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Comment by Benjammer | Hacker News Reader

If you have a condition like Asperger's or Autism then I apologize, I don't mean to be insensitive. But, if you have run-of-the-mill social anxiety and/or shyness, then I think time-boxed, scheduled, regular conversations with your co-workers can be just about the best format for practicing your conversation skills that I could think of. I think if you tried to put effort in, you might be able to make more progress than you think you can. Think of it like any other skill you need to practice and develop for work. This isn't a purely social situation, you don't need to be best friends with these people. It's just about practicing your ability to pretend to be a socially confident person in business settings when called for. And to learn about your co-workers personalities so that you can be a more effective and empathetic teammate.

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Sure, it's possible that if I put in the effort and practiced I could get better at conversation, and this might be a good venue for doing it.

But if I put in the effort, I could also be a much better artist. Or a much better cook, and there are plenty of venues that would be good for it.

I get along fine with my coworkers. In all the horrible peer-judging that goes on in Google performance reviews, "Hard to work with" almost never comes up for me. Nor does, "doesn't know what is going on". Nor does, "I wish they would be more socially confident."

I get along just fine. But enforced social time with people who I'm not doing projects with? No thanks. I'll do my job, communicate about my job in the standups and whatever normal checkins we have.

Fortunately, my skills are in high enough demand that if a role puts more social demands on me, I can just bail for another team or company. It's nice that way.

You do you man, but this idea of "I get paid to code, and I only do enough emotional labor to get my code merged and not get dinged on perf reviews," leads to a lot of the issues I have with working in big tech, personally. Maybe that's just me though.

Don't confuse "Hates hanging out in forced one-on-one social situations" with "Only does enough emotional labor to get code merged and not get dinged on perf reviews."

They are different things. I help people who need help, comment on design docs, and wish people happy birthday, have a good vacation and whatnot.

Required strolling with random people or going to lunch is not the same thing.

You do you too. If you love those things, great! Not everyone does.

I think you might benefit from examining how bias can take over when you only do emotional labor on an ad-hoc, unplanned, unstructured basis.

I don't believe that forced one-on-one conversations are the only way to accomplish this.

You should consider how assuming, "Everyone works like I do, and can benefit from the same things I like" may be biasing you against people who don't think or act like you, or are not emotionally rewarded by the same things you are.

Don't know how many different firms you have worked for, or how many different groups you are in, but I have worked in enough different positions with enough different teams in enough different roles to know that this style works awfully well for me. And given the various successful projects I've been a part of (not all, of course), I'm reasonably sure that this style hasn't held me or the teams back.

Congrats on your perceived success! I tried to use softer words like "might," and I explicitly said "maybe this is just me," in order to not assume anything. It appears you took my language in a different tone than I intended, and are now turning this into more of an argument than any sort of discussion, so I'm going to take my leave and move on.

Do people give comments on social skills in Google performance reviews? I wouldn't unless it was drastically lacking or causing problems. I wouldn't call anyone out if they are slightly awkward, doesn't make proper eye contact when talking, doesn't pick up on cues that the other person is bored, talks a bit too loud or too long, talks mostly about themselves, doesn't talk about anything else besides work, or doesn't talk unless talked to. None of these affect performance, but the lack of skill just groups the person into the socially awkward group. Not saying that the 20 minutes walks would cure that, of course.

Now, regarding social time with people I'm not doing projects with, I'm all for that, since information does not always flow freely within a company, and talking to people on adjacent projects could lead to new knowledge or collaborations, or at least be set up for such. It's also good if you become a hub of information for other teams, as that increases your value to yours and the teams you talk to. Information is power :)

Of course, as you said, you have to weigh this against other skills you can spend time on, it all depends on what you want from your career. If you desire to move up the hierarchy, soft skills such as this will grow in importance, as your work shifts from being neck-deep in technical details, to negotiations with other teams on how to achieve large initiatives. It's easier to catch someone's ear to talk about something you'd like to get done when they have a positive social impression of you.

All of this is possible without forced 1-1 walks with people I don't know.

For example, Google has dozens of interest-based groups, some of which I go and participate regularly and positively (not going to give too many details here), and get plenty of gossip from that. I participate in several job-adjacent team chats, where I learn about projects and contribute where I can.

One of my best interactions came from seeing an old teammate in an MK and they had a problem that we talked about. That was great and fun and interesting, and built plenty of social capital. But we had something to you know, actually talk about instead of make work.

Not everyone wants to move up the hierarchy--doing perf as an IC is painful enough. Doing it as manager would make me want to stab myself. ICs become less and less common as the level increases.

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