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> I've never known anyone who would think less of someone for not drinking alcohol. At most it would have been a passing curiosity.

This is subject to some major sampling bias. Drinkers cluster with drinkers. Non-drinkers with non-drinkers. For example, I've noticed that people tend to either know very few alcoholics or heavy drinkers personally, or almost everyone they know has an alcohol problem to some degree.

"Thinking less of someone for not drinking alcohol" would fairly describe much of my social circle. I've witnessed the abstinent be subjected to some remarkable barrages.

Oh, you don't? Is it a health issue? It's not? Then why? You don't like it? Why not? Do you think you're better than us? Are you a recovering alcoholic? No? Then what's the problem? Aren't you perfect! Why are you so uptight? Why are you trying to ruin the fun? He bought the drinks for you, it's really rude to refuse. Don't you want to have a good time? Why are you such a buzzkill? Here, try this drink (that I spiked without telling you). Yeah, there's booze in it. What's your problem?

When nearly everyone drinks heavily, and they view that as normal, then deviance from that is perceived as just that, social deviance.

> This is subject to some major sampling bias. Drinkers cluster with drinkers. Non-drinkers with non-drinkers.

Or they don't, and virtually in every community above 4 people you will find drinkers and non-drinkers as well.

It's certainly no hard binary! But drinking behaviours are socially determined, so unsurprisingly it does tend to cluster:

> People were 50 percent more likely to be heavy drinkers if one of their friends or relatives drank heavily. However, if a friend-of-a-friend drank heavily, people were only 36 percent more likely to do so, and if a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend drank heavily, they were 15 percent more likely to do so.

> The pattern worked in reverse, too, although it wasn't as pronounced. People with a friend or relative who didn't drink were 29 percent more likely to be teetotalers themselves.

> The quantity of relationships mattered as well. The more connections to drinkers--or nondrinkers--a person had, the more powerful the effect was. People "surrounded by" heavy drinkers were 70 percent more likely to drink heavily themselves, while those with many abstinent friends and relatives were 50 percent more likely to also abstain, according to the study.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/06/drinking.alcohol.family... Other studies mostly point in the same direction.

Sounds like a bunch of jerks. Maybe it's time to find another circle?

> I've never known anyone who would think less of someone for not drinking alcohol.

Eh, I don't know how "wasted/buzzed" people get a professional social outings but I think after about 2 drinks there's a pretty good disconnect between "I'm buzzed and you're stone sober and the conversation just isn't on the same level as if you were drinking instead"

> Don't waste your time at social events you don't enjoy.

The author is talking about work events, which are unavoidable if you want to get anywhere in your career.

I’ve avoided work events basically my entire career and have not had issues with career advancement or development. I reject the idea that they’re somehow mandatory in tech.

Many of my friends have similar experiences.

I have had a different experience in tech consulting. Networking was an explicitly required part of the job, and it was a category in my performance evaluation.

Absolutely, Jobs that are external-customer facing will require and evaluate you on your social skills. Ordering a rum and coke without the rum is a social skill. Whatever you do with your coworkers, you should do it with grace, or they'll rightly suspect that you're not using grace with your customers

As a drinker, I've occasionally ordered a non-alcoholic drink while everyone else was drinking because I had an early morning, had somewhere else to go, or simply wasn't in the mood. I've received pushback, for certain, on that - Alcoholics do get offended when you don't drink with them - but the one incident that ruffled me was odd enough that it stands out in my mind, and while I've certainly gotten "Just one" a few times, I've never felt unduly pressured to drink at work.

To put it really simply - I'd bet that the OP's author has experience what he's claiming, but I think he needs to get out of dodge because it is concentrated and you can just go work for companies that are more friendly.

Same. Was recently promoted to a software engineering position, and I have not attended any work events outside of work.

The author is a developer advocate which obviously requires attending a lot of events. Of course a software engineer will have a different experience.

The author is a developer advocate which generally does require you to attend workshops and other events. Tech is a very broad world.

That’s not what the parent comment implied. It implied any tech career required this.

I grant you a developer advocate would need to do this.

> That’s not what the parent comment implied. It implied any tech career required this.

No, that's not what it implied. Only if you give the least charitable interpretation, rather than the most charitable interpretation.

There are work events that are unavoidable for many people. For all people? No, of course not. There are exceptions to every generalization. But let's not pretend that work events are unimportant to careers, generally speaking.

Would you not say that networking is important, in general? The article author was specifically talking about a networking event.

My point was that these events are not necessarily about pure personal enjoyment, and finding them disagreeable in some way is not necessarily a reason to avoid them, if it's important to your career that you attend. That's not a "waste of time".

> Non-alcoholic drink options are available everywhere.

Ehh, they're pretty bad in the general case. I went to probably the top 1% of bars in the country recently (in The Shard in London). The entire sum of non-alcoholic options was 4 mocktails, all pretty good and very, very sweet (between us we tried 3).

There was one solitary NA beer: Peroni. This is probably one of the very worst NA beers I've ever had, after the Beck's one.

Probably they have the usual options of sugar/aspartame bombs like Coke too, but they're not on the menu.

If you're not into sugar, not drinking alcohol is extremely boring a lot of the time.

Which is sad, because there are actually some quite nice NA beers, wines and "spirits" (herbal extractions) now.

But then again, they probably don't actually want non-drinkers there as they can't sell them outrageously expensive drinks (the most expensive NA drink is £12.50, the champagne menu goes to 4 figures).

I'm a non-drinker (but am a passionate meat eater for later context). I agree that I don't feel like anyone has ever thought less about me because of my non-drinking status.

I've also won prizes that are alcohol related. The perspective I wanted to share is that I look at this as a free opportunity to delight someone on my team that enjoys alcohol. I don't try to get the conference to drop them. Instead I look at it as a way that I can delight someone.

I would hate that we reduce everything down to the point where the only thing we can give out is glasses of water because that's the only thing everyone can agree on.

Its ok that we have different likes and tastes. Don't guilt people that they like beer. It's ok, you can not like beer and they can like beer. And you haven't lost anything by winning a prize you don't like -- instead you've gained an opportunity to make someone else happy. Just pay it forward and the next time the universe might grant you a steak dinner instead. :)

It may be different in professional settings. In old country, drinking was effectively expected for several reasons including 'establishing trust'. Amusingly, anecdotally, I heard similar stories about China and its culture regarding drinking.

In US the only time I even heard of any kind of peer pressure was from first year college kids, who have not yet had a chance to explore their new found lack of parental supervision.

china is much worse in that regard. i was never subjected to it, but i could observe it. lot's of drinking.generally business decisions aren't made until after a big dinner with everyone with lots of alcohol. not everyone does it though, but it is considered normal and sometimes expected. they may not pressure anyone to drink, but it could affect their decisions later.

A lot of people will assume if you won't drink alcohol that you have a problem with overindulgence, not knowing your limits - not that you have some puritanical avoidance on principle.

Or you could notice that author's last name, which might indicate another reason that he doesn't drink (not that I know that this is the reason for his choice).

This isn't a good signal imo. The world is undergoing a lot of cultural mixing at the moment so making the assumption that someones last name indicates their cultural participation is a dangerous one. For instance, I have a very French name but I also have near zero French cultural implications.

Eh, I think from a Bayesian standpoint its valid to think that if somebody has a last name that correlates with a group that doesn't drink, and that person also argues against drinking that they're more likely to be a member of that group.

But that's the key part "more likely", and not something definitive. It's the thinking that that inference is definitive is where it crosses the line from trying to be understanding about another culture to becoming a racist argument.

I agree though that its definitely flirting with that dangerous assumption.

That's why I said "not that I know". The parent comment said that people may speculate that someone who refuses to drink might be alcoholic, but there are also people who don't drink for religious reasons, obviously. In any case, people can decline a drink for any reason at all.

Those aren't the only two options. Either they have poor impulse control or are "puritanical"? That might not be the best way to conceptualize non-drinkers and appreciate the point the author is making.

eh, as someone who was one and has been surrounded by wreckheads my entire life, this is absolutely not my first thought if someone doesn't want a drink or whatever. Also, compound cultural inputs - I'd full understand someone with a non-European family name not wanting to imbibe booze.

I'm perfectly ok with someone not wanting a drink. I wouldn't want to go out on the piss with them, mind, and I fully understand and respect the fact they'd not want to anyway... .

>> author is more frustrated that other people like to talk about things that he's just not interested in when they're out socializing.

So what? We should aim to be inclusive.

There's always a chance someone isn't going to like/be interested in what's going to be discussed, unless you stick purely to work, in which case why even be out socializing with coworkers?

He could include himself. I have been involved in plenty of conversations about topics that don't interest me.