We've done this twice so far at Sincerely. Once to Puerto Vallarta Mexico when our team was ~7 people. And once to Tahoe for a ski-cation when we were at ~9 people. Both were week-long trips and cost under $1k per person. We are doing Mexico again soon with our team of 14.
Quick thoughts:
- We like to ship stuff while on these trips. I find it unproductive to do brainstorming or planning on these trips. We plan before we go. We execute while we are away. And on drunken walks home from the club or sunburned strolls back from the beach, we come up with great ideas that we quickly turn into new realities for our users.
- The trips end up defining elements of company culture. It has been on these trips where we've started our board game culture, our exercise culture, etc
- For several of our employees, this was the first time they had left the country. Most of us do startups because they are challenging and an amazing learning environment. It is nice to extend that learning experience into other aspects of our human experience - like traveling abroad.
- I always dreamed about working at a company that did cool things like workcations to Mexico. And the best thing about running your own startup is that you can actually redefine the traditional work place. Be the change you want to see in the world. It feels really really good.
Does anybody else not want to see their co-workers outside of work?
I mean, I love my coworkers, but I love the rest of my life too, and I don't really want to go on a 10-day trip where I'm away from family/friends every evening. I don't want to go hiking or clubbing with my coworkers.
I want to work with my coworkers, and hike with my friends, and maybe there will be a little bit of intersection there, but it will be my choice and happen naturally.
I need to be away from work to recharge, and spending time with coworkers outside of work doesn't really let me do that.
Pretty narrow view. First, it's not "outside of work". What was described _is_ work. Second, it's 10 days out of the year, not 365. It's not meant to replace or displace any other recharging you might engage in. And, wow, maybe work with people you could consider friends?
> First, it's not "outside of work". What was described _is_ work.
Then even worse -- I want to be working during the workday, and living my life outside of that. Not working for ten-day stretches, unless there's an external deadline to meet and there's simply no choice.
> Second, it's 10 days out of the year, not 365.
The post says it's 10 days a day "several times a year" -- assuming that's 4-5 times, that's an entire two months away from my normal life, which I enjoy too much to give up a whole sixth of it.
> not meant to replace or displace any other recharging you might engage in
Then, once again, no thanks -- going 10 days without any recharging with my friends/family is simply not my idea of a good time.
> maybe work with people you could consider friends?
That's the thing about work -- your coworkers are generally chosen for you, based on their professional skills -- not chosen by you, for their personalities.
If you become close personal friends with some of them over time, then that's wonderful. But how on earth are you going to expect someone to take a job somewhere where their coworkers are friends? That would be an incredibly privileged position to be in, which very few people are lucky enough to be in. If that's your case, then I'm very happy for you, but don't extrapolate to most of us.
It's not narrow, just different. We're not all 20 something's with free schedules.
Once you have kids and become involved in their lives, something like this goes from being an enjoyable vacation-like work-bonding experience to ridiculous pain-in-the-ass to schedule time away from family requirement.
That isn't to say that it can't or shouldn't be done outright, but that like anything, it should be done with regard to the people and personalities on your team's best interests at heart.
I appreciate this kind of trip and culture is not for everyone.
But I worry about the stereotype you project - we're not all 20-somethings, and I think even our 20-somethings would object to you thinking they had anything like "free schedules"!
I totally agree with your comment that anything like this needs to be done with regard to the people and personalities on your team.
I have wife and kids, definitely not 20-something anymore, and work at a global company (i.e., not startup). Last year I spent 120+ days on the road.
While I respect that some people may not accept they have to travel for work at all, I don't think the stereotype of "only single 20-something with free time would do it" is valid. And 10 days, a couple of days per year is not really unreasonable.
If you love what you do, make it happen. If you don't like, then quit and go work on another place where travel is no req'd.
However, one of the reason this often works for small startups is that we hire our friends. From among my friends, I find the people whose abilities I know best, who I trust the most, and who I'm confident I can work well with. Thus I hire friends, thus I am happy spending time with them.
But yeah, I've worked plenty of places where spending 10-15 days in another country with my coworkers would've been a nightmare. And once a small startup becomes a 50+ person company, this gets really really hard to do.
We did the same thing for two weeks in Mexico. It cost about $8k for a team of 5, including one guy flying from Argentina.
In productivity terms, we juiced payroll by ~50% for a two week period and got much more than 50% extra work done. We worked 12 hours a day, in sync from sunup to sundown, and it felt great because lunch or coffee breaks were a dip in the pool or a beer on the beach.
In team-building terms, it was fantastic. We have one guy working remotely and getting in the same room with him for two weeks was a great way to help him understand how we're making product decisions. Also, we brought a bluetooth boombox and learned far too much about everyone's musical tastes.
@brezina is right - build and ship stuff. We did bug/issue triage together every morning, and played show-and-tell constantly. Having everyone working at extremely high velocity is self-reinforcing.
I think this is a phenomenal team building exercise, even if your entire team normally works from the same office.
Being in a place other than home removes all sorts of distractions from your regular life and you can focus on (a) work and (b) spending time getting to know your teammates, if that sort of thing is important to you.
Question: do you have rough guesstimate on what this sort of thing will cost per person, after all is said and done?
I'm guessing:
1000 airfare + 200/night/4 people for lodging + 50/person/day for food + 50/person/day for entertainment/booze ==
$12k for a 4 person team to go to spain from Chicago for 10 days? Is that about fair?
We've found it to be a lot less than that generally - almost half your estimates.
[Edit] re-reading, I think your flight costs are accurate from Chicago to Spain. They are less for us because half the team travelled from London. If you are all in Chicago, you should go to Canada or Mexico or Central America - lower cost to achieve the same goal.
You arguably don't have to go that far from home I guess - depending on where you live - just needs to be "away" and a great place (and have great Internet!)
That was my thought, this sounds like a great idea, but definitely seems a little pricey for a startup, would love to know the numbers (maybe the increased productivity is worth it)
Two of us on this trip are married, one with young kids. In this case the kids are with grannie and have a list of chores / Skype on their computers.
Sometimes team members take vacation at or close to the location with significant others after the work trip.
We talk about these trips when describing the company as part of our interview process. It wouldn't be a problem if people were unable to participate because of their personal situation - we're well used to working remotely. Almost everyone sees it as a big benefit.
This is something that has crossed my mind as well, so I'm happy to see it work out for you guys.
Do you find the cost (presumably around $130/person/day) is well justified? Do you find the long plane trips and getting around your destination too much of a hassle/distraction?
The cost varies and we often pick cheap destinations, so it ends up being less than you might think.
Jet lag can be a drag for the people going transatlantic and you do have overhead at the location - getting setup, shopping / cooking, figuring out where you are and what to do in the evening.
But all travelling together, and solving those problems is part of the fun and team-building. We all look forward to the trips and enjoy the planning process, so it's not even just about the focus benefits on the trip itself.
Actually this technique is what rock stars use to do to record an album -- they'd go to a remote location to pick up on the vibes of the local music scene instead of the usual hubs of the industry like LA or London.
One interesting aspect of this is that they were able to reduce costs by scheduling the trip between moving out of their old office and moving into their new one.
Quick thoughts: - We like to ship stuff while on these trips. I find it unproductive to do brainstorming or planning on these trips. We plan before we go. We execute while we are away. And on drunken walks home from the club or sunburned strolls back from the beach, we come up with great ideas that we quickly turn into new realities for our users. - The trips end up defining elements of company culture. It has been on these trips where we've started our board game culture, our exercise culture, etc - For several of our employees, this was the first time they had left the country. Most of us do startups because they are challenging and an amazing learning environment. It is nice to extend that learning experience into other aspects of our human experience - like traveling abroad. - I always dreamed about working at a company that did cool things like workcations to Mexico. And the best thing about running your own startup is that you can actually redefine the traditional work place. Be the change you want to see in the world. It feels really really good.