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Comment by kurthr | Hacker News Reader

This is especially true in business situations. Although there is a very collective decision making process, it can be quite hierarchical. Often, if a manager has stated a position others will not disagree even if it is quite wrong. This is where drinking together comes in...

I've seen an engineer who had sat through a day of meetings on a topic holding his tongue until they went out for drinks after work (like most days). The moment beer touched his lips he broke into an angry tirade as to how terrible the decision was, and because we were "drinking" it was not considered out of bounds or reasonably punishable insubordination. Of course sexual harassment can have similar in/out of bounds elements so it's not like strict rules, boundaries, and exceptions solve all problems.

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It's kind of jarring to me that this sort of thing could be anything more than an outlier. Do companies like this not have anyone who's an alcoholic, pregnant, not fond of bars, etc., or are they just fine with cutting them out of the actual decision making process?

My favorite boss ever would sit and drink with me and a few of my peers after work regularly. Some others wouldn’t join us, for their own reasons. He made sure to spend more time listening to their opinions in the office though, and he had their complete trust. Now, we may not have heard quite as unfiltered commentary from those folks since they didn’t choose to drink, but that’s by their choice. It’s better to have some honesty from half your subordinates than none.

I don’t mean this at all as an inflammatory hot take, but drinking with people builds bonds in a very effective way which is very hard to match inside the office environment. I acknowledge though that there are obviously big problems with drinking as well and not everyone should do it.

I'm going to preface this by saying that I also don't mean any of this as inflammatory or a personal attack, and I fully believe that you had nothing but good intentions, but it doesn't really seem like you've fully viewed most of what you've said from the perspective of someone who doesn't drink at all.

The claim that people wouldn't feel excluded and disfavored for not attending but frequent social bonding over drinks because its optional is impossible for you to objectively evaluate. Of course you weren't aware of anyone having anything less than "complete trust" in your boss because of it; why would someone who felt that your boss was favoring those who drank with him tell you? People who perceive they're not part of a special social clique aren't going to go complain to the exact people who are then ones making them feel that way. It's not impossible that you're correct, but it's hard for me to imagine that someone would feel comfortable sharing negative feelings about the boss with you when you seem so confident that no one could possibly have any issues with the arrangement; if I were in that situation, I can't see myself even considering trusting how I really felt about it about it with a coworker who couldn't seem to even conceive of those feelings on their own.

Thanks for your reply.

I can see how I could have been in the dark about someone's true feelings if they weren't in a "clique" that I was in. In my exact case though, I felt like the 'clique' wasn't just the people who liked drinking at the bar, because we also had lunches including those non-drinkers, zoom happy hours (2020!), etc. I mean, drinking alcohol itself is optional even at a bar.

You're right that decision-making shouldn't be done by a committee delineated as "just the people who drink together" -- and that could be a real risk if this type of thing isn't being carefully considered.

However, the only guarantee against it than I can think of would be the far worse policy to simply ban all socializing after work, because the same thing could happen if 4 people took up after-work hacky sack and the others weren't interested.

I think socializing after work is fine in a lot of cases, but I personally feel like a manager should avoid anything that even has the appearance of playing favorites. I recognize that this is probably a much more strict ethical stance than most people will hold though; in a lot of places it's not even forbidden for managers to date their direct reports, which is even more obviously a conflict of interest.

I also totally understand that there's no requirement to drink at a bar; I just don't typically find them to be very fun environments. At least in the ones I've been to post-work hours, they tend to be loud and crowded, and I've always assumed that the only reason people tolerate them as a place to socialize is that drinking makes those aspects less annoying. Imagine if all your coworkers really loved comic books, and after work they always went to hang out in a comic book store, and you had no interest in comic books; you certainly could still go, but without actually being interested in what the venue provides, it's just not going to be particularly fun to hang out there.

I think the thing you're missing is that in Japanese culture this kind of interaction can't happen unless you're drinking. The social mores just don't allow these sorts of outbursts in any other situation.

This can be difficult to wrap your head around in the US because we don't have social rules anywhere near as strict as Japan and so empathizing with the experience is difficult.

You're probably right, although I'm not sure it's quite because of a lack of familiarity with strictness; I think I just prefer it distributed very differently. I think there's value in there being a spectrum of what's acceptable across different circumstances, but tying openness to an "optional" form of recreation seems very unfortunate.

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