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Comment by fleddr | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

Then the relationship building excercise should be during normal work hours.

In my experience, the “fun” exercise is only a problem when it is after work hours and not appropriately compensated.

> 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.

This can get weird if you're the boss and offering to buy drinks, if only because it can reinforce a power dynamic you already see in the office.

Have the company open up a tab. It's a business expense.

Yeah...some of us don't drink.

Buy me food, however, and barring a conflict, I'll go. ;)

> 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...

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.

Thanks for your input!

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.

> to create social bonds

To create the bonds you wanted, to benefit you, and not because they naturally just wanted to, so not genuine.

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.

I don't recall who said it but the theory that stuck with me is that atrocities are always committed in the name of expediency.

Beware of anyone trying to sell you on why something is the quickest way to a goal.

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.

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