Sounds like a lot of HN people just don't like desire friends period. Like work is just a begrudging duty to attend to for half their waking lives but do it in tech because it pays extremely well for less investment (compared to other professions like doctors and Lawyers).
Again, It's half your life in your most active years so Idk how I'd tolerate a lonely workplace in top of an increasingly lonely world. Does everyone just suffice using online dating and posting here for other socialization?
Friendships develop naturally, you can't force them. You are forced to have relationships with co-workers though. Just because you're forced to have co-workers, this doesn't mean you should be forced to be friends with them. In the end, if friendships naturally develop, that's great. If friendships don't develop, there's nothing wrong with having a purely professional relationship with co-workers, especially if they are productive, energizing, kind, etc. There's no reason to feel like this is a negative thing. I can certainly get all my friendship needs met outside of work and love from my family at home. The only time I'd be desperate to make friends at work is if I'm single in a new city with no attachments to anyone around me. Even then, I can't force friendships to develop at work. The nature of friendship is different from work relationships.
Sure. But friendships also take effort and finding the idea of casually conversing on the clock "patronizing" sounds like effort to actively prevent any friendships. You don't have to force yourself, but being close minded to the idea outright
> There's no reason to feel like this is a negative thing.
disagree or not, I already gave my POV. you spend half your waking hours of the best years of your life there, I want to try and at least be open to the idea of people who hopefully are passionate in the same kind of work as me would have something to connect over.
But hey, if you have friends in town or are fine focusing on family, that's fine.
>I can certainly get all my friendship needs met outside of work and love from my family at home. The only time I'd be desperate to make friends at work is if I'm single in a new city with no attachments to anyone around me.
welcome to most college grads that don't all go work at a FAANG together after college. First job sucked but met some great friends, still talk to this day. Didn't force myself at all; some people asked to go out to lunch and I was simply willing enough to go out instead of keep my head at my desk. Some meshed well, some not so much.
2nd job was amazing from a career perspective, but I clearly wasn't going to closely bond with everyone else being 15+ years older than me with kids/family as a single 26YO dude (at the time). Wouldn't change it for the world, but it was always a lingering feeling there where I felt I had to try and act 10 years older in career and maturity compared to just being myself in the first role.
> Sounds like a lot of HN people just don't like desire friends period.
At work? They are not my friends. Over almost a decade working for the same company there's one person I can consider a friend and I'm pretty sure I'll continue to talk once we are working at other places. Everyone else? Not friends. Friendly, sure.
Work is really the wrong place to be looking for friends. Hopefully one has a life outside of work.
>Over almost a decade working for the same company there's one person I can consider a friend and I'm pretty sure I'll continue to talk once we are working at other places.
I've had to jump jobs every 3 years (not because I wanted to. just laid off) and I try to make at least 2-3 people I keep in contact with at every place. Made a few close friends but not at every job.
>Work is really the wrong place to be looking for friends.
Third place is dying, so it's becoming more and more of the only place to meet friends. It's not uncommon advice to try and find friends at the place you work. But like people anything, YMMV.
>Hopefully one has a life outside of work.
3 years of pandemic and looming recession don't help much with that, unfortunately. feel so bad for those that graduate in 2019, or worse, in college as the pandemic hit.
Sure, I get that. The key from my limited experience is to be open to work-adjacent outings. Going out to lunch, participating in some company event, or simply making the occasional comment in some casual chat channel. The "voice" won't be completely unmasked, but you start to see more points to jump into other than what deadlines are coming or ideas for the next feature.
I'll admit it's usually easier (or harder) for my industry to do this. I work in games, many people like and play games Obvious icebreaker: what kind of games do you play? Granted, games are super varied and it can lead nowhere if you play MMOs and the recipient plays FPSs, but it's more than what most can try to start out with. It also means there's a lot more non-devs on the floor to talk with too if you don't care to breath tech in and out of work.
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I do also need to echo the other reply that there are also, simply more and more people who aren't willing to try to socialize at work. You can't do much about that so don't spend your time talking to a wall if you can identify one.
I think one of my greatest professional gifts, especially since getting into tech, has been that I'm naturally personable and can get along well with pretty much anyone. It doesn't have to - and usually doesn't - get into personal stuff. I'm just sorta jokey and lighthearted while still getting my shit done. It has only been a benefit to me, personally and professionally.
I can't see how making people more comfortable talking to and collaborating with you could really be a negative, but everyone has different priorities I suppose.
the main premise sure. the comment I'm responding to is "I don't like talking about non-work stuff at work period. The person was annoying because of that". And that just feels like a lonely way to treat work, in my eyes.
> No cookie cutter management fluff is going to get you anywhere useful with intelligent people.
bollocks. intelligent people are just as susceptible to advertising, charisma, good looks, "presence", flattery, threats, and other manipulation as anyone. The bar may be a little higher, but everyone has intrinsic biases regardless of IQ, and it's not hard to flesh those out through interactions, then pander to them.
These are all part and parcel of the management toolkit and if you don't think they are then chances are they're working on you right now. "Advertising works, even when you know how advertising works".
Intelligent wasn't some nod to the learned class or a differentiator, I meant it in a very general and generous way.
People quickly see through things like, "I understand that you feel that way, and I'll definitely take your comments on board.
Moving forward let's see how we can collaborate in a manner in which we can all feel heard and empowered."
Or rote-learned manufactured smalltalk.
It's not an argument against generally finding things in common with people either, of course, just a recommendation to avoid the scripted stuff and get to the meat of it sooner.
I do think that a lot of management advice would suffer from a replication crisis if it had a strong enough base for that to be coherent.
Also have to keep in mind that just because your peers are intelligent, doesn't mean the management above is. They will probably reach out to the flatterer as a point of contact even if they aren't the best one at that specific task to be done.
At least personally, the people I've found difficult to work with aren't ones who I don't know what they want; it's that what they want conflicts with what I want. Usually, this boils down to "they want to decide how everything is done and not have to justify it to me, and I want to not just blindly follow what they tell me to do". Trying to "work maturely and fairly within that context" is directly at odds with what they want in those cases.
There is a lot of that. I have one who in no exaggerated terms needs every good thing to have been their idea and will reframe what their role was in anything that turns out to have been a waste of time/money.
They want, more than anything, approval and recognition - to an embarrassing extent.
It's not fun and I'd have it almost any other way given the choice, but we've achieved a lot despite that and observers so far have been astute enough to see things for what they are.
Even a shared love of Star Trek can result in irreconcilable differences and huge battles. I'd never want to work with somebody who likes Holodeck episodes or doesn't love Gowron.
That said, there are some times that even Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans can actually get along.
I'm bistellar: I love both Star Trek AND Star Wars!
> I'd never want to work with somebody who likes Holodeck episodes or doesn't love Gowron.
I like holodeck episodes, as long as they're not overdone. I have no strong feelings about Gowron, seems like a canonical distillation of a Klingon. Maybe we won't get along.
> I'm bistellar: I love both Star Trek AND Star Wars!
Of course, as long as I can shower you with all my favorite Gowron themed Star Trek Shitposting memes! Look into his eyes. You'll grow to love him the way I do, and thank me later, I promise.
And if you liked to hate Robert Carlyle as Doctor Nicholas Rush in Stargate Universe, you'll love to hate him as Rumplestiltskin / Mr. Gold / Weaver in Once Upon a Time!
...Did you know Battlestar Galactica was based on the Book of Mormon?
I also love Dark Star! But it is time for Sgt. Pinback to feed the alien.
Due to unfortunate confusions by the cosmos and misunderstandings by the search engines at the outset of the internet era, he had to make a trans-steller switch to Star Gazer!
One of the best ds9 episodes (and thus best Star Trek episodes) is the holodeck episode where the crew are James Bond villains. Bashir and Garek are the ones who have to escape.
I found that DS9 ep pretty boring. Whenever Avery Brooks is given an opportunity to chew the scenery it breaks the 4th wall for me. The main value of the episode is Andrew Robinson as Garak (as it always is), commenting on the absurdity of the fictional spy stuff.
In The Pale Moonlight is the maximum scenery-chewing by Avery Brooks I can take.
This has just brought back vivid memories of the person I used to work with where the one thing we had in common was actually a love of Star Trek. I still have no idea how he loves it so much given he apparently learned absolutely nothing from it, seemingly every belief and behaviour he held was something that would have Picard facepalming.
Yeah it's weird- so many commenters in /r/StarTrekMemes also seem to have taken no lessons (or the wrong lessons) from TNG, and at the same time accuse me of having done the same.
People and worldviews are totally inconsistent, even when two people watched the exact same thing religiously and can quote it back to you in context.
The entertainment industry is famous for it's lack of morals - why even consider taking any lesson from something they've produced? Role models, if needed, can be found somewhere else. I love star trek, have seen it all, etc. but it's purely entertainment for me.
Oh Star Trek played a vital role in both our formative years? That’s nice, but let’s get back to solving the matter at hand.