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Comment by whycombagator | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat related to the topic, but not necessarily the article:

I often see week long company retreats in far away lands listed as a positive/selling point on many company recruiting pages.

For many in their 20s, or single, it probably sounds great.

But there is definitely an unspoken pressure element to the whole thing for a certain class of individual.

Maybe I'm the only one, but I imagine if you have a family these retreats can actually be a negative. Perhaps they aren't mandatory, but surely it's not wise politically to miss them.

I feel like those with families might not want to spend a week away from the family in <insert-far-away-land>. For a variety of reasons.

Maybe some companies do a better job of catering for everyone/thinking about this. Perhaps it's not a problem.

But it just seems to me like at least some of them are another one of those "keep the company young" ageism tactics - whether on purpose or not.

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Our startup[1] is 100% distributed and has in-person meet-ups roughly every 4 months. About half our team (including me) have kids and, to your point, when one of us travels it definitely puts an added burden on our partners back at home.

So we recognize this fact and try to mitigate it in a few ways:

- We structure the offsite week so that Mon - Thu is meetings and Fri is a fun day. This means attendees can leave on Thu night or Fri morning if they'd rather re-join their families sooner.

- We actively encourage our team to prioritize their families above their work and make it clear that attendance is preferred but optional. One of our colleagues just had a baby 2 weeks ago and no one would expect him to attend.

- We do what we can to make our meetups remote-friendly. If someone can join remotely, we use a Meeting Owl[2] to give them a better remote experience. It's not perfect, nor is it Cisco Telepresence, but it seems a lot better than everyone present jumping on a Zoom.

- We try to work around colleagues when possible. We recently held the meet up in my home town when my wife was in her third trimester and really needed me home!

For the rest of the year, we enjoy the benefits of being remote, among which flexibility is ranked high.

[1] https://gruntwork.io

[2] https://www.owllabs.com/meeting-owl

> One of our colleagues just had a baby 2 weeks ago and no one would expect him to attend.

Will he actively be told not to attend? Often this sort of thing is implied to be mandatory.

People at our company would likely still be on parental leave so it wouldn’t be necessary to be explicit.

It would also be perfectly clear from context (and probably overt comments as well) that attending is not only not expected but would be looked down upon.

We repeatedly celebrate employees prioritizing their families over their work, and we make every effort to avoid taking on projects or commitments like 24/7 support that might threaten that. In short, we plan the company around our lives, not the other way around.

Of course, the counterpoint here is that people still need to add value and get things done. So we also very much celebrate shipping and moving the ball forward each week.

Ooh, Meeting Owl. We used one in our company get together last week and they are great (also incredibly expensive, about £800 in the UK). But yes can second this one.

Meeting Owl is an interesting discovery for me.

Amazon reviews [1] gives good understanding of how the product works in combination with their demo video [2].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Meeting-Owl-Conference-Automatic-Spea...

[2] https://youtu.be/N_duZc5DZ2c

Your post reminded me that we've been planning on testing out Gruntwork for months now and never got around to it. Thanks for the comments.

You're not the only one. I used to travel around Europe regularly with work and enjoyed most of it.

I've now got a 7 year old and twin 2 year olds. They're a handful and a half, even on a good day. They're my family, much as I like most of them my coworkers are not. My wife really struggles with the kids at times and we don't have much of a support network to lean on. She called me just yesterday from the other side of town because one of the two year olds was refusing to get into his car seat. I ended up driving there to help her.

I basically turn down anything that requires an overnight stay now. I get away with it but it definitely trades on what political capital I have.

> but surely it's not wise politically to miss them

This is something I have come to really despise about working in tech. It doesn't matter if it's office beers, or the board games group, or retreats, etc... It's something that I feel is almost inappropriate in regards to my personal time which is fleeting the older I get.

> "keep the company young" ageism tactics

Anecdotally, I've found it's less ageism and more building a "club" of who's in/out. If you're someone who wants to keep colleagues at arms length (ie: strictly business) it turns into a huge problem, and it will definitely come up in your 1-on-1's.

It plays out like this: "We're noticing you're missing team events - why is that? Is everything alright? We'd like people to be team players!"

To which I always want to respond: "Well Bob, at the end of the day we're all replaceable to those up the chain and I know it's 100% in my worst interest to blend my personal life and my work life. I don't want to drink with you, I don't want to share my personal opinions, and I am not here to 'make friends'. I want to keep work at work, and home at home."

I would never say the above because that's grounds for an instant conflict, ie: "I'm not here for the koolaid, I'm here for the paycheck". Best way I've found to address it is to outright lie and say you suffer from social anxiety.

Not directly in answer to your comments, but if you work for a remote company then meeting up 2 or 3 times a year for a week is part of the trade-off. The rest of the year you're at home for the partner/kids/pets.

I've traveled quite a few times for business since having kids. My brother-in-law travels even more than I do for business.

Business travel is both a personal preference and part of the bigger career direction tradeoffs that must be weighed when choosing an employer.

"I have a family" isn't something to hide behind when your job includes a small amount of travel. It's something that can be accommodated and planned for.

It really depends on your situation and job type. If you have a spouse with a demanding job, and no local family there really isn't much flexibility.

If I need to stay late a few hours after work than normal, it requires immediate triage. If my wife has a busier than normal week, it may mean I go in later to the office or come home earlier, at a minimum we will lose sleep that week on meal prep etc.

She did a retreat while breastfeeding and it require her to come home each night so our son could eat. She went on a work trip and I flew out with her and the baby and took 2 vacation days (still breast feeding)

Tbh, a non-local retreat i.e. more than an hour drive, and either of us would skip it.

Its just not a nessisary business practice and IMO is agist.

It’s not strictly necessary like breathing and eating, but it can be an extremely powerful time to spend time together as a functional or leadership team and really hammer things out. We do it 3 or 4 times per year for 3-4 days at a stretch. I see it as part of the job and honestly look forward to them, even though they can be grueling.

A small retreat with just a few leaders of a publicly traded company is pretty standard. 3-4 times a year is kind of excessive from a cost perspective and is probably very taxing for some members of the team.

Overall, I'm not sure if you are organizing it, but if you are, you should be very sure that all those offsites are not too taxing on your team. I'd personally be very frustrated, and I know coworkers at other publicly traded companies I have worked for complain about offsites, but not to their managers.

i.e. you think they are helpful but secretly your team or coworkers are very unhappy.

Ours is one 2.5 day strategy meeting for all execs and then our LT (I’m not the top leader) meets 2 (or very rarely 3) additional times for 2.5-4 days.

And I think that is totally ok. Not everyone can do everything. We've had execs and individual contributors who say, "can't make it." And that is it and it is ok. And the reasons vary from person to person. But it is not agist. There are folks of every age that either can or can't make company trips for many reasons. For the trips I've been on, we get close to 90% participation.

The fact that people give a reason and that you have 90% participation shows that people feel obligated to go.

Its hard having a family and having two working parents. Offsites make it harder.

If you are going to organize one, you should understand that while they have real value, they also have a real cost for participants and their time should be treated like gold.

They're horrible, but it's a tradeoff for full time remote I suppose. Myvwife despises them since she's stuck on fulltime childcare, I can't imagine how single parents do it.

The biggest issue is that it often is a week if pointless koolaid drinking, with a huge carbon footprint at that.

I've just been away on a non work retreat for 5 days and it was a big ask.

I can't imagine doing something similar for work. Are they paying you all the time you are away (after all, you are basically "at work" the whole 24 hours).

It just seems another way to squeeze more house out of people.

>can't imagine doing something similar for work.

That's the normal life for a lot of people who attend conferences etc. If that's not for you, that's fine. Just don't take that sort of job.

Work is different for an early-stage startup with purpose vs. established companies making way through day-to-day activities, churning through a list of tasks. It requires quite a bit of mind space and commitment to be part of an early-stage startup - and if you look at it that way, 5 days offsite for relaxation and collaboration sounds like a cool idea to me.

--> In most cases, this trip is completely funded by the companies on top of the regular salary which you will make anyway.

--> Many of them have fun elements to it to relax the attendees and give them a break. Infact, breaking the regular 'work more' pattern is the key aspect.

--> Any trip is always hectic - whether work or personal. If you can get more done during a 3 days trip which will help you to spend more time with the family once you are back, it is better in some way. Right :)

I've done these and I have a family. If you are sick, expecting, or have other obligations, it is unfortunate if you can't make it. It was fantastic to get to know a lot of folks who are typically just avatars on a screen or a face in a meeting.

Even before I had a family, the last thing I wanted to do was spend a week somewhere else with people from work. If I want to go somewhere magical, I'll save my money, plan the trip with people I know and like, and go - likely to have a far better and memorable trip with an agenda (or not) we set for ourselves.

Now that I have a family, the prospect would be a big fat "No" for me, unless we're all encouraged to bring our families.

We usually do a short retreat once per year. It starts around 9 am on a Friday, when we drive with a bus to our destination (usually 2 or 3h drive), and we come back on Saturday about 3 pm. All of that is "fun time"/team building. Of course that's a bit lamer than the topic, but since many of us have kids (I don't) they have a more realistic chance of attending. And for most them usually works out (but were quite small with ~50ppl).

My SO's employer went to Mallorca to party for a week when the company was smaller (200ppl?). I like our approach much more.

I see your point. A retreat need not always be in far off places or for 1 week. Infact, I think, most of the startup teams can achieve what they want in 2 or 3 days max.

In our case, there are team members who can't attend the retreat and we are fine with it. There is no evaluation/judgment happening. But we encourage them to be there to learn and understand faster

> I feel like those with families might not want to spend a week away from the family in <insert-far-away-land>. For a variety of reasons.

There is no obligation (ethically, or legally) for companies to accommodate everyone.

Certain groups, yes. But not everyone.

Vote with your feet.

(I'm the same poster)

If you know ageism is rampant. Perhaps take this into consideration before selecting the tech industry?

There are other industries which are more family friendly. They might not pay as much, but that's the trade-off. You can't have both.

It's not an inherent trade-off tech is participating in -it's the result of insensitive policies.

It's not like doing retreats or other things people with families don't like is what causes it to pay more.

Also insensitive people, apparently.

People age- everyone does it. The industry is going to have to deal with that at some point. Telling old people to leave the industry at a certain point in their career isn't real advice.

There is no trade-off to be had, the industry should not be ageist, end of.

There is also no obligations on us to not call out companies for being ageist.

"Shut up or leave if you don't like it" is a very bad form of argument imho.

What is ageist about a workweek-long company trip? I went on them in my 20s, my 30s and now in my 40s. I’ll do them in my 50s as well. I went on them when I was single, in a relationship, and married. I went on them before kids, with infants, toddlers, and now with elementary school age kids.

My fellow attendees at these events are in their 30s through 50s (and for all I know, some might be in their 60s or 20s).

I don’t see ageist discrimination around business trips to be honest. If business travel isn’t for you for whatever reason, there are an enormous number of jobs that don’t require or even offer business travel.

At the extreme, there are some jobs that are 75% (or whatever) travel to customer sites. Not my thing--though I travel quite a bit. But it's silly to suggest that such jobs shouldn't exist. Just don't take them if they aren't for you.

For distributed work, I actually think it's really important to budget and plan for F2F events. Again, if you prefer more of a 9-5 5 days limited travel job, maybe don't do that.

Requiring travel is not an ageist policy, it’s an attribute of a job. I know many people with kids who are on the road constantly with demanding jobs, this is a trade off they’ve made in order to provide their desired lifestyle for their family.

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