We don't do it at lunchtime. We don't do it during the working day. 5:30pm on a Friday? Let's have a glass of whiskey together.
Somebody joining/leaving, or we haven't been out together for a while? Let's go to the pub after work one evening.
There is a #drinks channel in Slack where people who fancy a drink after work co-ordinate, and several of will grab each other once a week for a couple of pints.
That does not mean we are drunk when coding. As for team dynamics, it means we know each other better and bond more frequently. Not a problem, I think.
The downside is that for people who don't want to engage in this or can't (have to look after family, etc.), it can feel exclusionary, so we spend some time making sure we do things with those people too.
Except for the non-drinkers in your team. I suspect that they either
a) feel left out, because a non-drinker at a pub has a boring time, and has to keep justifying their empty glass
b) probably miss out on important decisions if a majority of the important people in a team are present, which is bad dynamics
c) maybe your team doesn't have any non-drinkers. What does that tell you in terms of diversity / inclusiveness?
I'm not pointing fingers at you specifically because you mention explicitly making plans around people who don't/won't drink, but i think there should be more awareness around this, especially since it can seep into the culture quite insidiously, and invisibly.
Every social activity will exclude people who don't like the activity by default. There's no real working around this.
Even if you just have a 'talking' club, you exclude people who aren't natural extroverts or find large group conversations to be maddening.
In essence, there's no way to be perfectly fair... so at best you can have different choices to try to be as inclusive as possible with limited time.
Is this seriously a thing in the US? Feeling like you have to drink if you're surrounded by people drinking? I keep hearing stories like that. Nobody is going to judge you for not consuming alcohol - if anyone does, they're certainly not people I'd want to hang out with regardless of whether drinks are involved.
It doesn't hurt not to give a fuck, once in a while.
Another boss I had any a different job told me he fired someone for not partying with everyone else. If you went to these parties and didn't drink, the boss would harass you all night.
I agree with you that many people are just self conscious, but it's not exclusively that way.
The tl;dr is that people who are insecure will attempt to rationalize their feelings, and this frequently includes feelings of judgement and persecution from others where none exists.
Unless being drunk is your idea of fun (in which case it seems doubtful you'd be a non-drinker), I cannot understand how drinking liquid A at a party is any more boring than liquid B.
In fact a graph of my enjoyment as a non-drinker (in my experience) would probably be inverse to a graph of the enjoyment of the people getting progressively more shit-faced.
I drink regularly; but every now and then I'll go a week or month without drinking. I'm currently in the middle of one of these periods; but I've still gone out to happy hour or events that involved drinking every day since it's started. I manage to have just as much fun sober drinking soda + bitters.
The best part of this drink is that they rarely charge me anything for it. I'll usually tip a couple bucks per drink, and everybody ends up happy!
If your culture is one where that's necessary then the entire management chain should be fired.
We do these things:
1) We don't make any decisions when team members are missing; they have to be done during work hours when everyone is able to participate 2) There's no obligation to drink (why would there be?); several of the team don't drink, and there is no pressure to do so, they get soft drinks/tea/coffee/whatever they like
As someone who is very shy and introverted, it's one of the few times I actually go out socially, and it's a time to unwind and have a chat with your coworkers and associated friends/partners/family. I don't think doing this has any negative impact upon the rest of the team, so long as you don't do any serious discussion and decision making which excludes others.
If you're pregnant, this basically means that you can't be a part of the team's social gatherings for at least 9 months straight.
You were offended by a gift? Just say thanks and give it away or throw it away.
The vast majority of company gifts are useless to many people. Most people can cloth themselves, buy drinks for themselves, buy bags for themselves, etc and have no need for whatever crap the company is getting them as a sign of appreciation.
Unless they demanded you chug the wine in front of them, you really should not have offended yourself this way.
If I give an observant Jew a kilo of bacon as a gift, why shouldn't they be offended by my being an arsehole?
Same thing.
And if the person knew I kept kosher but still offered the bacon, I would laugh it off and then donate it.
Being easily-offendable is not a virtue. Being gracious is.
[1] http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5132052_chocolate-affect-person...
Sounds like a more balanced view of what I've seen at some companies. Implies grown-ups are in charge.
Is drinking actually bonding though?
It also provides a shared experience that is an easy conversation starter when meeting sober later on "hey, thanks for last night! Where did you end up going after.." etc.
Obviously YMMW, in EU/Denmark it's a very common way to "crash course" people on each other when you suddenly find yourself in a new environment with nobody you know (university, new work). Then again, I'd say EU drinking is a lot more mature than the US one. We usually get introduced to it a lot earlier in life, and have a gentler intro curve rather than going from zero-100 real quick, when entering college or the likes.
"hours-long conversations over beers" sounds like getting wasted to me or at at very least tipsy.
It doesn't. But it can be, because - besides the "social grease" benefits it confers, which I mentioned before - why not?
This is a red herring, if anything.
I think there's a difference between a culture where people drink a lot vs a culture where people get black out drunk and irresponsible with it, though, and maybe Uber is more like the latter.
Are you a woman?
I am a good coder with a bad drinking habit who has worked at companies that were ok with drinking on site. While they handled it well and while I love an excuse to get together over beers and discuss coding, it's definitely a smell. Black out drunk has nothing to do with it. Hell, it would be preferable if people just passed out. The problem is all the folks who don't pass out but all of a sudden think this is a good time to declare their love for a coworker's body.
Yes.
> The problem is all the folks who don't pass out but all of a sudden think this is a good time to declare their love for a coworker's body.
The problem is if they say something like that, the target is clearly uncomfortable, and then nobody else cares. Banning alcohol isn't going to fix something like that.
Anecdotal.
If drinking is done outside work/events this isn't what is being described in the article. What about the personal who a) don't drink or b) harassed by those who do? Drinking at work tells me the place isn't interested in performance or their customers.
Sure, but I'm not entirely sure what else you expect. Isn't your statement also anecdotal?
> If drinking is done outside work/events this isn't what is being described in the article.
Sorry, what article? It's not mentioned in the main OP, and the person a few parents up is talking about what sounds very much like events or after work happy hours. I can absolutely see how that can turn bad, I'm just saying it doesn't have to.
"talking about what sounds very much like events or after work happy hours"
The number of engineers bleeding from uber suggests, drinking isn't ^the problem^ but one part of a bigger culture problem. Do you work at Uber?
Yup. 100%. Because I'm an adult and I and my coworkers know how to drink responsibly and not make a fool of ourselves and keep things relatively professional.
It's not like I'm taking shots of vodka at the top of every hour - it's maybe having a beer or two at the end of Thursday and Friday, or having a boozy lunch every now and then to celebrate a success or birthday or someone leaving.
Their "maybe Uber is more like the latter" description of an unhealthy culture I think makes it obvious they don't work at Uber.
@mst fair enough point.
We have beer on tap at work. If I'm in the office late, having an occasional beer at 6pm or so seems perfectly reasonable.
Getting hammered is obviously way out of line but one beer is hardly the same thing.
Do tell what business this is, because unless the industry is alcohol production, I'm having a hard time believing this is an instrinc quality of an industry and not just a "boys will be boys" excuse.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4736291/
The following excerpt is the first sentence of the conclusion.
"Attorneys experience problematic drinking that is hazardous, harmful, or otherwise consistent with alcohol use disorders at a higher rate than other professional populations."
what? what possible nature of business are you in that makes drinking more (or less) acceptable.
There is no such thing. at work, you work. if you want to get drunk, you aren't working.
Of course, all that is about social drinking, not getting completely shitfaced to the point one loses control. That is never good.
Works at a bar or brewery? Wine related startup? Sales?
you still have work to do, and you probably still have colleagues whose time is valuable that aren't as big on drinking as you think they are.
drinking and having fun is great. at my company, if i wanted us all to drink, everyone got the afternoon off and we went out.
The fermentation industries on the other hand are more legit.
I've worked at plenty of places with a social drinking culture and never could we be bothered to actually code and drink at the same time. Maybe we might have a boozy friday lunch every now and then, but usually retros and 'meetings' like that followed
Also, I think the statement "extremely heavy on the drinking" is so subjective and up to personal interpretation.
I just absolutely do not understand how that is even possible. If I have ONE beer, it throws off my ability to write good code, or hold all of the concepts in my head.
One of the weekly coworking meetups I go to always ends at a brewery (there is a brewery next door to the hackerspace where it is held), and while it is certainly a lot of fun being there brainstorming things, I don't understand how anybody gets actual code written after drinking.
Obviously, that's just my personal experience and while I'm quite confident in my sample size, I wouldn't generalize it to anyone else. YMMV.
This certainly isn't all the code I write (far from it) and it's not for everyone, but it's definitely true for me. That's why I don't think saying alcohol and code can never mix is right, but I agree that it shouldn't be a daily occurrence or the central aspect of company culture. I don't think an optional, after-work happy hour on occasion is such a bad thing though.
Personally, I find coding is hardest when you're blocked or stumped. Sometimes it helps to turn off the inner critic and experiment with code in a way that might feel unproductive during normal work hours. How I approach a problem outside of work is my business as long as the solution is solid.
This should go without saying, but everyone's physiology is different. While most people get drowsy from pseudoeffedrine, it makes me hyper. That's why even if one treatment works for most people, it might not work for you.
Wait, we're citing XKCD comics now as if they are peer-reviewed scientific journals?
i know a lot of people who say they drive better if they've been drinking too. Doesn't mean it's accurate.
This is exactly what happens to me, so I sometimes will code after a bottle of beer or a glass of whiskey. But it has to be little - more alcohol and I start losing focus.
Or I'll go to far, write it, and it'll be unusable.
Everyone has some skill they insist they are "better at" when drunk.
These are only weakly connected.
"What?! Are you crazy?!"
"Don't worry, I got this."
Goes on to write vanilla JS.
Anecdotally, I've noticed that I'm significantly more fluent in my third language when I've had a drink or two. I get many, many more compliments. When I'm totally sober, I tend to trip up more and overthink the grammar.
There are lots of ways to reduce a hyperactive prefrontal cortex, including training (practicing art, meditating, etc.), but alcohol is by far the cheapest, quickest, and easiest.
I do not in any way shape or form endorse doing the same thing with writing production code.
Also, if you think people can't get actual, working code written when shitfaced, then I guess you haven't met the demoscene crowd ;).
There are times when a problem is intractable and I get frustrated through thinking too much about an issue. Alcohol, like caffeine, has its place. I want to stress that I'm not talking about getting hammered at the office, or even mildly drunk, I'm talking about the fact that for some people, a single beer after many hours of work can be helpful in calming them down enough to focus on the whole problem again.
Alcohol can certainly have performance-enhancing effects: comically, the first Olympic disqualification for doping wasn't for steroid use or anything similar - it was for a man drinking "two beers" before his shooting match to calm himself down enough to operate at peak levels.
What is the union of work, drinking culture and SRE (the job the article refers)?
Drinking and programming surely don't mix well. However, a culture that involves, or even promotes, drinking and partying doesn't have to be misogynistic. I've worked in companies that held parties several times per week, with plenty of booze, and they were nothing like what was depicted in TFA.
Good point @metafunctor, didn't even think of that.
@luckeydude, it's a sort of reaction test for brogrammers who work in toxic environments. I can't think of any job (not after hours) where alcohol improves your performance and output.
For me this is a red flag.
This leads to bad code also bad team dynamics. Ultimately this will reflect on the product and bottom line. For individuals this reads like a culture where the barrel is creating ^bad apples^. Not a good look on a resume.