Offsite retreats seem like a bad idea in general, I've never been to one where I felt the team or company worked together better afterwards, and I've seen some spectacularly bad results... like the time the facilitator tried to get to the bottom of tensions between the CTO and head of sales (the classic problem of "Engineering isn't shipping features fast enough" and "Sales is selling features before even consulting with engineering"). The discussion quickly turned shockingly personal and within a month after the retreat both the CTO and head of sales quit. At least they called an end to the retreat early.

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gkoberger 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I feel like our offsites, especially in a post-COVID remote world, tend to improve communication and productivity. People get to know their coworkers, and feel much more comfortable working cross-functionality.

I've had some bad experiences, of course, but overall I've found it to be incredibly worth it.

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annzabelle 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I think there's a difference between getting employees who work remotely from each other into the same room for a week, and a "retreat" offsite where pseudo-theraputic approaches are used to try to get employees to open up or bond socially.

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gkoberger 24 minutes ago | parent [-]

I think “retreat” is used pretty colloquially and doesn’t imply pseudo-therapy.

	▲	annzabelle 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		From the article: > “Vulnerability-Trust exercise” From your parent comment: > the facilitator tried to get to the bottom of tensions between the CTO and head of sales I was referring specifically to these sorts of things. Retreat doesn't always include this, but sometimes it does, and when it does it's a stupid idea.

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jraby3 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We have one annually for my company. It's at a casino, with a few scheduled meals and some activities (video game room, trivia done by a professional company).

It's voluntary and employees are allowed to bring their spouse. I think it helps a lot with communication, especially since we are a distributed team and most peoplr don't see each other.

But it's hard for me to know for sure, no one tells the owners the truth. It is voluntary and almost everyone attends. I think most people think of it as a free vacation.

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adastra22 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sounds like it was productive!

	▲	solatic 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I might be reading too closely / projecting, but... Sounds like an ineffectual CEO who didn't understand that his role, like any manager, is to help resolve interpersonal conflict between his subordinates that they're having trouble working out themselves. Outsourcing that to a random coordinator reeks of conflict-avoidant behavior. That they both quit tells me that neither one thought the other was the sole problem they were dealing with.
	▲	paxys 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I agree, unironically. Not all workplace tensions can be resolved amicably. Often the only solution is for one of the parties to go. The sooner it happens, the better.
	▲	protocolture 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Not one but 2 managers removed. Amazing result.
	▲	sublinear 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		No it wasn't. Those kinds of conflicts always have blame for the rest of the execs too.

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crossroadsguy an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

These often happened on weekends and I used to simply ask my manager about the days off for this and answer often was a shocked face and a no. So I rarely attended those.

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foobarian 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Reminds me of that super cringy one that Wizards of the Coast did early on

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kube-system 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Retreats like this just concentrate the social dynamics of the people the organization has hired. I think people’s experience with them is directly correlated with the caliber of people you work with.

All of the stupid shit I’ve seen happen at these events have been done by people who I don’t miss working with

Maybe a retreat would be a good 3rd round interview.

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sidewndr46 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

this could pretty much be it's own editorial, if you're feeling journalistic

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jitl 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

i’ve been to a bunch and all resulted in a big increase in trust between teams especially between tech and sales. i mended a few poor relationships at the last notion one in maui, made some lifelong friends. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ maybe for every shitty one there’s 2 that are great