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Comment by cujo | Hacker News Reader

Classic comment missing the point that not everyone needs or wants the social interaction with their work mates.

THIS, 100% this. I don't want to be "social" with you, I don't want to "bond" with you, and I don't care about you as a human being. You are 100% just a queue of work tasks and a source of pay checks. The less I see, hear, or know about the other people on my team, the happier I am and the better off they are. WFH forever, don't mess with a good thing.

FWIW, I would hate working with someone like this. You don't have to be super active, socially, but treating the other people (and they _are_ people) on your team as just drones is a) not conducive to good collaboration and b) pretty damn rude.

It doesn’t have to be rude. Seeing it as rude is an imposition on those of us who don’t see it as rude.

I’m pretty antisocial, personally, and love it when my workmates get to the point and focus on the actual “drone”-tasks. Why? Because that is why I do software. I don’t do software because I love people. I don’t do software because I love the paycheck. I do software because I love software and every second away from focusing on the concerns of producing quality software just seems like a genuine waste of time. Even here on HN, it’s mostly an opportunity to safely experiment with “politics” in a way that isn’t totally exhausting.

I get that everyone is not like me, and I’m okay with that. I don’t expect everyone to have my preferences.

I’d personally prefer to be treated as a respected “drone” (now THAT seems rude) and I don’t really want to spend time on banter, unless it’s being used as a metaphor that can improve our collective output.

This is “fun.” This is why I “work” (it’s not work to me). Discussing requirements and problem solving solutions is great; it’s fun. Happy hour is “work” to me. Please don’t act like I’m rude just because I don’t share your preferences.

That's not really the same as not caring about your co-workers as human beings, though. I'm happy to leave introverts alone and not drag them to unhappy hour with me, but they're still worth something as people, and I'd still help them out if they e.g. got hospitalised and needed someone to bring them clothes and a book.

I interpreted "I don't care about you as a person" as "I don't think you have moral worth outside your instrumental value to me", which goes beyond rudeness and into questions of whether the person can be trusted at all.

As someone who as been on both ends of that spectrum at different points of my life, I’ll attempt to explain: your core concept is completely legitimate and understood, at least here in HN.

Presenting it as a clear-cut _you are a queue of work and paychecks_ is where it breeds conflict. For the royal you that description is merely a description and expresses no judgement, it is simply the _why_ of your intentional lack of interaction with your coworkers.

To the people on the other side, that description brings back the negative feelings they felt when a coworker that held that same opinion (not you) was unnecesarily rude at work and shielded his failings behind the _I don’t do people_ cover.

I realize that asking you to use the human touch (for lack of a better term) is asking you to have to “work” to cater to the social aspects that you are trying to not get involved with…

So instead I’ll posit that your last paragraph is a perfectly acceptable response to the eternal “want to join and be social” question. It’s innofensive yet firm, and it conveys your position in a concise way that nobody can really pick apart unless they want to make an scene and look bad.

First, I made friends with most people I worked with. I still see them years after I left the company.

So who do I not see, the ones who insisted I must follow their favourite sport teams, the ones who got so drunk on the weekend they could not remember what they did but thought I should have been with them. The one (thank goodness it was only one) who keep eyeing the high school girls while we were in our 30s and 40S. And last the ones who always had to go out for a smoke, I don't want to imagine what their places were like.

You can like some people, but some people you just do not want to be around when you are not being paid to work with them.

Not everyone of course, and one should be attentive to and accommodating of teammates that feel that way. But surely “let’s knock off at three today and go down the pub, thanks for all the hard work” is a positive for most people?

"Thanks for all the hard work, let's knock off at three today" Is a positive.

"Let's go down to the pub" is still capitalizing on my time. It's still work, just the location has changed. And in the past it has often started at 3 and then kept going and going until way later than if I'd just worked out my day.

There is always some idealism around it like "oh if you don't drink you don't have to, just come hang out for a bit" or "you don't have to stay late you can leave early" but in practice people aren't actually that understanding. You try to head home and it's all "you're not having a good time?" Or "you're not a team player"

No thanks. I'll pass on all of that from now on.

Exactly my experience.

I can't believe that's real life for some people. I would never drink with someone who has "team player" in their dictionary unironically. That being said, the vast majority of my coworkers, all of them actually, are not robots like that. If they were, I would find a new job fast. If you are in a place like this currently, there are greener pastures my friend. Seek them out. Find people who don't care that you go home to beat traffic instead of hitting up the bar. They exist.

Try Let’s knock off at three today.

I'm going down the pub - anyone care to join me? I'm buying."

An argument could be made that non-pub goers are still excluded from some kind of reward or compensation. If the buyer was spending their own personal money that might be one thing, but more often than not the funds come out of company expenses.

In consulting companies I've worked for (and I'm inclined at least in part to agree) it would be argued that it is not necessarily equivalent to compensation since work is usually talked about in some capacity at these events.

That's why they don't mind paying for these, because it is seen as additional collaboration/problem solving time. but they 100% would not be okay with handing out additional money to those who do not wish to attend.

Edit: To clarify as well, I don't think people should feel forced or inclined to attend these events for whatever reason they wish, this is just the argument I know and quite literally is in onboarding training I've taken.

> But surely “let’s knock off at three today and go down the pub, thanks for all the hard work” is a positive for most people?

Definitely not.

1. I am not fond of drinking with workmates. An occasional, incidental, one-on-one or not much more: OK. In groups ("teams"): no thanks, this isn't school, we are not students, so no pseudo school party.

2. I abhor having drinks with people who have any kind of hierarchical power upon me.

who hurt you? obviously don't get too drunk with coworkers, but do you know there is a way to have a drink or two and not turn it into a fraternity event

And there is a way not to drink at all, it is called saying "NO!".

What makes you think I want to even have one drink of alcohol?

There are people in this world who say "Don't trust a guy (or gal) who won't have a beer with you."

And those are the people I do not trust.

>> 2. I abhor having drinks with people who have any kind of hierarchical power upon me.

Funny thing is the opposite isn't great either. I've seen a startup that likes doing this. Except all the decision-makers are in SF, not at the field office. So HH at the field office means none of the participants have any real power to see your passion, hear your ideas, or conversely for you to learn from their wisdom. It is still bonding for the team, but the team site is all terminal dead-end jobs.

> Except all the decision-makers are in SF, not at the field office. So HH at the field office means none of the participants have any real power to see your passion, hear your ideas, or conversely for you to learn from their wisdom.

My experience has been that the opportunity to actually learn from people’s wisdom has little to do with their heirarchical position, though the opportunity to suck up by making a show of “learning from their wisdom” might.

You don't have to go to the pub. You can just say something like, "I better go home now and get ahead of the traffic, have a good time!" then proceed to find a new job if they actually give you flak from that.

Some people will bitch and complain about anything. You could hand out $20 bills to everyone you see and in a big enough group someone will gripe.

Imo the key is making sure you don’t create a perception that you punish or bully people for not participating. As evidenced by this thread, it’s easy to do even inadvertently.

Correct.

But, is it ingrained griping?

Or Social Inequity Aversion? I don't like beer, so if you get it and I have to watch stupid sports and drink water, I don't want you to have your reward?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_inequity_aversion

In many cases, yes. Others will complain that coworkers are asocial or they don’t feel an atmosphere of camaraderie.

It’s all part of the package if you manage people. As I said, you need to be careful to avoid behaving in a way that creates bad situations. (Ie I’m not advocating frat house behavior or alcohol culture at work)

Not for me. If I'm not working i'd rather do my hobbies, excercise, be with my friends or gf. And I dont enjoy sitting in a pub. I'll be more than glad to take a walk with a co-worker. Play some sports together etc, but I really really don't want to feel like I am doing a mandatory activity with my job. Either I am working or not.

It's fine that some teams of workers don't socialize, and they aren't expected to socialize.

It's fine that some teams of workers socialize, and are expected to socialize.

It's fine for teams to select for people who will socially mesh with the office culture.

Nobody here is wrong; just work at a company where the culture fits what you want. Not everybody wants or needs the same thing.

Closer team’s performance is probably higher than teams that don’t socialize together

The keyword here is "probably"

Writing software in most companies is a team endeavor. If you can't handle interacting with others on a daily basis, find another industry. Better yet, start your own company.

There is a huge difference between working on a team and the team essentially acting as a replacement for your social life.

I love working on a team. I don't want to spend my free time with them. That's what my friends are for.

Sometimes people from the team become friends that I spend time with outside of work, but that's on my terms not my employers.

It really seems like many people do not have any kind of healthy boundary with their employer.

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