Couldn't have said it better myself. I've always detested these "team-building" initiatives that intrude into my own private social life. To every company that tells its employees that "we're all a big family": I have my own family, thank you very much.
At the best place I've ever worked, the whole product team would frequently have lunch together. We were happy to do so and we did it on our own, because we really liked each other, not because the company tried to "cultivate" this habit.
You know what that company did right? It made sure to hire top-notch people. When you're surrounded by people who are smart, capable and interesting, when you're surrounded by people whose achievements constantly challenge you to do better, when you're surrounded by people you respect and admire, then there's no need to worry about lunch.
> You know what that company did right? It made sure to hire top-notch people. When you're surrounded by people who are smart, capable and interesting, when you're surrounded by people whose achievements constantly challenge you to do better, when you're surrounded by people you respect and admire, then there's no need to worry about lunch.
Totally, totally agreed. I enjoy grabbing lunch -- and even going out for dinner/drinks -- with my coworkers. Why? Because I work with a bunch of awesome people. None of us have to do it, but we do it anyways.
Who suggested eating together the first time?
If no one takes the initiative, it might not happen, even if everyone would enjoy it, given the chance. I think Joel is just trying to create an environment where getting invited is the default.
Of course, there is the problem of creating a social obligation for those who really do want to eat alone. It's a tough balance to achieve.
It seems like you mostly object to one line in Joel's post:
when new people start work at the company, they’re not allowed to sit off by themselves in a corner
I agree with you that it sounds a bit Draconian. But I don't think that was Joel's primary point. It's more of an implementation detail. He's contrasting his efforts with other environments, where people don't naturally get included. Point being, by deliberately defaulting to inclusion, corporate culture can be improved. You might disagree with his implementation technique, but I think his objective is noble.
The overarching risk Joel is highlighting is the risk of "programming by accident" applied to corporate culture -- as is done at many companies.
My reading was that this was not an employer rule, but a part of their employees' inclusiveness, wanting to invite new people.
I actually subscribe to the view that lunch is free time, and because of this I agree with the parent comment and disagree with Joel dictating my lunch choices. At the end of the day, everyone wants to get something different out of their free time, including their free time at lunch.
- Some people want to relax, so then getting out of the office is the natural choice for them.
- Some people want to socialize and get to know their co-workers better, so going to lunch with the team is the natural choice.
- Some people want to have interesting conversations, so they seek people with similar interests to talk about the topics that are close to their hearts (it's the evil cliques, I tell you!).
- Some people want to use lunch for business and get outside their department to interact with internal clients and figure out their pain points.
It's all about what you want to get from your free time at lunch, and different people want different things.
Joel dictating my lunch choices
Personally I think this is an utterly ridiculous idea. Perhaps you love it. Perhaps many others do too. But perhaps also there are those of us who want to spend their lunchtimes not socialising but meditating; who want to be alone rather than with others; who want get outside and have a change of scenery. Gosh, perhaps they even want to meet other people for lunch! As shocking as it may seem to you, all of these things are entirely compatible with enjoying one's job.
At my last job (which I can only I assume I must have hated, although to be honest it didn't seem like it at the time) I almost always went out for lunch, on my own. Sometimes I made a sandwich that morning; often I bought something from the market. I bought a coffee; I took my time. I thought about the problems I was working on, and often, it was the most productive time of the whole day. I figured out the architecture of the applications I was building, and wrote code in my head. When I got back to the office, I sat down at the computer and typed it in. In fact, I'd probably go so far as to say that if I'd been sitting down and chatting while I had lunch, my overall productivity would have dropped precipitously.
This is by no means an argument against socialising with one's coworkers; it's not even an argument against having lunch with them. All I'm saying is that we're not all like you.
It's just the case described by the original comment is one of someone who doesn't hate lunch, it's a case of someone who hates their job. There's a difference.
Eating a delicious launch and focusing on it sounds like heaven. Except eating it with your SO, everything else in the lunch category is down a rank in my opinion.
Applying the concept of love to something as mundane as a job is ridiculous. Just a couple of generations ago, a job was a job was a job? Why, because a job meant survival. You either work your ass off, or you and your family starve. Did all these people love the hard labor, getting up at 4am to tend to a withering field? These generations were much more fatalistic about life and accepted bad things as an inevitable part of life.
Of course, nowadays, the idea that someone tolerates something stressful or taxing is seen as ludicrous.
> Applying the concept of love to something as mundane as a job is ridiculous
Please, speak for yourself. You might find it ridiculous, you might not think it important to do something you love, and you'd be joining the 99.999% of people out there who live their lives treating the vast majority of their waking hours as being somehow irrelevant to happiness. But consider this - you might be wrong.
"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a wide-spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible." - Russell
>Just a couple of generations ago, a job was a job was a job? Why, because a job meant survival. You either work your ass off, or you and your family starve. Did all these people love the hard labor, getting up at 4am to tend to a withering field? These generations were much more fatalistic about life and accepted bad things as an inevitable part of life."
Yes - some generations ago, work meant misery for the majority of people but - newsflash - we're not a couple of generations ago. We have experienced miraculous changes in the way the majority of people live, and it would be quite the insult to all those who have struggled to change things to say 'well it was misery generations ago, so why treat it any differently now?' - I can't think of a more retrograde or negative attitude. A few generations ago people died from simple infections - so why bother administering antibiotics? You could go on in that vein.
For some of us there is more to engaging in a certain activity than its ends, where the work itself transcends its purpose and becomes a pleasure in itself - a craftsman who really cares about his work sees the world very differently from a administrative functionary whose work is, by definition, mundane, repetitive and meaningless to them.
It's not all jobs, hell it's very few jobs out there, and certainly not for everybody - not everybody has it in them, or even the desire, to love their work but for those of us that do it is a very real possibility.
A lot of the problem I have with your attitude is that, for the minority who do see work as more than just a means-to-an-end, it is quite a struggle to fight against the prevailing attitude that you demonstrate and I really find it surprising that an HNer feels that way, and is especially frustrating for me as I am stuck in a job I emphatically am very unhappy in, fighting and struggling to get myself up to a level of ability where I can get a job in which I can practice my craft happily, and as a result I am considered fairly mad by a chunk of my friends + family.
pg puts it far more eloquently than I could [1]:-
"The test of whether people love what they do is whether they'd do it even if they weren't paid for it—even if they had to work at another job to make a living."
A few generations ago getting a job you love just wasn't possible for the vast majority. Now, and especially in software development, it is, and in fact as a result of the cheapness and ubiquity of computers + open source, etc. it is possible for somebody (at least in the west) to really pursue the craft regardless of circumstances. Please don't downplay that - it's nothing short of a damn miracle, really.
You work at a company similar to some I've worked at. The day is constant interruption i.e. low-quality conversation and low-quality work, so lunch feels like more of the same and you seek the pleasant contrast of actually having some time to yourself for once.
So, you and Joel are seeking the same thing, except his company is better run than your boss's company so the quiet and noisy times are in the right places.
Yup. Now I wear Bose headphones (the kind which seal around your ear, but no noise cancellation). Incredible productivity listening to jazz all day, feels like a vacation.
I think Joel has the right idea if you want to inspire a cult-like work environment which is probably very good for getting things done, but I worry that these type of things also cause a group think, as you notice people start sharing the same opinions about everything because of peer pressure.
I think it's probably a great thing at FogCreek, because everyone is isolated in private offices all day, so forcing everyone to come together is probably a good idea. But I don't think it would be the best idea at all offices, especially those with open floor plans where lunch is the only time you can get some peace and quiet.
Wow, you really need to get perspective or a different job.
I have tons of choices every day at work. Lunch is one of the more mundane (but important) ones. If I was offered the option to go to a company cafeteria (I've worked at places like this before), I'd probably go as often as not.
Do you realize the hypocrisy of what you are saying? You criticizes that taking things literally is bad by taking Schmidt's comments literally.
Actually the whole of (7) is way over the border of anti-social:
If my work mates are talking about something other than work, I'm probably not interested. I'd rather chew razor blades than talk about traffic, weather, casino gambling, baseball, real estate taxes, gun control, politics, or Dancing with the Stars. I'd rather shoot myself than hear anything about their children.
That's pretty naked contempt.
Right now I'm not a fan of children, this will probably change when I get my own (in many years), but until then I'd rather talk about something else.
I don't see anything depressing about having a walk in the sun, and then eating whatever I like, while either focusing on the food or a book or whatever I actually want to.
And then there's this prevalent assumption that this means I wouldn't get along with my colleagues, or that I would hate my job. Well, you're wrong, I'm just a person that needs actual alone time. Not headphones-on-head simulated alone time (I actually rarely do that) but real alone time when the nearest coworker is half a mile away.
Nothing wrong with going for a walk, either. I would usually eat lunch alone when I was in a corporate environment. It's really just the anti-social and frankly mean approach taken to normal conversation and interaction by edw that put me off.
To illustrate you how badly skewed it is: for a few years, me and my partner had a foster home for stray kittens. In Poland. That means lots of hard work that rarely pays off (by having a healthy kitten that gets adopted, there is no money in it, obviously), depressing amount of death and suffering, participating in such great activities as autopsies and interventions.
It was a significant part of our lives, our passion and when it paid off, it brought immense satisfaction. It was a very natural subject of talk for us, but really -- do you want to hear about the state of an inflamed heart we found in a dissected kitten, what happens to bodily functions when some dude flails a cat while holding it by the tail, how a neglected cat lost her eye to disease or other fascinating subjects from this category? All those conversations while eating?
Then why should people who aren't passionate about children endure conversations about children defecating? Really. I can handle it, of course (while I don't love it), but I can repay with a story about a dog eating her own intestines, so I'm probably not a benchmark for most sensitive listener.
People not wanting to hear about babies are just like people not wanting to hear about eyes falling out of sockets, it's only ours (yeah, I can talk about babies too) presuppositions that make the subjects seem so different.
(btw, if you rob me of my daily walk, I will fall asleep in your office)
I don't need to work with best friends, but if I hated spending any social time with my co-workers I would find another job.
Most people had pretty common answers ("A smile, a greeting, etc") but one engineer said something that really confused the class: "Just don't bother me." That answer instantly expanded my understanding of team interaction. He wasn't saying it to be rude-he sincerely meant that letting him concentrate on his own business was a sign of endearment.
Most people enjoy (or, at least, don't mind) the lunches, group activities, etc. but some people don't. The job of management is to cultivate a productive group environment. Whether this includes regular group activities or not depends upon the individuals in the group.
I don't agree with all your points but being constrained to a work environment for a social lunch is ridiculous.
Alternatively you might try finding a job where you don't hate your boss.
For me lunch is a time to stop thinking about work and get out of the office.
If people don't like sitting together at lunch, all you do is force them to think about creative things to say rather than letting them rest their mind and come back to work more productive after lunch.
It's another one of those time where I don't agree with Joel.
It also leaves another thirty to excuse yourself and take a hike.
I like to spend some of my lunches reading a book. It's relaxing, keeps me from thinking about work, and let's face it, when you get busy, reading for pleasure is often one of those things that gets pushed aside.
It isn't, really. Proximity is a pretty good predictor of friendship or relationships -- partly for the purely mechanical reason that you need to be near to someone to relate at all, but partly because repeated exposure to people makes them less threatening and therefore more likeable. It's why, when I first got to university, I made a point of only sitting next to beautiful classmates.
"Familiarity breeds contempt" is wrong.
It should be: "Familiarity breeds".
"Enforced association" sounds just like something that would come from someone who could say the following, without irony and without laughing, years after leaving junior high:
"...particularly Junior High, where who you eat with is of monumental importance. Being in any clique, even if it's just the nerds, is vastly preferable than eating alone."
But, for those rare times when I might eat at work, I like the idea of a few long tables, for the reasons Joel outlined. It might solve some awkward problems for some people, and I don't see the harm in it for the rest.
1. I don't want to talk about work at lunch.
2. I want to get out of the office and get some fresh air.
3. I often want to get away from the very people that Joel suggests spending time with on my break.
4. I'm a "food outlier". I hate pizza, deli, and fast food. I won't eat it away from work. Why should I eat it there?
5. Sometimes I want a beer with my lunch.
6. Sometimes I just want to close my eyes for 5 minutes.
7. If my work mates are talking about something other than work, I'm probably not interested. I'd rather chew razor blades than talk about traffic, weather, casino gambling, baseball, real estate taxes, gun control, politics, or Dancing with the Stars. I'd rather shoot myself than hear anything about their children.
8. If I am going to talk about work, I will want to bitch about the boss. Tough to do if he/she is there.
9. If I am going to talk about work, I want everyone else to talk freely and openly. This never happens. They will bitch about anyone else if they're not there, but when we're all together, they act like everything is just peachy. Phoneys.
10. "Enforced association" is phoney. I'd rather just make my own friends at work or out of work. So what if it appears to be a clique? All that means is that we are humans acting naturally.