[greggman]

> Lunches

This actually reminds me why I think free lunches at company cafeterias might be a net negative.

At a more traditional company lunch involves

1. Gathering the group (who wants to go to lunch?)

2. Deciding where

3. Getting in cars

4. Driving to restaurant (5-10 mins)

5. Waiting for seating (5-10 mins)

6. Ordering

7. Waiting for order to arrive (5-10 mins)

8. Eating (10-15 mins)

9. Driving back to work (5-10 mins)

That's 30-55 minutes spent together talking, interacting.

At a company with a free lunch cafeteria steps 4, 5, 7, and 9 are removed. I worked for 5 years at a company that had free cafeteria lunches. While I appreciated saving money on lunch my personal impression is I got far less camaraderie, team spirit, etc from it than from the more traditional "drive to restaurant" style.

I'm not saying companies should get rid of free lunches. Only that maybe people should look into ways to increase the time spent building friendships etc...

[chris_mahan]

Also, people are a lot less free about what they talk about in the company cafeteria. At a restaurant, especially if there are few people there, they are more likely to speak their mind. That's very important to create rapport.

[sethammons]

At our company, we get free lunches from a local foodery daily. At lunch time, we all walk over and order food and walk back together and eat together. The 30+ of us typically go in two or three herds around the same time. This is great for our team cohesion. On top of that, a bunch of us go to the gym at the same time. Also great. For skill building, all code is code reviewed unless it was done during pair programming, which we do a lot of. By far, the best group of people and company I've had the opportunity to work with (other reasons too, but these seemed relevant to the topic).