I am the type of person who appreciates this sort of thing, but it seems like we're in the minority.
Growing up, I always loved getting to see people from school / school clubs (e.g. FSAE team, photography, etc) out of the normal context. It really opens up relationships and helps you figure out how to work better as a team.
If someone's not there because they don't want anything to do with work after hours, it's hard to treat them fairly -- the people who do show up are going to start viewing them as an outsider, and they might get passed up on promotion for someone that the higher-ups got to know better after office hours. So, objectively, having a happy hour probably tends to punish the people that don't show up, turning it into a mandatory function. I'd never really thought about it that way.
I don’t think we’re in the minority. The HN crowd that is pro WFH has been extremely vocal since even before the pandemic.
For what it’s worth I was remote starting a couple years before the pandemic. I can’t wait to go back in at least a couple days a week. I can’t wait to spend time with my coworkers in some capacity.
Heck, most of the newly remote have only been doing so for twelve months; wait until your life has been one context for 3 years. It becomes quite brutal.
Liking this kind of thing correlates highly with being extraverted. In the general population, off the top of my head, "you people" (tongue in cheek) represent about 60%. In tech, I'd wager it's skewed heavily in favour of introverts.
In the event we did go socialist, UBI would be a much more effective way to allocate goods and services than a centrally managed economy. Let people determine what they need most, and use 'credits' to get it -- save the paperwork for less ordinary needs / circumstances.
I think the Baltimore Sun probably likes Europe just fine - what they don't like are self-contradictory rule sets that can cost them $20,000,000+ on top of the cost of achieving "compliance."
'Sarah Toporoff, a Massachusetts native who works in Paris for the Global Editors Network, which promotes newsroom innovation, raised similar questions. She said U.S. newsrooms “are a benchmark for digital innovation” — and it’s important that their content be available in Europe.'
'It is naive and wholly irresponsible to think that U.S. news holds no relevance beyond U.S. borders...'
Perhaps, then, Europe should've had some international discussion about their hyper-aggressive legislation, to try and prevent this situation. I am dumbfounded that anyone thinks the U.S. corporations are to blame for not spending millions to comply with a foreign law from countries where they have no legal representation.
Preventing that sort of 'taxation without representation' is something of a popular idea over here.
Compliance with GDPR is easy though - don't aggressively track and monitor European visitors. If you've stuffed your website that full with invasive trackers et al that you can't show it to Europeans for fear of broaching personal privacy legislation, you should probably have a good long think about where you've gone wrong.
GDPR is not merely a list of bad things to avoid, it adds a lot of ongoing burdens to every company active in the region. Hire more people. Actively investigate your own compliance. Wait months for government permission to deliver features.
There are people who aren't doing anything wrong, who did the math and decided they can't clear a profit on proving they aren't doing anything wrong.
(Paywall Ahead). Interesting look at the newest adult generation as the begin entering the workforce.
Trends to notice:
Higher rates of depression and anxiety. Less likely to drive, drink, party, have sex, or take out student loans. Fewer individuals desire to be their own employer than in previous generations.
Also, they are better with technology than Millennials.
From the article:
“They’re more like children of the 1930s, if children of the 1930s had learned to think, learn and communicate while attached to hand-held supercomputers,” says Bruce Tulgan, a management consultant at RainmakerThinking in Whitneyville, Conn.
Growing up, I always loved getting to see people from school / school clubs (e.g. FSAE team, photography, etc) out of the normal context. It really opens up relationships and helps you figure out how to work better as a team.
If someone's not there because they don't want anything to do with work after hours, it's hard to treat them fairly -- the people who do show up are going to start viewing them as an outsider, and they might get passed up on promotion for someone that the higher-ups got to know better after office hours. So, objectively, having a happy hour probably tends to punish the people that don't show up, turning it into a mandatory function. I'd never really thought about it that way.
That said, I'd still prefer to have them.