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Comment by heisnotanalien | Hacker News Reader

I sort of like the sentiment but this sort of interview, at least for me, would feel a bit too personal. Look I'm not your friend so let's not pretend that's what this or you just really want to get to know me. No. You just want to know if I can do the job so just get me to do a task which meaningfully reflects what I'd be doing day-to-day then ask me questions about it.

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Do you not try to be friends with your colleagues?

You spend about a third of your life at work, it seems to me that you should try to make it as enjoyable as possible.

Being friends with colleagues can lead to less enjoyable work situations, not to mention less focused work.

Being friendly should suffice, not all of us want to get too personal with the same people we might need to have professional arguments with.

We're all different.

I'll share a bit of wisdom my son shared when he was 4 or 5. In kindergarden they talked about what a friend is, and he said after some thinking: "A friend is a person you can disagree and fight with, and still play with later".

your son is smart. he will a go way.

Getting that close to all my coworkers would be too daunting a task.

Edit: Not to belittle your son's wisdom, of course. I totally agree.

It was merely that "it's okay to befriend a coworker, and if it doesn't work out, was it really a friend anyway?" kinda thing.

I think he mostly got it from my wife and I sitting down with our children after having a fight and telling them that we're still mom and dad, we've put it behind us, and it's okay not to get along all the time.

A professional is someone you can disagree and fight with, an still work with later.

There is a difference between maintaining a cordial working relationship, and being friends. I certainly don't go out of my way to be rude to my colleagues. But I don't pretend to be their friends. To illustrate the difference, my friends and I often have rather vehement political discussions. But I would never try to have such a discussion with my colleagues. It would just get in the way of getting on with the work at hand, and would potentially lead to hard feelings that would lead to difficulties at work later on.

In some ways, I find it's more enjoyable to not be friends with my colleagues; to keep my personal life and work life as widely separated as is feasible.

I try not to be friends with my colleagues. Friendly? Absolutely. Friends? No.

"Gladiator, make no friends of gladiators" - roughly from "Spartacus".

Of course, intra-office competition at that level is highly destructive but that's what people are acculturated to.

It's not really about that. I have many friends from wor. Though I tend to become better friends[1] with people once I've stopped working with them... Too many work orgs expect you to be a certain way politically/philosophically and even asking questions can be seen as a sign of you're-not-one-of us, so in a way work relationships are always tainted.

But really this is just more a case of I wouldn't be comfortable talking about my deepest desires with a random person. Sure, once I get to know someone a bit, I'm fine to do that...but a random interviewer? Eugh.

[1] That said, my Russian partner would not consider them friends. Friends in her world are people you can count on for anything and how many of us can say that about our colleagues?

You can't be friends with your colleagues. There's too much to lose if you say something politically incorrect and they react negatively.

Who do you eat lunch with? After 7 years I became pretty good friends with a lot of my co-workers. We went to hockey games and other activities.

there are some mega weirdos out there and sometimes it's best to just not ask.

"hey, what'd you do this weekend?"

"well, my friends and I run a historical re-enactment society where we all go to this remote retreat in the mountains, dress up as Nazis, and pretend that they won World War 2."

and you know what, if it was possible to just hold your finger down on the "rewind time" button for 15 seconds to just never ask this kind of friendly question, life would be so much easier. how do you reply to this? just stay out of other peoples business if you have to work with them.

You just need to get use to the admittedly unfashionable idea that it is possible to like people for some reasons and dislike them for other reasons.

while true, now I need to put up with hearing about what's new in the world of Hitler re-enactment until I quit the company. if I hadn't tried to be friends with this person, that wouldn't be a problem because we'd just be talking about PHP.

It's not about being friends in a strict sense.

I think the significant concept is that in the long term, there are very strong similarities between the mechanics of being a coworker, and those of being a friend.

So definitely it makes a lot of sense to "investigate" that way.

> You just want to know if I can do the job

This holds two things constant: You and the job.

On-the-job training is inevitable. The question is what you'll primarily be trained in: Office politics, or some other skillset which will actually go on your resume.

Similarly, the job will inevitably change if you're around long enough, and that's the nub of the meat of this: It's an old adage that you should never marry someone to try and change them, because people don't change, they just become like they are, only moreso. Both ends of the equation change, but they change around a solid core which was formed decades ago and will not be modified except through some serious event.

So personality matters quite a bit if you're looking for a marriage. If you're looking for a hookup, it only matters on the extreme ends of the bell curve.

A few people in bad marriages around here...

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