Great firm, but I still can't ever imagine wanting to (or being compelled to) eat lunch with the rest of my team every day.
Every day may seem like a bit much, but if you don't want to eat lunch with your team 3, 4, or even 5 days in a row, maybe you're not working with the right people...
Personally I like to get out a stretch my legs a bit during lunch. We spend all day, indoors, staring at a screen. It would be best for everyone to get a little fresh air a walk about. If I stayed in the office over lunch I would be much less productive in the afternoon.
Even for the people who didn't eat with the group every day? I notice that those people tend to get excluded over time. Not on purpose, necessarily. It's human nature to see things in terms of "part of the tribe" and "not part of the tribe".
> maybe you're not working with the right people..
This depends on a lot of factors. Even if you absolutely love everybody you work with, you may not want to eat lunch with them every day. For example, you work in an open office environment and see, hear and talk to them for 8-12 hours every day. Some would argue that, under those conditions, taking an hour in the middle of the day to be by yourself or to meet with people you don't see quite so often would be considered healthy.
On the other hand, if you all work in private offices 8-12 hours every day, then taking an hour and socializing with your co-workers sounds fantastic.
> Some would argue that, under those conditions, taking an hour in the middle of the day to be by yourself or to meet with people you don't see quite so often would be considered healthy.
That's certainly true, but I was more responding to the idea that somebody would actively avoid it. I definitely took a lunch by myself with my kindle not infrequently, but I certainly didn't go out of my way to avoid lunch with my coworkers.
This is to get people out of their cubicles and away from their computers and talking to colleagues. It helps people have a break from a particular problem (which is often all they need to solve that problem). It allows people time to chat to each other, about problems they're trying to solve or just general stuff. You know that you're not interrupting someone's work during one of these afternoons.
So, if a company is going to force some social time this is probably a better way to do it.
Crazy as it sounds, you have to manage this effectively to keep it from becoming "the norm" and losing people along the way.
You need from the top down, a continuing excitement so that each week's even is special.
I believe a good manager/boss should be keenly aware of the emotional state of his or her team, and plan accordingly.
It just sort of happened because we liked each other.
Same at reddit. :) We would go out maybe once a month.
It's a huge contrast from when I worked in an open-floor environment and thought of lunch as my "alone time".