Undergraduate Blog / Career Development

Hardly working or working hard?

In the past, the internships that I have done have been pretty traditional given that they have taken place in larger companies. They consisted of working from 9am to 5pm, and having fun before and after those hours. Working at a startup this summer has showed me that work and fun can both happen at the same time with the same people.

Every day, my team and I take a 1-hour break from work to play ‘foosball’. Similarly, every few days our CEO will ask us to stop whatever we are working on and take us out to eat somewhere far from the office. Even more surprising for me, we’ve already had 2 ‘beach days’ in which we all traveled to a beach outside Boston, played soccer and volleyball, and relaxed in the sun.

If someone would have told me that any company worked this way a year ago, I would have thought that this is incredibly unproductive. But this internship has made me realize that this simple bonding activities not only boost our productivity for the time that we are actually working, but also have created very strong friendships within our company. Turns out that not working to create bonds with other people can help people work better and happier for longer.