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Comment by chris_7 | Hacker News Reader

> When my kids were small, I used to do 4 to 6 hours a day of very focused work and would produce the same amount of work as others during an 8-hour shift.

I'd be amazed to find this at a startup - I find that it's usually the opposite. It's impossible to focus in an open-plan with dogs running around, music blaring, and people swilling beer, so everyone has to work 10-12 hours to get 4-6 hours of work done.

I'm also surprised there's no mention of rape/abuse culture as it relates to the startup culture of "drinks, bro!": https://annelibby.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/beer/

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Is that representative of most startups? The only common elements I've seen in the startups I've been acquainted with is long working hours and below-market pay.

See also: Our Culture of Exclusion (2012): https://web.archive.org/web/20130808111450/http://ryanfunduk...

For some reason my experiences with alcohol don't seem to agree with this at all. I never feel uncomfortable around my coworkers, nobody really gets terribly drunk, and there's no predatory behavior. Maybe it helps that most people are a bit older and are married, not sure.

> What could be more enticing than the insightful conversation being had by 50 drunk introverts telling "that's what she said" jokes?

I feel like this is not related to alcohol at this point. I never see this at our drinking outings, but I have seen lots of this in, for example, gamer culture. Maybe there's a similar tech subculture that is expressed this way, and alcohol makes it worse.

Any indication that women are more put off by beer than men? At the last startup I have seen, the women were much more predatory than the men during beer nights.

Not that I like beer nights, but I dislike one sided blaming.

Besides, if people want to have beer nights, why shouldn't they have them? Maybe my main motivation to start my own company is that I get to have beer nights. Why shouldn't I be allowed to create company with a work atmosphere I like?

Well, if your main motivation for starting a company is having beer nights, seems like the company you should start is a bar.

> Besides, if people want to have beer nights, why shouldn't they have them?

They might unknowingly (or worse, knowingly) employ:

- recovering alcoholics

- people with religious restrictions

- people that were abused by someone under the influence of alcohol

- people that were abused whilst under the influence of alcohol

- people that just don't like alcohol

- people that want to actually go home after work (drinking is not work unless you're a beer taster)

Yes, you can make these outings "optional", but then it's all "we missed you last night!" and "you should come out next time!" guilting-type social pressure. There's no need for that in the workplace, so let's stick to building great things! Go drink with your bros, no one minds if you do that!

I rarely drink (just for health; I don't have any specific health reasons or religious reasons for doing so) and don't see a reason to get offended. I usually drink some kombucha or apple cider when I join other folks. I'm never forced to drink and I don't think anyone will look down on me or inquire further if I said I have personal reasons for avoiding alcohol.

Segueing the topic of beer nights to a discussion of rape(?) culture makes it seem like you're unnecessarily trying to find a way to be offended.

These nights might help an overworked team relax and coworkers have another chance in the week to interact. And guilting-type social pressure is always going to happen at a workplace, whether it's an optional team outing to a park or a beer night. It's up to you to handle these trivial social issues, not the management.

It's definitely management's job to prevent employees from harassing each other! Although that doesn't help if the pressure is coming from management.

Some women are understandably less comfortable around drunk people because drunk men are more likely to be creepy and potentially abusive. Some, of course, are not. I'm a male and I'm less comfortable around drunk people, because drunk people tend to be in bars, which are usually not comfortable - they're dark and loud (why don't we have afternoon tea outings?).

I don't have any hard citations for this, it's just from various exasperated women in the tech industry that I've read on Twitter. Here's this, though: https://medium.com/@betsythemuffin/drinkups-are-rape-culture...

I understand that the management's job is to prevent harassment, but to preemptively stop casual events because some people might be creepy or abusive? That seems overly protective.

The best course of action when someone is inappropriate during a team outing or beer night or whatever is to inform them privately and/or talk to management/HR. I understand that drinking can lead to these situations but treating every male as a potential abuser is not only alarmist but sexist.

I understand that many (both females and males) could be bothered by this, but the Medium article you posted draws similarities between someone egging a person to drink to an abuser coercing someone to give oral sex. I get what she's trying to say, but it seems like a bit of an stretch in an attempt to get people incited.

I think the world is better served by different companies with different types of cultures. I'm not a drinker myself so I wouldn't work at a company with a "beer night" culture. At the same time I think it's good that such a thing exists. And market forces should result in a world where exactly as many "beer night" offices exist as the market demands. Market forces will also potentially put "beer night" offices out of business if that's something that makes them not competitive.

The problem that I have it's that it's very hard to find a company with:

- Talented employees

- Good product

- Interesting problems

- No corporate hierarchy/org nonsense

- Liberal policies ("no, you don't have to ask your manager about PTO for a doctor's appointment or whatever, of course not")

But without all of the other negatives (distracting environment, asking employees to give up their nights for outings, etc.).

For example, my company has a giant beer fridge. We also have uncomfortable chairs and flimsy, wobbling desks, and a rattly old air conditioner. We don't have dual monitors. The beer fridge does not improve productivity in any meaningful way. The other things harm it. Yet, we still spend money on the beer fridge instead of improving out environment, because #startup #crushing, or whatever.

You just laid out YOUR version of a perfect company. There are, of course, plenty of people who disagree with you.

I could not agree more. The thing is I actually like drinking and socializing, but having it mixed up at the workplace led me to drink more than I should, which I didn't like. And a few times I had conversations I felt weird about the next day. When I wanted to drink less it was annoying walking past beer all the time and people drinking it, because again, in the right context I do enjoy it. And I definitely know people who didn't drink, which was fine, but they felt socially alienated because of how many people were drinking. And several people got fired for sexual harassment, which is never cool, but it only ever seemed to happened at late night events with alcohol.

I actually decided I was drinking too much at that job so when I quit I took a break from drinking. One of the jobs I interviewed with had their happy hour as part of the interview! It's an insane "culture fit" test because of the many valid reasons you mentioned people might not be comfortable with it.

Like you said, people can go drink with their bros. Good not to tie your social life to work anyway so you can leave without losing all your friends.

I think putting beer out for an hour or two at an event and having a culture of 1-2 drinks sporadically is fine. But I'm avoiding any employers with a keg in their office, beer in the fridge every day, a happy hour culture etc.

If I tried to mandate "cycling nights", everyone would think I was crazy. Not everyone can ride a bike! Not everyone's comfortable riding a bike aggressively in Manhattan traffic! Okay, but I can and am, and everyone should be like me! Cycling nights!

Well, not everyone can drink alcohol. Not everyone's comfortable drinking alcohol. But "drinking nights" are fine.

Fortunately not all beverages are alcoholic.

Sure, you can follow behind us with your training wheels if you'd like. There's no way you'll feel alienated.

> Well, if your main motivation for starting a company is having beer nights, seems like the company you should start is a bar.

That doesn't make sense - you would be working at the times you want to be drinking and socialising with your colleagues.

Depends on the bar, but I definitely see bartenders and/or bar owners drinking on the job and socializing with each other and with their customers.

On the other hand starting a company with beer nights (or "drink ups" a la Github) could be an excellent way of finding people for whom it is a cultural fit as well as eliminating the overly stodgy types. I suspect it's probably a net positive based on startups I've read about and seen over the past decade or so.

Sure, Andrew Mason caught flack[1] for drinking at a meeting while addressing employees and investors as CEO of Groupon and sure there have been various dramas and culture clashes at other unicorns. But you know what? The default outcome of startups is failure, and Groupon, Github and others got to be multi-billion dollar companies in a short span of time. In Groupon's case, there was even a moose head that would appear on the screens as an alert that there was an unscheduled opening of the bar right in the main shared office at their Palo Alto campus.

I say, let a thousand company cultures form. Some will be run by Mormons and have strict rules about even having alcohol on the premises and others will be run by Japanese and practically require that you go drinking with the team (and maybe even karaoke). As long as it's a free labor market, people will find and stay at the places they find most comfortable.

>"Yes, you can make these outings "optional", but then it's all "we missed you last night!" and "you should come out next time!" guilting-type social pressure. There's no need for that in the workplace, so let's stick to building great things! Go drink with your bros, no one minds if you do that!"

This is needlessly ethnocentric and linked to your own assumptions about employees wanting to drink with "bros" rather than the people they spend most their waking days with.

>"Well, if your main motivation for starting a company is having beer nights, seems like the company you should start is a bar."

I would counter that if your main motivation is preventing your coworkers from going out for a drink after work, then perhaps you should try living in a theocratic country that would take care of policing your coworkers' lifestyles for you.

[1]: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20160901/BLOGS11/1609...

I'm not convinced Github did so well in the long run after "eliminating the stodgy types."

If you want cultural diversity, startups aren't a good place to find it.

If going from zero to a billion dollar valuation and domination of new social networking niche in a few years is unconvincing then maybe it's better for start-ups not to convince you ;)

Where does the assumption come from that every company should be a perfect "fit" for every possible employee? Is that even possible? If that utopian goal would be reached, I guess we could eliminate job interviews - all candidates would automatically match all companies. That sounds like a good thing - except that I find it unlikely to be possible.

Therefore I am more in favor of diversity of company cultures. That makes it more likely for any given individual to find a matching company they like.

Yes, I know that there is a perception the you HAVE to work long hours, that's why I am always publicizing my example: I only started working longer hours when I could. Yes, as I always say, "I had to be THE BEST" to get this treatment, but I was always treated exceptionally, like being allowed to WFH, when it was almost unthinkable (early 90s). But that's to my point - that was the kind of startups I was choosing. And not startups only, but the workplaces in general. And I never faced the "rape/abuse culture", probably because both my US startups were founded by female :)

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