re: #501 Obdicut

It’s very hard to distinguish, and the best intentions can lead to the propagation of a bad meme. Hell, it was one of my heroes, Frank Gilbreth came up with the meme “A happy worker is a productive worker”, and I feel that it’s done a lot of good as it penetrated the business world.

With some companies like Google, however, and with many Japanese companies, there is a very clear advocation that your fellow employees should be your best friends, that you should socialize a lot outside of work.

Basically, to me, nearly every company that promotes the idea that employees are like family, or friends, is being shamelessly dishonest.

Oh, gotcha. Yeah, we worked hard at my last company to provide a great place to work, but we gently frowned on post-work socialization (you can’t tell folks what to do, but you can suggest to your managers and supervisors that hanging out with their staff on a regular basis will only lead to trouble…you can’t spend equal time with everyone and you don’t always behave like you should).

So I think that various perks can be a smart way to retain talent but it ain’t a family. Bidness is bidness.