[twunde]

For most companies these fun events are optional, although the expectation is that while individual events aren't mandatory, everyone is expected to attend at least a few or if not there should either be a good reason. For most companies there should be a variety of events so that there should at least be a few events that every person is genuinely excited to go to (and importantly these events shouldn't all involve drinking). Some examples of events that my company has run are cooking class, escape the room, pumpkin carving, meditation, weekend hackathon, volunteering (I think the last one was running bingo night), picnic at a park, happy hour, sports league teams (soccer, volleyball and basketball), boat rides, team dinners. We have a decent number of engineers that miss many of these events because of parental responsibilities or travel times, but everyone should be able to do a few of these, especially when some are done in the office during work hours. The point is that there should be a number of inclusive events where you get to know your colleagues on a personal level. And to your main complaint, why should you be expected to attend a few of these events? These events build trust and relationships between employees, especially ones that wouldn't normally have relationships such as one between finance and engineering or for security/compliance and any other department. The relationships that are built are important for work between multiple departments or teams and typically help provide context for projects. These team events are designed to prevent feuding departments/political battles, allow for backchannels for when there are issues that one can't show to your management, and generally allow for better prioritization and better understanding of context behind projects/tickets (ie if Business Operations comes to you with a request you are more likely to go through and understand the context if it's someone you know).