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Comment by chill1 | Hacker News Reader

"No drinking at work events."

".. If you want to drink, be my guest. Drink. You're a grown up. I'm not the boss of you. But don't drink in a situation or event that is officially connected with work in any way."

I think this idea is due to the over consumption of alcohol that seems to be the norm in the U.S. now. Europeans, on the other hand, seem to have much more mature attitudes around alcohol.

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I have to agree that the sentiment seems strange to me. All my employers have had multiple receptions, celebratory drinks or lunches where alcohol was served and consumed. No one ever got drunk or misbehaved because of it. People are smart enough to be moderate in their alcohol consumption.

Note that in my country (Belgium), alcohol consumption at work is illegal, so these events were always after work hours or during lunch breaks. Technically, people had to badge out before consuming alcohol.

I'm not aware of drinking being a huge problem in Australia either, but that may be the particular places I happen to have worked. Certainly "goin' out 'n gettin' pissed" is an important part of weekly (even daily) social interactions for a lot of Aussies, though we don't have the wowser/puritan history to muddy the waters like the US does.

If you're not careful your shop can become a drinking fraternity first, dev team second. What happens when someone who does not drink wants to join the team ? Well just the fact that he doesn't drink can make the rest of the team feel like they're having less fun and that they "can't have as much fun drinking now" so they might (subconsciously) decide that the highly qualified non-drinker is not a cultural fit. That's fine in an environment where new qualified recruits are easy to come by.. but is that the world we live in ?

I think if your shop is turning into a fraternity because of a few drinks, you've got bigger problems than the drinking.

I'd say it's a "Drink responsibly" thing. Possibly refers to college culture and by extension hip cool startup culture, where (if I am to believe popular media etc) things can get rather excessive, with drinking games and trying to out-drink each other and just get pissed.

We have the occasional drinkup, where we just enjoy a few drinks without things going in full party mode. It's just behaving like an adult, imo.

I believe that's because Americans are not allowed to drink until they're 21. When they finally get permission, they go berserk.

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