Just had my oldest come into the office two weeks ago. He didn’t seem particularly excited about shadowing me at first since I have a desk job as a programmer. In the morning a user of our API was wanting a copy of our example Rest calls to use as references for their implementation. Unfortunately the ones I had were only used for personal testing and weren’t really usable due to junk data/comments in the files. I showed him how Git works and had him add the files. I had him make a branch and then told him how to clean up the files. After that he zipped up the files and we sent them to the client. He was very happy he could actually do something productive.

In the afternoon I asked him what computer problem he has had in the past that he wanted to solve. Him and I paired together and we solved the problem. He was pretty happy about that too. Overall he seemed impressed with what his old man does everyday which is saying something as he usually is only interested in motorbikes cars and sports.

Overall I would definitely recommend doing it as it is very good exposure into working life that they don’t normally see.

I’m kind of old now I guess. But when I was a kid, there would always be some kind of busy work. Things like filing or stuffing envelopes were great kid tasks.

Not really sure what kind of office work a kid could do anymore. Don’t think IT would really appreciate letting a kid on their computers.

I made my mom’s work day even more stressful and I wish someone had fucking asked me first before creating me

My mom took me into her work at a software company when I was a kid. All I remember was they had a couple of arcade cabinets in the break room, and I played some soccer game a lot while I was there.

My Mom took me to work at the insurance company she worked at when I was like 13. I specifically remember it being one of the most boring days I’ve ever had in my entire life. What the actual fuck even is the point of bring your kid to work day? At least what’s the point for something mundane as shit like an office job?

Kind of a reverse thing, we had a day in school where we talked about our parents jobs. I told my class about how my mom, at the time, worked for a company that made medical equipment primarily for elderly rehabilitation. Think exercise games and whatnot. My teacher thought this was cool, so after some back and forth my class took a field trip to my mom’s workplace. I got some of those electrical node things hooked up to my arm and they made my fingers dance, I was the cool kid for the day since I got us out of class

He got into a fight with one of the other kids working at Waffle House but he also got valuable lessons into work life balance.

Sure did. My pops worked in midtown Manhattan, I remember going to his office in April of 2001. His office had an automatic coffee machine that would also make hot chocolate, I thought that was the coolest thing. He took a long lunch with me so he could take me on a trip downtown. We ended up going to the World Trade Center and visiting the observation deck at One World Trade. That added a real crazy dimension to September 11th for me, I had just been there not even five months ago. My father was able to get on one of the last trains out of the city before they were shut down that day. He talked about how scary and confusing it was, watching fighter jets streaking across the sky above 5th avenue, not knowing what else was going to happen. Still, he was one of the lucky ones.

Went to my mom’s job in middle school, it was so boring. I basically played solitaire on her PC all day until we went home. Left with no idea with what she did.

My current jobs makes a huge production of it so kids can do stuff.

Yes, but no.

For both myself as a kid and my kids now that I’m parent, I’ve done it several times. However it was really more family day, an open house to show where you work and who you work with. It always had activities, my company has a bounce house (that I never got to use as an employee)

It became pretty annoying as my kids grew into teens. I stopped taking them because everything was oriented to little kids, but teens could probably use some exposure to what people do at work. They’re deciding what they want to do, but with no information, while it would be so useful to actually shadow their parent. Not fun maybe, but useful

There’s no way my dad would have ever let me (or either of my siblings) celebrate that in either of the jobs he had when I was growing up. Even though he doesn’t work directly with the machinery, a foundry is the opposite of a safe place for kids to be. Same with military weekend drills.

And if I ever have kids, I personally probably wouldn’t celebrate it with them because I think it’s just kinda dumb.

I would like to, but four-year-olds aren’t exactly sanitary and there isn’t much I could put her to work on that doesn’t involve contact with fresh produce, so I’ll probably never have the chance.

My parents ran a sports club, so every day was bring your kids to work day.

Kind of. I wrote about it here a few months ago:

Yes