That just horrified me. Sorry, but that's work stuff. Work stuff stays at work. If you hang out with people in different industries, you're less inclined to talk about work stuff because neither of you will understand the nuances of the other's job.
> I'd also say the message to me is "work hard, play hard, and keep a work life balance". People in Dallas get shit done, but they aren't going to work for more than 40-50 hours/week.
I can confirm that the culture here is very 9-5. We don't have the ambition-centric culture that SF has, and that works for me because I'm honestly not an ambitious person. You're probably not going to find many people here who are trying to grow their own business on the side or who go to a bar still trying to work through problems they're stuck on at work. I go to the bar when my job is stressing me out so I can forget about the stress by drinking tasty alcoholic treats until I can no longer concentrate on anything.
Yes, thank you for this! I was struggling to articulate why those novel conversations happen, but this is totally the reason.