We had an office virtual get-together and we got prepaid vouchers to everyone on a popular food delivery app. Everyone could order whatever they wished to, from their favorite restaurants. This accounts very easily for varying dietary needs, who else might be physically with them so that they can order more or less. I can't see the simplicity of this being beat easily.
A friend used this service to try to have a pizza party for a small cohort of graduating Master's students, and said that one pizza came hours early and the rest never arrived.
Honest question: Do you actually enjoy this (or any similar) kind of remote team event via Zoom? To me at least this seems like a properly dystopian future.
I always found "Pizza Parties" to be an exemplar of bad management.<p>Pizza is something that, when done right, is exactly the kind of thing management doesn't understand. It takes time, skill, effort and quality ingredients to assemble.
My company has a very good expense app.<p>So remote employees can just order a pizza or whatever substitute they wish, photograph the receipt and then expenses the cost against an event or case.<p>We have staff in South East Asia, who might not have a pizza shop nearby. They can just order a local takeaway instead.
This reminds me of that Silicon Valley episode about the pizza app, Sliceline. Solving a problem that doesn't need to be solved, and has to do with pizza.
The details say they will send a small pizza to each person.<p>In my area you can pretty easily find a small-sized pizza for $5 to $8 from an independent pizza place. Similar prices from national chains. Little Caesar's, for instance, offers a $5.55 large cheese pizza.<p>Let's suppose the delivery fee and tip is another $5.<p>And let's suppose it takes five minutes per person in time to find a pizza place near them and place the order. At an hourly rate of $60 for the coordinator, that's $5 per person.<p>So now you're looking at about $5 in profit per person, not even factoring in the $69 administrative fee.<p>I can't think of a reason why you wouldn't want to do this particular chore in-house, unless your entire team is billing hundreds per hour.
Unpopular (for HN) take, but you know what's been great for my mental health and productivity and made me feel more connected to my team?<p>Going into the office a few days a week again. It's been wonderful. Including eating real lunch with real people from my team. Gold.
<i>"no matter where they are"</i><p>Do they know a decent pizza place in Hyderabad that can deliver at 2:00am local time? Because I sure don't.
I would like the literal opposite of this:<p>We donate the party funds to a Zero Hunger program, take half a day off to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, and then come back and swap feel good stories.
Nothing would make me more demoralised than being given pizza and being told it's a party.<p>Pizza parties are for children.[1]<p>The whole concept of a "pizza party" is some Silicon Valley crap created to justify working devs into the ground then giving them pizza to "build team spirit".<p>And yes, Amazon's pizza based team sizing is very prominent in my disdain for all pizza based employee engagement.<p>[1]: <a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=k6DA_WwO90c" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/watch?v=k6DA_WwO90c</a><p>Edit: for the love of Jesus, the fact that "pizza based employee engagement" is very real in software shows some contempt for us.<p>* Work unpaid overtime, hey we ordered pizza!<p>* Come into the office for Corporate Mandated Fun Day, there'll be pizza!<p>* Do a hackathon and don't sleep for 36 hours so we can borrow your ideas, we even provide free pizza!<p>* Your team delivered a well engineered and tested product that will bring in an estimated $2.4m in the first year, you bloody bet we ordered some pizza!<p>And some wedges, with the fancy sauces, you deserve it!