Reducing isolation at work is good for business | Hacker News Reader

Reducing isolation at work is good for business

hbr.org

98 pointsnether27 comments

I took a 15-20% pay cut to move to a town that had college and high school friends. I missed out on a lot of the real bleeding edge type technical challenges that SV has and I feel like I'm taking crazy pills trying to drive change in our organization. However, I never have a problem unwinding after work and am far from burnout. Having this support structure here is probably worth that 15-20%.

Edit: I should note that I really hate mixing personal & work and that I have very few 'friendships' in the workplace that I take outside of work.

I did the same, stayed in Upstate New York after college, my commute is 5 minutes, traffic is low, zero stress, travel the world on company money, tons of good food, and drinks, I go home for lunch. I think about what I "missed" going to the west coast grind, but now that I'm older, I realize I favor low stress / getting plenty of sleep, over working long hours and long commutes to work on bigger tech. Plus this affords me the time to work on all of my side projects, which is what really gives me pleasure. I don't think I'll regret in my final days, that I wasn't able to work more for someone else.

The ONLY caveat I can think of, is if I was offered something very unique. Something progressing humanity. But slaving away for another X for X, isn't going to happen.

Totally hear you.

I'm living in a small college-town-adjacent city in rural New England and though I occasionally have pangs of desire for the SV life of some college friends, working for an established company that is not a historic software powerhouse makes stress super manageable, makes me a big fish in a small pond, gives me time to hack on side projects, and opportunity to perfect my hobbies (wood-fired pottery, cooking, and yoga). I took what feels like a big pay cut but cost of living compared to BOS, SV, SEA, or NYC at least zeros that out.

Of course there are problems where adopting technologies/best-practices, hiring a team, or speed of development is like pushing molasses up a sand dune, but leaving that at the door at the end of the day is worth it to me.

Will that balance change? Who knows. The future is hard to predict, but right now it makes a lot of sense to me.

I'd gladly take a pay cut to work somewhere I enjoy, at a company that cares about employees. Unfortunately I have student loans taking $2500 a month, and a disabled family member to take care of. The next five years at this huge tech company is going to be hell. I just hope that when I can afford to quit I still have my soul.

Something I noticed, is that young people commonly suffer from loneliness when making the transition from student life to working life.

Leaving the friends from student life... And not really able to make meaningful friends during working life. I had several people talking to me about this

Now, I have no idea whether it is a recent thing or not.

It's really worth putting a lot of effort into hanging onto your old student friends.

Happened to me a dozen or so years ago when I left the uni. In the end, what worked was rekindling some of the older friendships. I didn't make any permanent friends in the 8+ jobs I've worked at.

I think that people these days are not as comfortable with being on their own as they were years ago. I grew up in the 1970s and 80s and as we weren't continually interconnected with everyone else we spent a fair amount on time on our own. You became accustomed to planning ahead, travelling on your own to meet your friends with no communication, if they weren't there you either went home again or tried someone else's house.

There were also, I think, more people into hobbies such as stamp collecting and model making. They were fairly solitary for much of the time.

I've nothing scientific behind this but it seems to fit with what I see, we don't feel lonely and lost if we don't have continual stimulation.

Very true, as someone who grew up in the 80s and mid-90s, we usually met "friends" for an hour or so in a day and the rest of it was spent with solitary pursuits and perhaps with family. These days we're "connected" 24x7 thanks to the Net and particularly mobile. Almost everything we do is either over these mediums or at least shared on them, commented upon, collaborated and so on.

Individual activities like gardening, woodworking, philately, reading a book, birdwatching, stargazing, painting and so on are either increasingly waning or being substituted by their "online" and "connected" doppelgängers.

> Very true, as someone who grew up in the 80s and mid-90s, we usually met "friends" for an hour or so in a day and the rest of it was spent with solitary pursuits and perhaps with family. These days we're "connected" 24x7 thanks to the Net and particularly mobile. Almost everything we do is either over these mediums or at least shared on them, commented upon, collaborated and so on.

Yes, and on the other hand it sometimes feels as if this leads to social fatigue. Meeting someone face to face sure felt different and more...worthwhile (for lack of a better term) growing up in the 90s, when it was the only way to keep in touch with friends. Compare this to today where social gatherings are preceded, surrounded and accompanied by constant, always and immediately available, often lesser ways of communicating - whether it's social networks, group chats, messages.

Of course I don't want to paint a pure black picture - I enjoy those options as much as the next guy, but it comes with side effects I guess.

I've met many people in their early twenties who probably would love to see friends for an hour a day. I think if people were hanging out with friends for an hour a day they wouldn't have this problem

My gut feeling is that "work" (as it we know it now) is pathological. The fact that it's considered best practice to separate work and friendships, says a lot about the nature of work. Our modern age conception of work is literally 'soulless'.

This leaves me to think why it is considered best practice to separate work and friendships. It's certainly not frowned upon in most places to make friends with your coworkers, to go for drinks after work or to meet up on weekends.

I think you can be friends with some people but most, don't be Facebook friends necessarily. It would also depend on the size of the company etc...

Separating work from friendships makes frequent job-hopping much less painful. People in general care less emotionally about their work because the companies show absolutely no loyalty to the workers. When most people leave in less than two years, there's less of a reason to expose yourself.

Then there's risks involved in exposing personal opinions to people at work. If you two have a falling out due to different political ideologies, religions, hobbies, etc., that can make continued work more difficult.

Finally, it has the potential to foster a workaholic culture at the job. Why leave work when your "family" is there? But when that is the norm of the company, workers can feel compelled to work ridiculous hours, like Japan's work culture.

It happens, I went through this. It sucks. I was in grad school and didn't have many friends at all. It took getting a job where I made some life long friends at work (in different groups though). I've since moved out of that state but stay in touch with them. I found the high school to college transition hard and then the college to grad school transition even harder (at in grad school was the worst).. even though I was surrounded by similar people! :) Most of the time I focused on finding a girlfriend. I now regret not enjoying my own time more and seeing the optimistic side of being single.

Instead of being mired in loneliness, a key thing is to start doing things you enjoy that give you an option to meet others. Join a meet up, take tennis lessons, play golf .. ! Join a church or other community.

If you put people against each other in a mindless internal competition instead of supporting a proper collaboration (and not a fake one that requires some to sacrifice a lot so that others can step over them), what else than a massive isolation could be outcome? Also, not many people mistake colleagues with friends either, so any community within workplace is a non-working fix as people tend to forget each other quickly when they change jobs.

Why is this article concentrating so much on forging social connections at work? People's social lives should be built outside work, not the result of corporate workplace sociality-boosting programs.

Because the article is on Harvard Business Review.

I'm very skeptical of corporate programs that try to meddle in their workers' personal lives, but why should people's social lives be built outside work? A workplace is the social setting in which most of us spend most time, seems like a waste to limit those bonds.

>why should people's social lives be built outside work?

Because it is much more genuine, easier, and less risky.

There are countless laws, regulations, and policies dictating how one is to act in the workplace: you must dress this way, you must use only approved language (no swearing), you must not speak on controversial topics, you must not offend anyone.

A simple joke can get you reported to human resources and potentially fired.

Because it is much more genuine, easier, and less risky.

Right, but they're not mutually exclusive, so how they compare relatively is irrelevant.

Every social situation has its rules with which one must comply. The workplace may be more restricted than one's home or a bar, but hell, even in totalitarian states with political polices people managed to have friends.

If one is in a particularly bad workplace, or have difficulty reading its social context, sure - it's better to keep one's head down and be merely polite. But as a rule, seems quite excessive.

certain topics are off-limits for discussion with coworkers even if they occur away from the office.

For example, if I feel strongly about pro-choice but my coworker, she feels very strongly about pro-life, then there may be some extra politics I need to deal with work. While she might not directly shown her distain, instead it'll be a bunch of subtle things she does that negatively affect the relationship. Ideally, political interest would have no effect, but realistic they might. I'd rather not take that chance. That's why I only talk politics with friend outside work.

Secondly, I'd personally rather not talk about my private relationships and family with coworkers. If i was going through a divorce, I would not talk about that even with my closest coworker.Again, I would discuss that with a close friend outside of work. At work, people's status matters more. You always want to portray an image to look strong, positive. At work everybody has a job title, with friends outside of work, there are less stakes on 'status'.

> why should people's social lives be built outside work?

It's not a rule I always live by, but there are some pretty good reasons.

The kind of social interaction among members that often benefits a business - focused on productivity and with confrontation designed to limit liability and risk - makes for a boring way to interact with people. Additionally, a person too heavily reliant on work for social ties is going to be somewhat vulnerable in the modern workplace where jobs aren't designed to last.

> A workplace is the social setting in which most of us spend most time, seems like a waste to limit those bonds.

IMO it's a mistake to devalue the secondary relationships in our lives - neighbors, coworkers, acquaintances - as being inferior or wasted if they cannot be converted to something more permanent or intimate. Good neighbors and pleasant coworkers are a pretty great thing, even if they're kept at arms length.

Don't learn this lesson the hard way. Social life and work life inevitably will clash and disastrously. To put your entire life into the hands a company where profit is the objective is a very bad idea both for the business as well as you socially.

When it comes down to it, the business will have domain over the people you call friends at work.

I'm not saying in any way that we should only (or even primarily) have friends inside the workplace, so I'm not advocating for putting our entire lives in a company. I'm saying "you're in a social setting separated from your friends and family for hours a day, why refuse to make extra friends?".

I guess what I'm questioning is the "inevitably will clash disastrously". What sort of disasters are we talking about? Because I've known of pretty toxic workplaces, and there were certainly backstabbings by ex-friends, but very few events I'd classify as disastrous.

If I worked someplace large enough to have peers like me, this article's stance on finding a community within the workplace might seem more palatable.

The only truth I can see from my own perspective on this subject is that one solution won't fit for all.

In my context, the issues being with not having any workable solution.

Maybe that's another feature that guilds, unions, and other professional organizations provide industries that have them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com