The developers last company I worked at just naturally had lunch together almost every day. It wasn't mandatory and often some folks would go and meet friends or do their own thing for lunch, but overwhelmingly most of us ate together. Honestly, I really loved it. It really helped us to get to know each other outside of the work we were doing. It was also common for the non-developers at the company to also join us for lunch, which I thought was awesome. There was no sense of separation or exclusiveness.

Every day may seem like a bit much, but if you don't want to eat lunch with your team 3, 4, or even 5 days in a row, maybe you're not working with the right people...

> There was no sense of separation or exclusiveness.

Even for the people who didn't eat with the group every day? I notice that those people tend to get excluded over time. Not on purpose, necessarily. It's human nature to see things in terms of "part of the tribe" and "not part of the tribe".

> maybe you're not working with the right people..

This depends on a lot of factors. Even if you absolutely love everybody you work with, you may not want to eat lunch with them every day. For example, you work in an open office environment and see, hear and talk to them for 8-12 hours every day. Some would argue that, under those conditions, taking an hour in the middle of the day to be by yourself or to meet with people you don't see quite so often would be considered healthy.

On the other hand, if you all work in private offices 8-12 hours every day, then taking an hour and socializing with your co-workers sounds fantastic.

It was a small office. When people went for lunch they just yelled and anybody who wanted to join them did.

> Some would argue that, under those conditions, taking an hour in the middle of the day to be by yourself or to meet with people you don't see quite so often would be considered healthy.

That's certainly true, but I was more responding to the idea that somebody would actively avoid it. I definitely took a lunch by myself with my kindle not infrequently, but I certainly didn't go out of my way to avoid lunch with my coworkers.

I work with whoever I'm paid to work with, tbh. That doesn't mean I want or need to spend my free time with them (which is what my lunch hour is).

>> "if you don't want to eat lunch with your team 3, 4, or even 5 days in a row, maybe you're not working with the right people"

Personally I like to get out a stretch my legs a bit during lunch. We spend all day, indoors, staring at a screen. It would be best for everyone to get a little fresh air a walk about. If I stayed in the office over lunch I would be much less productive in the afternoon.

Fine, but who says that can't be done as group :)

yep ... agree with this. The best teams I've been on (ie. best culture/fit/whatever) have always ventured out for lunch. Making sure we get away for at least an hour in the middle of the day made us more productive.

Some places set aside work time, half a day per week, for "game playing". They provide a bunch of games. You're paid as part of your work to play them.

This is to get people out of their cubicles and away from their computers and talking to colleagues. It helps people have a break from a particular problem (which is often all they need to solve that problem). It allows people time to chat to each other, about problems they're trying to solve or just general stuff. You know that you're not interrupting someone's work during one of these afternoons.

So, if a company is going to force some social time this is probably a better way to do it.

I worked for a small company that did this. After the first few successful weeks, the high wore off and we would lose people to stress/pressing projects and the novelty of gaming at work lessened the excitement.

Crazy as it sounds, you have to manage this effectively to keep it from becoming "the norm" and losing people along the way.

You need from the top down, a continuing excitement so that each week's even is special.

Yes. Making it an every week thing would make it boring pretty fast. It might be more useful if done a few weeks every year or so.

I tend to agree. We also had weekly Friday lunches and even weekly tai chi which became almost a chore after only a few months.

I believe a good manager/boss should be keenly aware of the emotional state of his or her team, and plan accordingly.

If it's anything like it was at reddit, you're not being compelled. Each day an email would come saying "lunch is ready" and each day we would look at each other and say "time for lunch", and then all go sit down together. Sometimes we would look at the menu and decide to all go out.

It just sort of happened because we liked each other.

I work at FC and this is the way it pretty much works, except people rarely go out since our caterers are really good.

> except people rarely go out since our caterers are really good

Same at reddit. :) We would go out maybe once a month.

I work at the sister company, so things are pretty similar. We have lunch together and everyone participates (although it's not mandatory) simply because we all have our own offices, if we didn't have lunch together I wouldn't get a chance to talk to my coworkers face to face at all in a day.

It's a huge contrast from when I worked in an open-floor environment and thought of lunch as my "alone time".

I suppose that makes sense. For me currently lunch time is my "gym time".