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Comment by RamblingCTO | Hacker News Reader

It's very worrying to me that (especially US-inspired developers) people only think of a job as doing something for someone else. I guess it's pretty different in Germany, but a company is also a community, you spent a lot of time with these people. Sure, there are some folks who like to stay at home at all times, but I feel like that's not a majority. Humans are social animals at core, so I don't understand this one-sided discussion at all. Of course the article shits on management. Management enables you to do the work you came in for. I don't know how someone doesn't understand this. It helps you focus more on the stuff you like. Sounds like your management/company culture is shit.

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Are you sure this is a Germany vs US thing? I'm originally from Germany and now live in Switzerland. I also think I'm doing something for someone else, no matter that my current project has public utility. I've also never cared about my company for socialization purposes.

We'd need some data about this question to see whether it is a cultural or individual thing.

I agree. I enjoy socializing, but it never even crossed my mind that my job isn't doing something for someone else.

This hypothesis is quite easy to verify: the sets of activities that I perform at work and in the time I have full control over are strictly disjoint.

At least in the USA/Canada, the community element is heavily manufactured. Sure, you talk to your co-workers but you won’t speak to 90% of them again after you leave.

In the US, or at least the west coast, the developer community is tied to the broader ecosystem and not the particular company where you work. When I worked in Silicon Valley, there was a saying that you don't work for "the company", you work for "the Valley". And it very much felt that way. Companies were ad hoc gatherings of talent within a larger close-knit software community. The tech companies generally understood this.

This dynamic lead to rich cross-fertilization of ideas and talent between companies. Socialization happened at the ecosystem level, not the company level, and I think it is probably a healthier than tightly coupling professional socialization with a company.

That actually sounds so awesome! We don't have that here quite that much. Maybe in Berlin, but that's not representative of Germany in any way anyhow.

I am really surprised by all this "humans are social animals and like to be in the office community" bullshit. I had to be lectured about this from all of my managers allready. But if this would be really the case, then why is office community not part of the application process?? If that would be true, then interviews should be done in a very different way, giving the applicants the chance to get to know the people they will be working with.

In all my interviews the topics were 1. What is the company doing? 2. What have I done? 3. What can I do for the company?

Never was something like do I share some of the interests / hobbies of the people allready working there relevant.

Maybe it is a match for some people. But then it is a coincidence. You are employed to work and to produce something for the company. It was never about having fun. Stop twisting things.

> Never was something like do I share some of the interests / hobbies of the people allready working there relevant.

I always interview so that the team and the applicant meet and can chill a bit and I also ask them about their opinion. Especially for small teams it's way more important to have a personal match than ticking the boxes on the "hard requirements" like coding abilities.

> Maybe it is a match for some people. But then it is a coincidence. You are employed to work and to produce something for the company. It was never about having fun. Stop twisting things.

That's so sad. I'm sorry but you can't ignore the basic biological fact that we are meant to connect with each other.

I really wish that you experience a nice working environment somewhere down the line, but based on the vibes you give off you would block that anyways.

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