In all of my years of working, I have never been sent on a business trip by my employer. As a software engineer, there isn’t really a business justification to send me anywhere. This is especially true in these current times where remote work has been proven to be possible.
This is about to change, however, as my employer has decided to send everyone on the small team I am on to Los Angeles in mid-July. While my team has people who work all over North America and even Asia, the largest cluster of people reside in the greater Los Angeles area. This makes it the most logical destination for everyone to go to. The purpose of the trip is for us to meet face-to-face for the first time. Other than just one person, I have never been in the presence of my immediate co-workers before.
No real work will be done on this trip as we will be partaking in mostly fun and team-building exercises. The higher-ups have scheduled us for two days down in Los Angeles, a Thursday and Friday. This means that we can also choose to stay for Saturday and Sunday, if we want to do stuff in LA on our own before heading back home.
I recognize that we are still in a pandemic, so I assume that we will take appropriate measures when necessary. The one good thing is that from what I’ve seen of the data, COVID case counts tend to dip to lower levels during the summer months.
It should be an interesting trip.