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Comment by wccrawford | Hacker News Reader

I'm quite an introvert.

What I've found is that I tend to try to friends with my co-workers because I'm around them constantly. And I don't try to make friends anywhere else.

Lately, I've been realizing that even though my coworkers like me, and I like them, they are not really my friends. Nobody who leaves the company stays in touch with me. I almost never have contact with them away from work.

I share my hobby stuff with them during work hours, and they seem to enjoy hearing about it and engage with me, but none of them would actually want to join me in those hobbies away from work.

This has me thinking that I should spend less time trying to engage with them, and more time trying to find local groups that share those hobbies.

So, contrary to the article, I don't think "the loneliness of the modern office team member" is actually a problem. I think it's a big hint that they need to seek relationships outside of work instead.

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Aristotle explored this long ago, mapping out levels of friendship:

1) Friendship of Utility: Affection is based on usefulness, and if usefulness fades so does the relationship.

2) Friendship of Pleasure: Affection is based on pleasant enjoyment of the other, often in shared circumstance such as sport or hobby. When the enjoyment changes or circumstance ends, so does the relationship.

3) Friendships of Goodness: "Now those who wish well to their friends for their sake are most truly friends; for they do this by reason of own nature and not incidentally; therefore their friendship lasts as long as they are good- and goodness is an enduring thing."

#1 and #2 are common, #3 is rare.

Most work colleagues fall into number one. Some software projects are so demanding that you really get to see the true character of a person and how they react when they are tested. Sometimes number three happens.

It's an interesting cultural problem. Whether it changes more with time or from country to country is not clear to me and would be interesting to do research around.

For example, I grew up in the USSR and I saw how my parents' colleagues were practically all very close friends. Both my parents worked in academia. Someone's birthday was usually a big noisy gathering of the whole department of the research institute where they worked, plus some more friends from previous organizations and of course some classmates. Yes, at times it was that insane!

Looking back now I realize what has been lost. Why though - I have no idea.

Cell phones and social media. To learn about people you just look it up. You don't interact with them anymore. You text or snoop. It sucks but not like the past was all that better either.

It's the purposeful destruction of job security which is used as a threat to make employees work harder. Why make friends with your co-workers if you or them could be fired at any point when the shareholders decide to "cut the fat" for higher profits?

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/tenure.nr0.htm

>The median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer was 4.1 years in January 2020

It's difficult to make friends in this environment and this is a relatively recent change: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1984/10/art2full.pdf

It's even shorter in the software industry. I think it was 2-2.5 years or close. Ordinary engineers switch jobs often as the only way to bump up their salaries.

As sibling comments are pointing out - the jobs are not for life anymore (and the tenure is getting shorter).

But there are 3 other aspects, specific to your location/economic system, which do not apply (and mostly never applied) in the US/West:

- people did not move around the country for jobs like they do in the US

- salaries in Eastern Europe/USSR were public and the same for the same position/responsibility.

- bosses' salaries were perhaps 30% higher (certainly not 300+% higher, so everyone was in the same socio-economic class, facilitating camaraderie

Very true. So basically things that are good for the economy - labour mobility, flexibility in salaries, etc - are not good for friendship building. It's either or.

Anecdotally my mom who worked in a soviet hospital still keeps in touch with her coworkers - multiple decades after emigrating. Meanwhile I (usually) stop making an effort to keep in touch the second someone leaves the company.

I think there's two parts to this - the Russian attitude of maintaining a few, deep close friends and everyone by and large staying in the same city their entire lives.

I don't think it's specifically Russian (as I am not Russian, for example) but rather it was a Soviet thing. Your sibling comment explains it pretty well.

Man, I totally could have written this. The big problem is that whole "finding local groups" thing. That just... doesn't happen. Maybe if I lived in a city, but not in the 'burbs. Not when you have a full time job and kids.

follow up:

And you know what the crazy thing is? I just don't care about stuff like sports, but I'd happily go to a game if I liked the people I was with, for the the chance to hang out. But omg I just don't care about so many of the things that seem to bring people together.

That's the curse of the mild introvert, I guess.

Meetup gets thrown around as cliche advice for this sort of things, but in the last city I lived, majority of meetups were either very demographic specific (i.e. something like 60+, or women’s business) or fronts for MLM and other scams.

yeah I have never found anything on Meetup that interested me. I once went to one for "Computers and programming". Noped out of there real fast. I was the only professional and I'm not interested in helping rookies learn javascript.

this has been my biggest problem with Meetup style events too. I'm often looking for others with a level of experience or interest in a topic to match my own, only to find people trying to break into the industry and just barely scratching the surface. At that point it's not a social thing for me, it's a mentoring/work thing, and I get this feeling of disappointment in the situation, which persuades me to skip the next.

It’s easy to start a meetup. I did once and other people who were searching for something similar popped right up and formed some great friendships. It’s ok to be a light host.

Out of curiosity, what kind of meetup did you start? How did you find event space for it?

I started a meet up for local digital or tech entrepreneurs to find, learn and take their next steps together. It was a mix of techies, marketing folks, business folks. Didn’t matter as long as you were ready to learn and do your next step.

It was less of an event and more of a community of acquaintances who were good at welcoming strangers. Many of us became good friends.

Space was public venues, and once folks got to knowledge other, other suggestions of who had access to space came up pretty easily.

Today, I’d probably pick something semi different like airmeet and use it for a virtual meetup to gauge interest.

Sometimes restaurants or libraries have dedicated rooms that can be booked.

Yeah, you have to look for private clubs for the things you're into. Masters swimming. Archery clubs. Book clubs. Whatever.

They're usually not on meetup, and often only on their own websites and/or on Facebook.

I found this helpful: https://outline.com/aAmy53

I've also struggled making new (local) friends with kids, especially working from home for a non-local company. This is one of the main reasons I go work at coffee shops--the slim chance I run into someone in the same situation as me. It seems my wife can easily find a ton of mom's groups or women's clubs, for men, not so much.

My wife and the other moms in her mom group keep saying that they want the husbands to get together and do something. They just don't understand. We have nothing in common, and the shared experience of having kids is not even close to enough.

I hear this too. But I think that making friends is about diversifing your interests and theirs as well. Humans in frequent contact with each other tends to move towards alignment.

yeah but you have to have something. A liberal computer nerd and a firefighter steeped in macho culture are just not gonna work.

Do they both like tri-tip and beer? Boom. Bbq time.

Tri-tip and beer? If you have any friend-slots open I'd like to apply. :)

For me it's been the opposite. Being stuck in a suburb with small children, I've connected properly with more people than ever before in adult life. I wasn't actively searching or joining any groups, I just headed out with the stroller a couple of times per day during six (first child) plus ten (second child) months.

I think most people find it simultaneously wonderful and extremely boring to be at home with kids for extended periods, so quite a few seize any chance of having a conversation with another adult. The playgrounds are full of bored parents, and everyone has one or more tiny, human conversation starters.

Kindergarten is pretty good as well for meeting people. When a three year old is invited to birthday party, they kind of have to have a parent along for the event.

Somewhat specific to my locality (Sweden), there is 15 hours per week of free kindergarten for kids with stay-at-home parents. In my city there are specific drop-off and pickup times for those children, which means that six times per week you meet relaxed and slightly bored other parents, who have kids in the same group as you. This essentially always means that you hang around the yard for a bit and socialize.

Socialize yes. But so far it's only been because of the kids and because it's awkward to just stand around and not talk to each other. Never found anyone I'd really wanna hang out with. YMMV obviously.

It's hard to jump straight to friend-level, without first socializing and making acquaintances.

A bit late to reply... But, the magic of it for me has been that several of these repeated superficial contacts have turned into friendships.

Three new friends in two years, six if one counts spouses. That is the same amount that I made in the preceeding ten years!

I've done this, but at the dog park. Not sure it works as well though—I hardly know anyone's name, just their dog's name.

Kids make it tough, for sure. I can't plan time for get togethers because I have to take kids to activities every evening. They're well socialized and I'm a hermit. But I'm starting to push back against the parenting industrial complex. My kids will survive if I have friends or if I'm not there at all their games. I have social needs too.

Never prioritizing your own needs is a good way to end up bitter and divorced. Also competitive sports before high school should be considered child abuse. After all kids aren't the ones signing themselves up for these intensive programs.

Working in Toronto I found the same. Worse still (and in typical Canadian fashion), people would act as if they wanted to be more than work friends, but outside-work events would never work out for some reason. Moving to the Netherlands fixed the problem for me, so I think there are strong cultural forced at play. I've found building friendships (and knowing who is actually not interested in friendship) much easier, in and out of work. Also, in one year my professional network is far better than what I had in Canada after six years.

It's the blessing and curse of Dutch people, as a collective, that they really don't mind telling you what they think.

Argh this is my problem at my current company except I’m not even particularly introverted. I made lifelong friends at my previous small company but after four years at my current “top tier” company I got nothing, maybe one strong lead... in another state. We’re likable people and make friends quickly but nobody has time for a deeper connection, nobody wants to spend evenings or weekends doing bonding’y stuff (and I’m not into sports).

Like others here I tried finding local friends through groups, other dads, school events, etc but get nowhere. I’m honestly considering either switching back to a small cultish company or moving to a smaller town both of which have their own problems but... guess I could try softball

It doesn’t exactly make me happy others have this same problem but I’m glad I’m not alone.

I've worked at 4 companies in my career. I've made good personal friends at the first and current. I have close to zero contact with anyone from the second and third.

If I had to attribute what the difference was:

First company: Almost everyone was within a 10 year age difference of each other, and even those few that were older were still "young at heart", for lack of a better term. Everyone enjoyed each other's company and would frequently meet up after work, even go party together at bars and clubs on peoples' birthdays, etc.

Current company: My ex-boss had a unique knack for bringing the team together. I don't know what specifically he did that contributed most, but the entire team ended up becoming friends. Since he left, things haven't been the same with newcomers into the team, while most of the oldtimers have left.

Same. I have friends from some gigs that have stayed friends for many years. Other jobs, I never talked with anyone again. Age and stage of life is factor. If your coworkers all have young children, birthday clubbing isn’t really on their agenda.

Without out-of-work activities & bounding, friendly coworkers don’t transition into friends. I’d suspect remote work makes it very difficult to form a permanent friendship with a colleague.

Definitely agree age and stage of life is a factor. Which makes me more surprised how I've become so friendly with people at my current company. Our age ranges from early 20s to late 50s, singles, married with kids, etc. Most of us don't even live too close by. The only distinguishing factor I can think of, is as I mentioned, my ex-boss, who really had a knack for bringing people together.

> Lately, I've been realizing that even though my coworkers like me, and I like them, they are not really my friends. Nobody who leaves the company stays in touch with me.

I thought this was the norm, not the exception. I'm not in touch with of my past colleagues anymore. Reasons: a) we never hanged out outside the office (besides, beers on Fridays from time to time), b) changing jobs usually means changing cities, and using Twitter/WhatsApp/Facebook/Email is something that I find useless if you want to keep in touch with people; for me it is in-person hang outs or no touch at all.

this was my entire experience in San Francisco with almost everyone I met. i’m not that introverted, people seemed to like me and hang out with me at work. Once they or I left, I essentially never heard from any of them again.

I noticed this in other people too. Their entire social circles revolved around work. People had weddings that essentially only co workers went to.

Those years were the loneliest of my life.

> Those years were the loneliest of my life.

What did you change to turn this around?

Thanks for asking. I started therapy, and left. I moved to Tahoe in 2019, where I had actually made a few friends due to skiing ~40 days a year or so while in SF. I ran into some friendly people at an Alpine Meadows pass holder party awhile ago, struck up a conversation over a Blackhawks jersey and life in Chicago. Something that might happen in SF all the time, but would rarely if ever lead to a relationship.

The hardest thing for me, still, is I'm working at a company that has a similar vibe to an SF tech company with a lot of people moving here or our other office for the job. That sets up the transactional/ephemeral relationships from work. It's very hard for me to distance myself from getting self worth out of my work and relationships at work, but I must do that. The "I must do that," is an insight from therapy.

This is also a silicon valley problem. Lots of people move there to get the big job and make money. It attracts a certain kind of people. People who prioritize their career and income above other things. You also have the challenge that a lot of the people moving to SF might only stay a few years, so you have lot of turnaround. People are not focused on building long-term friendships and relationships because know that they or others might leave. You also see this on the dating scene. I found silicon valley to be an unhealthy living environment on multiple levels.

my experience is.. our lives are complicated and we should trust ourselves more and not try to optimize

a lot of us are lonely and it makes everything sensitive, maybe your colleagues don't stay in touch because they think you didn't stay in touch

it's subtle and fragile and I think we should find more strength within ourselves

I have the same issue. I want to expand my friendships beyond my employer, but I'm not certain how. I feel like I've got just enough time outside of work to spend time with my family, and very little left over to go to meetups or wherever else it is that people find new adult friends.

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