Joel Spolsky: Lunch

Going to lunch with people affords me the opportunity to hear them complain about their job. Sometimes, although they might not realize, their complaints are things that I can fix for them. They're my best source of ideas for projects.

"GUH! I keep asking $so_and_so for new $office_supply, but I guess we're out of it, WTF!?"

Hmm...maybe we need an inventory tracking system for the office supplies?

"$so_and_so is gone today, and she is the only one with the $excel_spreadsheet on her computer. It sucks because I can't get ahold of her and I need $excel_spreadsheet!"

Well how can we solve this? Why aren't they using the file server for this stuff?

And so on.

I work for Google in one of the larger offices (New York). Here we have several cafeterias. You go at anytime (in the meal times), take what you want, eat it there or eat it at your desk.

You can eat with team mates, by yourself, with friends from other teams, with random strangers or whatever.

I love this for several reasons:

1. There is obviously the cost aspect (not having to pay for lunch) but for me this is probably the least important part;

2. It saves so much time. Other places I've worked, going out to lunch means 30-60 minutes for a lunch break. Here you can eat and be back at your desk, if you want to, within a few minutes. Waiting for elevators, waiting in line, etc are all such incredible time wasters;

3. When choosing where to go and what to get for lunch, you're basically asking me to make decisions I don't care about. This I hate. Here I simply choose what cafeteria to go (typically the closest one) and take from the selection. I don't have to decide about where to go, what to get. I simply taken what's (generously) offered.

(3) for me is probably the most important. This one applies to software and hardware too and is (IMHO) one of the key reasons for Apple's success: Apple is unafraid and unapologetic about making most decisions for you. These decisions are right for most people most of the time.

Joel had an old blog post on this (probably the famous "Controlling Your Environment Makes You Happy" one that everyone should read) that said something like this: every option you give someone forces them to make a decision. I would go on to add that every decision has a cognitive cost, which simply annoys the decider if they're deciding on something they don't really care about.

Now, on a smaller scale I can see work lunches being a problem. If you need to be there at a set time, have limited opportunity for mingling or your team is so small that if you don't want to get stuck with someone (eg you don't like them or you simply don't want to talk about work).

So I see edw519's point. On a sufficiently large scale however, provided meals are fantastic.

Personally I think this is an utterly ridiculous idea. Perhaps you love it. Perhaps many others do too. But perhaps also there are those of us who want to spend their lunchtimes not socialising but meditating; who want to be alone rather than with others; who want get outside and have a change of scenery. Gosh, perhaps they even want to meet other people for lunch! As shocking as it may seem to you, all of these things are entirely compatible with enjoying one's job.

At my last job (which I can only I assume I must have hated, although to be honest it didn't seem like it at the time) I almost always went out for lunch, on my own. Sometimes I made a sandwich that morning; often I bought something from the market. I bought a coffee; I took my time. I thought about the problems I was working on, and often, it was the most productive time of the whole day. I figured out the architecture of the applications I was building, and wrote code in my head. When I got back to the office, I sat down at the computer and typed it in. In fact, I'd probably go so far as to say that if I'd been sitting down and chatting while I had lunch, my overall productivity would have dropped precipitously.

This is by no means an argument against socialising with one's coworkers; it's not even an argument against having lunch with them. All I'm saying is that we're not all like you.

The caterer is great about not repeating meals very often (we probably go 2-3 weeks before seeing the same thing twice). Most everything is healthy, there's always a vegetarian option, salads, etc.