There is a difference between being friendly and becoming friends. The latter is dangerous and you will be fooled in thinking your coworkers actually care about you and you need to drink the corporate kool-aid, work overtime and be a true best friend to everyone.
If you are going out binge drinking with your co-workers, you're doing it wrong because it blurries the lines between professional and personal life in my humble opinion.
Very few deep friendships develop at work, at best they will be acquaintances you see once in a while.
So by all means, be nice and cooperative but keep your distance.
Ultimately, remote is likely going to win out. Most people in the white collar work force are older, have families and live in the burbs. The commute for a lot of them is 1+ hour each way.
But what you're saying is legitimate, and it bothers me the amount of people acting like it doesn't matter. American society already isolates people. Work is a big (maybe the biggest) avenue to develop friendships as an adult, just like school is when you're a kid. Not everybody gets married and then their life becomes about their 2 kids and any social interaction outside of that is incidental.
>Most people in the white collar work force are older, have families and live in the burbs.
Maybe in USA, but my experience in multiple (>5) workspaces in Poland as 28 years old spftware engineer, is that people over 40 are maybe 5% of devs/tech leads.
You can be friendly without having to socialise. Not sure why those things would have to go together?
Doing socials after work is such a waste of time - sure it may be fun, but this way you are using up time that otherwise you could use to maintain friendships outside of work.
Socialising at work is when you develop unconscious and conscious biases and it is a breeding ground for a toxic atmosphere and disruption of team dynamics.
Isn't this also how a lot of friendships start? People finding themselves in a similar place/situation/habit/interests. So to me it seems a bit natural that workplace friendships would naturally develop. It's healthier to make an effort to have friendships outside of work as well, of course.
Maybe I'm being naïve, but I don't see how "toxic atmosphere and disruption of team dynamics" would result from these casual friendships. If anything, I'm more likely to hold myself accountable to my team members when I know them better personally.
FWIW, I've built and strengthened plenty of friendships with coworkers via Teams, which obviously, I've used a lot more during the pandemic. This shouldn't seem that weird... I've made plenty of lasting long term friends over the Internet too.
Within time cliques form and some people may be coming to those events out of fear they'll be missing out instead of to have fun and some people may just not be coming and will be viewed by other team members as weirdos. From there it is natural to side with something you know and feel affection to and you may be unconsciously treating people who don't socialise with you worse than the others.
Other things that may happen, often when also alcohol is involved, people may say things from their private lives that then other people may use against them or when you start talking about politics and it turns out some people have completely opposite views to yours. This is not helpful in any way.
> You can be friendly without having to socialise. Not sure why those things would have to go together? Doing socials after work is such a waste of time - sure it may be fun, but this way you are using up time that otherwise you could use to maintain friendships outside of work. Socialising at work is when you develop unconscious and conscious biases and it is a breeding ground for a toxic atmosphere and disruption of team dynamics.
You're going to spend nearly 1/3 of your waking hours with these people. You don't need to be best friends forever, but working somewhere that you don't at least have some friendly interaction and culture sounds utterly miserable.
> Socialising at work is when you develop unconscious and conscious biases and it is a breeding ground for a toxic atmosphere and disruption of team dynamics.
There is more to life than team dynamics. Metrics won't keep you warm at night. Perhaps I'm forgetting the HN demographic...
> You're going to spend nearly 1/3 of your waking hours with these people. You don't need to be best friends forever, but working somewhere that you don't at least have some friendly interaction and culture sounds utterly miserable.
Why are you assuming remote == unfriendly? That's silly.
What people are pushing back against isn't being friendly or developing a good working relationship with your peers. People are pushing back against "Not mandatory but you will be judged for not attending" after work happy hours, or extra-curricular work events where you are expected to attend during your free time. Things that seek to place your coworkers as your friends, and take away from time you could spend with your family and outside-of-work friends.
This parasitic work culture seeks to make the workplace replace your family and friends and it's all centered around the office.
Sure, a 100% remote company might be friendly, for example. I mentioned "friendly" since the previous comment mentioned "friends". Not my intention to suggest inclusivity/exclusivity.
I wrote a long edit clarifying a few things, and lost it on submit thanks to timing out. Damn.
I'm morbidly fascinated by the polarisation that drives some online conversations. Admittedly I have probably fuelled some of that with my question, I'll try to do better in future. However, it was intended to point out that there are shades of grey here (as evident in the comments) while the post I replied to seemed very black-and-white to me.
I wonder if a better question might be something like: what does a healthy, productive future of work look like now that covid has demonstrated that some people will very much want to continue working entirely remote, while some people very much do not?
For what it's worth, I completely agree and sympathise with all the issues people raise here. None of remote, in-office, or hybrid are perfect. They all have problems.
It seems that covid has given us the opportunity to at least try to improve things, even though clearly the answers are difficult to find.
Slight tangent: I was saddened to read recently that Basecap has permanently closed their Chicago HQ [0]. I've held up this place as a model for how I'd want to build an office space should my unicorn/cash-cow finally hatch. No, it's not perfect, but I loved the fact they explicitly tried, and they explicitly recognised it might be seen by some as a waste of company funds, particularly when they also did things like deliver fruit & veg to employee's homes rather than workplace as an incentive to go home rather than stay late in that expensive office space [1].
I think there are major underlying structural issues that discourage companies from solving issues relating to worker happiness. Extortionate rent and service charges have produced homogenous high-streets, and they're homogenising the business districts too. The labels over the door of each building might be different, but the attitude inside is the same. Worker happiness is grist to the mill, productivity and the bottom line reign. I think we could do better.
In a hybrid model the people who choose to be remote are damaging their own impact and career development. That's a tradeoff they're free to make if they want but it's the reason why I think hybrid models won't last for too long.
The reality is that most people don't grow in the same company. They grow by changing employer. So what you just said here, doesn't apply to most people anyway. The ones that most like the current structure are the ones most rewarded by it as well. No wonder they don't want it to change. Most people get promoted by social acts, even in google.
Longing for a career at a one company it seems like a concept from the 80s-90s or movies, where you start as a janitor and finish as a director.
However, this indeed can impact your day to day life at a company, as managers will develop biases towards people who they socialise with. That's why I think any kind of socials are a bad idea as they may be potentially discarding people who are bad are socialising but are great workers otherwise and that comes as a negative to a whole organisation.
A career at one company might span 5 years rather than a lifetime, and that's plenty of time to be affected.
One form of interaction benefits one type of employee. A second form of interaction benefits a second type of employee. Both benefit the company. Which form is best?
It's not just about socializing or climbing the ladder - you need to communicate with other people to get stuff done. Even if you only care about technical contribution and getting work done, if you aren't in the office and everyone else is, you'll have a difficult time.
If half the team is in office and half is remote on Slack, then the communication throughout (both useful and pointless) is much higher among the in person. Some simple examples:
1) quick clarification for a technical question - easier to turn back and ask your colleague
2) design minutiae which you remember after a 30/60min meeting is over - very easy to grab your coworkers in hallways or by watercooler and nail down
3) coming across interesting conversations among your colleagues by just being in proximity - not possible when you have to schedule a 30min chat for that
4) reading body language to know whether your colleague is stressed or relaxed or happy or sad - helps tailor your response which improves the communication
I haven't even delved into the timezone issue yet, which matters a lot even between colleagues on East vs West coast (let alone Europe or Asia). Meetings before 8:30am PT? PT people would still be waking up or dropping kids to school. 9-10am PT? Time for people in ET to have their lunch. 12-1pm PT? Lunch time for PT people. After 2:30pm PT? ET guys are already out for the day.
Whiteboards were a huge part of my daily work prior to COVID and the lack of whiteboards had a negative impact on my team. Touchscreens have not really been the same for us, it is too much overhead when all you wanted was to quickly work out an idea with someone else.
We dropped whiteboards in favour of collaborative editing of documents. People write their ideas and then comment in realtime. It took some time to get used to, but not many people miss it. Some people got reMarkable if they want to draw something and share - this is a brilliant tool, but unfortunately it doesn't support encryption, so the use is a bit limited, but to draw some flows etc is great.
I completely understand this. I think best through conversation with others involving drawing on paper or whiteboards. Without being able to do this, I can really struggle to focus ideas and plans. Online just does not work as well for this, not for me anyway.
The reverse is true as well. A company with no focus on social interaction drives away people that enjoy socializing with their work mates. For them it makes the office seem like a cold and uninviting place and they’re more likely to take that job offer from a friend. I agree that everyone needs friends outside of work and that you shouldn’t be really close friends with people at work since it can lead to complications but there are benefits to being able to chat with the people at work about non-work related things and to let your hair down a little.
Let's say ideal data exists in some hypothetical company which will convince you. What would it look like? Asking because this is an area where it will be impossible to get meaningful data unless a big enough company runs an A/B test over a long period of time to measure the impact on career development.
Can't we have data showing career advancement differences between onsite employees and remote employees? I don't understand your attack/sarcasm. We manage to find data to show salary/promotion differences between men and women, or between different races, why not based on the location of the workers?
How many companies exist which have meaningful representation of onsite vs remote employees at various levels of seniority? Can you please name a few?
FWIW, at one of the FAANGs I worked that, HR shared data (promo rate etc) between HQ vs remote offices. But those were still remote offices and not remote employees who could work from anywhere.
Fine, I'll play along and say that you're right: the data doesn't exist - which btw I never contested, I actually asked if there was any data available to back a claim. It is then equally fantasist to claim that being a remote employee at a hybrid company is either detrimental, neutral or beneficial to career advancement.
This sounds like a copout. Lack of data doesn't imply equal plausibility. It means that you need to use other methods of reasoning. And people do this all the time - it's not like every time you're faced with a new situation you go "Oh I don't have any data here, all of my options are equally good". No, what you do instead is use common sense, draw on experience, best judgment, mental heuristics etc. Those aren't as good as evidence based decision making but they surely beat throwing your hands in the air and saying that all of your options are the same.
Some of the best friends I have, I met online and haven't actually seen face to face. Still, you can have a workplace with a reduced (not eliminated) physical presence. I know of people who do flexible office visitation, so they have two days per week when everyone is in, and the rest of the time, people are free to either WFH or at the office. Seems to work out for them for now - those who really want to be there can be, while those who prefer to work from home can do so.
Then by all means go into the office and get their element of social interaction together and let the introverts get their stuff done in their preferred environment.
There are introverts who value a dose of in-person interactivity. Some find the structure of the work schedule useful in ensuring a degree of socialisation. My question was more around whether the workplace can function better for both introverts and extroverts. There are several comments in this thread that suggest entirely remote work has issues, and hybrid models might favour the extroverts (although one interesting comment suggests they'd experience an increase communications burden, repeating messages in-person and in chat). Personally I would not want a 100% in-person workplace. How do we resolve the issues that come with, let's say, hybrid working?
