Am I the only one who thought retreats are just a method for the company to force employees to work unpaid OT, cause well, where are they gonna go? Everyone's in some far away destination disconnected from friends/family so you may as well work for a week straight.
Have you been to one? In my experience it's discouraged to do actual work so that you can focus on the goals at hand. Also in my experience, a decent company will hold it during business hours/week. Or at least overlap that time.
Yea I’ve been on a few. Basically I felt that I got taken hostage (no key to the airbnb, no car rental budget, basically forced to stay with colleagues at all times). Meetings all day about company direction and architecture, then our normal programming work all night Hackathon style. I need time away from my coworkers to write productive code and I think other engineers do too.
It looks like you didn't have a great company hosting you. I have never heard of unpaid OT during a retreat.
I run this small company and I take a lot of effort to find the right budget to give a good experience for my team. If I give a bad experience during the 3-4 days, then why would they come back recharged to the office?
Organizing a retreat takes significant time and money from the company. If someone is using that just to force a few team members to work unpaid, they really don't see the bigger picture. Get out of the place asap :)
