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Comment by bitwize | Hacker News Reader

> A lot of companies have realized that they get employees to work harder for less if they are able to get the employees to develop some sort of emotional attachment to the company.

This is the kind of bullshit I inoculate myself against by telling myself: This is not your life. These are not your best friends. This is you farming gold out of a megacorp so you have the means to advance the story-driven missions that are your real life.

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And yet, as the place where you spend more than half your waking hours, it is your life. If you have the option to connect with the people you are spending your hours with personally and authentically instead of holding them at arm's length with cool detachment, why not? We are all humans. And if you have the chance to drive a mission in the work that you do, then even moreso is there no reason to throw up a false barrier.

More broadly, people are lacking third place institutions like churches, fraternal service organizations, or neighborhood clubs to connect - when their coworkers throw up barriers to connecting, folks get awful lonely awfully quickly.

One can tell themselves their 40 hour work week (not including commute) isn't their life. They would be lying to themselves.

A 40 hour work week is 23.8% of your week. If you get 7 hours of sleep per night, it's 33.6%. I don't want a third of my waking hours to not be my "real" life.

While I agree with you completely there is a different side. It's better for you since you get more from the relationship.

Those are all self-fulfilling prophecies. And the opposite maxims would also be pretty effective ones.

Most businesses are small businesses.

Is that what you’re doing?

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