However it feels like many people are spending more and more time at work, and it also seems cruel to say: "you cannot get to know anyone romantically during 50-75% of your waking day."
If it's not, maybe he should have chosen a different job.
It's also worth noting that the Intel CEO joined the company in 1982, apparently straight out of college.
So obviously relationships are bad when
there's a power dynamic,
Yes, power can be abused. But anyone with a knife at home can abuse that knife by stabbing someone. That doesn't make it wrong to own a knife.
There exist a subset of people in the UK (and in other places but the a subset of the UK subset is particularly vocal and influential) who believe the opposite with varying degrees of passion and with various exceptions carved out.
Edit: Pun not intended but I like it so I'm keeping it there.
ISWYDT.
Is the difference in power between a US president and the given citizen larger than the difference in power between a 18 and 15 year old? If so, and if relationships should be banned based on power differences, then it seems the only logical conclusion is such a relationship should be banned.
Then again, our laws and social morals are rarely so consistent.
If the relationship continues, the power could be used to favour the subordinate over other subordinates (give them good reviews, etc).
If the relationship ends poorly, the power could be used to spite the subordinate over other subordinates (give them poor reviews, etc).
It's the same thing with conflicts of interest. The clear possibility for misconduct is a problem that at least must be declared, and at best is avoided.
You can't write policy based on imagining single incidents. At scale, power dynamics will be abused, full stop.
Companies that are large/sophisticated enough to have formal policies of employee conduct generally ban a wide range of behaviors that prioritizes the employee's personal gain over the company's.
What is your source for this figure? I just googled around and every survey appeared to put in the 15-20% range.
It's going to be hard to come to consensus on a number because it changes over time. Are we talking about all married people today, people of a certain demographic (18-34, etc)? During what period?
My source for the ~50% number is "common knowledge in the 80's and 90's". Anything you find by googling right now is going to have definitional problems. I'm not aware of something like a US Census that would be definitive.
I don't see what's wrong with a supervisor dating a suboridinate if both parties are consenting and the supervisor is not abusing their power. This taboo has never made much sense to me.
The supervisor can already be abusive towards their subordinates. You don't need to introduce a relationship to introduce the possibility for abuse. Why does a relationship automatically become wrong when these balanced power dynamics are already in place?
Keep in mind the potential problem isn’t just between the supervisor and the subordinate, but with the supervisor and their entire department. Because it’s natural to suspect the supervisor’s lover of getting preferential treatment in terms of pay/benefits/promotions. This suspicion tends to cause an unhealthy work environment.
It's extremely poor judgment to date some that reports through you. "Power corrupts"-type stories are everywhere. Don't trust yourself to be the perfect exception; have some self-control.
Or, if you must, move to a different role or job! You're the one in the scenario with more options. And remember: most relationships end! Then it gets even messier if you work together directly, especially if they report to you. You break up, you can't work together well, now what happens? IME, nothing good for the person in the management role.
I feel like the solution to this is to engineer society so people spend less time at work, not so that they are encouraged to move their personal lives into the workplace.
Few companies have such strict relationship policies.
If you're CEO, yeah that means you can't date anyone at work. But for anyone else it only eliminates some % of the dating pool.
And who said that love (and/or lust for that matter) can or should be confined by such BS rules? Or that someone would have to chose between that and their job?
"dating pool" makes it clinical, as if every person is an interchangeable potential fuck/partner. In reality people are attracted to particular persons.
Nobody cares if two engineers hook up, but it's a Very Bad Thing if your boss starts putting the moves on you. Relationships where one person holds real-world power over another are prone to exploitation and violation of consent.
If person A doesn't want to have sex with person B and person B would be inordinately happy to have sex with person A, just about all ethical systems would say they shouldn't have sex.
If person A has money in savings and is clinically depressed and person B wants to take that money and go on a vacation that would make them very happy, just about all ethical systems would say, no, that's stealing.
One of the things functional societies do is to limit the amount that certain people can make themselves happy as a mechanism of limiting the amount to which other people get hurt. Banning workplace relationships because of their serious potential for hurt seems like a straightforward case of this.
Nobody the debate is not between "some restrictions" and "no restriction", the latter is very much a straw man. We are debating where in particular the line should be drawn. For any given behavior X there are trade offs across the entire spectrum from full restriction of X to no restriction of X and the latter extreme is almost always far from ideal but much better than the former extreme.
It's happened probably 10s of thousands of times in the past few decades... and some of those couples are now happily married. I personally know of a boss who married his secretary and a professor who married a student.
I think the words "Very Bad Thing" are a little excessive. It's risky behavior.
They're dangerous to the firm and bad for the people's involved careers.
Best rule for everyone is no relationships between co-workers and if one happens both people are fired.
US work culture sometimes feels so incredibly alien when seen from the outside.
oh wait.
It matters because if one of those people gets promoted it can break the policy.