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Comment by sageabilly | Hacker News Reader

".....oversee discussion groups about anything from animal rights to sexual expression."

Why are there even discussions about this on a work forum? Why in the world would anyone want to talk about this stuff with the people they work with? Is it a side effect of the company being so large it's impossible to know everyone?

I go out of my way to not discuss anything that comes within a whiff of a controversial topic with the people I work with. I go to work to pull a paycheck and because I enjoy the work that I do, I do not go to work to make friends or to hang out with people. If I end up making friends with some of the people I work with, great, however, we hang out as friends outside of work and we don't discuss things as friends via any work channels. Is making your co-workers your friend group a new thing? Is it a side effect of working so many hours you don't have time to hang out with anyone else?

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> Is making your co-workers your friend group a new thing? Is it a side effect of working so many hours you don't have time to hang out with anyone else?

Well, at Google we have things like Memegen where people post memes, and those memes have comments, so I guess you can see where that goes. Why do people post memes? I guess for the same reason I'm on HN at work; they're bored.

> I go to work to pull a paycheck and because I enjoy the work that I do, I do not go to work to make friends or to hang out with people.

I only go to work for the former and having friends at work just makes work more tolerable for me. I can eat lunch with them, get coffee with them, play ping pong with them, take classes at the gym with them, or just have a walk outside when I'm taking a break.

It feels lonely otherwise.

Also, many of us have moved far from home for work, so we had no friends, and it's much easier to make friends when you have common ground. Plus, as you say we spend so much time at work that in a way there are more opportunities to make friends there.

>Well, at Google we have things like Memegen where people post memes, and those memes have comments, so I guess you can see where that goes. Why do people post memes? I guess for the same reason I'm on HN at work; they're bored.

Yeah, but posting on HN doesn't advertise to my entire company that I'm dickin around instead of doing work.

I agree. I thought Damore's memo was an insane level of workplace inappropriate if just from a topic standpoint, until I heard about the rest of Google's discussion culture. It's just begging for horrible conflict that these items are even on the table.

It should be possible to conduct yourself professionally and not burn up inside over whether or not someone harbors some ideology that conflicts with one of yours.

It should be possible to conduct yourself professionally and not burn up inside over whether or not someone harbors some ideology that conflicts with one of yours.

More and more, it's portrayed in the media that people who are so out of control they can't tolerate different opinions are the "genuine" ones. This goes hand in hand with how certain kinds of ad-hominem attack are somehow morally laudable and intellectual worthy activities.

I haven't observed the media portrayal you describe. Different channels promote different views, but claiming more "genuine" isn't something I've seen.

That scene with Bill O'Reilly yelling, "We'll do it LIVE!" is a prime example. The sort of ad-hominem implication one sees again and again in interviews is another example.

What I see becoming common is "sure, we should respect different opinions, but _this issue_ is so important we can't afford to sit on the sidelines", and then you say that for every issue.

> I thought Damore's memo was an insane level of workplace inappropriate if just from a topic standpoint

I feel like the idea "our hiring policies are getting us a lower quality of incoming employees than we should be getting" seems OK in the workplace from a topic standpoint...

I have never seen an active work forum that was not about FREE FOOD alerts.

This is likely flowery writing, and all you can conclude is that these forums do exist. That isn't surprising to me, in a company of tens of thousands of employees, that one person would start a group about some sensitive subject or another.

There is this trend in HR to try to get people to "bring their whole selves to work".

Of course, most people are political, social, etc animals.

This is also the consequence of corporations encouraging cultures that blur the lines of work-life balance. People will bring life into work. Reap what you sow.

> try to get people to "bring their whole selves to work".

Ugh, that's messed up. In grade school I was forced to spend significant amounts of time interacting with classmates who I detested. They brought their "whole selves" and it was torture. I assume most people had this experience?

As an adult I appreciate being able to choose who I associate with in my free time. Since I'm forced to interact with certain people at work, at least give me the mercy of bland "professional" personas!

The far greater long term trend is to require a diminished, corporate-approved life form to show up every day. I suspect most people on this forum are too young to know any different way.

I see this too and am trying hard to formulate a non-cynical version of "uh, no, that doesn't work for me and my contract does not require that."

>Is making your co-workers your friend group a new thing?

I wonder if it's generational. I work with a group of millenials (~30) and my attitude is exactly like yours, but they're mostly all friends with each other, go to each other's places, etc. I'm honestly shocked that they ever hired me in here.

I’ve been in those workplaces. The last one saw me mobbed out on a phony allegation the day before I went to a funeral, told my actions “T-T-Trump any explanation” by a director of Eng (Cormack at OpenTable, there’s been total refusal of dialog so I name him... and he stuttered-ed-ed it like that). In reality I used a colorful descriptor to get a persistent drunk girl to leave me alone, but the grape vine escalated to include drunken table flipping and there were 3 “matching” reports. Friends, man. Was also mobbed out of a prior job in the same way, but didn’t observe the social dynamics much then. Both involved Cal snowflakes. Kids are bannanas and my 18 year career is wrecked, over a mild potty mouth... it’s not what you say, it’s your social status when you say it; sounds like you’re bottom of the totem.

Making fun of a stutter isn't cool.

> Why are there even discussions about this on a work forum?

Thank you. It's strange how everyone from the CEOs to the journalists to ordinary people missed this. Why are any employees wasting time and resources on such unproductive thing during company time?

> Is it a side effect of the company being so large it's impossible to know everyone?

More importantly, why hasn't the board or CEO come down hard on these people wasting company resources and time? Last I checked, these people have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to make sure the company isn't wasting money on nonsense.

> I go out of my way to not discuss anything that comes within a whiff of a controversial topic with the people I work with.

I think that's 99.99% of all employees. How companies have been turned into a political turf war and a tool of their employees to actualize their political objectives is shocking to me. Either work or leave. Worry about politics and sexual expression on your own time.

I can even understand discussing a controversial topic at work.

I still don't see why you would do it with people you don't personally know. If you want to talk to randoms, the Internet is right there anyway.

My company does an annual employee engagement survey in a futile attempt to measure employee happiness. Last year one of the questions was "Do you have a best friend at work?"

smh...

>Is making your co-workers your friend group a new thing?

Friend is a strong word. You might go out to a bar with your coworkers, watch movies, game, attend birthdays. But it's a superficial "friendship". You don't talk about anything deep - that would be a "bummer".

The less your co workers know about you the less they have to use against you when its dog eat dog time.

Agreed, but I find it draining to have to attend a bunch of social events that are "work" (in the sense you can't be your authentic self) which in turn leave less time for a personal life.

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