Stop eating at your desk.

Why more teams at work should have lunch together

Recently, Severin Hacker, CTO and Cofounder of Duolingo posted about how teams including him and his Cofounder Luis von Ahn have lunch together everyday and that's fundamental to their company culture. In fact, he finds them more useful than engagement surveys, given it's an unprepared conversation where employees and new hires discuss what's working for them, what's really frustrating them, play out new ideas and so on. Conversations that would never have happened otherwise.

And, this hit home. At every place I've worked at, we've had lunch together. And that's made all the difference. Whether in my current team at Amazon where we religiously go for lunch together everyday (well, almost everyday) and avoid meetings between 1 to 2, at ThoughtWorks where the company provided lunch and hence most of us ate together or in my first organisation, Dasra. Eating lunch together with other colleagues is something I really enjoy and look forward to.

At lunchtime, I have learnt so much about what others that I don't closely work with are working on, had opportunities to vent frustrations out and move on with my day, shared great food, heard stories about fun holidays and simply built good friendships. In fact, at Dasra, apart from other weekdays, on every Friday, we had a special lunch and this was a thing where the whole org of about 150 people ate together and we ordered food for everyone. Its a memory that's lasted more than 10 years.