作者：Ryan Vandendyck

如果你关注过我的相关博客的话，就会知道我将自己的个人经历定义为“双重开发者”。也就是说，我既是游戏行业中的全职开发者，同时本质上也是全职的独立开发者。在上周的文章评论中，许多人阐述了他们自身的同样经历，也有些人对我繁忙的时间安排发表了看法。但是，为避免该系列博文过于片面化，今天我想做些许转变，谈谈新的话题：为何我认为像我这样安排时间对员工和雇主双方都有益。

indie game developer(from indiegamemag)

那么，在我开始说明之前，我或许应当先解释下发表这篇博文的必要性，因为有些人可能并不了解电子游戏行业中合约性计划的相关事宜。通常游戏公司雇员所签订的合同中都会有“公司向你支付X美元的工资，你创作的所有东西都将属于XXX公司。”此等效力的条款。这只是对合同中某些条款的概述而已，真正的合同中会包含更多的法律隐语，包括对“所有东西”和“创作”的完整定义。

从公司的角度上来看，此类条款当然能带来很大好处。他们并不希望自己使用潜在的专利知识训练出来的雇员将所创作的东西用来产生私人盈利。我认为，公司有这种想法是合理的。我觉得，我们都理解可能有人在偷偷摸摸地干这种事情，所以公司自然会采取保护自身的措施。

但是，我认为此类条款存在的问题是杀伤性过大。在过去的博文中，我曾解释了某些强制执行保护政策的严厉方法。事实上，公司的多数员工都不会想要利用公司自身拥有的知识和技术来满足私欲。我并不是说世界上完全不存在有这等想法的人，但是我想大多数人都不会这样做。事实上，根据我自身的经验来看，员工通常不仅不会想去伤害他们的雇主，而且他们很愿意帮助后者！如果这是普遍情况的话（游戏邦注：作者认为这的确是普遍情况），那么为何合同却要以另一种态度来对待我们呢？

当雇主认为雇员有潜在的敌意时，后者的斗志就会受到影响。对于那些从未有过在工作之外自行开发项目的雇员来说，这样做或许并不恰当。但是，我曾经同许多程序员交谈过，他们声称自己的确很喜欢日常工作，也愿意利用自己的业余时间来做同样的工作。只要雇员的行为不会对雇主的产品构成消极的影响（游戏邦注：比如，你的雇主正在面向手机市场制作解谜游戏，而你也正计划在手机市场发布解谜游戏或者其他类型的游戏），那么让雇员自由去做某些自己喜欢的事情又能怎样呢？我认为这种做法完全可取。

事实上，我猜测（游戏邦注：以下论断仅属作者的推测，并未经证实）如果雇员可以在家中做自己的项目，那么他们的斗志将得到提升，因为他们会认为自己被当成诚恳的个人对待，而不是潜在的窃贼。但是，有人或许会辩解称，与潜在的威胁相比，斗志的增加似乎并没有什么价值，公司还必须确保雇员的项目不会与产品发生冲突。

尽管如何抉择需要依各公司的价值和文化而定，但是我还是想提出一个看法，那就是制作游戏是很困难的。有多少个雇员能够真正度过漫长的开发过程，为销售而制作游戏？我的猜想是，能达到此等状态的雇员并不多。因而，我认为让雇员在家中制作自己的项目而带来的麻烦并不会很多，因为由此出现真正能够在市场上销售的产品的可能性很小。这并不是说我认为雇员懒惰或者缺乏天赋，而是因为许多人自行开发项目仅仅是为了从中得到乐趣而已！

所以，我的首个观点是，让雇员开展自己的项目有助于提升他们的斗志，这通常会使他们在工作时更加愉快而且更具创造力。现在，我认为这已经可以算作是公司能够获得的利益，也是让雇员开展自己的项目的充分理由。然而，我认为还有另一个好处：在家中开发项目的雇员可以免费使雇员得到训练，省去公司的精力和开支！

我将以个人经历为模板来解释上述说法。在工作之时，我是游戏可玩性程序员。在工作中，我无需编写演奏代码、多线路系统、音频系统和内存分配器等。这些并非是我的工作职责，曾经也并非是我力所能及之事。但是自从我开始在家中自行开发项目以来，我不得不开始学习这些东西，还有其他更多的东西。现在，如果雇主需要我在工作中做这些事情，我能够在公司无需提供任何培训的前提下就职。

如果你阅读过我的上篇博文，你就会知道我在家中花了相当长的时间用来编程（游戏邦注：每周将近40个小时）。也就是说，平均算来，雇主每支付给我1个小时的薪水，他们获得的是我价值2个小时的经验。我认为这对雇主来说是个可观的好处，而且我觉得他们也会认同这个观点！和所有其他的事情一样，实践可以改善我们的技能。那么，多数雇主故意在无需公司付出任何成本的前提下，限制雇员进行实践的这种行为还会有意义吗？

总的来说，我认为雇主允许雇员像我这样拥有双重开发身份的生活能够带来许多好处，包括获得开心的雇员和无需公司再次训练更具技能的雇员。假如你不认同我的想法的话，那么让我给你举个可见的成功实例：谷歌。谷歌有个80/20规则。通过搜索你可以看到许多关于这个规则的解释，或者可以查看http://smartstorming-blog.com/googles-8020-formula-it-can-work-for-you/这个链接中的内容。谷歌极为认同让员工制作自己的项目，甚至不惜动用员工的工作时间！这种措施比我的建议更加彻底，因为在我的建议中公司无需付出任何薪资和成本，只是让雇员在工作时间之外制作自己的项目。但是在我看来，谷歌目前依然是有着快乐雇员的创新型公司。

这篇博文中我还没有解答的问题是：虽然在家中学习与工作中的任务无关的东西很棒，但是如果学习的东西会影响到我的日常工作又会如何呢？这里是否存在某种冲突？或许我将在后续博文中解答这个问题。

游戏邦注：本文发稿于2011年10月3日，所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Why being a double developer is a win/win

Ryan Vandendyck

Hello again everyone! If you’ve been following along with this blog series, you’ll know I’ve been posting about my personal experience as a “double developer”, which is a term I’ve coined to describe my life working full-time at a developer in the games industry while also working essentially full-time on my own indie venture. Last week’s comments section was on fire with people chiming in about their own experiences doing something similar or about their perspective on my admittedly hectic schedule. In order to keep this blog series from being a one-sided story, however, I thought I’d switch tracks a bit today and touch on a new topic: why I believe that employers allowing the type of arrangement I’m doing is beneficial to both parties.

So before I begin I should perhaps explain why this blog post is necessary at all, in case some people are unaware of some of the contractual arrangements that go on in the video game industry. So a typical contract that an employee of a game company gets would say something to the effect of “In exchange for x dollars for your salary, everything you work on becomes the property of [insert company name here].” That’s a very rudimentary re-statement of what would be in the contract; the real thing would contain much more legal jargon, including more complete definitions of “everything” and “work on”.

Now from the company’s perspective, of course this makes a lot of sense. They wouldn’t want to train an employee using potentially proprietary knowledge just to have that employee turn around and re-purpose what he worked on to turn a personal profit. And I believe such an outlook is justified; I think we can all agree that for someone to do that would be pretty underhanded, so it’s good that the company seeks to protect itself.

But the problem I have with it is that I believe it’s overkill. In my first blog post I explained some of the more draconian ways in which this protective policy has been enforced. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of employees at a company have no desire to rip off their employer by canabalizing their market or sales by leveraging the company’s own knowledge and technology against them in order to turn a personal profit. I’m not saying there aren’t a few bad seeds in the world, but I think we can agree that the average person isn’t going to do that. In fact, based on my experience, the average person usually not only does not want to hurt their employer, but actually likes their employer and is happy to do things to help them! If this is the typical case (and I believe it is), why are all of our contracts treating us like it’s the other way around?

When employees are treated as potential hostile thieves by their employer, morale suffers. For some people who never have any intent on working on their own projects outside of work, maybe this isn’t such a big deal. However, I think I speak for a lot of programmers at least who would argue that they really do enjoy what they do and they like doing it on their own time as well. As long as what they work on has no negative implications on the product offerings of their daytime employer (i.e. your employer makes puzzle games for the mobile market and you plan on releasing a puzzle game for the mobile market, or perhaps any game for the mobile market), is there any harm in letting the employee go hog wild on whatever captures their interest? I don’t see why not.

In fact, I hypothesize (but cannot prove, since I have only my own experience to draw upon) that if employees were given the option to work on personal projects at home that their morale would improve because they would feel that they are being treated as individuals with integrity, as opposed to potential thieves. One might argue, however, that the increase to morale is not worth the added hassle of having to deal with a potentially large group of employees producing products that would have to be vetted by the company to ensure they aren’t competing with their product offerings.

While that decision comes down to a company’s values and culture, I would raise one issue: making a game is hard. How many employees are truly going to go through the long-term, focused effort at releasing a game for sale at all? My guess is: not many. Therefore I postulate that there would be little to no hassle involved in just letting employees putter around at home on personal projects, since the chances of any becoming viable marketable goods is small. This is not because I assume the employees are lazy or untalented; rather, because a lot of people just like messing around on projects for the fun of it!

So my first point is that letting employees work on personal projects provides a morale boost for the employee, which generally translates into happier, more productive employees at work. Now while I perceive this to already be a tangible benefit to the company and enough reason to let employees work on personal projects, I propose another benefit: employees working on projects at home provides free training for the employee that the company doesn’t have to provide!

I’ll explain what I mean from my own experience. At work, I am a gameplay programmer. Without diving into my exact responsibilities, it suffices to say that I do not write rendering code, multi-threaded systems, audio systems, memory allocators, etc. These are all outside the scope of my responsibilities at work, and indeed were once out of the scope of my abilities altogether. But since I’m making my own game at home, I suddenly had to learn about all of these things, and more. And now if ever my employer would need me to fill one of those roles at work, I would be able to step into that role without any training needing to be provided by the company.

If you read my last blog post, you know I spend a considerable amount of time at home programming (around 40 hours per week). This means that on average, for every 1 hour of work my employer pays me for, they gain 2 hours worth of experience in terms of my skill and knowledge growth. I believe this to be of considerable benefit to my employer, and given that they choose to keep me around I think that they would agree! Like anything else, practice improves our skills. Does it make sense then that most employers intentionally limit the opportunities for their employees to practice on their own, where it doesn’t cost the company anything?

To sum up, I believe that employers that allow their employees to live a double developer life as I am doing will reap numerous benefits, including happy employees and more skilled employees that they don’t have to train as much. In case you’re thinking differently, allow me to mention one very visible success story: Google. In case you’re not aware, Google has an 80/20 rule. Searching for it will yield a lot of explanations, but here is one: http://smartstorming-blog.com/googles-8020-formula-it-can-work-for-you/. Google believes in empowering employees to work on their own projects so much that they give them time to do it at work! This is much more radical than what I’m suggesting, since in my example the company doesn’t have to pay anything at all, but simply let employees work on projects outside of work. But the last time I checked, Google was a pretty innovative company with happy employees.

One potential question I didn’t cover in this post (which I might cover in a subsequent post) is: “While learning things at home unrelated to my tasks at work is great, what about learning things that does impact my day job? Are there any conflicts of interest there?” Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have any comments/questions of your own! (Source: Gamasutra)