I’ve discovered one thing I love about commuting into the office:

The lunch group.

Commuting sucks; remote work is great, and everyone should embrace it.

Having said that, no one has successfully emulated lunch over the Internet.

Having lunch with a group of people in generally the same team/division/org, who are all wrestling with similar challenges, is a valuable, humanizing thing. I’ve learned much about the people behind the commits, built relationships with coworkers, and absorbed technical wisdom beyond mere documentation. I like to think that others have benefited from my opinions and experience as well.

But most importantly, lunch provides a zone of plausible deniability. This is a time when people can honestly air their grievances with no way for lawyers to later discover what was said. It affords taboos to be spoken, gossip to be spread, heresy to be shared, and value systems to be collectively and honestly applied to how the sausage is made, with little fear of retaliation. It allows us to be more fully human.

I haven’t found anything that replicates this. Not remotely.

• #opinion