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Comment by sscarduzio | Hacker News Reader

God, who cares of this work jokes shit? They're never funny, it's always the boss that makes them and everyone laughs way too much. FFS, We're not friends, we don't have to be, and it's OK!

I like what I do, take pride on it and everything, but at the end of the day, my private life (where I get to choose my friends) is OUTSIDE work hours. And I'm committed to close the laptop as soon as I'm done.

I guess this kind of "school feeling", "we're on the same boat" feeling, where groups of people linger together in long coffee breaks tends to belong to corporate, especially in USA where they work stupid hours to "show off" their commitment. Utter nonsense.

One more thing that I really feel I "broke free" from (after becoming full time remote) is the ALCOHOL CULTURE. Peer pressure into drinking: company credit card on the tab and unlimited drinks (no food, otherwise it's cheating). So degrading.

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No offense, but this works both ways. I mean, this is not a secret that there is this sort of people who feel that way, and if I can see that you are one of them — I wouldn't want you to be a part of the team. I mean it strongly: if I don't need you for some very specific kind of job, no way you are hired. Even if you are great professional (but replaceable) and a nice guy otherwise.

I don't like myself this weird culture where it's supposed that you have to be always a nice guy, politely nod and smile and say "Completely agree! Except..." when there isn't a single point you actually agree on, so I often dismiss such labels as "toxic attitude". But your attitude is just that — toxic. I'm okay with people being somewhat rude and arrogant and whiny and always complaining about "why should we", but this attitude of "I have a real life outside, and here — I just work here, so fuck you all" — that makes you both absolutely unreliable and very unpleasant to have around. Unfortunately, the word "toxic" fits really well.

I've actually never had anybody to work extra-hours, but knowing that they would is significant part of what makes me care that they don't have to. Technology is worthless, people are what makes companies to succeed, and absence of meaningful relationships with your team basically renders you to be a piece of quite primitive carbon-based technology.

You are entitled to your sentiment, but calling people and their approach to life "toxic" is a good way to alienate them and dismiss what you have to say. There are many ways to run a business, and I've run teams that have shipped multi-million dollar software entirely remotely, with minimal face time and non-work related socializing.

There are plenty of companies that manage their work in a way that minimizes the human component and maximizes the technical utility of their engineers (judged on productive output alone), almost in a way that makes the human component and all it brings with it (unreliability, politicking, emotional outbursts, backstabbing, you name it) irrelevant. In fact, my ideal company reduces face time to close to zero, because that's the only reliable way to eliminate politicians, bad actors and people who try to game the system using social skills and emotional manipulation. A nice side effect of remote work is that it automatically creates that sort of environment, unless you go out of your way to change that (but then the remote work model is probably not for you).

>renders you to be a piece of quite primitive carbon-based technology.

The fact that you don't know how to manage engineers in an entirely meritocratic, non-political environment, says more about your management abilities than anything else.

I'm in no way suggesting that people spend all of their time at work or have significant overlap between their work friends and after-work friends. However, it's nice to work with people and not robots. Some people can tolerate sterile work environments devoid of anything but neutrality, and some people can't. I'm not even saying you have to be friends with the people you work with, but being friendly goes a long way. You spend a large portion of your day with these people, so it's not a huge ask for someone to give a crap about them as people.

I think most people have a better office experience than you. I have to be comfortable actually expressing the situation I'm dealing with when I run into troubles, be that cursing about some code or explaining why something will take longer or shorter than expected to my boss. I feel much more comfortable in a less "sterile" work environment in that way. If I'm in a work environment that's too sterile I'll feel like every error I make, every little delay detracts from my value as an employee, and that's immensely stressful to me.

That said, no one here puts in extra hours to "show off their commitment", everyone shows up when they want and dumps at 8 hours later. I've stayed late when I was buried in debugging once or twice and got told to go home by numerous colleagues. Just things like that, telling you to put it down is a positive influence sometimes. I came in the next day and solved the issue that I had spent 3 hours on the previous day in about 20 minutes.

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