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Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

The reality is we spend most of our waking lives at work. Other than those we had before we started, most of our friends (and even romantic partners) will be made there. Enforced work socializing is counterproductive, but enforced non-socializing is even worse. A good workplace should accept that people are social, that being able to play around for a few minutes in the middle of the day makes you more rather than less productive. That a workplace offers nerf guns does not prove that it will be a nice place to work, but it does at least show you that it's not stuck in joyless "professionalism" that would guarantee that it isn't one.

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> but it does at least show you that it's not stuck in joyless "professionalism" that would guarantee that it isn't one.

I agree with most of your comment but I disagree with that. I think you have to define what a "joyless, professional" work environment really means. To me, it means nobody enjoys their work, nobody feels challenged, nobody feels heard, rather everyone is just a cog/code monkey. If that's the case, throwing in some nerf guns and free soda won't change anything.

However, to you, a "joyless, professional" work environment seems to mean one where people aren't friendly with each other, and nobody has any fun when they're at work but not currently working. In that case, some toys actually might help a good deal.

So I guess it's a subjective topic and both are equally valid definitions depending on your values.

I think "professionalism" is one of many factors that can lead a workplace to be joyless; I didn't mean it's the only way to cause that (as I know from personal experience).

The reality is we spend most of our waking lives at work.

Bloody hell, that sounds so depressing when you put it like that...

Even more sad if you live in a northern climate. You get go to work in the dark, and return in the dark. Daylight is just something that happens during work.

I live in Sweden. When I was an employee I didn't get any sun on me during a significant chunk of the year.

I run my own business these days.

Really? I sleep about 8 hours a day, and work 8-10 hours a day. That's 6-8 hours of being awake and not working, plus 2x16 hours of not working on the weekend.

So worst case scenario, in a week, I spend 50 hours at work and 62 hours being awake and not working. If your numbers are not in that ballpark, you probably want to re-evaluate whether all the hours you spend at work are optimal :)

But those hours "being awake" include eating, showering, doing house chores, etc. In reality it's 10 hours work (including commute) vs 3-4 hrs non-work, and ~10 on the weekend. So the usual number is 50:40 at best, not 50:62.

You don't even need to do the math, we've all been there: get up, go to work, come back at 7-8pm, have dinner, 2hrs to do something then sleep.

If professionalism feels joyless to you, you are doing it wrong.

I believe that was the intent of the quotation marks.

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