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Comment by watwut | Hacker News Reader

I am surprised over "eats lunch together" being so high. I dont get why would anyone care about that at all.

Just anecdotally, but every team I've been on where we ate lunch together was amazing, and every team where we didn't was joyless. Eating together of course doesn't cause amazing teams (but it can help), but seems to happen naturally when the team gels. I also like to invite random people from outside our team to come eat with the group, just grabbing someone in the hallway as we head out ("hey we're going to X, want to join?"), it's great for building connections in the org.

I think that you're just reversing the arrow of causality.

or even that there isn't really an arrow. i think .. all of the places which essentially had a near-mandatory eat together culture spent an awfully large amount of time organizing and executing lunch and very little time doing anything else. we got to know each other, but it didn't mean we worked* together

I don't like eating lunch with my coworkers but if I liked my coworkers enough to eat lunch with them I would probably love work.

See, I like my co-workers and we work together well and we go out outside of work hours for drinks and stuff, but I still like to eat lunch by myself.

It's funny, even though "Eats Lunch Together" is really important to me, I'm also surprised to see it so high on the list.

Lunch time is an opportunity to socialize with your colleagues. It's also a great time for spontaneous collaboration to take place. I've worked at a startup where great ideas were born out of engineers, operations managers, and customer service reps eating sandwiches together. It's cross-pollination that does good for everyone.

A lot of companies also combine lunch with talks, presentations, or team building activities. In general, I care deeply about working with people that I look forward to chatting with during the day.

If you can imagine a place where most people eat alone at their desks, what else might this signal? Maybe people aren't friendly? Maybe everyone is expected to work through lunch? Maybe people are very exclusive and leave the office in group without inviting "outsiders"?

I work remote currently, but I've spent many years working in offices. In those times, as an introvert, I've greatly preferred to eat outside the office, to avoid feeling expected to socialize during what would otherwise be a nice 30-45 minute break from other people. That isn't to say I don't like other people, but it is exhausting to be continuously around people who you ought not to ignore, especially if you aren't actually interacting with them (but might be called upon to do so at any moment), and having a break most days from that makes it doable.

When I was younger, I used to often lunch with boyfriend who worked nearby. These days, I go sometimes with small group of colleagues, not always the same. I oftentimes go alone, because they prefer different place then me. I also occasionally lunch with former colleagues or with people from different departments. Some colleagues go exercises instead of lunch and then eat sandwich fast at the table - their freedom to choose so. We have very good working relationship, I respect them a lot and know they respect me and know they would tell me directly if they would have some problem with my work or me (same with long time ago). We do have personal conversations too and support each other when someone has problem at home.

The worst teams I worked in expected a lot unofficially-mandatory socialization where your status and work progress depended a lot on your ability to be charming and fun. Did not prevented bad politics.

Personally, I value it a lot. If you want to communicate with your colleagues during the day, you have to spend more time in the office; or keep the same time spending less on actual work. Eating lunch together allows you to avoid both.

I find places in which I get along with my coworkers enough to have lunch with them with no work talk to be the best I've been at. It's fun.

I didn't vote in this poll, but it's always been important to me.

It's an easy proxy to see that your team mesh well together (if my "best friends" at work are also my team members, chances are we'll work well together). Plus we'll end up discussing work problems we all have and that lunch time can turn into solutions.

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