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Comment by renjimen | Hacker News Reader

I do this with my team. We spend more than half of our weekly 30 minute 1-on-1s talking about anything but work. That isn't written down anywhere, it's just a natural consequence of us being interested in each others' lives, and prioritizing that over "getting back" 20 minutes to do more work.

We also have a team-wide monthly "happy hour" where we bring one discussion point each, usually an interesting article. They're a lot of fun, and I appreciate my colleagues in a much more rich way than I would have otherwise.

It's so obviously important that we maintain semblance of community through live conversation in remote workplaces. I spend more time "with" my remote colleagues than I do with anyone else in my life, including my wife. The human brain does not separate cleanly into "colleagues" and "friends".

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What if they don’t want to spend their time making small talk with their boss or manufactured chit chat at a happy hour?

I get that a lot of people need this. I don’t need my work to provide a social life, I’d rather get my shit done and leave. When I socialize in a work capacity I’m doing it because it helps me do my job better, not because I want to

If they don't feel like chatting they don't need to. I guess I have a chatty team. We don't always fill the 30 minutes, but we often do. It doesn't feel performative and I wouldn't waste our time if it did.

There's no consequence to skipping the happy hour but everyone shows when they can and is engaged and contributes to the conversation. We often talk about culture, politics, economics other topics most folks have a general interest in.

> I don’t need my work to provide a social life

Fair, not everyone sees work as a community, but many do. Remote culture is hard to build but it needs to allow for folks who still need human connection in their workplace.

The risk I often see is when the company also emphasizes this 'family' ideal. I think that is unnatural and forced; most of my associates hated this. It ruins the work-life balance.

I found it more important to emphasize trust, and allow them to handle these conversations/attendance If they couldn't, that's fine. Outside factors can disrupt this, ... So I wouldn't complain if there was a no show once in a while.

We had a monthly tea(m)time to share tea and talk about anything, hobby topic or something technical. It was fun to see what people do with 3d printers, especially those that had no time/space for this.

This isn't a company policy, it's just something I make space for in my team. There's no pressure to connect beyond the required work items.

The happy hours are only an hour a month during work hours, where we talk about stuff everyone on the team is interested in, like economics, culture and politics. Most people seem engaged and bring interesting stuff to talk about.

We also do a more formal "data blitz" in our ML team labs, where folks bring vaguely data-related topic to talk about for 10 minutes, but that requires a little prep. Those are always fun. We've had people rating diaper brands and showing their marathon training schedules.

I've had 1:1s like this and I'll tell you it was entirely performative. Yes my manager and I chatted about non work stuff for half or even all of the meeting but it was all fake, just talk to get through the meeting.

Yeah, that's not great.

It's not like we try to fill the 30 mins, but I think we all crave a little connection with our colleagues, so make use of the time to catch up. I've worked with these same team members for over 3 years, so we are all a little invested in each others' lives by now. Obviously I'm not going to force a new team member to divulge everything about their lives, or go through my weekend in detail unless they're actually interested in chatting. It's pretty clear when someone just wants to get on with their work, rather than chat.

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