I am going to answer here the person who deleted the long message yesterday saying saying he/she rather play PlayStation alone and so forth (hopefully he/she will read this)

If one of my employees is having panic attacks thinking about the yearly team building diner and drinks, then we are having a big problem...

We need to sit down talk about it and find a solution, professional help, whatever it takes to go over this, because it is juts not healthy!

Not to mention on how this person will react in a real stressful situation, let's say the part of the network is down, systems affected, the company is loosing money on SLAs, big debugging call in the middle of the night - this kind of real pressure will for sure either damage a fragile person or at least case a burn out...

Mental health is no joke and have to be taken very seriously...

If it is hyperbole, then I agree that professional help is a necessity. Mental health is a serious issue and not properly addressing it is doing everyone involved a disservice.

I think its also important to note that having panic attacks has nothing to do with fragility of a person, and suggesting that someone who has suffered from panic attacks isn't suitable for a job in IT is flat out ignorant. This attitude is the reason why mental health issues go undiagnosed.

Now if the panic attacks were hyperbole, and this poster was saying that they would prefer to play Playstation alone than go to a company meaning, I think your comment is fairly short sighted. This person sounds like they are very introverted. Through High School and much of college I thought that there was something horrifically wrong with me because, if given my choice of leisure time, I would prefer not to go to big parties or hang out in large groups. I finally realized that there was nothing wrong with being introverted, as long as it made me happy. I understand how being in groups and parties is enjoyable to you. I think it is only fair that you can understand how the opposite is true for me or other introverts.

I work from home (my team is spread across the country), but I talk to them almost daily, so frankly I am not sure what I would do when I retire for real. The trading is fully automated, so I would get bored pretty fast I guess...

For now the plan (written in sand in a low tide) with my wife is to give it a go maybe after the kids are out of the house (hopefully in a few years) and travel for a while...

It was a bit of a long winded answer, but as you can see I have no idea yet :-)

And often it becomes a coat of paint on what is poor corporate culture. Someone complains that the company is lifeless and that they feel like a cog in the machine. An easy fix is to have quarterly family events instead of fixing the problem.