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Comment by quadrifoliate | Hacker News Reader

The central theme of my comment was "it has become subtler". I...don't see a conflict between this and your statements?

To take your examples concretely – sure, you won't see your pay docked, but you may find that the teammate who does bring their spouse along and participates in the bullshit rituals gets consistent pay rises that you don't.

Or at least, this used to happen routinely prior to the pandemic making it impractical to conduct such affairs unnecessarily blending work and life. Yet another reason why a lot of management is itching to "get back to the office".

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>> but you may find that the teammate who does bring their spouse along and participates in the bullshit rituals gets consistent pay rises ... Yet another reason why a lot of management is itching to "get back to the office".

I am curious what the basis of your world view is. I worked as a manager in some pretty big companies and this doesn't resonate with how I or anyone I knew acted, nor does it make sense to structure things this way from an incentive point of view.

I would say there's an angle there where people that like their work and co-workers more are generally more productive than those who punch the clock. So I could see that there could be some (mild) correlation - not causation - between better performance/higher team cohesion and interest in work social events, it would be silly to pay people based on the later because we can just pay them on the former.

It seems pretty noncontroversial to me that managers are more likely to promote people they like, and that this effect magnifies at higher ranks where performance metrics are less objective. Obviously a worker who only focuses on politics is going to be seen as redundant pretty quickly, but I've seen some very good workers who didn't get the promotions they should have because they didn't engage with politics at all.

I agree with that - people need to know who you are. It's very different than the "you didn't bring your wife to the party so we won't promote you" nonsense (frankly) that I am responding to.

I was told bringing a spouse to a work event meant you wouldn't get raises because family people are less willing to work late. So which is it?

It's on a case by case basis, but try saying "I do not wish to discuss my personal life at work" in response to any questions about your personal life, and see how it goes :)

Caveat: You have to be in a large company with a lot of managers.

>> try saying "I do not wish to discuss my personal life at work" in response to any questions about your personal life, and see how it goes

No one will bat an eye at that answer. There are some managers / employees / peers where I know their personal life well and there are some I don't know at all. It has never been relevant.

You have to play the social game.

Saying "It's none of your business and you can't force me to answer" send a very different message than "It's going alright. Did you watch the game last night? Pretty cool, huh?"

It means that you need a new job.

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