Maybe that's where I go wrong... I'm not a gamer. The plus points for gamers are that they're dedicated and focused. I however get half way through the first level and I'm bored. However, give me a book full of common coding tasks and ask me to complete them all in the fewest lines of code possible and I'm out of commission until they're all done.

So yeah, I'd have to say that gamers are high on my list of people to hire because:

• They tend to consider system performance higher than a typical data programmer.
• They tend to strive for code elegance much more than the average programmer.
• They're focused on the task at hand until it's complete... or at least until they're killed off by their colleage in the next cubicle.

I had a director prevent me running for promotion once because I'm English. She'd previously partnered with another English guy who burned her. I had to work twice as hard to get that promotion and 3 managers directly below her had to mutiny and tell her that I was getting the promotion whether she liked it or not. Eventually she gave in and we got on famously... but damn.

Prejudice is never fun, but at some point or another we will all be subjected to it. It sucks but that's life - imagine what it'd be like to have to deal with that every day and don't propogate it.

Answer 4

While I think that it is silly, there's a reason why they say that until you've landed the job, you should keep all your cards hidden.

People who hire have different prejudices, some justified, some less justified, and they may cast anecdotal experience or past experiences on new people.

By default, all that the recruiter has on you is your dry CV. He'll get what he can from your slips, and if he actually cares from information that he can glean about you online.

Even harmless details can be problematic: For example, too many pictures of you skiing may indicate that you may take too many "personal days" on powder days. Pictures of you in Vegas may indicate a gambling problem.

Pictures of you at parties may suggest to a conservative recruiter a frat-boy mentality, drinking problems, or sexual harassment potential (unless you are grabbing the bosoms of a future secretary of state and applying for work in the white house :).

One can come up with a lot of these examples...

The trouble is that the law only forbids them from prejudice based on dry factors such as race, having a family, etc. There is nothing against subjective prejudice.

As for gaming, like a lot of things, it can be addictive, it can be a time waster, etc. If you played it on the job, they'll deal with you. If you played it all night and showed up tired to work, they'll deal with you, but you could have also been dealing with a crying baby. I think it's silly, but you have no control over recruiters. It's not a fair process.

Answer 5

I'd say it depends on what games. I'd definitely be wary of a MMO player. I played wow for 3+ years and I've seen on myself and coworkers how can it absorb someone. It can be like a full time 2nd job. I wouldn't reject someone just because of it but it's kind of a red flag.

Answer 6

For Pete's sake...

People with a serious interest in computers often have an enthusiasm for computer games. To exclude those programmers who are heavy gamers is to exclude some of the most brilliant and creative minds in the industry. Legend has it that Ken Thompson invented Unix in part so that he could play computer games on the PDP-7.

If somebody is a serious gaming addict and it obviously impacts their work life, then of course you wouldn't want that person working for you. But to instruct a recruiter not to send you WoW players is utterly ridiculous. Your average recruiter ("I have an opening for a square-shaped programmer here... are you square shaped?") is not going to interpret that in an intelligent way. Furthermore, for an employer to make such a request sets of warning bells in my head that they are draconian and far removed from the reality of tech culture.

In fact, I'm not even convinced that screening job applicants based on whether or not they play video games at home is legal. What makes that any different than screening applicants based on what TV shows they watch, what their political affiliations are, or even what religion they practice (if any)? If I found out that I got passed over on a job for a lesser qualified applicant because I told the recruiter that I play video games, I would take my story to a lawyer.

Answer 7

In an ideal world maybe one's hobbies shouldn't influence the decision of the interviewer. However, when i had to choose i'd prefer someone who excessivly writes code in his spare time to someone who excessivly plays WoW (or anything else). Unless i'd own a game company and needed testers.

Answer 8

Seen from the recruits point of view, I'd say that I wouldn't work for someone who is so narrow-minded that he or she doesn't want gamers (or soccerplayers or 25-year old women or ... ) working for them. A good boss is someone who applauds everyones diversities and makes the best of them individually and as a team. Now, having a projectteam consist of 10 WoW-players could be a problem, since people tend to talk a lot about that game when they got the chance, but then again, I wouldn't like having 10 stiffs in my team who likes to talk about how IBM is solving some kind of no-use problem anyway :)

I say, embrace diversity!

Answer 9

It's worth remembering that getting a job in a recession is not quite the same as getting a job in a boom. Specifically, the number of applicants is liable to far outweigh the number of jobs, and the hirer may be faced with a mountain of CVs for any given position, and will be looking for any reason to exclude any given CV. If you want to conduct a maximum of 20 face to face interviews, and you get 200 CVs you have to ditch 90% of them without spending too much time on the job. I have been in this position in the past, and it went as follows;

• Too many pages -> bin
• Bound or on coloured paper -> bin
• Too much space dedicated to hobbies -> bin
• Too much job hopping -> bin
• Big gaps in career -> bin
• If the pile is still too big, bottom half of pile -> bin

You get the picture. Basically, your CV is you one chance to get your foot in the door, and in a competitive environment the hirer is looking for any reason to exclude most people. Every line on your CV must express something positive about you in the context of the position you are applying for. Playing WoW or any computers games is at best a neutral attribute for most recruiters and should IMHO not be included on your CV.

Incidentlly, one tactic that worked well for a friend of mine was to send in two CVs for the same post. One vanilla CV to get past the plain Jane HR type recruiter, another that stood out a bit to appeal to a more techie and/or humane audience.

If you're convinced your skills and experience are that good that you will easily beat off all of the competition, and that the recruiter will pick up on this from your CV, you can put whatever you like in the personal interests section. Otherwise...

Answer 10

It's not game-playing per se, but any out of hours 'commitment' which might impact their working day will have an impact on my decision as an interviewer.

I once employed a very high level amateur sportsman in my team. He trained for several hours a day (before and/or after work), more at weekends, went to the gym at lunchtime, ate all the time, permanently tired. He was a really good team member, lots of experience, good ideas, a go-to, helping sort of guy.

At the time, we didn't care. Indeed, as a company we effectively sponsored him - put advertising on his kit, looked after him, considerate deadlines, working from home and when he reached the National Championships and won the right to represent the country we celebrated with him.

But he was one of ours who got really good while working for us.

Would I have employed someone similar knowing what was going to happen or while he was at that stage? That's a really good question but I would honestly have to say probably not.

Answer 11

My personal feeling is that yes, other activities can take up your time too (sports, theatre, music, volunteering, etc.) and any one of those can be taken to an obsession. But somehow gaming saps your energy more than those other things. You burn on adrenaline for hours while you play, and then afterwards you're tired, irritable, and you can't think. Online games have some element of social interaction, I guess, but mostly it doesn't give you any useful skills in return for the time you spend on it.

I've gone through periods where I've been addicted to games, where I don't want to think about anything else and I can't wait until work/school is over so I can run home and play again. That's why I try to minimize the amount of gaming I do now, because I recognize that it can be a destructive habit in excess.

For me, it's not an automatic no-hire red flag, but if someone's going to be obsessed about soemthing, I'd rather see that time spent on something other than gaming.

Answer 12

I don't see why it should be held against someone during the interviewing process. In fact I not even sure why it would even come up unless the applicant volunteered it. If the interviewer were to bring it up, and it didn't make sense in the context of the company (e.g. Blizzard) then it might be a sign of a deal breaker for that job. Likewise, the comment by ffpf makes me raise and eyebrow as well I don't think the company should really care that much about what you do in your free time.

In the context of employees currently working for the company, things might be a bit different, but as long as it isn't interfering with your work I don't think you should be bothered about it. This is a bit of subjectiveness as to what degree of interference might have (e.g. showing someone a raid video at lunch versus browsing WoW websites during the day) but most good managers will let you know when you productivity starts going down.

Answer 13

Getting a job is a game in and of itself. In most cases, if you don't play by the rules, you probably won't win. Volunteering info in an interview that might be detrimental is the interview equivalent of walking into the middle of a gaming battlefield and taking off your body armor. It might not get you killed, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Answer 14

If I saw a resume with an objective of "Reach level 80 and get full tier 7," I might say he's not a good fit.

If I saw a resume with an objective of "Help my coworkers get full tier 7," then yeah, he's hired.

Answer 15

Largely, a candidate's personal life is not really any of my business. I would hope to provide a working environment that would allow them to no have their work life trickle into their home life, and I would expect that in return, they do not bring their personal life into play at the office.

That really does not answer the question, though. I would be lying if I said I didn't try to see what kind of "dirt" I can dig up on a person as part of a pre-screening process. You would be amazed at how much information you can find with an email address. To date, this pre-screening process has only eliminated one candidate from being contacted. This person had, for some reason, spent a large amount of time posting about where his favorite places to do drugs were, how wasted he would get, and how he would show up to work "trippin'".

The flip side of the pre-screen is that you can actually get good angles to talk to candidates on, such as knowing their interests, what kind of questions they ask on places like SO, etc. ;-)

Answer 16

Although I posted MMO addiction as a top answer to why programmers are fired, I wouldn't rule someone out simply because they play a game heavily. I might however google to see how much MMO related things they post to the internets during work hours. A little would be fine, but a constant stream of postings would be a red flag.

Answer 17

I've never met anyone who was obsessed with games like WoW and competent enough technically to hire. So I think it is mostly a moot point. Of the people I knew in college who played WoW, most were mediocre coders, some were good, but none were exceptional.

I think it is just a matter of time. You can't possibly be that smart/knowledgeable as a developer if all of your free time is going elsewhere. While my friends were reaching level 70, I was writing my own filesystem. The really good people find enjoyment in personal projects more so than games.

Ironically, I would really love to be a game developer, since I think it would be challenging, but I can't play games for very long without getting bored and wanting to do something more substantial with my time.