During a particularly weird HR intervention at a branch office I worked at, all the managers were required to sit through a team building exercise where we were handed crayons, construction paper, glitter, markers and other kindergarten craft tools, and required to create some kind of personal expression and share the result with each other.
The intervention was in response to some big attrition and rage quits on the engineering team, and a general disconnect between that office and the rest of the company. Forgetting for a moment that a group of adults had to create these objectively demeaning expressions and then present what the glitter or animal stickers represented to each other, and to an exec with hire/fire authority, HR collected the artifacts at the end of the session - and when we returned to the office the next day, they were hung on the walls for all the managers' staff to see what we had accomplished on a day long retreat while everyone was under immense deadline pressure to ship features. One engineer saw these pathetic clusters of multi coloured clutter taped to the walls and with the horror of someone whose invested career so far depended on performance reviews from said managers, she asked, "seriously, what the hell is this?" We had pissed off eng staff to begin with, but what the exec team thought we needed was a kind of coup de grace to utterly discredit managers as men and women in front of the people whose livelihoods depended on their leadership.
Since then, what I have come to think these exercises are is a test of supplication, and of whether you can convincingly and competitively debase yourself better than your next peer. It was a kind of race to the bottom to demonstrate how sincerely you could erase your humanity and individuality in service to the narrative of a team, and what you were willing to do to survive. I've even come to suspect it's a system, where they take average people with impostor syndrome, make them debase and humiliate themselves in front of others, and then leverage the shame of the exercise into a new cruelty and compensatory sadism to squeeze out marginal effort from their staff. Now when I see glitter and crayons, I am reminded of how they tried to teach me to hate.
> I have come to think these exercises are is a test of supplication, and of whether you can convincingly and competitively debase yourself better than your next peer.
I sold you and you sold me under the spreading chestnut tree.
In corporate environments, more often than one would hope, one runs into an extortionist gatekeeper who just wants their ego placated. But that HR story...what's horrifying is that they probably thought they were really helping.
Mandatory child games like the one you described above are confidence busting exercisee, done to demoralize your colleagues to the point where they feel quitting isn't an option because they see themselves as barely worthy of the job they already have.
This was nicely written, and I don't know how the general experience was across the team performing this ceremony, but it is revealing that very many people completed the exercise at all.
When I've found myself in similar situations, part of what has dismayed me is observing that at least half of the people seem to enjoy it. It'd be nicer to think this was just management jerking the leash; The actual enthusiasm from colleagues is doubly alienating.
The "Immoral Mazes"[1] sequence from LessWrong may be of interest for you. Maybe jump straight into "Does Big Business Hate Your Family?"[2], but I recommend reading the whole thing.
Interesting drill down and I like lesswrong, I just wish we had a more cogent set of values and criticisms that had legs, as even I'm guilty of just over articulating complaints. We can get traction against office problems like yelling, swearing, disagreeableness, teasing, chirping, and fratboy behavior, but by analogy, sorority level passive aggression, gaslighting, malicious rumors, lying, gossip, spying, whisper networks, and related animus doesn't have a critical framework to recognize it.
We can tell stories about this stuff, and lesswrong is gratifying, but I haven't seen a cogent critical theory on this stuff that has legs where we can say, "hey, this really is problematic" in a meaningful way.
> The intervention was in response to some big attrition and rage quits on the engineering team, and a general disconnect between that office and the rest of the company. Forgetting for a moment that a group of adults had to create these objectively demeaning expressions and then present what the glitter or animal stickers represented to each other, and to an exec with hire/fire authority
If HR has fire authority, you are doing something wrong with the org chart.
The problem with the "fundatory" phenomenon is not whether or not it actually is fun (sometimes it can be), rather that the motivation is not genuine. When you organize a drink with friends, there's no hidden agenda.
A corporate drink may still deliver fun, but not for the sake of fun itself. It's a means to an end that ultimately benefits the company.
If you disagree, and are a manager that genuinely wants to add fun to an employee's life without any secret agenda, ask them which they consider more fun: leaving an hour early or staying with coworkers they already see more than their family.
You should then have no problem with the "leaving early" answer since you're all about maximizing fun. If you find that answer disappointing, you never cared about fun in the first place.
This is a weird reductive line of reasoning where you can't have multiple goals. My primary goal is relationship building amongst my staff, my secondary goal is for them have fun while doing it. Therefore I try to create the most fun activity possible that involves the staff being together. Your "send them home an hour early" completely violates the primary goal without invalidating the secondary goal as you claim.
> Your "send them home an hour early" completely violates the primary goal without invalidating the secondary goal as you claim
As you imply, there is a middle ground: let them off early and announce you’ll buy drinks at the bar. If people want to join, they have the option. If they don’t they won’t. If you’ve created the right culture, nobody will feel obligated, but you’ll receive feedback on the social state of your team.
What’s your take on people who aren’t interested in relationship building at work? I’ve never been particularly interested, mostly because I bristle at the idea of someone else telling me what to do!
Granted my attitude is frequently called childish, and while I acknowledge it can be childish, its much more frequently simple disinterest.
Curious to hear your take as I’ve only ever heard the take of exasperated former managers who rarely-to-never care about my personal feelings. Thanks!!
It's important to build relationships with your coworkers. You don't need to be buddies, but you do need to know each other well enough that you feel comfortable bouncing ideas off them or working with them in stressful situations.
I don't have to manage staff anymore but when I did, the people who didn't build relationships with their coworkers were the first ones let go. Their individual productivity wasn't good enough to justify their reduced ability to work with others. (However, note that this was at a firm where productivity was measured at billable hours, so not really comparable to an in-house position.)
Great take, thanks! I’ve always felt that I was able to build effective working relationships without resorting to mandatory drinks after work, or other mandatory fun.
It definitely hampers me, but honestly, I’m not staying for more than two years. I’m not interested in internally climbing a ladder. I’m interested in stepping up the salary ladder, and you don’t do that with promotions internally.
> I’ve always felt that I was able to build effective working relationships without resorting to mandatory drinks after work, or other mandatory fun.
Those arent my favorites either, but lets not reduce the options to the stereotype: there are other ways too.
The two qualifiers you put in front of relationship already pidgeonholes the outcomes. I think you should consider that you may in fact not have been developing good relationships, or possibly very one-sided ones.
This a fair reading of my comments, but certainly I don’t think its a fair reading of my actual life. Still, it’s worth considering what you’re saying. Have many of my work relationships been one sided? Yes, I think this is entirely possible, and something I can work on.
But then, it does seem somewhat pointless if you already know in two years maximum you’ll be moving on. I’ll have to talk with some folks that know me well to see if I can resolve this conundrum.
> My primary goal is relationship building amongst my staff
So it's a means to an end that ultimate benefits the company, and therefore it wasn't reductive, just an accurate characterization of what you're doing...
The reason you can't have multiple goals in this case is because fun and mandatory are directly opposed to each other. The moment you require somebody to have fun, it no longer is fun.
If your employees are friends with each other, they very well may enjoy having a drink with each other after work for an hour despite seeing each other so often. The reason is that they don’t actually see each other that much while working. It’s like saying students would rather go home to their family because they already see so much of their friends at school. It is perfectly possible for coworkers to be friends with each other, and that DEFINITELY should be a goal for building a company.
I didn't say they can't be friends or have fun together, I was talking about the scenario of "mandatory fun", where such events are forced top-down. It's quite a different scenario when colleagues self-organize an event without any power dynamic at play.
As to coworkers becoming friends, there's nothing wrong with it, but hard disagree on this needing to be a company goal. Friendly? Yes. Actual friends? Very much optional.
There's big cultural and personal differences regarding this matter. Some cultures and people maintain a hard boundary between their work and personal life, they don't necessarily blend into each other.
We used to have company sponsored drinks or other fun activities with co-workers every few weeks. And we still do, on our dime once or twice a year, despite the fact the company has not existed for five years now and everyone has moved on. Once we even manged to rent company's old office, vacant at that time, for a Friday night party. So I'd say it was genuine enough to create social bonds that survived the test of time.
Imagine we had a society for a minute where we judged people, harshly and critically, based not upon their motivation (perceived or real) but upon their behavior. Good actions are judged positively. Bad actions, negatively.
Behind nearly every great evil in our society there was an individual, and a group behind him, who saw themselves as the good guys engaging only in awful misdeeds for the sake of a great society for everybody down the line. Their motivations noble, their actions despicable. Their great motivation never comes to pass, but the harm they did in pursuit of it certainly did.
And vice versa, Henry Ford radically improved the lives of his workers. In a time of a 6 day week with 10-12 hour days, he chose to adopt an 8 hour work day and 5 day work week. Why? After experimenting with it, he noticed it yielded greater productivity than the previous 10-12 hour, 6 day weeks. In other words because he did it because it made him [much] richer. He had a primarily selfish motivation, but in pursuit of it carried out actions that created a better life for countless others.
Of course when we look to the past, what I'm saying is hardly novel. Far more clever men said this much more succinctly than I ever could, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."
> Behind nearly every great evil in our society there was an individual, and a group behind him, who saw themselves as the good guys engaging only in awful misdeeds for the sake of a great society for everybody down the line.
Hum, nope. That's a movie thing.
Behind nearly every great evil in out society there were individuals thinking about personal gratification.
Behind most good acts too. That's a good point. But those altruist goals (for good or evil) are a small minority, and when they do happen, they don't have much of an impact.
The point of the "fun events" with the coworkers is precisely that you will be seeing them more than your family, so the company wants to make the experience of working with them as pleasant as possible. Attrition is significantly lower if people like who they work with.
It's very different though if it's mandatory frequent "fun" as opposed to an occasional thing.
It still astonishes me to this day how Director+ level at a company doesn't understand the power dynamic of being asked to 'optionally attend' these types of events.
Saying no is instantly a negative thing by the literal definition of "no". So however you ask your staff it won't matter, they will be uncomfortable at the event or uncomfortable saying no.
> Saying no is instantly a negative thing by the literal definition of "no". So however you ask your staff it won't matter, they will be uncomfortable at the event or uncomfortable saying no.
I'm a new SWE Manager and I've been thinking alot about power dynamics since I got promoted. You would think that you can just tell you reports "hey you can be honest with me and speak your mind", but the difficult part about that is no one will take you at your word when you say that.
I'm still working it out but one thing I've found that helps is to crack some jokes with my reports. Like the other day I was having a one on one with a report where they were saying that they didn't like how ClientX was doing ThingY on ProjectZ. I could tell by his tone that he was trying to gauge my reaction before continuing, I interjected with a light joke about said client, basically telling him that I completely agreed with his sentiment. From there I noticed that things got much lighter and he was able to speak his mind more about the issue.
Power dynamics are definitely there, and they can sneak up on you. Injecting jokes can definitely break the tension, but I have also had it backfire on me a bit.
In my first time leading a team, a few months in one of the people on my team who I had known personally from before pulled me aside and basically said "listen, I know you, and I know that you are a sarcastic person and can understand it. But everyone else kind of thinks you're an asshole". Still very thankful that they pointed that one out to me.
>but the difficult part about that is no one will take you at your word when you say that
The majority of us understand we're not fully rational and treading ground as if that's the case, is exactly how one ruins their chances. There's a far lower risk in faking things than there is trying to be honest and hoping the opposite party is not affected by negativity, both consciously and subconsciously.
The number of superiors who say similar and do get affected subconsciously far outnumber those who aren't affected. Most of us are playing a game of Poker, not a game of DnD.
> You would think that you can just tell you reports "hey you can be honest with me and speak your mind", but the difficult part about that is no one will take you at your word when you say that.
Of course not, because of the SNAFU Principle: "True communication is possible only between equals, because inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their superiors pleasant lies than for telling the truth."
If I'm working for you, you are not my equal. You might be my superior in the organizational sense, because you have the power to demand I be fired if I push you hard enough. You are also my inferior in that you can't meet your KPIs without my cooperation. Under no circumstances will I tell you the plain, unvarnished truth. It isn't what you want to hear, especially if you've got senior managers or clients breathing down your neck. Shit doesn't just roll downhill in the Army.
You don't want to hear that it is flat-out impossible to come to me on Friday afternoon with a feature request that must be in production by the following Monday. Instead, I'd tell you that it can be done, but I'll expect time and a half for all of the overtime I'll be working that weekend, and it will probably be buggy because the requirements were scribbled on a fucking bar napkin and I probably won't have time to test it properly. You won't like that either, but at least you'll have the basis for a rough cost-benefit analysis you can present to your bosses to ask them, "How badly do you want this done in the current timeframe?"
This is anecdotal; but being genuine is a great pathway to open dialogue. Cut out the formalities and speak openly about your goals as their manager to create an environment where everyone works cohesively. A previous manager was successful in creating this environment and I was never more motivated in my life than working under him.
> I'm a new SWE Manager and I've been thinking alot about power dynamics since I got promoted. You would think that you can just tell you reports "hey you can be honest with me and speak your mind", but the difficult part about that is no one will take you at your word when you say that.
I've also become a manager in recent months, and have had to think a lot about this. The approach I've mostly gone with is to try to be vulnerable and open about my own issues of the sort that I would want my reports to share. In the hope that they will reciprocate. It's hard to tell for sure, but that seems to have worked reasonably well.
> "hey you can be honest with me and speak your mind", but the difficult part about that is no one will take you at your word when you say that.
I'd just caution you that... If you wanna bark up that tree you better be prepared to hear what they have to say. It might not be something you actually want to hear. And you're both going to have to deal with the fallout.
I think this is the real difficulty. Most people don't handle negative feedback all that well, and that's pretty much all people are going to come to you with.
> It still astonishes me to this day how Director+ level at a company doesn't understand the power dynamic of being asked to 'optionally attend' these types of events.
It depends on the company, on the country and the manager.
I sometimes organize dinners for my team (it's France after all). People can freely come or not and there is always someone who does not come. This someone changes all the time and nobody is keeping count.
I know my team inside out and, believe me, they will say when something pisses them off. Clearly. The dinners are not one of these things.
Would you say more? Article headline and subtitle say “mandatory”, “required”, and “forced”. Certainly some weak leaders try to have their cake and eat it, by having “fake optional” events, but that seems like a different issue from mandatory fun that’s disclosed as mandatory.
One thing about these “perks” is that they are supposed to automatically turn into good reasons to work somewhere. Like “hey your salary is shit but at least there is a nintendo switch in the common room”. I want to play games at home after work. Plus, if I sit down for more than 15 minutes in the common room playing Super Mario Odyssey people will invariably start to look at me weird. In the end it’s just another bullshit way to attract naive, young employees.
I was actually almost better working at Amazon (2001-2006) where you got a door desk and they penny pinched everything and there was no enforced fun bullshit.
Amazon of course took it way too far and did things where they couldn't figure out how to find the money to get Apple laptops for devs (circa 2003) because they'd cost $100 more a seat and if 5,000 devs want them, that'd be half a million dollars! (to make $750M of dev salary at the time happy).
My dad worked for Shell. Every year, the plant he worked at would rent out an entire carnival for two days so that the families of plant workers could play the games.
> Like “hey your salary is shit but at least there is a nintendo switch in the common room”.
Even better, "we're like Google" except they give you a blank stare where you ask about the 20% time, free food, compensation or where they hire from. Turns out it's all bootcamp/local wages no stock, no 20% time. But hey, they have beanbag chairs! On the flip side, they make it almost too easy to poach talent...
Maybe its different because we're a small company, or maybe I'm deluding myself, but I've always run 'work parties' here as non-mandatory and people seem to see it that way without trouble. Typically we'll buy pizza, or have a bbq for lunch, or handle birthdays by one cake a month for everybody who has a birthday that month, and the employees who want to partake do, some never do, and some do occasionally. Nobody gets ostracized based on whether they attend.
But I also 1) never provide alcohol, 2) never require any social 'ice breaker' type games, and 2) never have company events during non-working hours.
> But that doesn’t mean that colleagues stopped connecting altogether, says Lopushinsky. They just started doing it in ways they actually found enjoyable. “On the flip side, the pandemic also led to the rise of more employee-led initiatives,” he says. Team-building events and ‘fun’ ceased to be top-down. “Employees would lead a Zoom yoga class, or a cooking class for their colleagues. It’s an interesting shift, away from ‘you have to do this,’ and toward, ‘what do you guys really want to do?’”
I am almost sure that the "mandatory fun" that the article described initially started as employees lead initiative that turned "mandatory", when he employees championing them started reaching position of power within the company. That's when people started feeling like they had to participate to impress their boss.
I can't wait for Janine "fun yoga zoom class" to become "mandatory" when said Janine becomes manager of her team and people notice that she has a privileged relationship with people who participate because they have something in common. And the cycle will repeat. There is no reason to believe the pattern has fundamentally changed.
> I am almost sure that the "mandatory fun" that the article described initially started as employees lead initiative that turned "mandatory", when he employees championing them started reaching position of power within the company.
It doesn't even have to get that far. I have low-level manager friend who's being pressured into leading "mandatory fun" events by his team. He hates that kind of thing, but if he doesn't do it his team will complain (not specifically about mandatory fun, but vaguer morale things) and it will look bad.
I don't understand...the team will complain? But it's his job to lead and take care of the team. He's not being pressured, it's part of the job. It's like when employee #2 is having a big fight with #3 because he never cleans the common kitchen after preparing his coffee. You might not care about the feelings of #2 but you have to do something, you are not pressured into it because the team can't stand the situation.
But the comment I was responding to was about these things becoming more "employee led" by people who actually want to participate. In this case it's a kind of weird up-down pressure by a couple people who who may want these events, but would rather complain than take the initiative themselves.
Why does he need to lead it? A manager should delegate, especially for things like this that can easily be organised/lead by someone that actuallys wants to lead them.
> I can't wait for Janine "fun yoga zoom class" to become "mandatory" when said Janine becomes manager of her team and people notice that she has a privileged relationship with people who participate
Not exactly the same, but at a previous job at a fairly small company (~25 people in total) the CTO smoked, and there would be "smoke breaks" where all the smokers would spend 15 minutes, smoke a cigarette and talk. I didn't (and don't) smoke, but it was a little frustrating to see the people who smoked seemed to consistently get promotions and special privileges, I think largely due to more personal time with the CTO.
I'm pretty convinced that at least two of my coworkers noticed this and started smoking specifically because they thought it might help their careers, and in their mind the smoke breaks weren't "optional" if they wanted to progress.
That company went belly up about a year after I got there, so I'm glad I never partook, but it was certainly tempting sometimes.
I've seen this happen with other activities, too. Drinking in a bar where you know the VP will be present. Wednesday Strip club lunch. I once worked at a place with "Bring Your Gun To Work day" where we'd go to a firing range with the boss over lunchtime. Even things as innocent as Sportsball chat. I once did some basic learning about the Warriors because a boss's boss was a basketball fan. I didn't even know the rules of basketball and had to Google who the local team was. Optional activities that get you face-time with the boss are not really optional.
> I can't wait for Janine "fun yoga zoom class" to become "mandatory" when said Janine becomes manager of her team and people notice that she has a privileged relationship with people who participate because they have something in common.
This sounds like it could qualify as harassment in some jurisdictions if my last harassment training is anything to go by.
Using the ol' quadrant construct, I think we can create 4 categories of folks with respect to such activity:
1 | 2
-----
3 | 4
Above the line are folks who genuinely are open to friendship beyond work, below are folks are are not.
To the left are folks whose jobs encourage or require this extracurricular fun, to the right are folks whose jobs do not.
If you're a #1, things are great! Work is fun AND you're making new friends!
If you're a #2, things are ok, Work is work, and you have hobbies and activities outside of work too. You might wish you were in category #1 though.
If you're a #3, your job is causing undue stress and misery. You're having your arm twisted to do things you don't want to, perhaps due to outside commitments or maybe just lack of interest.
If you're a #4, there's mutual respect in the workplace and that's enough.
I guess the traditional view is that boring old companies led to people in categories #2 and #4. But then some companies declared themselves "fun" and set people up to be in categories #1 or #3. I don't see why it's so hard to arrange fun activities, while making it clear there's absolutely no pressure, and get people into categories #1 and #4.
I like your framing. I think the challenge is just that people have different personalities. Some will be happy to go out with coworkers multiple times a week (and will stay in #2 unless they get the social aspect), some will treat a company-comped steak dinner and drinks once a quarter as a tyrannical step towards slavery (and will easily slip from #3 to #4 at the mere suggestion). Hard to manage both types in the same team, especially if people are remote.
The worst is companies that mandate their "fun" on your time. Scheduling these events later in the day or after office hours, or - for some truly evil companies - on weekends.
I don't think it's healthy, and I suffer from that too. But I'll turn away if I see a tourist point a camera at me (well, not at me, obviously, at whatever interesting thing I'm standing near), I'm obsessively private about things like that, especially with colleagues. Sharing photos would be painful.
For one recent thing at a new company, we had to play "two truths and a lie" in a breakout room with 4 people I'd never met. Normally I can think on my feet but I ended up telling three truths by accident, and was then forced to lie about one of them being a lie to these complete strangers, which made me feel like a fraud incapable of even playing a basic icebreaker without being weird. And I'm not weird! Basic as you get. Ugh.
And I've got another one of those godawful 300 person-with-breakouts ra-ra sessions coming up in 15 minutes.
Tangentially related: I was deeply relieved to be able to take a required training course on one of the standard corporate "don't be a bad person" topics virtually, thinking I would be spared the inevitable small group discussions. I of course completely overlooked Zoom's breakout room functionality and had to deal with two hours of periodic awkwardness as three of us started at a countdown timer and tried to stretch 30 seconds of bullet point discussion into 7 minutes.
It's never healthy or normal to get anxiety attacks from a situation that is not genuinely dangerous. For example an anxiety attack from being chased by a crazy dude would be normal. In any normal social situation, no.
That isn’t an anxiety attack situation. Even a job interview should not be. There are other means of making a living if you lose your job. Not if you get killed by a crazy dude. It is never healthy or normal to have an anxiety attack due to a work event
Should go on the attack with HR that this discriminates against neurodivergent people who aren't comfortable with social situations and who don't document their lives on their phones. Maybe throw in that its possibly ageist against older employees who didn't grow up with facebook in their teens.
True work life balances acknowledges that we have lives outside of business, that coworkers are not family, and that higher bonuses and flexible time off policies are more appreciated than anything else. If we wanted to be here and suffer the tedious bedlam of your office politics, you wouldn't need to pay us.
This is a sentiment I see expressed all the time from friends and peers that are in engineering and product that I don't see as much on the sales side of things. I don't know if it's the Austin tech community that seems slightly more focused on treating your co-workers and employees with humanity, the nature or type of people on sales teams, or just a coincidence in my limited experience, but I tend to try to work at places where I genuinely like the people I'll be working with and build real friendships (though still in a different context than non work friendships) and it seems a lot better than other's experience.
You have to spend ~1/3 of your waking life working in almost all cases and I can't imagine trying to frame it solely as an impediment to the other things I could be doing or other people I could be interacting with.
I feel negative about work and the concept of work even a lot of the time, but I don't like the idea of fully giving into that and accepting that 1/3 of all my time will be captured by some not valuable time sink with people I'd rather not speak to. I don't think I could live that way for long.
I was wooed by koolaid and 'perks' at companies when I was fresh out of school, but when that faded or failed, it was the people you could build relationships with, learn and win/fail with that really makes it tolerable to go into an office or spend 8 hours a day making someone else a bunch of money.
My biggest question looking at orgs is if they look at people as human beings or cogs in a machine first, and at what level as you go up the chain, if any, that stops. When you read about Amazon forcing leadership to distance themselves from DR so they can not feel when they shrewdly make the business more efficient, that is one of the most glaring examples.
> places where I genuinely like the people I'll be working with and build real friendships
These are dangerous places to work for people who like co-workers because they hold up their end of the work, and have their own criteria for choosing friends. It turns work into high school, with an in-group and outgroups. Those outgroups will often be older people with children and lives, or something like all of the women or all of the Indians.
I'm friends with people I would never work with, and I love working with people who I would never be friends with. People don't have to be everything for me, they just have to be at least one thing well. I choose my friends carefully, and they were difficult to find. A job is arbitrary people thrown together by their ability to do that job. The odds that I would want to be friends with a bunch of them are about the same as the odds that I would want to be friends with everyone at a random bus stop. The odds that I would want to work with them are a lot better. Settle for that.
edit: I'm actually annoyed when I realize that a coworker would make a good friend. I have to say things to coworkers sometimes that I would never say to friends, because coworkers need to get shit done.
Yeah I don't disagree with you entirely. I worked at a place with the 'outgroup' feeling you describe.
I think the word 'friend' is too broad here. Maybe the French ami versus copain is more apt[1].
While I wouldn't say many co-workers are close friends, all but a handful have been or could possibly be good acquaintances.
Another way to say it is I wouldn't mind spending a couple hours at a happy hour with them chatting.
Since we're such social creatures and how that maps to our physical and mental health, I still worry too hard a line between the the two and how much we all work could be risky/detrimental.
I fondly recall the mandatory volleyball games at my first employer. The guy with no arms got hired; played one game, and kicked ass. Suddenly the games weren't mandatory anymore and the bosses' kids took up baseball instead of volleyball.
I asked this question on Reddit a while back and this seems like a good place to ask the question now:
I'm a brand new manager, managing several reports and we are all remote. I've been tossing thoughts in the back of my head around on various ways we could bond as a team. My managers suggest that we do Zoom happy hour but I honestly cringe at the idea. With that said does anyone have any suggestions for things I can do with the team that wouldn't be "mandatory fun"?
My thought on it thus far is if we are all remote, the best thing you can do is to just support your team and not get in the way with various activities and such. But I would love to be proven wrong.
Any activity that involves potentially bonding with your boss will always suck. The potential for power dynamic interactions gets in the way of relaxing.
If you think your team needs to be better meshed with each other, then suggest to one of them (who, after discussion, seems to think the same) that they propose an out-of-work bonding thing to their coworkers. And that they invite the rest of their team, but—crucially—not you.
Much more likely to be seen as a pleasant activity, rather than “mandatory fun.”
Now, if you as a manager want to bond better with your team yourself… I have no honest idea.
Probably you can at least build empathy, by taking on some of the worst “somebody’s gotta do it” work they’d otherwise be doing, to shield them from said work and instead keep them on work that’s their comparative advantage. They may never notice this / may take it for granted, though.
(But the real trick is to rise through the ranks from a non-managerial role, and ensure everyone already vibes with you before the promotion to management.)
Just remember, you can be someone's boss or their friend. Pick one.
I'm not saying you can't be friendly. But you need to lose any illusion that you can be friends with your direct reports. And the way to be a great boss is respecting people's time. So instead of piling more stuff onto their calendars, try to identify some time wasting meetings/ceremonies and replace them with something fun and engaging.
I don't know what the remote version of this is, but instead of having an "after work" event, we found that having a lunch or event during work hours was far more valuable. While it's only been done a few times it seems that people really just want to go home after work, so the current thinking (subject to change) is that any "fun" thing needs to be during paid time and not disrupt family and personal time.
After all, employee happiness from a company perspective, is really primarily for the benefit of the company so paying for it, in time and resources, should be an acceptable expense.
We used to have a happy hour at the office when we were in person. Snacks, alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages, etc.
When the company went remote due to COVID, we kept the time as an open chat. Most people joined in, some with beverages, some from their backyards, and some just kept their cameras off and mic on mute. I think it worked well. The understanding (carried over from when it was in person) was that it was completely optional and that definitely helped.
As far as non-mandatory fun goes, it has to be on "company time." And you really need to emphasize that it is optional (this means not doing anything that requires you to know the number of attendees ahead of time) and that there are no repercussions for not going.
I remember two outings at the same company, same department but under different managers: with manager A we went to lunch and a movie but anyone who wanted to could just take the afternoon off instead. Under manager B we went to a movie (with paid snacks - company budget was less then) but it was either go to the movie or stay at work. There was a definite difference in vibe at the two events.
IMO, I think the best way to bond with your team really depends on who the people in your team are, and how easy / difficult it is to physically travel to be together.
For a year I worked hybrid (mostly remote) with a guy who was a single gamer. We'd try to play a game once a week; it was never mandatory. We met face-to-face every other month or so in the office and had lunch together.
In another remote position, we occasionally flew to the main office to meet each other face-to-face. We made a point of having team lunches.
For example: If everyone is within a 90-minute drive, coordinate a monthly (or quarterly) day together. Provide lunch, and focus on a task that works best face-to-face, like whiteboarding.
If many people need to fly, consider a yearly meetup at a hotel with a conference room.
Regarding a traditional "happy hour," I think if your team can't spend 30-60 minutes chit-chatting over some snacks, you have bigger problems. Feel out your team about alcohol, the presence of alcohol can make some people uncomfortable; but on other teams is perfectly welcome.
"With that said does anyone have any suggestions for things I can do with the team that wouldn't be "mandatory fun"?"
Anything work related is "mandatory".
And bonding happens also naturally, when people work together on something with success.
Mandatory remote team bonding sounds bound to fail in most cases.
Depending on the size if the team and their interests, maybe some computer games could be fun and useful. I probably wouldn't say no to play battlefield or Left4Dead on company time with coworkers. But not everyone enjoys that.
Hang out with the people you're already buddies with. Make it reciprocal, don't always be the one inviting the other, they should invite you half the time. If you foster an environment where you already have a collegiate environment at work, your subordinates will naturally like to move that fun out of the office from time to time.
In short, make it optional, don't make it regular ("we have a happy hour every Friday :^D"), and make sure it's reciprocal.
A sibling comment mentioned how awkward the power dynamic can be when doing any social activity with your direct reports. That's definitely true, but I don't think that means you shouldn't try something.
There are plenty of online games, from card games, to pictionary/drawing, to word games. I'd start with short list of options, let the team select one, and play during an existing team meeting. Limit it to 30 minutes during normal work hours. That way there's no pressure to stay late or give up a lunch break.
If the team is brand new (to each other and to you), there are get-to-know-you activities. One that's kinda fun is "3 things" where each employee gives three things about themselves, but only one is true (or one is a lie), and the team has to guess which is true/lie. Sometimes unconvers interesting/unique things about employees - I had an employee who was a pro golfer at one point, stuff like that. Same as above - during an existing meeting, not after work or during lunch.
FWIW I'd personally be quite annoyed if my employer were encouraging at-home alcohol consumption in the form of "zoom happy hour", prioritizing corporate team building over my home environment's quality at my/my household's expense. I don't even keep alcohol around, it would be akin to encouraging me to have cake around just so I can eat it on a virtual meeting scheduled specifically for cake consumption, another junk food I don't keep around and never really consume.
"drink up, happy hour is now enforced by law" - Dead Kennedys [0]
I don't drink, so I tend to drink water at such events. If you feel pressure, people can't tell what you're drinking. Iced tea, or whiskey? Gin, or water? Bloody Mary, or V8 with a salt rim? Moscow mule, or who cares, it's an opaque cup?
What about a recovered/recovering alcoholic employee liable to slip into this enabler trap?
I'm not personally plagued with this problem, but have no difficulty empathizing with the situation and think it's completely asinine for employers to encourage drinking among employees.
> What about a recovered/recovering alcoholic employee liable to slip into this enabler trap?
I absolutely hate that, and yes, that strikes very close to home. Over the years, I've had countless coworkers, peers and even a couple of managers, pressure me hard to drink. The pressure they're willing to apply skyrockets as they get more drunk. All I'm saying is, it's easier to deflect over zoom.
And that is the very hard line for a happy hour: No one should be "getting drunk" or otherwise visibly intoxicated on company time.
That's something I'd bring up with HR / upper management or my direct. "I had enough pressure to drink to excess in my college fraternity. I don't want it in my workplace."
I was fortunate that my last team was a group of engineers that all liked video games. So we downloaded 0AD and beat the crap out of each other for a few hours one Friday.
Crucially, they'd been nagging ME for months to do some sort of team bonding thing but nobody wanted to do the usual Zoom HH; everyone was well past the novelty of that by late summer 2020.
I'd inherited the team during the pandemic, we were spread out over 4,000 miles and six time zones, and we'd grown the team by hiring remotely too. So it was important, but the initiative came from them and I just facilitated it.
I struggle with this as well. My team grew during COVID, and many of them are in different locations. In many ways, they haven't been able to gel as a team. There are other managers who had teams before COVID hit and their virtual hangouts just amplify the bond they had before.
People will complain about these events, but I just don't know any other way to help teams learn about each other.
>People will complain about these events, but I just don't know any other way to help teams learn about each other.
In gaming, there are entire genres which expect people to cooperate to get better results. Initially, they don't know anything about each other, but in functional groups there's at least a silent agreement to work together and not cause a fuss. Let's say in professional environments, it's fair to expect most employed people would do the same (ergo, the hiring process properly filtered the problem people out).
Eventually people end up working together on things more and more. From there, depending on their personalities, they will either learn more about each other, or come to an agreement they are only there to do the work. Both outcomes are fair, though individuals might feel left out when their expectations aren't met (team culture mismatch).
By introducing these events, it feels like managers are trying to fastforward a process which would happen naturally, through events which have little to do with the work at hand. If your projects need collaboration, surely these people will eventually communicate with one another and go through the flow illustrated above. I only expect managers to step in when there's a clear mismatch or sign of dysfunction within the team.
And honestly, I'm skeptical whether functional adults as a whole enjoy the attempts at fastforwarding the process. These events have a tendency to feel forced and infantilizing.
> And honestly, I'm skeptical whether functional adults as a whole enjoy the attempts at fastforwarding the process.
I certainly don't. I'm there to make money, not friends.
I've tried making friends at work before, and it was never worth it. They expect you to be there for them, they're never there for you, and once you've left the company you might as well have never existed to them.
Ironically the money part is a very good reason for people not to misbehave to begin with. If they don't misbehave, that alone should provide ample opportunity for the group to figure out if they want to just work or do more.
I just got onto a new project, and one of the first things the lead said was that they do a Zoom happy hour every Friday at 4pm. I told her, "That's fine. Keep on doing that, but don't expect me to show up. If I want to socialize over Zoom I can do that on my own time."
No, I'm not fun at parties. I'm the designated driver.
The second statement shouldn't follow from the first. I'm plenty fun at parties, but work "friends" is a negative concept to me, and manager enforced "team bonding" is stupid.
I bond with my teammates by working with them, by overcoming struggles, confusion, stupid corporate policy, and deadlines with them. We learn to trust each other, to reach out to each other, and help each other. They are not my friends, they are my coworkers.
Managers, stop trying to force coworkers into my personal life. I have multiple groups of amazing, personal, and dedicated friends. None of them come from work.
> I've been tossing thoughts in the back of my head around on various ways we could bond as a team.
What is the problem that lead to you thinking about this in the first place? Maybe somebody will be able to give you better advice if you can be more specific about what needs to be corrected.
Proactively investing in team health, is the closest thing to a free lunch as far as improving team outcomes. Try different things and see what works, but definitely do something if you want to find out what the highest version of your team could be.
It will hurt you...unless it doesn't. The things we worry about rarely end up being the things that smack you in the back of the head in the middle of the night.
The enforced fun stuff at the hellscape company that laid me off were a non-issue. The layoff got me in a position to go work for a much less poisonous place.
Heh, you just made me realize my favorite kind of mandatory fun is the sort that forces a bunch of my co-workers to play some team sport (any team sport, really) with me that I don't get to play often as an adult, because it's usually difficult to get enough people together for it. I dislike most of the rest, but that kind's awesome. For me, anyway—probably some of the others hate it.
Haha ye. I hate "mandatory fun" unless it is soccer or longball or whatever I never have chance to do otherwise. Strangely, those events are usually actually not "mandatory" but just enthusiasts wanting to play team sports.
The good part of that is probably that it's still work (a fun kind of work.) You're not trying to come up with things to talk about or to be witty. The subject is the game. I wonder if boardgaming could work the same way.
The remote aspect makes a lot of these engagements more pathetic, not that I really enjoyed them in person.
We had Zoom 'happy hours' where people drank alcohol and rambled about inane stuff. It was certainly an hour, but happy? No, more like depressing hours.
I didn't mind mandatory fun that's just stuff you might do anyway like going down the pub with your colleagues and maybe your boss to get some pints it, but I'm really not a fan of structured mandatory fun that involves a sense of obligation.
If you were working with somebody you respect would you ask them to lunch or dinner? Sure, perfectly normal in every society on earth. However would you invite them to a sack race?
The cadaverous reek of mandatory fun was best captured by the impressively pathetic David Brent in the original UK Office series (portrayed by Ricky Gervais).
The moment when he points to a stuffed monkey on top of the coat-rack to demonstrate how much fun it is to work there... that moment is with me forever.
The problem with "fundatory" activities really is in how they're implemented. I've had managers schedule 'fun' activities... after the workday. I'm not spending any more time at work than I have to. If you want co-workers to celebrate birthdays, get to know each other better, etc. do it on the clock.
Also, most of my outside interests and lifestyle is not HR appropriate. So, outside of the work we do, I don't have much in common with coworkers. Or, at least, I don't know that I do because talking frankly about outside activities could lead to a trip to HR. So there's not really anything to talk about except works tangential to work. And I already do that for 1/3 of the day when I'm forced to. I'm not looking to talk about AWS outside of my working hours with the people on my immediate team.
Things change slightly when it stretches beyond my current workgroup. If I'm in an offsite training? Yeah, I'll go do the 'fun' stuff. Because that's where I can get to know new people and have potentially find a lead on my next job move.
But with my current team? After work? Nah... Unless it's with the one person on my team who shares the same taste in music. We can hang out a bit and talk about music.
I won't miss the Mandatory Fun Corporate T-Shirt. What a waste of resources. Printed up and shipped halfway around the world to be used one day and then donated to Goodwill. Let's do better!
The article casts office forced-fun birthday parties as toxic, and yet the only alternative mentioned is co-workers voluntarily gathering together to drink alcohol and complain over zoom...as if that isn't also toxic. Hello everyone, we can do better!
A better alternative is employee-led, voluntary gatherings. For example, my company will pay up to $1000 for any such gathering. Somebody organizes a gathering they want to do, and it's announced to the whole company. Anybody who wants to join can come too.
We used to have these things at our old company, and they were happy to pitch in with e.g. dinner; that way we've had board game, MTG or video game nights (for the last one they employed a company that supplied gaming PCs), sports events, hackathons, airsoft, you name it.
My current employer did a lowkey after work beer here and there, and during the pandemic, awkward "forced fun" zoom meetups which started off with the guy pulling things to remark on everyone's camera image. I mean I get it, someone has to do it because in this company nobody else will because they all just want to get paid and get on with their life, but still.
I was once at a mandatory Winter Holidays party at my startup. Family was invited, too. And what happened at the end was that we were all, family included, directed to pick up a computer or chair or other relatively lightweight piece of office furniture, load it into your car, and move it to the company's new location about five miles away. Surprise!
Since at the time I was driving a minivan, my family got to load up half the server room, racks included, and drive it to the new place.
A great example of forced celebration and socializing is The Circle by Dave Eggers. There's a moment early in the book between two characters. A man is very upset with a woman whom he has never met, and who was just hired by his company, because she failed to RSVP to his invitation for a company social event.
The ridiculousness-yet-very-serious nature of the scenario reads almost like satire, but it's what I've always imagined Silicon Valley's forced social events to be like.
The Circle can only really be enjoyed if read as an over-the-top satire in the vein of "if things go on this way." And the film was a great missed opportunity to do some sort of Strangelovian dark comedy rather than playing things straight.
A friend of mine is working in a somewhat larger, remotely working team and they have a retreat once or twice a year. It's usually a holiday destination, a few days (like the work week) and it looks quite fun. It's one of the few times where everyone can see each other and it's seems to do it's job well as a team-building exercise, and I think it's largely because it's bottom up. It's up to the engineers what they want to do.
It's a holiday together, somewhat boozy with different social activities where not everyone is forced to participate (some might need something physical in between and others are not really in shape to participate).
Which might be the secret to 'mandatory fun' in the office. Maybe just ask what they would like, listen a bit and gather feedback what worked and what not, instead of just booking some random team-building offering. Top-down, mandatory fun (with a focus on mandatory) is just not going to work.
I'm sure this isn't the same for everyone, but for me, my work environment is great. I love being in the office and socialising with people. We go for after work drinks twice a week. It's not mandatory (or even perceived mandatory), but I personally enjoy it for getting to know my coworkers outside of work contexts.
At my last job, we had an organically-developed years-old tradition of what we called "adventure lunch," a weekly outing where one attendee would nominate someone to choose another restaurant for next time. The shared experience of a brief walk was nice. There was no expectation that anyone would go and no judgment associated with nonattendance on a particular day.
We hired this director-level engineering manager who took it upon himself to commandeer the slack channel we had previously used to coordinate these outings, to dictate that they were now daily, and to dictate that he was in charge of choosing the location every day.
Covid quickly made the specific point moot, but they have since suffered nearly complete turnover in the engineering organization.
Severance [1] has a few bits about "office fun" which reflected how awkward work sponsored "fun" can really be.
Personally, the idea of "fundatory" is lost on me; I am working to perform a function that furthers an end goal and in return collect payment for doing so.
If work wishes to have a weekend event or a no-obligation after work get together, the people who wish to be there will happily show up with those who would rather not be there won't.
Or maybe it's just the sign of a meh place to work if there is mandatory fun?
I've worked at several (small I have to admit) companies where the people were usually honestly disappointed if they couldn't join the yearly weekend outings, the parties were fun and if someone didn't want to join, they didn't join. OK, I only started at my current one during the pandemic so I haven't actually met most of the people and it's also a bigger one, with actually separate departments, so no high hopes here, but I'm just saying that it doesn't have to be this bad.
My boss recently had a birthday party where he invited us to come and pay for our own pizza at a place of his choosing. He invited his wife and baby but no one else was allowed to bring partners. It was made out like it was optional but when I didn't respond to the invite he singled me out and I was the only one not going. Didn't feel like I had a choice really.
Or just cover small group lunches. Lots of bonding can happen over food. NOT at the office. Particularly important when there are older employees around. Like, you know, thirty four.
Happy hours are the fastest way to bond, because libations lead to openness, and openness leads to friendships. Do that while you can. Then switch to lunches. Or even dinners!
People are distinguishing between being friends with their boss and friends with their peers. Is there really a difference? Are people really cutting loose and opening up with their peers in a way that they wouldn't if their boss were physically in the room?
As an engineering manager of a team spanning 5+ time zones, i don't do any remote huddles, too cringy in my opinion. I offer free Friday afternoons for personal fun, and i travel to meet face to face every 2-3 month, on a volountary basis.
That's what I tried to tell students at a bootcamp, but then I never got hired back. They could just fuck off whenever they wanted to go play mario kart, and I tried to tell them that's not what they were paying them for.
If I hadn't just come back from a mandatory company onsite loaded with mandatory fun events, I'd understand this article. They haven't died, they've just become more concentrated, disruptive, and expensive.
Just started watching Severance on Apple+ TV and it's a dark thriller (far as I can tell early in) but it demonstrates tons of this corporate behaviour if you want to chuckle at the absurdity of some of our realities.
Just wrapped up Season 1 last night. But yes this article, especially the photos with people wearing Cones of Dunshire hats made me think of the corporate perks!
The intervention was in response to some big attrition and rage quits on the engineering team, and a general disconnect between that office and the rest of the company. Forgetting for a moment that a group of adults had to create these objectively demeaning expressions and then present what the glitter or animal stickers represented to each other, and to an exec with hire/fire authority, HR collected the artifacts at the end of the session - and when we returned to the office the next day, they were hung on the walls for all the managers' staff to see what we had accomplished on a day long retreat while everyone was under immense deadline pressure to ship features. One engineer saw these pathetic clusters of multi coloured clutter taped to the walls and with the horror of someone whose invested career so far depended on performance reviews from said managers, she asked, "seriously, what the hell is this?" We had pissed off eng staff to begin with, but what the exec team thought we needed was a kind of coup de grace to utterly discredit managers as men and women in front of the people whose livelihoods depended on their leadership.
Since then, what I have come to think these exercises are is a test of supplication, and of whether you can convincingly and competitively debase yourself better than your next peer. It was a kind of race to the bottom to demonstrate how sincerely you could erase your humanity and individuality in service to the narrative of a team, and what you were willing to do to survive. I've even come to suspect it's a system, where they take average people with impostor syndrome, make them debase and humiliate themselves in front of others, and then leverage the shame of the exercise into a new cruelty and compensatory sadism to squeeze out marginal effort from their staff. Now when I see glitter and crayons, I am reminded of how they tried to teach me to hate.