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I'm a cofounder of a start-up that is all remote but does quarterly get togethers (though attendance isn't required). I think that the software development tea

I'm a cofounder of a start-up that is all remote but does quarterly get togethers (though attendance isn't required). I think that the software development team in general is ambivalent about them and happy to just work from home. But the other areas of the company seem to really enjoy getting together to socialize and interact with their co-workers once in a while. A lot of people want some level of human connection with the thing they spend the majority of their waking hours doing and really hate being isolated and never meeting their team in person. Preferences of course vary by personality, age/living situation, type of work, etc. So I think it's a little unfair to say that the only reason people have off-sites is because they can't figure out how to effectively work remotely. Different people like different things and need different things to get satisfaction from their job.

drewcoo 4y ago
Your paragraph about what people "seem to really enjoy" is just a restatement of the grandparent's "make up for the ways the company has failed to implement a stable async remote culture." Same substance; different spin.
- oblio 4y ago
  Let's be real here. People are different and software developers are notoriously asocial if not antisocial.[1] Their desires shouldn't be extrapolated to the general population, since even the most tech heavy company will at point need to have HR, sales folks, marketing folks, recruiters, program managers, project managers, on site consultants, technical writers, etc, etc, etc. [1] On average, this is based on anecdata from my personal experience and tons of discussions with folks, reading books, blog posts, etc.