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Comment by tetha | Hacker News Reader

I think being in the office together with a plan is a good tool to use, but you need to use it well.

Just yell at people to be in the office for 2 days per week for no reason? Meh. Why?

Organize a week to have all local and international employees together for a week once or twice a year, schedule big organizational meetings and important discussions in that week, sponsor dinner and lunch together, have a team event or three? Just accept that concrete and hard productivity will crash for that week, and consider it a social event? That's actually nice and valuable.

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> Organize a week to have all local and international employees together for a week once or twice a year, schedule big organizational meetings and important discussions in that week, sponsor dinner and lunch together, have a team event or three? ... That's actually nice and valuable.

When I read posts like this - however well-intentioned - I just see a person without kids or other responsibilities, who thinks it would be 'fun' to fly out to some town and hang with their colleagues 24/7 for those seven days, and forgetting that for a lot of people this would be difficult or impossible. At home there can be children that need to be looked after, or an elderly parent who needs a visit, or a partner who works nights or a disability that would make this type of 'cool' get-together impossible or extremely stressful.

The compromise is ofcourse that you're working the majority of the time remote and can reasonably accommodate one of these trips if the date is known in advance. I had a similar experience at a workplace I've had with known "onsites" that facilitated several of the business units at the same time, holding meetings and small get togethers to allow some face to face time. Afterward, optional events were suggested to spend time with teams if you had the flexibility, like meeting for a bigger group dinner or doing a meeting specifically with your team.

I don't think it's nearly as 'tech startup burnout' culture as you're envisioning here, people travel for work functions regularly in other sectors of work. Nearly all my aforementioned coworkers on my team had children and lives that they were able to allow their temporary separation from. I dont think it's anyone else's responsibility to fix but your own if making accommodations and planning to meet other people makes you stressed.

You are straw-manning by quoting half of my post though.

On the team, "people without children" are the minority. We do have member s on the team with disabled elders, elders requiring care, disabled children. Lifestock even. We do have people with all manner of volunteer responsibilities too.

We have discussed this extensively internally. To all of these people, it is massively easier to clear up 1 full week with 3-4 months of lead time, than to free up 2-3 days per week permanently. That's why whe chose this mode.

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