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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

Man, "bring your whole self to work" was well intentioned but ultimately a mistake. Just bring the part that knows how to program computers, and leave whatever part this is turned off from 9-5.

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I always assumed "bring your whole self to work" was just a nice way to lead into "you don't need work/life balance because your work is your life"

What kind of life is that? To be a sterile, subservient entity for the majority of your existence.

Being authentic in the working world helps in so many ways. And it works when your goals and the goals of the company align. The advice to just shut up and code leads to no good outcomes for anyone.

Good ways to bring your unique perspective to a professional context: intervening to avoid making some users feel offended or excluded, before a project ships to those users.

Bad ways: just yammering about how you are poly, bi, trans, and a revolutionary anarchist while we are trying to finalize OKRs for the quarter.

Your authenticity is not everyone’s authenticity.

And the opposite is true. There's a balance. For some that authenticity really works for them at work (those with a general curiosity, an interest in how groups interact and work, who are workaholics) and it aligns. For others it does not and is unfortunate in its requirement of more energy to suppress and lack of natural culture-fit.

Are there parts of your whole self that are not always appropriate to bring up? I sure think so. If one team mates whole self includes their support for Israel and another whole self is their support for Palestine, maybe we can leave some of these whole selfs at home, and just talk about work, and maybe how our camping trip this weekend was. People shouldn't have to be proselytized by any other people's extreme religious or political views at work.

Very true, there is a balance to be found. The suggestion from OP to leave it all at home, to focus purely on skill and merit is too black/white.

This isn't how people really are.

People have different presentations for different social contexts. That's typical and normal. For a working example, the social context of the marital bedroom is not the social context of the city playground where you mind your kids. Differences in clothing, actions, words.

This spans into most areas of life.

You don't have to sterilize your work life - but you do have to have _boundaries_.

But this is how people really are. Being authentic is easier for some because the corporate world more closely aligns with the dominant culture. Take the casual ignorance of an employee PC background of a sexy woman, because that's just how the boys are. Or how women are meant to breastfeed out of sight.

People do present differently in different contexts. But it is a requirement to file off all your sharp edges to participate effectively in the workplace. Intentionally limiting yourself, your output, to cater to the social conformity of others seems to be an anti-goal. But it is what we do.

>be a sterile, subservient entity for the majority of your existence

yeah, having a job sucks shit, we know

most people don't have the luxury of working a job that's worth aligning with

Obviously. And I do believe the same type of person who wants to "bring your whole self to work" also is the most disgusted by seeing it implemented. If there had been a culture of professionalism you obviously do not ask some random other employees about gay slang.

Ultimately work is a give and take. And it gets easier when it is clearly defined what is given and what is taken. That is what "professionalism" in a work environment is about. Pretending that work is some great family adventure can only lead to terrible results when conflict inevitably arises.

To be honest, I don't even know what "bring your whole self to work" means. If it means that I need to mix my personal life with my work life or a rejection of behaving as a mature professional, then I object strongly to the idea.

This misses the point. Certain groups of people have always been able to bring their whole selves to work. For example, if you're straight and married with kids, there's never been a problem about casually mentioning these things to your colleagues.

In another post, you mention

>Bad ways [to bring your whole self to work]: just yammering about how you are poly, bi, trans, and a revolutionary anarchist while we are trying to finalize OKRs for the quarter.

Do you know who 'yammers' most about their personal lives? Straight people with kids! It's not even close. I wish the majority of people doing the yammering were poly, bi and trans. It might be a touch less boring.

See, you have improperly conflated reproductive preference with sexual orientation and gender expression. That's exclusionary!

No, I haven't. I'm just saying that straight people with kids often talk about their personal lives at work (which is fine), whereas other groups of people don't always feel as free to do the same thing. If we were making a list of "kinds of people who are likely to talk lots about their personal lives in a work environment", then bi trans poly folks would not be at the top of it. If you genuinely disagree with any of those points then we can have a discussion about it. But I can't really connect your sarcastic response with what I originally said.

> If we were making a list of "kinds of people who are likely to talk lots about their personal lives in a work environment", then bi trans poly folks would not be at the top of it.

Correct. The #1 position for people who talk about their personal life and interests at work, far ahead of anyone else, would be the people who really love bicycles. Straight people with kids would be somewhere in the top 10, although perhaps not in the top 5. And gay, bi and trans folk would not even be in the top 10.

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