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Comment by tokyodude | Hacker News Reader

I find catered lunch a mixed blessing. Plus = free lunch. Minus = spend less time at lunch getting closer to co-workers (drive/line/wait/food/drive-back). Spend more time at office instead out around town.

To put it another way

catered lunch = just another meeting except with food

going out to lunch = break/mini social event with friends

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Wow, that's weird. I personally never go out to lunch with coworkers, unless the company is paying (which they do once a quarter or so, for "team building"). My coworkers would want to go to places I don't want to eat, plus I don't want to waste so much time out of my day with them; I'd rather go home earlier.

The problem with catered lunch is that it can frequently be something I don't want to eat, like cheap pizza.

For me, the less time I have to spend at work with my coworkers, the better. I already spend 8 hours/day with them, I don't want to spend more.

Drive? I don't think I've ever driven anywhere for lunch

Well, okay, walk if you live somewhere you can walk. Here in Tokyo I would do that. When I was in SV there was nothing in walking distance.

Yeah. I mean I only go out with friends for lunch on fridays anyway, but the purpose of the free food is definitely to keep you working longer.

Is it though? The way I see it it saves me a lot of time which means I can end my day earlier.

Plus, a socializing lunch break in the middle of a day cuts your space for deep work in half, which means you'll often not get any done in either half. That's why I always brought my own lunch and/or ordered stuff to the office to eat at my desk, and went with people to lunch only every now and then.

How productive is 8 to 13 hours of deep work? Personally I need a break every so often to celebrate the incremental wins, else life becomes one long problem to solve.

To me it seems like it is the companies that have "cool" offices with ping pong tables that try to get you to work 13 hours instead of 8

8-13 hours of deep work are unsustainable on most jobs. My problem with breaking day in half is that deep work tends to require some runway; 3.5 hours is not much if you account for the time it takes to achieve full concentration.

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