How does a small company like Fog Creek handle ordering, delivery, and clean up each day? In the photo it appears that everyone is eating off of china with silverware. Do they maintain a cafeteria?
There is a catering service which brings them food every day and sets up the serving area. You wash your own plate, I think.
P.S. FC is a small company with offices literally adjacent to the New York Stock Exchange. That might meaningfully adjust one's perceptions of the amount of resources they have for a problem like this.
Yup, pretty much spot on, except we have a dishwasher!
The caterer is great about not repeating meals very often (we probably go 2-3 weeks before seeing the same thing twice). Most everything is healthy, there's always a vegetarian option, salads, etc.
I think i've read something about a catering firm in of of joels earlier posts... It will handle all that stuff...additionally they have a small kitchen with softdrinks, fruits and such..
At our company the CEO just takes orders and goes and gets food. If he's out or busy he leaves a prepaid visa and someone else goes. No fancy china but it works. Sometimes we'll order in using foodler.com which lets you do group ordering.
I'm definitely on board with this. My last job was pretty lonely until we all started eating together every day. Eventually our long table was taken away by HR and we had to find somewhere else to go. We all wanted to keep it though because it made work much better so we found a way to still eat lunch together.
While there are some positives, to enforce this seems quite inhumane.
People often need a bit of space in order to work together better.
Also, in a group > 2 there's huge potential for conversational drift. So, if two people want to talk about a certain topic, it becomes too easy to derail.
We do this at my company and it's awesome. The idea is it's not at all mandatory. Do whatever you want for lunch. But everyday, at noon, there will be a free lunch served at this location. Most people will participate in that 4 out of 5 days. If they have a deadline, want to meet a friend for lunch, need to run some errands or whatever it's fine. Most often the conversation is about everything but business.
It makes us closer as a team and some of our best ideas come out over lunch when we're not trying to brainstorm or think about business issues.
This is exactly what it's like where I work. It's fun to grab lunch when you want/need it at the same time as others, but it's ultra-low-pressure and in no way mandatory. Best of all possible worlds, in my opinion, and a huge perk for anyone working at a company <20 people.
It's not always so easy for everyone to eat together however. People have different work schedules - different deadlines to meet, some may be working from home at times or while on a business trip, and for some, such as myself, lunch is really something I just kind of grab and go, don't really sit down for 30 min to 1hr and eat lunch. That's just my habit, it's a working lunch (although I make up for it at dinner)
I need a break at lunchtime. For me that means sitting quietly, spending some time away from the effort of conversation, catching up on reading or taking the opportunity to think about ideas that have been on the back burner.
I see it differently. I sit alone all day, working on my projects by myself. Come dinner time, it is a welcome change to get to chat a little with my coworkers.
Ultimately, I'd say it depends a lot on who your coworkers are. If you enjoy your coworkers, you will enjoy lunchtime with them and it won't be a chore. On the other hand, if they annoy you the second they open their mouth...
At my last job, I ate my lunch 2-3 hours earlier than everyone else, thanks to dietary issues and the fact that I started work 3 hours earlier than they did. That meant I always ate alone.
But everyone else tended to bunch together. (The boss actually vetoed that, requiring that at least 1 person remain in the tech room. (Which was me, obviously.) After the team grew, it became '3' for the requirement.) They would all have lunch together, going somewhere they decided on, or playing pool upstairs in the breakroom.
It was obviously something that was strengthening them as a team, and despite my anti-social tendencies, I really wanted to join them.
I don't doubt for a minute that Joel is on the money with this issue.
While we all need our times off, a team needs to mesh well enough to be able to eat with each other at least a few times a week. If that can't happen, there's something profoundly wrong with the team.
If "Joe" doesn't ever want to eat with the team, I would prefer not to work with "Joe", given the choice. I'd like to work with humans, not with "Joe who doesn't want to talk about anything but work".
At my last job, I had a really fantastic lunch group -- intelligent, inquisitive, and always wanting to talk shop. It was fantastic, I feel that I learned and grew more as part of the lunch group than with respect to a lot of other things I did at work.
At my current job, I'm sad, because generally I don't have anyone to do that with, as most people are only interested in empty socializing.
Frankly I'm so uninterested in my current job, I'd rather eat while working and go home that much earlier. Which is sad, but there you have it.
I prefer to grab a sandwich and go for a walk. This was especially true when I was contracting and based in interesting cities that were fun to explore.
I'd rather not be compelled to eat with co-workers at lunch. Lunch should be a time to do whatever you want. For things like meeting people/friends outside of work, having some quiet time to read a book, or going to the gym.
Some days I don't even feel like eating at lunch, and prefer to have a late lunch in the afternoon.
And why the compulsion to sit with people that I already interact with the entire day? Nothing wrong with being social with your co-workers, but it ought to be natural. This isn't kindergarten.
Joel is obviously not aware of the differences between introverts and extroverts, which seems weird for someone who works in a field with a lot of introverts.
I'm not down on his idea of eating lunch together - it's probably fun and productive. But if someone spots me eating lunch by myself while reading (a book, a magazine, on my phone, on my computer), it's not because I "don't like people," or, sadder, that I pretend not to like people because I've been rejected socially. It's because I find dealing with people all day somewhat wearying and I enjoy having time to myself doing things that I like, such as catching up on reading I can't do during work hours.
Yes, Joel is COMPLETELY unaware of the differences between introverts and extroverts. Except for the fact that he is an introvert and runs two companies filled with a substantial percentage of introverts.
The reason that lunch here works so well is because the people we hire are fun and enjoyable people (even the introverts) so you don't have to pretend to like the other people at the lunch table, you actually do.
That's great, but I think Joel overstates the "problem" of someone eating alone. I like eating with the people I work with, but I also like reading, and sometimes lunch is the only time I have for some pleasure reading. So, sometimes I need a little down time, and I prefer to read and eat by myself rather than eating with my friends. I don't think this makes me someone who hates people or is unpopular.
I don't eat by myself nearly every day because I dislike my co-workers -- I actually do like my co-workers, and my job would be a nightmare if I didn't. That doesn't mean that, come lunchtime, I won't nearly always take the opportunity to be by myself (conceptually, even though I'm still surrounded by people).
On your assertion that Joel is an introvert:
[...] but you'll also see a distressing number of loners eating by themselves.
Distressing? Really? I don't think an introvert would say that, and his later assertion that
Being in any clique, even if it's just the nerds, is vastly preferable than eating alone.
, and the "obligated to pretend" language, seems to indicate that he's an extrovert. I'm not sure if he's claimed to be an introvert, but if so, it's a pretty weird juxtaposition.
Introverts tend to "recharge" by themselves while "extroverts" tend to gain energy through interaction. I applaud Joel's efforts to bring his team together but I wonder if some of the introverts are taking extra long bathroom or smoke breaks to make up for all of the face time that is required.
I'm introvert but I loved eating with my coworkers. It's very different from the energy consuming socialization that you would experience at parties or otherwise.
Then again, I didn't eat with all of my coworkers, just my friends.
If you're an introvert, why do you have a job that involves dealing with people all day to begin with? It sounds to me like it isn't lunch that's the problem, it's the hours before and after it.
It's not an all or nothing thing. It's not as if interacting with humans is physically painful. Being introverted isn't a crippling social disorder; it just means that sometimes you need to recharge by spending time by yourself, and often find that relaxing.
(I actually do work at home now, but I've worked in office environments in the past, which I've liked fine, not least because I got to spend lunchtime when, where, and with whom I chose.)
Eating lunch together (whether to talk technology or just to socialize) is huge for building a cohesive team that works together and talks outside of the lunch room. Especially if you don't work with each other directly on a day-to-day basis, it helps to reinforce that you all work together rather than on separate teams.
I have always hated this and probably always will. I have rarely eaten lunch with my work mates. Just a few reasons why:
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.
Most of the reasons you mentioned are exactly why the "free lunch" perk at a former job began to show me there really is no such thing as "no free lunch".
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 what you may have experienced is a different phenomenon related to peer pressuring people to agree with everyone else. I'm not sure that a group of people eating together regularly normally devolves into something that one would describe as "cult-like".
I describe it as "cult-like", because they are essentially taking the one independent choice you have during your work day (what, where and how to spend your lunch break) and making you conform to the "norm".
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.
> they are essentially taking the one independent choice you have during your work day (what, where and how to spend your lunch break) and making you conform to the "norm".
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.
You are not everybody else. Some people are very busy and use their lunch for all sorts of things: Time to read a book. Time to run errands that couldn't be taken care of during the previous or coming evening. Time to go home and see the cat. Time to go home and do chores. Time to go home and make food that you want to eat! The list goes on. It is my time, not anybody else's. If the group lunches are so wonderful, friendly, and relaxing, then people will show up to them, but anything approaching pressure to do so is patently absurd.
Yeah absolutely. Even when I had a great lunch group, A) They were people I considered friends and would hang out with outside of work, and B) We only ever ate quality food outside of the office itself.
I don't agree with all your points but being constrained to a work environment for a social lunch is ridiculous.
Right. I've had a great time having lunch daily with some groups of co-workers. Others have been boring as hell and there's no way I'm going to spend an interminable extra 30-60 minutes making small talk with them.
If you know that's on the cards when hiring, then I'm sure it's a filter you might not use otherwise, i.e. can I handle having this person at the lunch table every day.
Does anyone not feel a sense of unease when applying all of these "social" filters to hiring decisions? The end result here is you end up hiring people exactly like yourself (and the rest of the group). Being able to do the job well is no longer enough; you have to be "interesting" enough to spend an hour with at lunch everyday. What this essentially comes down to is you need to also be a part of the same culture with the same personality type. This is a very insipid form of discrimination and sadly it seems to have widespread support.
I agree. I've been fortunate enough to work with mostly interesting people over the years where a few have become life long friends. I've also been to offices where lunch was dreaded because most people there you didn't want to have to interact with anymore than required.
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.
Synopsis: You hate your job, not your lunch. Quit your job and get a job that you love, and you'll inevitably end up loving the lunch you currently hate.
I'm interacting with my co-workers while doing my job. I don't have any desire to also interact with most of them during my breaks, which includes lunch. Part of my lunch is to not just take a break from my work, but to take a break from the people I work with.
Right, because everyone who loves their job also loves sitting down to have lunch with their coworkers who they see for not less than seven hours a day five days a week.
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.
I'm not saying that you should eat lunch with your coworkers. I actually rarely do.
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.
Point 4,5 and 6 where about lunch itself, and I agree woleheartly with them.
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.
First of all, I do not have to LOVE my job. As everything in this world, most things have good and bad sides. Surprise!
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.
Before I start I'll address the first point - yes, everything has good and bad sides, but that includes things/people you love. I doubt Beethoven always loved composing, or Einstein always loved doing science - it's a net thing, and when it involves something/somebody you love, the joy vastly exceeds the cost.
> 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.
Regarding item 1: I had this problem at my last job, especially since I was technical support, so people would often use lunch time as a forum for questioning me. I would answer the first question, and then politely say that I didn't feel like talking about work during lunch. If other people around me were talking about work, I'd make an effort to start another topic with the people who weren't actively engaged in the work-convo.
I had a totally different reaction to Joel's post. He seemed to emphasize shaping corporate culture deliberately in positive ways, rather than letting things happen by accident. He emphasizes creating a positive social environment in the office: welcoming new people and promoting inclusivity.
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.
I'm incredibly surprised at how anti-social most of the comments are here. Then again, I just watched the Tina Fey interview at Google, and realizing that maybe I ought not to be surprised. I had this mental image of Google as being a hip, cool, social company to work for but the audience seemed so contrary to this, and even Eric Schmidt would go on and on about how "literal" Googlers take everything, how stereotypically engineer-minded they are, basically implying they were incapable of being creative or having vision or social skills. Maybe that's just Eric being disconnected from his employees, but I have a hunch there is some truth to it.
I am introverted an geek, but this: "I'd rather shoot myself than hear anything about their children." is borderline anti-social for my taste. Or maybe he just really don't like his coworkers for some reason.
Calling it 'borderline' is too polite. I couldn't decide if (1) he was deliberately overdoing it (revealing the satire?), (2) deeply hated children in general or (3) found his co-workers' children especially hateful or what.
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.
Number one, I think. And I suspect that it's less that he started out hating that stuff than that he has just heard so much of it that he's sick of it.
As a single male there's a limit to how much talk about a co-worker's children I can stand. If they have an interesting story to tell then that's fine, but if the parents start chatting about/comparing their children then it's time for me to go and do something else.
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.
Even Eric Schmidt would go on and on about how "literal" Googlers take everything, how stereotypically engineer-minded they are, basically implying they were incapable of being creative or having vision or social skills.
Do you realize the hypocrisy of what you are saying? You criticizes that taking things literally is bad by taking Schmidt's comments literally.
So in #8, you say you want to be able to bitch about your boss behind his back. But in #9 you call everyone else "phoneys" because they bitch about people only when they're not there.
The fundamental question is this: is lunch work time or is it free time?
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.
I'm pretty sure Joel isn't going to freak if you go out for lunch to meet some other friends, go somewhere different, or just to go for a walk, or to an appointment.
I really agree with #1. If you're talking about work at lunch, you're probably bitching. We all need time to bitch, but you get tired of it. And I don't care about what my coworkers' kids are doing, or what work they need to do around the house, or what sports they're watching, etc, etc.
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.
If you worked at Fog Creek, you'd already be spending much of the day alone. Joel believes everyone has the right not to be interrupted while they are trying to work and gives all developers private offices. Lunch is a pleasant contrast to this.
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.
> constant interruption i.e. low-quality conversation and low-quality work
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
"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."
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.
I'm a big fan of group meals and I've seen a fair amount of camaraderie built this way. That said, this reminds me of a team based PM course I was in a few years ago. Our group was made up of about a dozen people from different disciplines and we were asked "How do you know someone is being friendly to you?"
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.
"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."
Another one of Joel's other big things is an office to yourself with a door that shuts. Presumably one that provides several hours of solitude per day. With that in mind, 30 mins with colleagues chatting about work doesn't seem so bad and I'm reasonably anti-social.
It also leaves another thirty to excuse yourself and take a hike.
What a disappointing reply. You'd really rather shoot yourself than listen to someone talk about their children? No wonder you don't get along with your colleagues. I'd really invest in lightening up, this is an awfully depressing outlook.
No. The outlook when we are all reduced to breeding engines that have to like talking about children or else -- that's depressing.
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.
It's fine to not really love talking to colleagues about their children, but if it's so unpleasant for you to "hear anything about their children" that you'd hyperbolize it by saying you'd "rather shoot [your]self", then that's a problem. For people who have children, children are a huge part of their life and to pretend like they should never be able to discuss such a significant part of their life with others is really silly. I can understand being annoyed with someone if it's all they talk about it or they otherwise engage in that topic excessively, but the description given by edw is way far out there.
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.
The problem may be hard to notice or acknowledge for many people, but there's actually a lot of pressure put on people to socialize in some way and interact in some way, and that is mean. Being mean in return may not be the most effective reaction, but it is quite understandable.
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)
Great points! But, it can get pretty lonely to have your lunch alone - sometimes even depressing. I tend to have lunch with 1 or 2 of the closest of workmates whenever I can.
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.
Absolutely agree with you. I'm not sure why this post got 200+ points. Enforced Association is perfect description and it's something that every company must be aware of. I try to get our team together once a month to go out for lunch but that's where it stops. Everyone likes each other and they spend time together at lunch when they want to, not when they're forced to.
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.
Well, I think the article is predicated on having a job one enjoys in a positive work environment with sympathetic and interesting coworkers. It doesn't seem to apply to you.
Sure, understood and agreed. I like to get away from work during lunch too.
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.
I remember my first day working at IKEA as a summer job. I was young, I didn't know anyone, I didn't know the culture. So I got my lunch, found an empty spot to sit, and was about to sit down. But I didn't sit down properly before someone came over from a busy table, asking me if I wanted to join them.
From then on I realized that the culture was that everybody always eats together there. That way I got to know loads of people, many of whom I otherwise never would've talked to because they'd work in an entirely different department. This is just 1 example of the awesome culture at IKEA.
I think Joel's article glosses over a point that most of the con arguments here don't notice: in order for this to work, you have to set up a group of coworkers who mesh spectacularly well.
Fog Creek has pretty obviously done that; it's one of their top priorities. I've worked at companies where lunch is communal and companies where it isn't, and it seems to me that the difference has less to do with personality types and more to do with cohesion.
Put differently, the types of teams who want to eat lunch together are the types of teams you should want to be on. The company shouldn't need to enforce it; they should just help to facilitate it.
This is unfair. Extroverts are energised by social interaction, but introverts are drained by it, so they're going to find mandatory group lunches tiring and unpleasant in the long term regardless of the cohesion of the group.
So perhaps that's what "cohesion" really means in this context: hire a bunch of extroverts. Bully for Joel.
There are introverted people who are largely introverted because they find the dance of formal social interaction puzzling or unrewarding. Once that's taken care of for them, they're perfectly happy interacting with others and crave being social.
Then there are sorts who are fine with social interaction but rebel against perceived social obligation or pressure to enjoy or do something. They become angry at this pressure and instead choose to alienate themselves.
I don't think I'm necessarily in the last group. However, I bristle at the idea of not being able to have my own personal time to daydream without interruption while I cram food into my fat idiot face.
This strikes me way too much of the, "I see people doing something I don't do, so there must be something wrong with them." mentality.
I like leaving the office. Go outside for a good long, quiet walk along the creek to think about non-work stuff. Or going home and enjoying some left overs.
When I come back to the office, I'm fully refreshed and ready to jump right back into things.
I don't mind lunching together with a bunch of people if there is no pressure to join in with the "conversation" or the "group activity" at the table.
Sometimes I want to read the Bible at lunch. I don't mind if we talk shop about which chapters we're reading, which Biblical story best fits our challenges at work, or maybe even discuss differing viewpoints from differing faiths, etc, but a lot of times reading the Bible requires some personal concentration and contemplation.
In that case, I wouldn't mind eating at a big table - just don't expect me to join in talking about the latest movies, or which MacBook Pro is better to buy, or which web server we should use.
For me, I can handle reading in solitude while also being in the middle of a group. If the group of coworkers can understand and accept that idea, then I'm all for eating together.
However, if my religion makes other people at the table uncomfortable, I'd rather sit and lunch on my own.
I am right now unable to have lunch with co-workers. I've always done the group lunch and would always make every possible effort to get as many people involved as possible.
The problem is that at some point, I simply run out of people :( I am not that much of a social person who comes up to random people and socializes with them very well, so its really hard for me now, I'm not getting my daily dose of talking to people, its maddening.
Talking about work or not is irrelevant. What is important is that the conversation is completely friendly, enjoyable by all, not stressful, and does not in any way require immediate action. Also it means that at any point we can go off on a completely different direction talking one moment about building software and the next about how cats decide that your keyboard is a backscratcher.
To be honest, the lack of socializing is demoralizing and depressing :(
Lunch is also a really important part of my job. I run the IT department for a fairly small company (~200 employees).
Going to lunch with people affords me the opportunity to hear them complain about their job. Sometimes, although they might not realize, their complaints are things that I can fix for them. They're my best source of ideas for projects.
"GUH! I keep asking $so_and_so for new $office_supply, but I guess we're out of it, WTF!?"
Hmm...maybe we need an inventory tracking system for the office supplies?
"$so_and_so is gone today, and she is the only one with the $excel_spreadsheet on her computer. It sucks because I can't get ahold of her and I need $excel_spreadsheet!"
Well how can we solve this? Why aren't they using the file server for this stuff?
While the ideas for projects is a good one, do you ever get sick of hearing peoples complaints in social situations? Nothing is more annoying than when you are having a few Friday beers and all people want to do is tell you how crap their computer is expecting you to promise them a new one by Monday.
I work for Google in one of the larger offices (New York). Here we have several cafeterias. You go at anytime (in the meal times), take what you want, eat it there or eat it at your desk.
You can eat with team mates, by yourself, with friends from other teams, with random strangers or whatever.
I love this for several reasons:
1. There is obviously the cost aspect (not having to pay for lunch) but for me this is probably the least important part;
2. It saves so much time. Other places I've worked, going out to lunch means 30-60 minutes for a lunch break. Here you can eat and be back at your desk, if you want to, within a few minutes. Waiting for elevators, waiting in line, etc are all such incredible time wasters;
3. When choosing where to go and what to get for lunch, you're basically asking me to make decisions I don't care about. This I hate. Here I simply choose what cafeteria to go (typically the closest one) and take from the selection. I don't have to decide about where to go, what to get. I simply taken what's (generously) offered.
(3) for me is probably the most important. This one applies to software and hardware too and is (IMHO) one of the key reasons for Apple's success: Apple is unafraid and unapologetic about making most decisions for you. These decisions are right for most people most of the time.
Joel had an old blog post on this (probably the famous "Controlling Your Environment Makes You Happy" one that everyone should read) that said something like this: every option you give someone forces them to make a decision. I would go on to add that every decision has a cognitive cost, which simply annoys the decider if they're deciding on something they don't really care about.
Now, on a smaller scale I can see work lunches being a problem. If you need to be there at a set time, have limited opportunity for mingling or your team is so small that if you don't want to get stuck with someone (eg you don't like them or you simply don't want to talk about work).
So I see edw519's point. On a sufficiently large scale however, provided meals are fantastic.
>you can eat and be back at your desk, _if you want to_, within a few minutes<
The key part is "if you want to".
Some days I use the extra time just to get more done, because it's crunch time. Some days I use the extra time to get home earlier. Some days I spend lunch-time playing soccer and grab something on the way back to my desk. Most days I enjoy a relaxed lunch.
The best thing is that I have choices. It just so happens that the easiest choice is usually to round up some co-workers and walk down to the closest cafe :-) But nobody is going to say anything if I want to do my own thing and have some time to myself.
This I guess varies from person to person. A lot of people don't stay for dinner because they come in early (and get breakfast), they have families or whatever.
In my case, I like to take little breaks when I need to so don't tend to work in 2 solid 4 hour blocks so I'll be in the office quite awhile. Plus if I'm just going to go home and catch up on a couple of shows on Hulu, I may as well do that in the office. It's nicer than my apartment. :) I do live in walking distance to the office too.
But I guess my main point is that I'm not clock-watching. I leave when I have something else to do and/or feel like I've done what I need to do. I like what I do. I'm not waiting for the clock to hit 5 so I can leave. YMMV.
Honestly this is another huge positive for me. I once worked at a place where I worked from 7 to 4 with half an hour for lunch (due to market times and a time difference). The rest of the team turned up at 9-9:30 and all they noticed was I left at 4 and I was called up on it. The net result was I turned up at 9, left at 5-5:30 and took an hour for lunch (resigning a month or two later).
Google, at least in my limited experience (I've only been here ~6 months), is much more results-oriented. We trust you to do what you need to do. I know some guys that routinely turn up at 1pm or later or skip a weekday and work on Saturday instead. I've seen no issues of "face time".
I know I work longer than a 40 hour week, sometimes substantially longer. But I don't mind. I have no other pressing responsibilities pulling me away. For those that do, it doesn't seem to be an issue.
But in the absence of responsibilities pulling you elsewhere (which are perfectly understandable) if you're watching the clock, IMHO you're probably in the wrong profession.
I hate it when people assume that everyone else thinks the same way they do.
Just because you get lonely eating alone doesn't mean everybody does.
"Being in any clique, even if it’s just the nerds, is vastly preferable than eating alone."
This is just bullshit. I don't want to be part of a clique. Or a group. Or anything of the sort. My lunch time is a time to get AWAY from people and recharge. Take that away from me and I get stressed out and my productivity suffers massively.
"For loners and geeks, finding people to eat with in the cafeteria at school can be a huge source of stress."
For a lot of us, feeling pressured into "socializing" because some bigwig decided that it's good for us is a huge source of stress. Just leave us be! Please! It's my time, so let me do my thing. Alone.
Joel's free to want to eat lunch however he wants, but who is he to decide that people who are happy to eat alone are "loners", "don't like people" or are pretending not to be sad?
209 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 220 ms ] threadP.S. FC is a small company with offices literally adjacent to the New York Stock Exchange. That might meaningfully adjust one's perceptions of the amount of resources they have for a problem like this.
The caterer is great about not repeating meals very often (we probably go 2-3 weeks before seeing the same thing twice). Most everything is healthy, there's always a vegetarian option, salads, etc.
People often need a bit of space in order to work together better.
Also, in a group > 2 there's huge potential for conversational drift. So, if two people want to talk about a certain topic, it becomes too easy to derail.
Embrace the quiet.
It makes us closer as a team and some of our best ideas come out over lunch when we're not trying to brainstorm or think about business issues.
It's the idea of making it mandatory that I consider domineering.
Great for a cult ... not so good for herding cats.
There goes my career at Fog Creek!
Ultimately, I'd say it depends a lot on who your coworkers are. If you enjoy your coworkers, you will enjoy lunchtime with them and it won't be a chore. On the other hand, if they annoy you the second they open their mouth...
But everyone else tended to bunch together. (The boss actually vetoed that, requiring that at least 1 person remain in the tech room. (Which was me, obviously.) After the team grew, it became '3' for the requirement.) They would all have lunch together, going somewhere they decided on, or playing pool upstairs in the breakroom.
It was obviously something that was strengthening them as a team, and despite my anti-social tendencies, I really wanted to join them.
I don't doubt for a minute that Joel is on the money with this issue.
While we all need our times off, a team needs to mesh well enough to be able to eat with each other at least a few times a week. If that can't happen, there's something profoundly wrong with the team.
If "Joe" doesn't ever want to eat with the team, I would prefer not to work with "Joe", given the choice. I'd like to work with humans, not with "Joe who doesn't want to talk about anything but work".
Well, that's how I feel. Others may differ.
At my current job, I'm sad, because generally I don't have anyone to do that with, as most people are only interested in empty socializing.
Frankly I'm so uninterested in my current job, I'd rather eat while working and go home that much earlier. Which is sad, but there you have it.
Typically, I go for a walk and get some errands done. Or sit quietly and reflect. Or I'll go have lunch with non-work friends.
Occasionally I'll go out with work friends.
Some days I don't even feel like eating at lunch, and prefer to have a late lunch in the afternoon.
And why the compulsion to sit with people that I already interact with the entire day? Nothing wrong with being social with your co-workers, but it ought to be natural. This isn't kindergarten.
I'm not down on his idea of eating lunch together - it's probably fun and productive. But if someone spots me eating lunch by myself while reading (a book, a magazine, on my phone, on my computer), it's not because I "don't like people," or, sadder, that I pretend not to like people because I've been rejected socially. It's because I find dealing with people all day somewhat wearying and I enjoy having time to myself doing things that I like, such as catching up on reading I can't do during work hours.
The reason that lunch here works so well is because the people we hire are fun and enjoyable people (even the introverts) so you don't have to pretend to like the other people at the lunch table, you actually do.
On your assertion that Joel is an introvert:
[...] but you'll also see a distressing number of loners eating by themselves.
Distressing? Really? I don't think an introvert would say that, and his later assertion that
Being in any clique, even if it's just the nerds, is vastly preferable than eating alone.
, and the "obligated to pretend" language, seems to indicate that he's an extrovert. I'm not sure if he's claimed to be an introvert, but if so, it's a pretty weird juxtaposition.
Then again, I didn't eat with all of my coworkers, just my friends.
There's obviously some upfront extra consumption of energy in getting to know new co-workers, but at least to me that's well worth the price.
(I actually do work at home now, but I've worked in office environments in the past, which I've liked fine, not least because I got to spend lunchtime when, where, and with whom I chose.)
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.
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.
I don't agree with all your points but being constrained to a work environment for a social lunch is ridiculous.
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.
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.
[1]:http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html
Alternatively you might try finding a job where you don't hate your boss.
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.
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.
Do you realize the hypocrisy of what you are saying? You criticizes that taking things literally is bad by taking Schmidt's comments literally.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
It also leaves another thirty to excuse yourself and take a hike.
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)
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".
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.
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.
From then on I realized that the culture was that everybody always eats together there. That way I got to know loads of people, many of whom I otherwise never would've talked to because they'd work in an entirely different department. This is just 1 example of the awesome culture at IKEA.
Fog Creek has pretty obviously done that; it's one of their top priorities. I've worked at companies where lunch is communal and companies where it isn't, and it seems to me that the difference has less to do with personality types and more to do with cohesion.
Put differently, the types of teams who want to eat lunch together are the types of teams you should want to be on. The company shouldn't need to enforce it; they should just help to facilitate it.
So perhaps that's what "cohesion" really means in this context: hire a bunch of extroverts. Bully for Joel.
There are introverted people who are largely introverted because they find the dance of formal social interaction puzzling or unrewarding. Once that's taken care of for them, they're perfectly happy interacting with others and crave being social.
Then there are sorts who are fine with social interaction but rebel against perceived social obligation or pressure to enjoy or do something. They become angry at this pressure and instead choose to alienate themselves.
I don't think I'm necessarily in the last group. However, I bristle at the idea of not being able to have my own personal time to daydream without interruption while I cram food into my fat idiot face.
This strikes me way too much of the, "I see people doing something I don't do, so there must be something wrong with them." mentality.
I like leaving the office. Go outside for a good long, quiet walk along the creek to think about non-work stuff. Or going home and enjoying some left overs.
When I come back to the office, I'm fully refreshed and ready to jump right back into things.
Sometimes I want to read the Bible at lunch. I don't mind if we talk shop about which chapters we're reading, which Biblical story best fits our challenges at work, or maybe even discuss differing viewpoints from differing faiths, etc, but a lot of times reading the Bible requires some personal concentration and contemplation.
In that case, I wouldn't mind eating at a big table - just don't expect me to join in talking about the latest movies, or which MacBook Pro is better to buy, or which web server we should use.
For me, I can handle reading in solitude while also being in the middle of a group. If the group of coworkers can understand and accept that idea, then I'm all for eating together.
However, if my religion makes other people at the table uncomfortable, I'd rather sit and lunch on my own.
The problem is that at some point, I simply run out of people :( I am not that much of a social person who comes up to random people and socializes with them very well, so its really hard for me now, I'm not getting my daily dose of talking to people, its maddening.
Talking about work or not is irrelevant. What is important is that the conversation is completely friendly, enjoyable by all, not stressful, and does not in any way require immediate action. Also it means that at any point we can go off on a completely different direction talking one moment about building software and the next about how cats decide that your keyboard is a backscratcher.
To be honest, the lack of socializing is demoralizing and depressing :(
Going to lunch with people affords me the opportunity to hear them complain about their job. Sometimes, although they might not realize, their complaints are things that I can fix for them. They're my best source of ideas for projects.
"GUH! I keep asking $so_and_so for new $office_supply, but I guess we're out of it, WTF!?"
Hmm...maybe we need an inventory tracking system for the office supplies?
"$so_and_so is gone today, and she is the only one with the $excel_spreadsheet on her computer. It sucks because I can't get ahold of her and I need $excel_spreadsheet!"
Well how can we solve this? Why aren't they using the file server for this stuff?
And so on.
"Where do you work?"
"HP"
"Oh, I have a problem with my printer/laptop"
"Actually, I work on superdome specific optimizations for the HPUX compiler."
"So why does printer ink cost so much?"
....
I work for Google in one of the larger offices (New York). Here we have several cafeterias. You go at anytime (in the meal times), take what you want, eat it there or eat it at your desk.
You can eat with team mates, by yourself, with friends from other teams, with random strangers or whatever.
I love this for several reasons:
1. There is obviously the cost aspect (not having to pay for lunch) but for me this is probably the least important part;
2. It saves so much time. Other places I've worked, going out to lunch means 30-60 minutes for a lunch break. Here you can eat and be back at your desk, if you want to, within a few minutes. Waiting for elevators, waiting in line, etc are all such incredible time wasters;
3. When choosing where to go and what to get for lunch, you're basically asking me to make decisions I don't care about. This I hate. Here I simply choose what cafeteria to go (typically the closest one) and take from the selection. I don't have to decide about where to go, what to get. I simply taken what's (generously) offered.
(3) for me is probably the most important. This one applies to software and hardware too and is (IMHO) one of the key reasons for Apple's success: Apple is unafraid and unapologetic about making most decisions for you. These decisions are right for most people most of the time.
Joel had an old blog post on this (probably the famous "Controlling Your Environment Makes You Happy" one that everyone should read) that said something like this: every option you give someone forces them to make a decision. I would go on to add that every decision has a cognitive cost, which simply annoys the decider if they're deciding on something they don't really care about.
Now, on a smaller scale I can see work lunches being a problem. If you need to be there at a set time, have limited opportunity for mingling or your team is so small that if you don't want to get stuck with someone (eg you don't like them or you simply don't want to talk about work).
So I see edw519's point. On a sufficiently large scale however, provided meals are fantastic.
Otherwise, I'd rather spend those thirty minutes interacting with my co-workers and relaxing.
The key part is "if you want to".
Some days I use the extra time just to get more done, because it's crunch time. Some days I use the extra time to get home earlier. Some days I spend lunch-time playing soccer and grab something on the way back to my desk. Most days I enjoy a relaxed lunch.
The best thing is that I have choices. It just so happens that the easiest choice is usually to round up some co-workers and walk down to the closest cafe :-) But nobody is going to say anything if I want to do my own thing and have some time to myself.
In my case, I like to take little breaks when I need to so don't tend to work in 2 solid 4 hour blocks so I'll be in the office quite awhile. Plus if I'm just going to go home and catch up on a couple of shows on Hulu, I may as well do that in the office. It's nicer than my apartment. :) I do live in walking distance to the office too.
But I guess my main point is that I'm not clock-watching. I leave when I have something else to do and/or feel like I've done what I need to do. I like what I do. I'm not waiting for the clock to hit 5 so I can leave. YMMV.
Honestly this is another huge positive for me. I once worked at a place where I worked from 7 to 4 with half an hour for lunch (due to market times and a time difference). The rest of the team turned up at 9-9:30 and all they noticed was I left at 4 and I was called up on it. The net result was I turned up at 9, left at 5-5:30 and took an hour for lunch (resigning a month or two later).
Google, at least in my limited experience (I've only been here ~6 months), is much more results-oriented. We trust you to do what you need to do. I know some guys that routinely turn up at 1pm or later or skip a weekday and work on Saturday instead. I've seen no issues of "face time".
I know I work longer than a 40 hour week, sometimes substantially longer. But I don't mind. I have no other pressing responsibilities pulling me away. For those that do, it doesn't seem to be an issue.
But in the absence of responsibilities pulling you elsewhere (which are perfectly understandable) if you're watching the clock, IMHO you're probably in the wrong profession.
Either way, 30-60 minutes are not wasted, every day from your life.
Just because you get lonely eating alone doesn't mean everybody does.
"Being in any clique, even if it’s just the nerds, is vastly preferable than eating alone."
This is just bullshit. I don't want to be part of a clique. Or a group. Or anything of the sort. My lunch time is a time to get AWAY from people and recharge. Take that away from me and I get stressed out and my productivity suffers massively.
"For loners and geeks, finding people to eat with in the cafeteria at school can be a huge source of stress."
For a lot of us, feeling pressured into "socializing" because some bigwig decided that it's good for us is a huge source of stress. Just leave us be! Please! It's my time, so let me do my thing. Alone.