I'm working for a small (<50 employees) company, and I'm pretty lucky to have a management that cares about this.
Stuff we've got:
- weekly all hands meetings where people talk about what makes them excited
- lots of non-work-related chat rooms
- 2-3 meetup opportunities per year
- culture of quick ad-hoc synchronous meetings
It also helps massively if the company is remote-first. We've got a central office where several employees are based but you never feel like you're missing out if you're based elsewhere.
That is pretty awesome. I've only worked remotely from a place where everybody is based in the same office, but I think your place addresses the big lack of social interactions that usually accompanies remote work.
On a side note, I'm also tangentially interested to see how VR can affect the remote workspace. I've used Bigscreen Beta (shared multiplayer lounge with virtual screens) with the Vive to work on a mutual side project with some friends and being able to see each other's screens by turning your head rather than by sharing with some program has also made the experience feel closer to in person work.
I recently stumbled upon a webcomic called Drugs and Wires. It may have more comedy than you'd expect from the subject matter, but it builds an excellent dystopian world.
I've read various William Gibson books and generally enjoyed them, but I find his dense writing style exhausting sometimes. I think a comic written by him could work pretty well.
I'm the opposite — I wish there were more writers who were capable of writing with the same kind of rich texture as Gibson.
J. G. Ballard comes close; The Atrocity Exhibition is very Gibsonesque in places, though with a much bleaker sense of alienation than anything Gibson wrote. Cormac McCarthy is also great, though not like Gibson at all.
People seem to like Neal Stephenson's early work (Snow Crash in particular), but I was always put off by his apparent plagiarizing of Gibson's style.
Yes, Gibson's writing style requires some getting used to. Once it all "clicks" though it is usually a fun ride. That being said, these days I prefer writers who write in a much more straightforward style. For instance I'm reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon and despite the fact that the book is large and the content rather technical it is an effortless read.
When I was a kid in Bulgaria (and probably now) you could go to one of those small streetside shops in the winter. Along with cheap tea or coffee, you'd be able to get a cupful of beef or chicken stock to warm you up.
I still have a cup of stock every now and then - half a cube per mug, with a splash of lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. Wakes and warms you up like anything.
A friend of mine set up IFTTT so his phone would play a "ka-tching" sound every time someone paid for a premium account for his startup. The novelty never seemed to wear off.
Stuff we've got:
- weekly all hands meetings where people talk about what makes them excited - lots of non-work-related chat rooms - 2-3 meetup opportunities per year - culture of quick ad-hoc synchronous meetings
We also had a board game night via Tabletop Simulator (http://berserk-games.com/tabletop-simulator/)
It also helps massively if the company is remote-first. We've got a central office where several employees are based but you never feel like you're missing out if you're based elsewhere.