Hacker News Reader

Comment by sanderjd | Hacker News Reader

Because you might get fired or laid off or burnt out and leave and only then discover that you have invested too much of yourself into this faceless entity that does not care a whit about you. This is one of those things where peoples' warnings to the young come from hard won experience, but where it doesn't sound right to people who have not themselves yet gained the experience. So we fail to impart the lessons and each generation is forced to relearn them on their own. It can be maddening to know something is correct but unable to convince someone who must experience it themselves in order to see. But it's just life and humanity, it just works that way.

View on HN

>This is one of those things where peoples' warnings to the young come from hard won experience, but where it doesn't sound right to people who have not themselves yet gained the experience.

Speak for yourself. I am very experienced. I have worked at many companies, some of which I left abruptly, and others where my close friends were fired/laid off.

But guess what? None of that matters. Just because a friendship starts at a workplace doesn't mean it ends when the employment ends. Some of my best, life-long friends are people I met at work. My current SO, who I will marry, is someone I met at at a past employer. My wedding party is going to be half-filled with people who I met at work, even though I no longer work with them. I currently mentor (and am mentored by) people from past jobs, one of which was actually fired.

This is also a self-fulfilling prophecy that I see in these conversations. People begrudgingly make nice with people at work, and restrict those relationships to only happen at work... and then are surprised when those relationships end when employment ends. If you only interact with your "friends" at your employer, then no shit those interactions will stop when your employment ends. But they don't have to, and for many people, they don't.

It's not any different than any other part of life. I'm no longer in college, but I'm still close friends with people I met in college, and I don't regret at all the fun activities I did during college. I no longer go to my old gym (I switched to a new gym), but I still keep in touch with someone I met at the old gym and I still benefit from the exercises I did there. I no longer live in my old apartment, but I still keep in touch with my friend who lived across the hall from me. Why should my workplace be any different?

You have to be careful, because work friends can suddenly vanish when you change jobs, but anyone with a bit of social awareness can navigate this.

WFH has changed work from a social experience into something boring. I get it, work is work, and maybe treating it as a more significant part of life isn't a shrewd move, but I am definitely missing out something in this current state.

(That being said, I do understand that I may change my mind in 10 years, assuming I have a family. But I can only talk about how this seems today.)

There are two different statements one can make: "don't make friends at revolve one's life around work" vs. "don't only make friends at and revolve one's life around work". I'm making the latter statement. Edit to add: I think you're also making the latter statement, so I don't think we disagree.

Wow.

You sound SO different from me. I really struggle to form relationships so easily, yet it sounds like you making lasting relationships wherever you go.

I find that kind of fascinating. As someone who just went back into the office with the whole intent on being more social, I still find that my interactions with coworkers are at "arms length" and are very sterile. Hard to imagine a relationship with them outside of work. That line is still very strong.

Kudos to you. But I would ask, is this an intrinsic skill or did you learn this over time?

Not OP, but I always try to watch out for opportunities to talk about other people's interests. When someone's eyes light up about a topic or they get an excited tone, I try to ask them open-ended questions to get them talking more. Its pretty affirming to get thoughtful questions about a topic you have strong interest in.

It works even better if you can manage to remember those things people get excited about. Even if you don't remember anything else about the person, it gives you something to revisit in future conversations.

I do the same, but getting people to open up to discuss that initial thing that interests them can be a challenge in itself. I think that's the art of small talk, it's teasing out information from someone, and gaining their trust, so that they eventually let their guard down and mention something close to them that you can expand on. I have no problem connecting with people past that point, but it's the initial small talk and trust gaining stages where I suck.

I've heard from people who are good at this that it comes from a genuine interest in other people. They're able to work through the small talk phase because they're driven by an intrinsic desire to learn more about the person. I definitely do not have that trait.

I can understand that; I think there's also hesitation at that point in any relationship, where both parties are unsure of how much to invest in further social interactions.

One thing I would say though: if you believe that this is an intrinsic trait that others have, rather than something that can be learned, then this belief may hold you back more than you may think.

Sounds exhausting (and distracting) trying to maintain anything beyond a superficial relationship with so many acquaintances gained from all the vectors in the life described above.

Enjoying the convenient food, comfortable workstation, and low level social interactions you get from a good workplace is not an investment at all. If you get fired or quit then you just get the same thing at the next job. I speak from experience having done this multiple times.

Your point about not over-investing into a company that doesn't care about you is valid, but not relevant.

It is relevant because many people in our industry replace hobbies, diversions, and friendships outside the workplace with those within. If they instead merely augment them, that's great. But there can be many temptations to transition through augmentation into replacement.

I think a lot of the benefits you (can) get from this you can take with you after you leave the company. I have good friends I still hang out with from my previous work places 1 and 6 years ago. If it would have been all/mostly virtual interactions, I'm sure things would have been OK, but I don't think it would have resulted in the same level of connection with some of my coworkers. YMMV, different people form connections differently.

> Because you might get fired or laid off or burnt out and leave and only then discover that you have invested too much of yourself into this faceless entity that does not care a whit about you.

I think how much you invest into this faceless entity is independent from whether you WFH or the office, no?

In theory, yes, but in practice many offices are designed to draw employees into the company being a lifestyle rather than a place to work, in a way that is difficult to accomplish without the office. (This is why there is so much hesitance from these companies to ditch their offices!)

What I want to know is who's paying all these people to stand around and socialize while they're on the clock am I paying for that as a customer because fuck that what company is this. I'll take my business to someone who has employees who are efficient and keep my cost low.

Oddly nobody seems to wonder this about the golf and yachts of executives. Yes, very successful companies generate lots of free cash flow, and there are myriad expressions of this, like extremely wealthy executives, staff that enjoys niceties like socializing while at work, and lots of other stuff. Customers are not actually very sensitive to the size of margins taken, in many many businesses.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com