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Comment by ido | Hacker News Reader

    pre-COVID we did a lot of events together (skiing, surfing, hiking, 
    co-living, workations, etc.)

A bit off-topic, but how well does this work for employees that have a family? Do they take their kids/spouse to the events?

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Yes, we're completely open to having partners and kids around at our events. We actually encourage it. I myself have a child now and am looking forward to taking her to our next event. We're also looking into options of having a nanny. Depending on where we go and what we do.

What about employees with physical disabilities? I've got ten screws in my spine and never thought when deciding to work in computing that I'd be expected to be able to ski and surf.

I’ve not personally thought about that specific case but it’s similar to a lot of other issues with well meaning benefits (e.g. company outing focusing on activities like Laser Tag).

The best solution I’ve come up with so far is simply paying well & giving a lot of time off (and making sure people actually feel comfortable using their vacation days, which is an issue with “unlimited vacation” sometimes). Then each person can just afford to take the activities they want to.

Yep. Outside of the occasional off-site and/or team dinner (which aren't really the same thing), I pretty much want to keep company recreational activities--especially outside of work hours--to a bare minimum. They're never really optional.

We’ve not done anything that physically demanding, but we’ve definitely had events with short hikes, a chair lift ride up the (summertime) mountain to the lunch spot, or other short diversions from large group discussions. I’ve never gotten any sense that if someone were either physically unable to perform it or just not interested that it would be held against them and in any group of 30+ people you’re likely to have someone who doesn’t want to/can’t do exactly the activity and so you make accommodations.

It’s not like you’re going to be coding while waiting for the next set.

This is a problem we have had at my company too, how can we be inclusive to everyone with "fun" type events? Some people don't want alcohol, some don't want physical events, etc.

I think the best we can do as companies is know the team, have a variety of activities (inside normal working hours!), and not require 100% attendance since there is never going to be one activity that works for everyone.

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