Show HN: I built a fake VS Code to browse live cricket score in office (opens in new tab)

I'm not sure that's "UK" specific but probably more office/company/leadership specific..

I don't live in the UK..

For the 2018 World Cup my department repurposed several meeting room TVs to stream matches and folks could gather in those rooms to work while watching the games.

Work still got done on time.

At the same time, a friend who worked down the street forwarded me an all-team memo from his boss that warned employee sick day requests would be "extra scrutinized" during the World Cup. So yeah.. Leadership.

It is called low trust environment.

In high trust environment nobody cares what you are doing -- you are trusted to manage your time to produce results best you can. You are given a challenge and you figure your way to deliver results. We are all adults and we understand different people work differently but most people are unable to keep focus uninterrupted for 8h straight, day after day.

In a low trust environment management thinks they can improve productivity by banning activities that have nothing to do with work.

The reality is that banning everything else than work is not causing people to do more work. It just causes them to work longer but slower. Or be more inventive about avoiding work. Or just staring at the screen with your mind blank (I have been there). Also not care to manage your time better, look out for risks, improvements, etc. And then if they are any good quit after 2 years so they don't get bored to death.

Do you really want to pay your developer by the hour? This is just as stupid as paying by LoC.

At a previous employer we had a pool table which was well used by almost every level of the company. People would regularly disappear for 20 minutes to play a couple of games.

On a whole I think it was probably neutral or even a positive for productivity. If my project manager wanted to talk through something he'd usually appear over my shoulder and just say "pool?". Similarly other people on the team when struggling with something would do the same and use the time to loosely discuss the issue (often in rubber duck fashion) or just take a few minutes to think about something else which was often enough to get things moving again.

I'm not a huge cricket fan but there's something so pleasant about having Test Match Special on a crackly longwave radio in the background when I'm working. I'll be sad when they shut AM radio down in the UK even though it's probably impossible to listen in cities at this point.

This can also be company or department specific. I remember when we moved, I encouraged and actually pushed that we arrange everything in a full privacy mode, regardless of where you stay and how many people are in the office, no one can see your screen or desk without coming up behind you. It's funny how other departments in our same company have a clear hierarchy, where the boss has full privacy and everyone under him needs to have their screens placed that they are visible at all time/when entering the office. The funniest, or maybe saddest was another dev team that forced everyone to face the walls around each office, so the screens are always public.

Nothing to do with being in the UK btw

Indeed, I used to work on a trading floor where they'd show cricket on the wide screens. The game is so slow it kinda lends itself to that. You can concentrate, then turn your head when there's a wicket.

At a previous office, I sent a video to someone. Some time later, I asked if they had seen it yet. They had not. It turns out that team didn't watch videos during working hours, but my team did.

Things can get pretty intense with IT "body shops" in India where the company literally makes money on the hour.

You have to bare in mind this appears to be an Indian site and a lot of companies in India have a very different culture to that of the Silicon Valley (or even London).

>> I had never had a job in the past 15 years where you couldn’t open a sports page once in a while.

Let's talk about males in the workplace, and web filters.

Isn't it funny how web filters almost never block sports sites?

I worked with a woman who raged about this and was convinced that "People magazine is blocked, but ESPN isn't? It's because men built web filters!"

Interesting perspective.

Cricket is a very long sport (up to 5 days for a test match) and quite often you don't actively watch it so much as keep an eye on it while you go about your day.

This is good because you can have the window open all day on one of your screens without it obviously being not work. Cricket.com.au has a similar option which emulates a spreadsheet https://live.cricket.com.au/bossmode/2836/51513/western-aust...

I remember in 2016 when Leicester won the premier league, pretty much everyone in a fairly large office (100+ people) just stopped working to watch one of the games on. I had to go to the toilet at some way through it, but just put it on the radio on my phone so I wouldnt miss anything. I didnt realise though, that for whatever reason the radio was about 5 seconds behind, so ditched even using it after hearing the entire office shake with cheering, and then the radio telling me 5 seconds later why.

I think before the open plan office frenzy it was quite normal. By the way, I discovered most of my friends WFH now and don't plan to quit, so maybe we can treat open-plan offices as a crazy fashion that appeared, persisted in spite of multiple studies showing it's bad for everybody (including micromanaging bosses), and now no longer makes sense as those who can WFH.

> I had never had a job in the past 15 years where you couldn’t open a sports page once in a while

Good for you!

But do you really not realise that other people work under less favourable conditions than yourself?

When we actually used to go to office, we always replaced the CI/CD screens with live cricket feeds all over the office. It was much less distracting than opening a tab on your machine, and you could still stay updated with just a glance. As an exciting match would draw close to the end though, people would pay much more attention to the screens than their work.

These are all in good fun so it's kinda whatever, but I'm surprised OP didn't bother to mention the source even in the blog post https://pankajtanwar.substack.com/p/i-built-a-fake-vs-code-t...

Top marks for your politeness in calling this out!

Dp you have it open-sourced?

I switched VS Code theme to light to avoid attracting attention (as most of our screens are mostly white normally) when using it occasionally while my job had nothing to do with VS Code (or any code at all). Everyone procrastinates. I wrote some code for sake of procrastination, instead of using social networks like normal people do. Some may probably call this "ill-intent".

Growing up I had a game which had a "Boss Key" in that showed a spreadsheet and some pie charts, I remember wondering why you'd want a fake business looking screen in a game that disappears if you press any key. So many mysteries that remained unanswered before you could ask the internet.

This one even supports a HN, Microsoft Word and Google docs theme.

There was a computer game I played a bit at a kid that had a "boss coming" mode. It'd cover the screen with fake progress bars and messages like "updating spreadsheets" and "compiling estimates" or something. Clearly meant as a jokey easter egg, but fun.

Sounds like a modern day George Costanza [1], I mean it as a compliment.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw9sQmmfqWg

Reminds me of a script I wrote a few weeks ago. Basically it listens to Google Chat notifications via D-Bus and plays my phone's alarm clock sound when someone DMs or mentions me. In my case it was meant for when I wanted to take a break without blocking people who needed me though (not high-tech sleeping on the job ^^).

fun to look around at some of the old ones, DOS games mostly, mock-spreadsheets etc

Even found that ESPN Australia had one built into their CricInfo page back in 2015 that went to a fake spreadsheet screen with live scores embedded in the cells! https://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/11/remember-the-boss-key-from...

My experience with a team from India who liked to watch cricket was completely positive. They got their work done. And watched cricket. They were completely responsive to me when needed, and would watch cricket when the work wasn't urgent.

I don't think that is any different than any other remote worker. You both work at home and live your life. As long as the work gets done, who cares how the rest of their time is spent, or even when they do it?

What was your experience like?

I think the OP was using this to keep up-to-date on the Twenty20 world cup. This is a much shorter format of the game, and a match can take as little as 2 - 3 hours to complete from start to finish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty20

I rarely use solely windows (always remoting to a box), but this keystroke is really nice to know!

Actually, there's other layer to that joke.

For context, the original fake VSCode was made by Pieter Levels ( https://remoteok.io/vscode ) - which isn't mentioned in this project.

The joke is that his main product, remoteok, was a single index.php file for a long time.

In a world where people spend too much time thinking of tech stacks, the dude was banking on a single php file.

Like this http://www.codereddit.com/index.html

Depends on perspective.

> the fact that you had time to build it means you need to keep the job at the company you work with ;)

Leisure Luit Larry had this!

Just read the page source! For browsing HN, it is actually feasible.

That's a lot of work for a joke

Kind of poetic justice after they sabotaged our hosted series lineup by harrassing NZ team's family members with fake bomb threats.

Looks like some one else already built one[0]

[0] - https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=KavinDes...

Was thinking the same - sounds like someone was really bored.

And if you have to be in VS Code, why not a plugin or curl script which outputs to a file, which is then in a VS Code tab.

It was quite common for pc games (like Sierra's adventure games) to have a boss key in the 80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_key

Because, seriously, cricket? ;-)

Within reason, of course, since at the end of the day you do pay them to run your business. But I've had plenty of workplaces that would have football matches on a TV if need be. And I've spent plenty of time playing mario kart on the clock as well.

I loved that prog, I used to use it all the time - I was often on site as the IT person in non-IT companies and would have downtime etc but didn't want to look like I was lazing around and seeing as I just wanted to read forum threads etc it worked brilliantly in keeping me looking respectable.

there are some CLIs to read hacker news in the terminal, if that's enough :)

Workers in India, China... many, many places.