Comment by lynnetye | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lynnetye | Hacker News Reader

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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"?

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.

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.

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