5 ms·

> And for the social aspect, weekend or week-long dev retreats are ideal. As much as I appreciate (most of) my coworkers, on nights and weekends I want to clos

> And for the social aspect, weekend or week-long dev retreats are ideal. As much as I appreciate (most of) my coworkers, on nights and weekends I want to close my computer and spend quality time with my family, not see and talk to the same people I am already forced to talk to 35-40h a week. They might be ideal to you, but you're assuming quite a lot about everyone's situations if you think they work for everyone.

blunte 6y ago
In my remote experience, I definitely don't talk to my colleagues that much. But when you're trying to build a small company, one approach is to make it feel like a family. And families always have people we like and people we like not so much. But there's something special about one unit working toward a single goal. My design is for a startup with young people. This would not work nearly as well for older people and people with their own families!
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  I managed distributed teams long before COVID. Having people meet in person a few times a year does wonders for team cohesion. Some people handle remote communications just fine. Others were raised on a steady diet of internet flame wars and approach the screen names in their company chat the same way: As enemies to argue with every day. Putting people in front of each other associates a real person with that screen name. Everyone starts treating each other better and working more cooperatively. The transformation is almost instant. One important tip: Face to face meetings need to happen on regular company time as much as possible. Avoid anything on weekends or after hours as much as possible. You don’t want the team building to be an extra ask on top of their normal workload. It is their workload. Obviously flights and hotel stays must be an exception, but keep it in bounds of normal working hours as much as possible.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Yeah. Remote is fine but you need to budget time and money for plane tickets and hotels. That's been the tough thing for me the past year. I'm normally remote although I could go into an office--and am technically assigned to one but I normally travel to a lot of events as well as off-sites. >Face to face meetings need to happen on regular company time as much as possible. Yep. I sometimes hear people talking about how we should have team building events on the weekend. That's a big nope. In fact, while it's sometimes unavoidable, I sort of resent it when I need to travel on a Sunday to get to some event/meeting.
    - folkrav 6y ago
      > I sort of resent it when I need to travel on a Sunday to get to some event/meeting As you should. It was something that should have been your time, and became company time.
- ramphastidae 6y ago
  So, to be clear, your plan is no different than all the other crappy companies people complain about: replace real process and professional management with calling yourself a family, “perks” the employees already pay for through reduced salary like food, and taking advantage of young, cheap labor that doesn’t know any better than to be exploited?
  - blunte 6y ago
    Is that what you read? No, I am creating the kind of company I would have loved to work for. Salary is fine, but I know firsthand that if there is good free food, I will stay and work through lunch (or at least talk with my colleagues about work challenges while eating the nice food). Look, if someone is not happy with their work, free food or free trips is only going to hold them in place for a short while. They absolutely will leave at some point, and chances are they'll either do some damage on the way out or take some IP if possible. If you don't treat people well, you get what you deserve.
    - iamacyborg 6y ago
      How about just, you know, letting people have a lunch break that doesn’t involve work. By all means subsidise it if you want, but don't try drag people back to their desks with free food.
      - blunte 6y ago
        agreed. I have just found by my own experience that when nice free lunch is supplied (finance company, not SV startup), we typically talked about work and tech stuff anyway. those who went out for lunch did because they needed some air and distance, and that was not frowned upon at all. but trust me, good free food is a powerful motivator to stick around!
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      When fun and camaraderie happens naturally on a project, it's really amazing to be a part of. When an org tries to force "fun", it's awful. I think you are dreaming of the first kind, and everyone against you in this thread is having nightmares about the second. But I've also learned something about dealing with "corporate BS" -- if it's at least reasonably well intentioned, one can still decide to make the most of it instead of fighting everything and killing everyone else's motivation.
- folkrav 6y ago
  > In my remote experience, I definitely don't talk to my colleagues that much. Maybe you should, then. I speak to my colleagues at the very least 30 minutes to 1h a day, and work full remote. > But when you're trying to build a small company, one approach is to make it feel like a family. An approach I immensely dislike. IMHO it's a huge waste of time to pretend like most employees aren't just there to make a living. I'm not looking for a second family or to make friends, I'm here to provide my skills in exchange for money. > But there's something special about one unit working toward a single goal. I don't need to like you or my coworkers to do it, they all just have to be remotely competent and do a decent job at it, and I'll do the same. Let's have fun at work when at work, then let's close our computers and have our own lives, please. If friendships evolve from there, cool, but I'm not actively looking to make friends at my workplace. > My design is for a startup with young people. This would not work nearly as well for older people and people with their own families! I'm 30, I'm still quite young, AFAIK.
  - patrickserrano 6y ago
    I always find this position to be really interesting because as an adult I've had a really hard time making new friends. So working in an environment that values and supports employees creating friendships that extend outside of the office has been a huge benefit for me.
    - folkrav 6y ago
      Maybe our definition of what counts as a friend differ? I don't really consider work acquaintances (some of those I loved working with and would do again in a heartbeat if the occasion presented itself) "friends". A friend is someone I feel I can confide in and would not hesitate to call if I ever needed help with something personal. I can count those on a single hand, and in my case, none of those came from work, and that kind of deeply rooted relationship definitely wouldn't come from a company or team-wide organized retreat.
      - patrickserrano 6y ago
        I don't think our definitions differ at all. I have a close group of friends that I made at my current company. Some of them have moved on, others are still here but pre-covid we made time to hang out on the weekends or after work and during covid we've done zoom hangouts and stuff like that. A number of them were at my wedding, we were all there for support when someone's mom died during the pandemic and she couldn't travel home for the funeral, and we all supported each other when one of our friend group took his own life last year. Obviously you won't find that applicable to every job or company, but I see a lot of similarities to making friends at work and when you're in school. You spend a lot of time with the same people everyday and you probably have a shared interest or two. Sometimes that means you find people you can be friends with outside of the time you're "forced" to spend together with.
- riscy 6y ago
  Ah yes, the founder’s dream: gaining familial power over young people’s entire lives to further your start-up, before they realize they should develop a life of their own outside of work to avoid complete burnout.
  - blunte 6y ago
    Hey, they can spend 1-2 years with me, learn to be a good developer, and then happily go do whatever they want. I'm not binding them to be with me and my company forever. This is not the US startup scene. There are decent alternatives which don't use people up. No VCs, so no short term fixations beyond having enough runway to last 6 months.
  - dexterdog 6y ago
    I can almost hear his "Our Incredible Journey" post already.
    - CoastalCoder 6y ago
      IIUC, you're saying that the GP's approach is a recipe for failure. Can you elaborate?
      - BlargMcLarg 6y ago
        In a nutshell, the problem with the "family approach" is how it puts a very powerful tool into the hands of one's employer they can hold against you: your committal, loyalty or even reliance on others in the same situation. Should you ever want to switch places, you will likely have to rebuild your circle of friends, as they often do not take kindly to people "leaving the family" or simply lose contact due to no longer sharing anything big in common. Similar things tend to happen when one has a circle of "friends" related to a physical activity: when they stop or change clubs, they often lose most of those "friends", as often the only thread holding things together is a shared activity and location. At least by recognizing this, people can opt to not put all their eggs in one basket, which lessens any potential loss. Also, it allows them to look at different ways to establish friendships, in a way they can withstand more changes. Finally, there is no third party (the employer) that can use a potential insecurity against them (e.g. less financial growth because Bob is so afraid of rebuilding his circle of friends, he'll accept a stellar performance netting him 1% wage growth). And as others point out: forced participation into social activities is not something everyone is favorable towards.
- rytis 6y ago
  what's the upper age limit to join this hypothetical company? /s
- matwood 6y ago
  > In my remote experience, I definitely don't talk to my colleagues that much. I'm fully remote and this is weird to me. I might go a day or two and not talk to anyone because I'm busy on a problem, but there's always sprint planning every couple of weeks. We also have a general rule that if a slack convo gets too complicated we just start an impromptu video call in the channel and talk it out. This normally leads to a bit a banter after figuring out what we needed.
CoastalCoder 6y ago
My thoughts as well. That said, I think an occasional company retreat during the work week is a nice compromise.
- folkrav 6y ago
  Yeah that can work. I've had a barbecue and games with my current full remote team before lockdowns, it was fun, and seeing them face to face was nice. But it was during work hours. And I still took my car and drove back home at the end of the day - maybe a bit later than usual, but I still could kiss my son goodbye. I've had two days/one night retreats at another role, too, they were fun. But they were planned in advance, exceptional events.
csa 6y ago
GP post was referring to retreats for 100% remote workers, which would be work with a f2f element rather than merely socializing during your free time. These could happen during the week or (depending on the retreat) the weekend, with weekends probably being given comp time in lieu. If you think that a modicum of face time throughout the year for a remote team has no value to a group or team, I’ve got news for you. If you think GP was referring to additional face time in addition to face time at a workplace, then I think you may be projecting and selective quoting a bit. Note that employees at this small company can work when and where they want.
- folkrav 6y ago
  I am 100% remote. Some face to face is desirable, sure. Do it in core work hours, and don't assume I want to work outside those.
  - csa 6y ago
    I think that was the idea. Most 100% remote places I know of that do retreats typically have them during the week. A weekend retreat would be reserved for an activity that would only happen on a weekend and has buy-in from the team. There seems to be a lot of resistance from remote workers about remote worker retreats happening outside of work hours. Is this actually a thing? I have never heard of it other than the weekend caveat (weekend only event with team buy in) that I mentioned above.
    - folkrav 6y ago
      > There seems to be a lot of resistance from remote workers about remote worker retreats happening outside of work hours. Is this actually a thing? I have never heard of it other than the weekend caveat (weekend only event with team buy in) that I mentioned above. The occasional event w/ buy-in definitely can work, but that wasn't how OP seemed to frame it. Maybe I misinterpreted, maybe he badly explained his idea, I don't know. But I'd have given anybody sh*t for trying to make me work outside of work hours, remote or not.
    - ghaff 6y ago
zikzak 6y ago
I cannot imagine telling my very busy, more stressed than me, top level exec wife that she was on her own for a week so I could bang out some code. She wants me to be successful but that's a little too much to ask.
- glitchcrab 6y ago
  If you think we're meeting to 'bang out some code' then you're very much mistaken. Vastly less code gets written than during a normal working week; the on-sites are about spending time with your colleagues in meatspace. We have a loose schedule with meeting slots for teams/SIGs etc, but the emphasis is strongly on socialising.
glitchcrab 6y ago
I think it depends on how you view your colleagues, and also on your working conditions and location. My entire company is remote (albeit with a small office in a co-working space a few local people sometimes use), and we have two week-long on-sites every year (recent times notwithstanding). There is no pressure to attend, but the entire company is always there (unless they have scheduling conflicts etc) - that says a lot to me. It helps that the most important aspect of our hiring process is about culture-fit - so much so that the final stage of the (pretty relaxed) hiring process is a presentation to everyone in the company who wishes to attend (regardless of role). Those presentations typically see 40% or more of the company attend. Crucially, every person in that presentation gets the opportunity to vote on whether the candidate is hired. I've made friends for life at this company.
- folkrav 6y ago
  > I've made friends for life at this company. I've just said this earlier in another comment, but I've never had what I'd consider true friendships come out from work acquaintances. I just don't consider "I have fun with you sometimes" to be friendship, and there's exactly 0 people from all the places I've worked at I would feel comfortable say, calling at 3am if I ever felt depressed. That's friendship in my eyes, and a company retreat would never bring that kind of intimacy that's for me a requirement to actual friendship. Now there are definitely people I would work with again without hesitation, and I'd grab a drink any time with most of my old colleagues.
  - pault 6y ago
    I’ll give my counter-anecdote. I have made three close friends at work who I frequently talk to about relationship issues, etc, and would happily help them move a couch if they asked. One of them is currently my roommate. I’m 41, so these things can happen as an adult too. It might be different if I had my own family though.
- ncpa-cpl 6y ago
  My company has offices in the neighboring countries and we travelled often to the branches abroad. The teams are very close because we frequently work together. Having guests in the company was always an excuse to do fun stuff. Like driving one weekend to a beach/volcano in one country, planning to go to the movies in another one, and lots of tasty food. We could expense the food so we only paid for a bit of extra gas or extra bus tickets with our pocket. As a perk we have full kitchens in our offices, and a couple of times a week we cooked lunch together with the foodie/cook ones. It was usually tastier than buying food nearby. And it was fun to learn about each country's home cooking style. I miss that and hanging out and sight seeing with coworkers on weekends or after work... The daily commute to the local office not so much.

blunte 6y ago

In my remote experience, I definitely don't talk to my colleagues that much. But when you're trying to build a small company, one approach is to make it feel like a family. And families always have people we like and people we like not so much. But there's something special about one unit working toward a single goal. My design is for a startup with young people. This would not work nearly as well for older people and people with their own families!

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
I managed distributed teams long before COVID. Having people meet in person a few times a year does wonders for team cohesion. Some people handle remote communications just fine. Others were raised on a steady diet of internet flame wars and approach the screen names in their company chat the same way: As enemies to argue with every day. Putting people in front of each other associates a real person with that screen name. Everyone starts treating each other better and working more cooperatively. The transformation is almost instant. One important tip: Face to face meetings need to happen on regular company time as much as possible. Avoid anything on weekends or after hours as much as possible. You don’t want the team building to be an extra ask on top of their normal workload. It is their workload. Obviously flights and hotel stays must be an exception, but keep it in bounds of normal working hours as much as possible.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Yeah. Remote is fine but you need to budget time and money for plane tickets and hotels. That's been the tough thing for me the past year. I'm normally remote although I could go into an office--and am technically assigned to one but I normally travel to a lot of events as well as off-sites. >Face to face meetings need to happen on regular company time as much as possible. Yep. I sometimes hear people talking about how we should have team building events on the weekend. That's a big nope. In fact, while it's sometimes unavoidable, I sort of resent it when I need to travel on a Sunday to get to some event/meeting.
  - folkrav 6y ago
    > I sort of resent it when I need to travel on a Sunday to get to some event/meeting As you should. It was something that should have been your time, and became company time.
ramphastidae 6y ago
So, to be clear, your plan is no different than all the other crappy companies people complain about: replace real process and professional management with calling yourself a family, “perks” the employees already pay for through reduced salary like food, and taking advantage of young, cheap labor that doesn’t know any better than to be exploited?
- blunte 6y ago
  Is that what you read? No, I am creating the kind of company I would have loved to work for. Salary is fine, but I know firsthand that if there is good free food, I will stay and work through lunch (or at least talk with my colleagues about work challenges while eating the nice food). Look, if someone is not happy with their work, free food or free trips is only going to hold them in place for a short while. They absolutely will leave at some point, and chances are they'll either do some damage on the way out or take some IP if possible. If you don't treat people well, you get what you deserve.
  - iamacyborg 6y ago
    How about just, you know, letting people have a lunch break that doesn’t involve work. By all means subsidise it if you want, but don't try drag people back to their desks with free food.
    - blunte 6y ago
      agreed. I have just found by my own experience that when nice free lunch is supplied (finance company, not SV startup), we typically talked about work and tech stuff anyway. those who went out for lunch did because they needed some air and distance, and that was not frowned upon at all. but trust me, good free food is a powerful motivator to stick around!
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    When fun and camaraderie happens naturally on a project, it's really amazing to be a part of. When an org tries to force "fun", it's awful. I think you are dreaming of the first kind, and everyone against you in this thread is having nightmares about the second. But I've also learned something about dealing with "corporate BS" -- if it's at least reasonably well intentioned, one can still decide to make the most of it instead of fighting everything and killing everyone else's motivation.
folkrav 6y ago
> In my remote experience, I definitely don't talk to my colleagues that much. Maybe you should, then. I speak to my colleagues at the very least 30 minutes to 1h a day, and work full remote. > But when you're trying to build a small company, one approach is to make it feel like a family. An approach I immensely dislike. IMHO it's a huge waste of time to pretend like most employees aren't just there to make a living. I'm not looking for a second family or to make friends, I'm here to provide my skills in exchange for money. > But there's something special about one unit working toward a single goal. I don't need to like you or my coworkers to do it, they all just have to be remotely competent and do a decent job at it, and I'll do the same. Let's have fun at work when at work, then let's close our computers and have our own lives, please. If friendships evolve from there, cool, but I'm not actively looking to make friends at my workplace. > My design is for a startup with young people. This would not work nearly as well for older people and people with their own families! I'm 30, I'm still quite young, AFAIK.
- patrickserrano 6y ago
  I always find this position to be really interesting because as an adult I've had a really hard time making new friends. So working in an environment that values and supports employees creating friendships that extend outside of the office has been a huge benefit for me.
  - folkrav 6y ago
    Maybe our definition of what counts as a friend differ? I don't really consider work acquaintances (some of those I loved working with and would do again in a heartbeat if the occasion presented itself) "friends". A friend is someone I feel I can confide in and would not hesitate to call if I ever needed help with something personal. I can count those on a single hand, and in my case, none of those came from work, and that kind of deeply rooted relationship definitely wouldn't come from a company or team-wide organized retreat.
    - patrickserrano 6y ago
      I don't think our definitions differ at all. I have a close group of friends that I made at my current company. Some of them have moved on, others are still here but pre-covid we made time to hang out on the weekends or after work and during covid we've done zoom hangouts and stuff like that. A number of them were at my wedding, we were all there for support when someone's mom died during the pandemic and she couldn't travel home for the funeral, and we all supported each other when one of our friend group took his own life last year. Obviously you won't find that applicable to every job or company, but I see a lot of similarities to making friends at work and when you're in school. You spend a lot of time with the same people everyday and you probably have a shared interest or two. Sometimes that means you find people you can be friends with outside of the time you're "forced" to spend together with.
riscy 6y ago
Ah yes, the founder’s dream: gaining familial power over young people’s entire lives to further your start-up, before they realize they should develop a life of their own outside of work to avoid complete burnout.
- blunte 6y ago
  Hey, they can spend 1-2 years with me, learn to be a good developer, and then happily go do whatever they want. I'm not binding them to be with me and my company forever. This is not the US startup scene. There are decent alternatives which don't use people up. No VCs, so no short term fixations beyond having enough runway to last 6 months.
- dexterdog 6y ago
  I can almost hear his "Our Incredible Journey" post already.
  - CoastalCoder 6y ago
    IIUC, you're saying that the GP's approach is a recipe for failure. Can you elaborate?
    - BlargMcLarg 6y ago
      In a nutshell, the problem with the "family approach" is how it puts a very powerful tool into the hands of one's employer they can hold against you: your committal, loyalty or even reliance on others in the same situation. Should you ever want to switch places, you will likely have to rebuild your circle of friends, as they often do not take kindly to people "leaving the family" or simply lose contact due to no longer sharing anything big in common. Similar things tend to happen when one has a circle of "friends" related to a physical activity: when they stop or change clubs, they often lose most of those "friends", as often the only thread holding things together is a shared activity and location. At least by recognizing this, people can opt to not put all their eggs in one basket, which lessens any potential loss. Also, it allows them to look at different ways to establish friendships, in a way they can withstand more changes. Finally, there is no third party (the employer) that can use a potential insecurity against them (e.g. less financial growth because Bob is so afraid of rebuilding his circle of friends, he'll accept a stellar performance netting him 1% wage growth). And as others point out: forced participation into social activities is not something everyone is favorable towards.
rytis 6y ago
what's the upper age limit to join this hypothetical company? /s
matwood 6y ago
> In my remote experience, I definitely don't talk to my colleagues that much. I'm fully remote and this is weird to me. I might go a day or two and not talk to anyone because I'm busy on a problem, but there's always sprint planning every couple of weeks. We also have a general rule that if a slack convo gets too complicated we just start an impromptu video call in the channel and talk it out. This normally leads to a bit a banter after figuring out what we needed.

CoastalCoder 6y ago

My thoughts as well. That said, I think an occasional company retreat during the work week is a nice compromise.

folkrav 6y ago
Yeah that can work. I've had a barbecue and games with my current full remote team before lockdowns, it was fun, and seeing them face to face was nice. But it was during work hours. And I still took my car and drove back home at the end of the day - maybe a bit later than usual, but I still could kiss my son goodbye. I've had two days/one night retreats at another role, too, they were fun. But they were planned in advance, exceptional events.

csa 6y ago

GP post was referring to retreats for 100% remote workers, which would be work with a f2f element rather than merely socializing during your free time. These could happen during the week or (depending on the retreat) the weekend, with weekends probably being given comp time in lieu. If you think that a modicum of face time throughout the year for a remote team has no value to a group or team, I’ve got news for you. If you think GP was referring to additional face time in addition to face time at a workplace, then I think you may be projecting and selective quoting a bit. Note that employees at this small company can work when and where they want.

folkrav 6y ago
I am 100% remote. Some face to face is desirable, sure. Do it in core work hours, and don't assume I want to work outside those.
- csa 6y ago
  I think that was the idea. Most 100% remote places I know of that do retreats typically have them during the week. A weekend retreat would be reserved for an activity that would only happen on a weekend and has buy-in from the team. There seems to be a lot of resistance from remote workers about remote worker retreats happening outside of work hours. Is this actually a thing? I have never heard of it other than the weekend caveat (weekend only event with team buy in) that I mentioned above.
  - folkrav 6y ago
    > There seems to be a lot of resistance from remote workers about remote worker retreats happening outside of work hours. Is this actually a thing? I have never heard of it other than the weekend caveat (weekend only event with team buy in) that I mentioned above. The occasional event w/ buy-in definitely can work, but that wasn't how OP seemed to frame it. Maybe I misinterpreted, maybe he badly explained his idea, I don't know. But I'd have given anybody sh*t for trying to make me work outside of work hours, remote or not.
  - ghaff 6y ago

zikzak 6y ago

I cannot imagine telling my very busy, more stressed than me, top level exec wife that she was on her own for a week so I could bang out some code. She wants me to be successful but that's a little too much to ask.

glitchcrab 6y ago
If you think we're meeting to 'bang out some code' then you're very much mistaken. Vastly less code gets written than during a normal working week; the on-sites are about spending time with your colleagues in meatspace. We have a loose schedule with meeting slots for teams/SIGs etc, but the emphasis is strongly on socialising.

glitchcrab 6y ago

I think it depends on how you view your colleagues, and also on your working conditions and location. My entire company is remote (albeit with a small office in a co-working space a few local people sometimes use), and we have two week-long on-sites every year (recent times notwithstanding). There is no pressure to attend, but the entire company is always there (unless they have scheduling conflicts etc) - that says a lot to me. It helps that the most important aspect of our hiring process is about culture-fit - so much so that the final stage of the (pretty relaxed) hiring process is a presentation to everyone in the company who wishes to attend (regardless of role). Those presentations typically see 40% or more of the company attend. Crucially, every person in that presentation gets the opportunity to vote on whether the candidate is hired. I've made friends for life at this company.

folkrav 6y ago
> I've made friends for life at this company. I've just said this earlier in another comment, but I've never had what I'd consider true friendships come out from work acquaintances. I just don't consider "I have fun with you sometimes" to be friendship, and there's exactly 0 people from all the places I've worked at I would feel comfortable say, calling at 3am if I ever felt depressed. That's friendship in my eyes, and a company retreat would never bring that kind of intimacy that's for me a requirement to actual friendship. Now there are definitely people I would work with again without hesitation, and I'd grab a drink any time with most of my old colleagues.
- pault 6y ago
  I’ll give my counter-anecdote. I have made three close friends at work who I frequently talk to about relationship issues, etc, and would happily help them move a couch if they asked. One of them is currently my roommate. I’m 41, so these things can happen as an adult too. It might be different if I had my own family though.
ncpa-cpl 6y ago
My company has offices in the neighboring countries and we travelled often to the branches abroad. The teams are very close because we frequently work together. Having guests in the company was always an excuse to do fun stuff. Like driving one weekend to a beach/volcano in one country, planning to go to the movies in another one, and lots of tasty food. We could expense the food so we only paid for a bit of extra gas or extra bus tickets with our pocket. As a perk we have full kitchens in our offices, and a couple of times a week we cooked lunch together with the foodie/cook ones. It was usually tastier than buying food nearby. And it was fun to learn about each country's home cooking style. I miss that and hanging out and sight seeing with coworkers on weekends or after work... The daily commute to the local office not so much.