How OpenAI use lunchtimes to foster collaboration

I love the human to human interaction you get in an office environment,

But it can be hard to describe it in practice.

Aliisa Rosenthal, Head of Sales at OpenAI brought it to life for me in her SaaStr presentation

"At Open AI we have these long picnic benches in our dining hall, and the etiquette is you get your lunch and then you just take the next seat at the table, you don't try to look for your friends.

Its this nice environment that forces everyone to get to know one another.

You'll sit down and ask the person next to you what do you do and they'll say I work in maths gen, and you'll say what's maths gen, and they'll say I'm teaching the model how to do math and you'll say cool, how do you do that....?

So when I'd sit down they'd ask me what do you do, and I'd say I work in sales, and they'd say huh, so what exactly are you selling...?"

These kind of interactions are just so rare or non-existent in remote only.

I know that some people may grimace at the idea of having to sit next to someone you don't know - but this is how we build relationships, make connections and learn.

Remote has a lot of benefits, but I can't help feeling a whole generation is missing out on building deep relationships and experiences with people outside of their close team.

Grab the full episode here (this excerpt is at 6m 45s):