1- "Though shall not" limit their social life to their colleagues (or any single group that can disappear with a divorce, change of jobs, or hobby, maybe because of an incident).
2- "Though shall not" blindly help people with the hope of being helped in return. Help with generosity, but know the limits: don't sacrifice yourself, and certainly, don't count on people returning the favor as your main plan. It's incredible how much happier we can be just by helping people, if we fire and forget, rather than cling onto.
3- Do not define yourself with your job, your success in there, or with your colleagues' approvals. This is extremely hard, yet extremely important. Diversify what defines you. Be able to mentally afford being bad at some of them. Don't let any of them define who you are. This lets you act with true confidence (not insecurity disguised as overconfidence), which is extremely pleasant for yourself and others.
Making friends at the workplace is fine until there is such conflict, then where will they stand? If they will turn they back on you (and most of them will), then how much is such relation worth in the first place?
Should I give up years of joy and sense of community and belonging for the fear that someday my workplace friends will betray me? And then years more of suffering in my next workplace?
A strategy that minimizes risk rarely maximizes reward.
If I am not making friends at work, it doesn't simply equate to "sad life". Maybe it would for you, but then you can question why behaving so, work isn't and shouldn't be one's central piece of existence. Maybe you were never fired, or never saw firing for all the wrong reasons. Maybe you work so much its hard to have an actual life outside of work. At the end it doesn't matter, but folks do see things differently to you and its fine.
Professional networks are a massive important part of growing/building a career. This is especially true in an environment where there are mass layoffs constantly.
Building personal and trusting relationships is a huge part of developing that network.
This doesn’t mean you should turn every coworker into your therapist, but the other extreme is also bad for both your career and your person.
Extending on that, I do not agree with "do not define yourself with your job". Why not? It's a big, if not biggest, part of almost everyone's life. What's bad is defining yourself with your job ALONE. Psychological safety comes from having multiple self-identities: be an engineer at work, a volunteer on weekends, amateur radio enthusiast on Thursdays nights, or whatever, and don't mix those!
No, this is a recipe for surviving corporate America. You can have and make friends but be cautious of coworkers that you work directly with. I’ve made friends outside of work. I’ve made friends at work but I do not expect to be friends with everyone I work with.
> corporate America
Sounds like you're saying the same thing.
Really hope I didn't have to ever give that up.
I’ve made friends at work. I wouldn’t call them friend friends but I’ve made friends at work.
I treat everyone I work with with respect but I also don't go so far as to let them into the inner circle. I wish people could just respect people but I've seen too many office politics sessions to know better. I wished to make friends with some coworkers outside of work but it never amounted to much.
They were asked if you'd fit in and they gave the most diplomatic, polite feedback that they knew would be be taken as a no. Their comment was a pretty clear admission that this was not a "work life balance kind of company".
From personal experience I have reported gross treats by senior leadership to an HR rep who was shocked about hearing their HR employee evals being suppressed by only allowing score between 8-10 in a 1-10 score. The HR rep confirmed it personally that it was happening and a few months later appeared on the other side of the desk with the leadership as they fired me for budget reasons.
What I did was to build my own grass field(started company with my team) and it has been fucking great. We made a better product and made enough of a name of ourselves, that while I lost the battle that time with the former leadership, I fought long enough to see them all lose their jobs.
As a CEO myself now, I choose not to have an HR rep and try to do better for my people.
Also this is in EU so as a warning to others,like me then, who thought HR in the US could do this but not here.
Do they also go around repeating the sky is blue?
>>It was always a saying with Joe that there was a sucker born every minute, and all through his business career he acted on that basis, and generally found a good crop of them
The people within HR may be friendly, they've probably got friends :). It can be a very people-oriented role. But they are incapable of being your friend when you're interacting with them in their role as representative for the company.
I greatly appreciate my employer's HR folk, they're really lovely, very good at their jobs, and want to help. But if I have to have a formal meeting with them, I would definitely bring along my union rep.
Edit: which also means you're not wrong, if you've got claims that trigger damage control then HR are even less your friend.
My first manager job I was very naive, I went to HR to get help with directs. It was a bad idea, it put me and my direct at risk... never again.
The sad truth is that the managers who actually care and want to solve problems for people (personal and technical) usually get the wrong end of the HR stick first.
My question was not about if it is true or not, but why people like saying it so much.
Through multitudes of anecdotes, this group often apparently holds that conflict could be solved by going around someone, their supervisor, say, and invoking HR as if they had authority over the situation and would obviously correct the injustice. Having misplayed their hand, they end up feeling victimized through organizational discipline or firing and abandoned by the would-be savior HR. With the moral injury now upon them, they tell everyone this warning as if it were a great lie to be exposed.
Our bosses tend to be the primary relationship to manage in organizations. Just the way power works, and it mostly poses a problem when one party doesn't realize it and thinks relationships are optional.
HR is a tool. They have helped me with tons of things, but there are things they aren't good for.
At least you get paid I suppose.
Do people not know how to make friends and develop trust. The solution is the same judgment process any human should go through.
Only an idiot would automatically assume coworkers are friends.
Only an idiot would assume coworkers can't become friends.
I wouldn't want my wife to work on same team for example. Heck, even same company may be less than ideal, time off each other is usually for the better. Also, if breakup/divorce happens, workplace can easily become a place out of worst nightmare.
I prefer looking at hobbies/passions groups, people there match me way more than people at work, it that doesn't work out its easier to cut off only that group if needed. In my case it was climbing events I was organizing, and I ended up with wife that matches me on basically all important levels
Also, in IT there's not a very diverse group of people to search from. When it comes to women, the ratio of hetero men to hetero women is insanely not favorable.