Slashdot Mirror
Friendships in the IT Workplace?
Greg Cantori asks: "We've seen stuff like this on TV and in movies. Policemen, Firemen, Astonauts, Army guys, etc, all gathered round a BBQ on a sunny weekend, chugging a few cold ones and maybe talking shop, wives and girlfriends preparing salads, kids running round the garden. Middle class bonding and fun, eh? Now, picture your IT workplace. Look around at your workmates. Do *you* get together on weekends? Do your spouses know any personal details of your workmates' spouses, beyond what may have slipped out during a long forgotten company Chistmas ball? Do you go bowling, play poker, or help your colleagues pave the driveway of their new home? Do you even have drinks with them after work? Is it just the professions who share some element of physical danger where this stereotypical bonding occurs, or can it occur with nerdy programmers? What are your experiences with friendships in the code-cutting office?"
Damn, man, you mean socialize? As in, hang out? With the users? WTF?
Oh, other IT. Okay. Had me panicked for a second.
Woot w00t w007.
Maybe it's because we're a small company, but those sorts of things definitely happen here.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
/. is fucking ann landers
ARe there the same differences in a university setting?
Are you mad? IT guys don't drink after work. Espescialy *WITH* other IT guys. We drink *during* work.
We really need your help
http://www.gofundme.com/help-sherry
I personally throw parties and go to strip clubs w/ my fellow tech support geeks. We go out for lunch alot together too, especially to go get a Margarita during lunch...which helps alot when stressed by tech support cals.
Sleep: A completely inadequate substitute for caffeine.
It really depends on the people you work with. If you have common interests, then it's easy to get together after work.
It can important to get to know the people you work with, so you have future contacts. Especially in this economy. It never hurts to know people in other organizations. People you might have worked with in the past.
We all telecommute, but those of us in Florida get together for a big Xmas party every year... a small group of us hangs out more frequently, but it's mostly because we work from our homes etc, and this gives us a chance to get to know each other on a more personal level.
With other jobs, we'd go out for drinks perhaps after completing (or landing) a large project, but never just for the heck of it.
I don't know if it's the "Personal danger" issue, maybe more that we aren't as social as most people...
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
I do something with my coworkers at least 3 or 4 times a week, even if it is just getting together for 4-player Madden and a few beers. This past weekend, 5 of us went to a local bar to hear a 6th play in his band. Judging from a few of my IT friends at other places, this is unusual only in the frequency that we get together.
It is more true of IT companies than others, mainly because a lot of IT workers are anti-social, and there is a big mix of personality types in the industry. A lot of IT workers (read: geeks) often take personal opinion too far resulting in IRL flame wars.
im lucky to be an IT person in a small and new non-IT company, so ive got good work with great people.
just my opinion.
I get more done and have less distractions but I really do miss the social interaction, the gossip, the afterwork beers etc.
Why is there always this stereotypical assumption that because you cut code for a living you must be some kind of antisocial, introverted misfit? Coders have friends too y'know.
To be honest, no, I get enough stress and strain in the office, that the last thing I want to do
out of work time is see the very people who got
me stressed to begin with!
i've been drinking with them more times than i can count (we had a weekly thing for a while, even after the company went bust and we went to different companies), to lunch, to pool, to parties, to strip clubs... one is even my top weed buddy.
even sysadmins need friendship and love!
... why would i want to hang out with people that aren't as smart as me?
Unless you are a total misanthrope, you're going to make a few friends at the workplace. I was the single tech guy where I'm at until my company bought a small CATV engineering firm that also had a tech guy. I've learned quite a few things from him, and we generally have a good time when we hang out. (At work & away).
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Okay, is social behavior THAT strange a task that we need an Ask Slashdot article about it? I'm still not clear on what the question is, but it seems to boil down to this:
"Am I allowed to be friends with everyone at work?"
You know, most people you work with do enjoy having fun. And most people you work with usually have fun with their friends. Now, if you're a friend of theirs, chances are they'll want to have fun and invite you along. Why? Because you're their friend. That is how friendships work.
I didn't realize this was such a complicated subject. People who are compatible will gravitate toward one another, regardless of the venue.
What do you need, written instructions?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Of course we do! We play poker once a month, we help each other move, we visit each other on holidays, and we drink together after a hard day of work. I hang out with 6 out of 10 of the guys, the others are either managers or just not people I would enjoy being around after work.
I think since the job tends to be more stressful, we bond with those around us more and learn not only the technical aspect of their lives but also personal in the process.
"Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." ~ Emo Phillips
I hang out all the time with some people who were coworkers at a previous programming-only shop.
My current employment is at a place where I am the only programmer (not even a sysadmin at this location). This is the place where I don't have 'work friends' over all the time.
drinks with the coders and sys admins. no users allowed.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
which is why I have to hang out on /. all the time.
:(
Seriously tho, I work a midnight to 8am shift, if I had friends, I'd never see 'em anyways. God Bless 24/7 support
Social life? After work? What is that??
------I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either.------
I'd invite my co-worker friends over on the weekends when I feel like hanging out, but they dont seem to care about checking their work email on the weekends! I know, I can't figure it out either.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
...they called me 'sticky tech' and I was a coworker's 'email slave'!
And, as a practical joke, the owner of the computer that I was sharing with him deleted all my GNOME panels and set my window manager to some horrible one with no 'close' button and disabled all the other window managers!
No, I'm not a social introvert. My cow-orkers were picked by HR. Yeah, right, there's a good filter for close, personal friendship. I pick my friends, and the overlap has thus far been slim, although anything might happen.
1Alpha7
Live to be Moderated
TV has a tough job to do, in using only 23 minutes or 46 minutes to develop a plot and resolve it with any sort of realism at all. Not to mention the many interruptions in which your drama must flow correctly. If they can take shortcuts with characters, they will.
In RL, it's important to have social situations secondary to the job. That way your social life and your job life can remain independent - and any job issues won't affect your friendships.
Although I am the sort to have few friends, and thus not an expert, I would say that depending on your job for your social life would be a bad idea in RL.
Hey, we face danger too. There's always the risk that our site will succumb to "the slashdot effect" causing angry users and employees ready to bite our heads off because they can't access the web site.
at the startup i worked at from '98 to early 2001 there was def a social scene. in the silicon alley building where our office was located there was a bar on the first floor. drinks after work (or even a few well-placed rounds during the day) were a common occurance.
now i work for a big blue chip company. funny that there's so many more people in aggregate, but the scene is so much smaller. people are def more guarded. even so, on my small team i consider the people with whom i work my friends.
People who are heavily into IT are naturally solitary types.
Perhaps using a computer provides some of the fundamental interaction that we require, making social interaction less important for computer programmers. Stupid idea? People have emotional relationships with cats and dogs, and even with creatures which arguably don't have any self-awareness or emotions (pet spiders and fish, for instance). These animals fulfil some basic emotional need for interaction, and something to care about. Can the same thing not be said of a computer? They evoke emotional responses from humans after all. (Especially when the damn things crash when you haven't saved a copy of your work).
Well, it may not be the same situation. Me and my 2 partners get together with our families a few times a year and have a cookout or go see a movie or something. But I guess being a startup we share financial danger, not physical.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
You mean I should be hanging around with that weirdo Linux guy? I don't think so. I suspect he will spike my drink and have his wicked, linuxy way with my private o.
I hang out with people every once in a while from previous workplaces, but not my current one. I keep believing this is just a bad dream - I haven't even memorized people's first names. Just the first initial and last name. I get weird looks when i say "Good morning, bsmith!". I dunno why. But in a company that considers Christmas & Thanksgiving "Just another workday" unless you can prove meaningful or religous backing for the days, I won't dedicate too many engrams..
The comradare I had with my co-workers at the deceased dot-com i worked for is still strong, and one of the best friendships of my life came from it, but here.. Well, for one, im the only one under the age of 30 and my biggest chum is a manager. Interpret that as you may.
I don't think what job you have has anything to do with if you're more prone to hang out on the weekends. Generally, if you're working in a position of narrow scope, odds are your co-workers are going to become some soft of staple in your social life; who better understands you then the people who have the same passion you do which drove you to that working environment?
/can/ be social and fun and hang out with each other.. it's the people, not the job.
It makes sense, the workplace puts you on somewhat of a common ground. When i was working in SF, we hung out afterwork and on weekends in a huge group. We were all different, but all shared the same passion for technology, and the same passion for beer (this helps) and since we enjoyed each others company at work, it spilled over into social gatherings as well.
The same would hold true outside the tech industry, but it's even truer, i gather, within the industry, especially in smaller towns and cities where it can be hard to find anyone other than your coworkers who even know what SSH is.
So yeah, IT people
BBQ on a sunny weekend, chugging a few cold ones
then someone gets in their car and has a massive accident, sues company for supplying the alcohol. End of party. A lot of night clubs are starting to take keys away from impaired patrons because, more and more, the responsibility is being shifted to the clubs. Just think "Tobacco company is responsible for someone's smoking and lung disease" for legal precedent.
Then there's the possibility of sexual harassment suit after a few cold ones, not to mention making 'politically incorrect' jokes... It all puts a big chill on the so-called 'fun'.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Does going mountain biking and white water rafting count? So far no family get-togethers but the families find other outlets, us overworked, underpaid IT guys gotta get out in the sun with other dudes once in a while. Other chicks would be cool too, but the wife........
Yes, it's a joke...
One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence
We get together to go to Yankee games, hang out after work at the bar, etc.....
:-)
My entire team (~10 sysadmins) get along great.
I even keep in touch with the folks from my previous job -- we all get together once a month or so to hang out.
Ya gotta keep yourself sane.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.....
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.....
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.....
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.....
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.....
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.....
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.....
:-)
My work experience may not be as atypical as I once thought. I have two very good friends who I seem to end up working with over and over again. We are buddies from high school. We went to the same university and then went separate ways - for a short time. One of us, got a job at a startup and then convinced the founders to hire the other two of us. We made up the whole dev team and it was great. Lots of fun, loud music, really productive 30 hour stretches... Things turned sour financially, so we all managed to jump to Sun. From there, we all split up again, but only for a short time. We ended up together at another startup. Again we split up, and that is how things stand at the moment. Nevertheless, we have plans afoot to reunite. This is not to say that everything has been rosy. We have had our share of conflicts. Working together is one of the best ways to get to really know your friends. We have come very close to losing our mutual friendship due to work related problems. At one point, one of these friends of mine was my boss, and he wasn't very good at it (partly because he was my friend, but also just because it was his first time managing). I won't get into the details, but suffice it to say that there were some very very bad moments. Our spouses/girlfriends have relatively minimal contact which is partly because we are now geographically dispersed. I live in "northern" ontario, one friend lives in Toronto, and the other lives in San Fran. We see each other from time to time. Of course, I also make new friends when I start a new job. I have some very good friends from the days when I worked at Sun. And in my current job, which I started quite recently, I am developing some friendships that will almost certainly turn into the bucolic middle-class scene which is described in this article. But it depends on the work environment. Certainly this won't happen if you are in a telecommuting position :-) It also won't happen if you have a negative attitude towards your co-workers. You have to actively seek this out (if you want it that is). It doesn't just happen automatically. As well, office culture can play a fairly substantial role: if there are frequent social events, I think it is less likely that more spontaneous relationships will develop.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
Is it just the professions who share some element of physical danger
I am the contracted sysadmin of an HP 9000/I20 owned by the government. I know Danger
People come and go so fast in my IT workplace (large pharmaceutical), that there usually isn't time to really get to know people. Of course we all have our casual acquaintances, but it seems the people you work with are always changing. The weeks are always so fast paced that we want to just chill on the weekends with our families (translation: playing Xbox while drinking some Coronas). :)
At my LAST job, we had plenty of 'Employee appreciation' type BBQ's that were really strained. It was rather obvious that the sentiment wasn't genuine and it came from some Management cookbook to increase productivity. The staff saw through it easily. (But we still ate the donuts.)
At my current job, there's a much better morale, a camaraderie if you will (Kum-ba-ya) While we don't usually get together on the weekends, there are more than enough employeee sponsored Potlucks during the holidays to seriously impact my wasteline. We've had Beer's in the Bar after work, and folks pretty regularly bring in food in the morning. All this is pretty funny as the IT department is a vacuum of calm in an otherwise really f*cked up government entity.
(That and they're taking the troops to breakfast this morning. Yum!)
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
I'm not a programmer, so I can't speak for that type of animal, but among the support staff in my two previous jobs--you know, the much-embittered guys that answer helpdesk pages and go to lusers' desks and fix problems--there has been a high degree of extra-work fraternization.
We hung out on weekends, and we'd go drinking after work if the day had been particularly stressful. Quite often we'd swap luser stories.
I think the World War I guy-in-the-trenches mentality that is forced onto a lot of support guys brings about hard and fast friendships.
Since we're all geeks in the engineering and IT departments, more often than not we'll be getting together for something a little less blue collar than bowling. Think: LAN party, D&D, etc.
What are we? Savages? We're people like everyone else. We just get together to do different things. Instead of having BBQs we get together for gaming. Hey Bill! Come on over and we'll play my new PS2 game! Bring over your laptop and we'll get the rest of the guys over for a LAN party!
First, I appologize as my spelling sucks today.
My opinion is that geeks have two phases in their lives. When they are young (and stupid/innocent) they work way too many hours trying to make a big bang. They still have the illusion that if they work really hard, and sacrofic their personal live they will be rich by 27. When they hit 27, they have married the first girl that would sleep with them, their wife is pregenant. This is when they hit the second stage and become "family unit isolated". They put in their time and then rush home to the wife, kids, and playstation.
If we geeks weren't allowed to have a computer, video game console, tv, palm, or any other time consuming electronic appliance, there might be a change for us. We would be forced to get out and socialize.....
You would think that user groups would be a good solution for geeks getting out more, but a lot of us can only manage to make the technical meetings and then run away before the social hour starts....
My workmates are some of my better more reliable friends that I have...
But then again, my workplace is a place that we enjoy a great deal (most of the time).
I really don't see what "Greg Cantori" problem is, and I would suspect that he isn't enjoying his work, therefore he should move along until he finds a place where he is happy. Your job is just about money, its about quality of life.
Then again, you don't really need to be mates with your fellow drones, to enjoy your job either (but it helps).
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
I manage and code for an ISP in Louisiana, every monday it's tradition that I take out some of the technicins out for 2.50 pitchers of beer at a local bar. I've found it to be a great bonding experience, but theses tuesday mornings really REALLY suck :-P
Why should IT people be any different from other employees? At my previous company we went out all the time to different bars and clubs. A lot of my former colleagues are now close personal friends.
But, coming to think of it, I must say that after having worked with different categories of people, IT people tend to socialize less than other. Idiots.
...oups. That includes me I guess.
I don't know about other people, but I am in a development program at a large company. Most people in the program were recruited from schools quite some distance away, and relocated here. Because of that, we pretty much know only each other (the fact that they put us all together in classes for two weeks helps), and we've become pretty good friends. I don't hang around w/my direct co-workers much, mostly because they're all double my age (I write COBOL...). I play golf, go to happy hours, hit the "nightspots", watch football, etc... with people in the program, though.
Now, the problem I need help with is meeting people *outside* of work...bars suck, gyms don't work...the best luck I've had is basketball at the local park, but it's gettin a little chilly for that in New England...anybody have any ideas for this?
Juiced? Or Not?
"Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing."
Uhhh. Have you ever seen a group of firemen, astronauts, etc, doing that stuff you describe in real life? Maybe it's just TV.
Its unfortunate since most of the people here are very skilled, but without trust between us, there is no way people will open up to each other, and thus, no socializing. It makes for a very ugly environment to work in. A co-op student we had about a year ago make this comment about one of the supervisors, "She's the only person I know that will smile to your fact while shoving a knife in your back." He came to this conclusion 4 weeks after working in our office.
Myself, and several others have actually been "hauled into the office" beacuse we tried to point out a flaw in a decision. In my case, I did it in private, explaining how a particular device did not meet our needs and would not provide the needed functionality. I was told to purchase it anyways. We got it, I explained again why it wouldn't work, and was pulled into the office by my supervisor and manager.
I'm not happy, nor are most of the people here. I'm half looking for a new job at the moment, while I take advantage of some training and pursue some more certification (yes, MCSE, but if it makes me marketable, who cares).
The social interaction is there, even if it doesn't include girlfriends and BBQ. More often than not, it also includes some game like Quake.
Geeks just have a different common ground between each other than fire fighters or policemen, but the pecking order still is established somehow.
Stupid spelling errors...my bad.
Isn't it bad enough to be trapped in a room with these people all day? Firemen and policemen, military actually depend on each other for their lives. If my life depended on the IT decisions that my coworkers made I'd be totally screwed. On a serious note I doubt that with recent trends of IT professionals people actually spend enough time in one job to form those kind of lifetime friendships.
"Freedom of speech has always been the abstract red-headed stepchild of the Constitution"
-Suck
I believe that there are few businesses with more need for social gatherings that the type I'm working in. I'm a consultant, and spend most of my time in the office some client. During the last 4 years, I've seen my company office maybe 40-50 hours in total. Therefore, my company arranges frequent gatherings (monthly meetings with dinners), parties, sports activities etc. so that we will have a social venue where we can get some interaction with our real collegues.
Now, the last year, the frequency of these things have dropped significantly, and the result of that is that we are feeling alienated from our own company, and as a result, more and more people are leaving, also long-timers. What a shame...
In general there is no reason to assume that my co-workers are my friends. I want to "party" with my friends, not a bunch of other geeks I see too much of anyway. There's no reason co-workers can't be friends, if they happen to be the kind of people I like, but I hardly want to feel obliged to spend more time with them.
I think it depends on the company you work for.
Two of the companies that I have worked for had a very tight group of people and we all socalised toghther (OK went drinking together). Sometimes work is talked about. Some (not all) partners of coworkers used to join us.
I have worked for another company where that seemed not to be the done thing to any such extent.
It depends on the company culture
Everyone at work is essentially your comptition, when it comes time to get that raise, your so called friend will use everything against you he can to make sure he gets the raise and not you, and because YOU were stupid enough to allow this competitor into your life, you suffer the concequences when they ruin it.
Lets get a few facts straight, theres no such thing, as a "Friend" at work, these are called assosiates, you work with them, but you are careful what you say around them. Talk bad about the boss around the wrong guy and next thing you know you'll be fired or in your bosses office explaining yourself.
I know i cant be the only person here who knows that the first rule is never trust anyone at work.
The second rule is never try to make friends with people at work.
Third rule is not to date women from work. If you are a high up CEO or boss, and all the women are after you, dont fall for it, you know they just want a raise and want to move up.
Well enough with my rules, I'm sure everyone knows the rules, but some people are too blind to follow.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
At my old job in the web hosting group of a big ISP, we would occassionally strole over to a bar down the street and get drunk on tequilla shots.
Does that count?
It was all too convenient being that our office was located in an area full of bars and restaurants.
At my current job, there are three of us in the whole company, and we have occassionally done some things, especially if the company is footing the bill.
I allways enjoy these things the moment its organized (or simply not organized at all) by some other colleague or simply thought up by the group. And usually those occasions are much more fun too.
Certain pockets of people do have friendships with each other outside of the workplace. And there are a few "magnet" people which act as a spoke. But interraction is generally light, otherwise.
However, by monitoring the network's AIM traffic, I keep tabs on their relationships. Interestingly enough, I am also privy to inter-office affairs, the guy who tries to get laid on AIM, and the guy who IS getting laid by someone he met on AIM.
But I think relationships outside of the workplace are fundemental to creating a 'good ole boys' network inside of the workplace.
I think the creepy 50's sterotype police are on their way!
--Britt
I had a summer intern style job for 2 years in High School at a smallish company working on a government software system. Every Wednesday we would take an extra hour and head to a local park and play touch football and get lunch. The boss held occasional parties at his house and even a high school junior/senior like myself was invited to hang out with them after work.
Getting outside and doing SOMETHING to relieve stress was the big goal, and I guess that is why the company didn't have any overweight geek types... We all had fun being active outside.
(Posting anonymously to preserve my anonymity.)
After work I take the bus to a Chinese restaurant and eat dinner, then I either go to a book store or straight home. At home I get on the computer, or a play on my keyboards (musical, not computer).
Even on the weekends I don't do much socially. I do some volunteer work at a nature center, but other than that I spend most of the weekends reading and writing.
So although I do have a life outside of computers - music, books, writing, nature - I really don't have a social life, and you can forget any thought of friendship with my co-workers.
I guess the stereotypes are true to an extent: I don't make friends easily and my interests are very esoteric by "normal" standards, so I spend a lot of time alone. I am looking forward to the Lord of the Rings movies, but that's pretty geeky in itself. (And I'm really bad here, anyway. As I said to someone on a message board "U-pedon i lam in Gelydh. Pedon Sindarin." *sigh* Yes, I actually speak Elvish.)
I guess my social ineptitude is partially a result of the whole "geek angst" experience: beat up by the "cool" kids in school; most school kids didn't want to be friends with me; chess club, RPG club, band. I've also got manic-depression thrown in to the mix, though, with a heavy emphasis on the depression. That didn't help any.
So do I have friends among my coworkers? No. They aren't like me. Even working in the computer industry.
For all my spare time, there's Civilization 3.
Huh, yes.
Actually, I moved from France to Sweden to work, a year and a half ago. Basically, I've almost only met people from work since then, and "people from the office" are 95% of the people I hang out with, during evenings or week-ends.
We go and repaint each other's flats, help moving, go for drinks, etc, etc.
The big upside of this is that you end up really liking your work environment and the people you work with.
The big downside is that when your company goes bust, so does a big chunk of your social life.
From my personal experience, I'd say the IT business is one of the best for socialising outside work -- mind you, that may be because of the relatively low median age.
but then again... we're not IT guys... we're embedded apps engineers... yay...
:)
You deal with idiot customers all day... how can you NOT drink?
Oh and yeah.. we have stump pulling parties and remodling parties... any excuse to drink really.
Here at the ITLAB at the Medical Univeristy of South Carolina we all are very sociable. We have
partys with co-workers and friends. We help each other move. We got out drinking or to
concerts together. We play LOTS of video games together. We have X-File marathons.
And POTA marathons.
Can you see Iron City here?
We are a small company of approx. 30 people, specializing in linux development and deployment. .. monday's are usually VERY quiet around the office after those weekends.
I count my co-workers as among my best friends, approx 80% of the company are ravers, and we see each other almost every weekend.
My MD is a blue haired freak with a heart of gold and can party any of us into the ground.
My project manager is gay , like me, and we have spent many many many weekends partying together and crashing at his place. We're each others 'fag friend' , and are close as can be.
Our marketing person organizes raves every now and then , and the entire company goes on a party outing, then hit the after-parties together
I went out of my way to find the best linux job i could in backwater africa , but i managed to find my home. I always wanted to emigrate, but since working here... there's no way.
I've worked with are not people I would choose as friends, despite our "common" interest in the job. The place I work at now, I don't even trust the guy next to me not to stab me in the back, let alone have a beer with him. The one guy I did respect quit. Lucky Bastard.
;)
I did do a 2 year stint as a chef at an upper-crust society club for awhile. That was loads of fun, lots of beer and Thurs/Fri. night fun. Anytime we had a banquet was an excuse to raid the liquor cabinets -- the Sous Chef did most of the raiding too
I live in one of the longest average commutes counties .
Socializing is typically narrowed down to Highway Oral. with the Co-Eds.
Since I am in my early 30's, I have just 2 good friends, that I've known for maybe 12 years. Most od the "friends" I have made since then have merely become acquaintances. I am a very friendly person, however, I find it hard to find someone I can "sync" with. Although an office affair is fairly common!
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
I may be wrong but I think this is a white colar job versus blue colar job thing, rather than an IT job versus everything else.
Sure, we do the christmas party, the "sponsor a kid" for the holidays stuff, the donuts on people's birthday, and on monday morning before our weekly status meetings we all talk about our weekends and stuff. But I would say this is all very superficial stuff. I see no deep bonding like you describe. Sure, a couple of people here that have similar interests (video games) do get together every once in a while to play, but that's about it. Maybe it's because of the way people come and go (get hired and laid off) or the way "political correctness" is such a huge influence that we hesitate interacting with our co-workers in any way that (heaven forbid!) could result in building a real friendship.
I think if you work in a type of job where your life depends on the other guy (firemen, policemen, etc) there is absolutely NO WAY BUT to forge really deep bonds with these co-workers. You know, the kind of job where "team work" is not just an abstraction that improves productivity, but where it means life and death.
I am sure there are exceptions to this. In fact, I know there are exceptions to this because my previous job was different. We were a very small team and yes, we did bond that way. But I always thought we were the exception rather than the rule.
We dont have weekends or friends, we have THE SIMS!
hang out is a understatement. were like a huge family around our IT office. i'm sure that it helps that there is only 20 of us, but still. We go out for drinks at least three times a week, with Friday always turning into the 2am out at the clubs night getting hammered. celebrate the holidays, potlucks, stuff on the weekends, etc.
Great Code! Why would I want do that? I'm already forced to spend 8 hours a day in an office full of PEOPLE during the week. I'm glad that at least I don't have to see another human face on Sundays.
Yep, we hang out with everyone in the company...as a matter of fact, the IT department here is full of alcoholics. I once built a server while drinking lots of beer with my co-workers at my house.
You are correct. Its absolutely STUPID to bring your personal life to your work, because eventually someone at work is going ot ruin your life to get a raise, or a promotion, or whatever, then where does that leave you?
Well now you'll be depressed because you thought person X who used you as a stepping stone was your friend.
Having friends are work is just dumb, dont you people learn anything from Steve jobs and bill gates?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I designed a quake map like that once- the rocket launcher was right by the BBQ so it was a very popular spot. No salad, though...
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Instead, I just sit in front of a monitor, pretending to work while I read Slashdot. Where's Beth when you need her?
D
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
As a contract employee, I seldom find myself hanging out with the regular employees. I keep in touch with and socialize with fellow contract people fairly regularly. When in the same city we'll do something about every week. I choose my friends among contracters, I have to work with the employees.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
I work on a large helpdesk (30 or so people..), and sometimes we do get together as a group, but not all that often. Our most succsefull outing was my Christmas party last year, called Quakemas. Everyone brought in money & twitchy trigger fingers & we played quake (w- really cool Grinch skins) and decorated the call center. It was actually quite fun.
Debugging code? Enh. Not so much.
Don't kid yourself - there's a real sense that you rely your coworkers in jobs that are physically demanding. Team sports can do that, too. You get a sense of kinship with the people you strive hard with to accomplish the common goal.
I haven't seen that kind of camraderie anywhere that's got a cubicle on the premises, to be honest. Private industry or government work, you name it; the person in the next office is an idiot, people get talked about behind their backs, and it's really as if the cubicle isolates people socially as well as physically.
I decided a few years ago that as much fun as this lone-wolf stuff can be, it's pretty goddamn lonely, and twenty years from now I don't want to end up a pale, scrawny guy haplessly prowling around singles bars without any idea how to interact anymore. I decided to pick up Ultimate, and went to sign up for a novice team. Whatever sport it is, if you're looking to meet people, looking for that kind of camraderie, you've got to put yourself in a situation where that kind of thing occurs.
And I'll tell you, a co-ed team and a warm summer evening beats the fuck out of an all-nighter in a cubicle.
Mike Hoye
Personally, I can't stand geeks. I may work in IT, but I'm not a geek. Geeks talk about hardware, software, gadgets, the latest geeky TV show, games, etc. The LAST thing that I want to do is to spend my FREE time talking about computers and other such silly bullshit.
Maybe the problem isn't your "competition", but a somewhat paranoid world view?
Networking is not the only reason to socialise - I meet up from time to time with many people I've worked with over the years - but in tough times knowing people can be invaluable. Why, the contract I have now is because I kept in touch with someone I worked with a few months ago.
Great Windows SFTP Server!
alright. i'm trying to tread lightly here.
the shop i work in consists mainly of techie-types who are vaguely well-adjusted, which i originally thought was a little strange. now i'm not so sure - for every pocket protector geek i meet, there's another who at least knows when to stop laughing.
so that's encouraging.
but, despite the fact that we all get along remarkably well, we've all got this aversion to hanging out together...and then it occured to me: we're all painfully aware of that geek stereotype, and we're all trying to pretend we have lives that involve other, non-geek, people.
of course, it's all a big lie, but i think it says something.
well, either that, or IT types understand that the purpose of the network is that you don't have to walk around anymore.
every good
My last job at a dying dot.com has left alot of us as dot.refugees. We didn't hang out much while we worked together, but now we remain "close" through ICQ.
It's an odd sort of closeness we've retained, we don't email, talk on the phone, hang out at the bars, or even live in the same states any more, but I feel we're all still quite close.
I wonder if this is more common now that there are so many of us who spent long hours working together, and have now gone our seperate way?
There was quite a bit of social interaction when we did all work in the same office before though.
The key phrase here:
Guess what? TV is not the real world. My bet is that very few co-workers anywhere have this fabulous social life you see on TV (much like very few bumbling, average-to-not-so-good-looking husbands have fabulous babe wives, although this seems quite common in TV sitcom-land).
Before I said friends at work was dumb but i didnt go into detail why.
Take a look at Bill gates, Steve jobs etc, They were friends at work, but they were also competitors, backstabbing each other for money at every chance.
Someone who is a competitor can never be your friend, because they are your competition.
Look at the business genius bill gates, how did he get where he is today? Friendships at work!!!!
Its good to have assosiates at work, but these arent really friends, these are people who you call contacts, or if you are a backstabbing liar like bill gates you use these people to move up, but they arent your friend.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The last company that I worked at actually had a fairly friendly Systems Engineering team (lead, 2 NT guys, 3 Unix guys, 1 Cisco guy), and from time to time we'd hang out for lunch. During the summer, we even went to one guy's house to have a BBQ, and that was pretty cool too. Now if it weren't for the layoffs we'd still be together... *sniff sniff*
I think this depends on where you're working and what kind of mentality the company has. I work at a Healtcare software company. We don't encourage people to stay late just for the fun of it, and we have no flex time. This means, pretty might the entire team is here by 10 and gone by 6. This helps us get to know each other better because usually as we all get in, we can chit chat a bit as a team. When you have flex time, people are coming and going at various time. I've worked at companies where I see people only at meetings. I don't think you can get to know people that way.
Another factor is age. Honestly, someone in late 20's to mid 30's are interested in a lot different things than people who are younger. People who are in their early 20's generally aren't interested in the weekend bbq. They have plans to go out somewhere, either clubbing or some party. Not to say that the older people don't, but they just don't as often. But for the people in the older 20's certainly go out in the weekend. It's not common in my team for someone to drop by to someone elses home in the evening for dinner or some drinks.
But finally, it is a symptom of the field we're in. A lot of people, because of various factors end up working long hours. When you do this, the last thing you want to do is meet your coworker again in the evening.
Me.
If the same thing that makes you a good kernel mangler makes you a little leery of socializing, it may be why a lot of offices don't have social events. On the other hand, our office has barbecues pretty regularly during the summer. Maybe none of us are hard core enough.
Information wants to be $1.98/lb.
Umm... I have to be with my co-workers 7-10 hours per day, five days per week. At weekends, I don't want to see, hear or think anything related to my work. And my co-workers are one thing, which reminds me of my job. At weekends I want to be with my fianceé and my friends or just stay at home and sleep.
I'm a programmer and I'm quite tired of my job. Maybe that is one reason, why I don't want to socialize with my workmates.
My site only has 5 techs, another engineer, and a program manager. (All of which, barring one tech, came in after me).
When I arrived, I started a "Thursday night out" where we go to a different pub every week. About half the crew participates.
During this time steam gets blown off, information gets passed, and these members of the team are a lot closer than the others. Sure, we don't hang out on the weekends or anything, but the night out makes the job a lot more enjoyable.
That, and drinking with the boss has its advantages. I've learned all *kinds* of useful information vis-a-vis social engineering. Relatively easy after 3 or 4 pints of Guiness.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
aside from the fact that you cannot ever "fish off the company pier," great friendships can, in my opinion, be made at work. for instance, my boss and i are going on a week long ski trip in january with friends and family. occasionally, the guys here go out to play "pasture pool" (read: golf). however, one cannot have friends from only one locale. if all your friends are at work, you're in for trouble.
the moral of the story: make friends, and do it often.
Its been my experience that most of my fellow IT coworkers and I have always been way to busy while on the job to get into the aspects which may be considered social such as chit-chat, gossip, just plain old fooling around, etc... Which dosn't necessarily mean that IT folks are anti-social IMHO... simply (too) busy. And the IT environment itself isn't the most condusive for the aformentioned activities. However, I have made many friends over the years working in IT... but our social interaction has taken place mostly outside of work, in a less stressful environment. We do talk about our personal lives and we still talk endlessly about work related issues ... but its easier to laugh about it over a couple of cold ones than in front of a brokendown box minutes before crucial demos by the bossman to his bosses...
and contacts, and networking.
Work is not a place to make friends, its a place to make money, the more allies you have on your team, the more money YOU make.
Its a competition, its like war
You dont make friends in War, you make allies, you have peace treaties, you dont make "friends"
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I am finally at an IT job that is friendly enough to do this... the other IT jobs I have had were so slave-ship, so depressing, so not-what-I-got-into-computers-for, that friendship came in a distant last to survival.
stuff |
That IS right !
......
Only Mormons work in support !
It explains a lot.
I don't know about everyone else, but I work in a small software shop. We only have 6 people in the company, and let's just say that we have ALOT of fun. Slot-Car tracks in the office, beer on the back deck overlooking the golf course, yada yada yada.
So one day we were bored and three of us went out and bought motorcycles. Now we take weekend trips with and without the "significant others" as an office group. Not exactly what you would call the old school BBQ, but definitely social.
What is this article supposed to convey? The stereotypical non-social nerd (in the common media meaning of the word) who's in love with his computer?
IT personnel are, on the average, just normal people, whose job simply happen to involve a lot of computers. Yes, we are of a technical nature, but then again, so are mech engineers, etc. And there's never any question about whether or not they socialize.
I'm almost offended by the tone of the question posed. No, I don't really go out on the weekends with my coworkers, but that's more of a keeping my private/professional life seperate. I will and do have a drink with them, or go to "nerdie" movies with them, mostly at the end of the week or something like that. In fact, it's probably not much different in other types of workfloor.
Those TV office romances are really just that, TV stuff. Workfloor romantic relationships usually have too many professional implications to hop into as easily as the media would like you to believe.
...BBQ (ugh, low-tech... microwave it)
on a sunny (it burns! it burns!)
weekend (can't make it... working),
chugging a few cold ones (jolt, right?)
and maybe talking shop ("then I deleted his files & posted pics to alt.naughty.sailors.in.moms.clothing")
wives (left for guy in marketing with Porsche)
and girlfriends (maybe for now, but will learn soon enough)
preparing salads (no damn rabbit food, gimme a pizza)
kids (get lost until you've hacked my firewall, kid)
running (run? you mean... strafe jumping?)
round the garden (overgrown, neglected, wild & scarey)
Seriously though, I'm the youngest coworker at a company at 24 (and three quarters!!), where the second youngest guy is 31 and the average age is 43.
They all have spouces - I just have a crush on my neighbour.
They have friends - I just have the Internet.
They talk politics, I cream them at those discussions (see number 2) because I apparently know more about the subjects at hand.
When we hang around at fridays sucking down a cold beer, they usually discuss the finer points of engineering or the lates fashion in drainage grates (no kidding).
Did I mention I'm the only computer guy at a small engineering company? My experience is that computergeeks and other people just don't mix. But then again, I'm just a social dropout, who don't have any friends, and don't even have the guts to invite his neighbour out (and no, it's not because I'm some 5', 350 pound, zit-faced geek who would be able to compete on http://amIUglyOrWhat.com - I clean up quite nicely).
Does anyone know where you can get a spine-transplant?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
We don't hang out much at the weekend 'cos we all live a long way from work.
We do beers two or three times a week (if we have a 'pass' from the spouse). We go out for an evening with spouses once in a while. We go go-carting once in a while.
I don't expect or plan for any backstabbing from any of the guys, never have and its never happened to me or anyone around me.
Of course this isn't the USA so YMMV.
At my company, we have a mix of upper and lower level employees, all working together (becuase the company is fairly small). Any social contact outside of work would be very awkward just because some of the people who work here are 25 years older than I am.
HOWEVER, every friday at 4:30 almost everyone in the office, young or old, joins in on a big game of quake 3. We all look forward to it at the end of the week and nothing is a better outlet for taking out your aggression and relieving stress.
Most places I've worked have enough geeks to get up a regular Role Playing Game. At the places I'm currently working we play Shadowrun. Although most of the guys are friends I had before I stared working here...
I worked at a place where the IT department went out for lunch on a daily basis and the director had parties for pretty much every holiday. I was the lowly UNIX admin in the engineering dept and I went with a few times. I thought it was a pretty good idea b/c for one you all definately are getting a break in the day. It was a good release of all the pressure and angst of dealing with cruddy users. And they could tell thier jokes in a crowd that would understand them. The best was when we went to the chinese place and I was taught that every fortune cookie saying had to be followed by "in bed."
I mean where else could you get this kind of quality information.
At my current job we are pretty talkitive and I've already went out and got pretty fubared up with a few of them. Think it's because we computer people so like to be part of a group. I'm far from an alcoholic, but it sure is nice to get butt wasted and talk about OC rings at my buddys NOC and IPv6 with the bs-ing network manager.
"blah blah blah...forwarding tag"
1) You must know the people you work with for a while. A lot of IT people work with people for short chunks of time, then move on to the next project.
2) Well, chemistry. Lets face it, if you get along really well with your work people then you may well socialize outside work.
I was an intern this summer at a large company, and was working in a room with 6 other people. I think it was an unusual room in that we all got along really really well. We ate lunch together every day if possible, oftentimes people saw each other on the weekends, one day we went boating with our team lead, etc. This group, even though projects only last 4 months, had been together for about a year at that point, which was also unusual.
Police and firemen, etc. have this reputation for that kind of thing, but I think its really a product of your work environment. Socializing with their work mates and the community is mostly what they do, and the real firefighting and arresting people work is probably a very small portion of their time. IT in general isn't quite as good of an environment, but really its what you make of it.
Some thoughts that struck me:
In our company, which is in rough waters at the moment, the situation is pretty tense at the moment. The result of that is that the programmers are sticking together against management. Thus, people are doing something together out of free will. There the friendships are born.
Before, everything was a lot of fun. Everybody was happy _at_ work, so there was no _need_ to do something together.
Danger, or unfavorable situations, seem to encourage friendships. You have to trust your coworkers, and thus, it seems, are much more likely to get friends.
the pun is mightier than the sword
"Do your spouses know any personal details of your workmates' spouses, beyond what may have slipped out during a long forgotten company Chistmas ball?"
Am I the only one who sniggered when I read this?
PS Also, think the word is Christmas, not Chistmas?
"We've seen stuff like this on TV and in movies. Policemen, Firemen, Astonauts, Army guys, etc, all gathered round a BBQ on a sunny weekend..."
Yeah. Nothin' like havin' a cold one with the 'nauts after a long day in space.
I've smoked a few bowls with my co-workers, but that's about the extent of the socializing outside the office.
Hang out with my co-workers? Those nerds? I don't think so... ;)
I've had a variety of experiences at a few companies. My last company was filled with 20 year-olds, so there were lots of friends to be made. I made my closest friendships and that company and hang out with those old co-workers all the time. My current group is filled with a variety of ages and types. The only things we have in common are computers and alcohol. So sometimes after coding we go out drinking.
But I don't golf, don't have a wife or kids, and never want to visit anyone in New Jersey. (Yes, NJ really is the armpit of the US.) If we were all middle-aged bankers, I could see us going to all play golf one day or have a BBQ with the families. But with such a varied bunch of developers, I don't see that happening in my career anytime soon.
Developers: We can use your help.
Did you see Office Space? Geeks always travel in packs...
--T
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
I work in the Enterprise support division of one of the "Big 3" companies (IBM, Compaq, HP) and it's no secret that times are tough around the office. Falling demand... budget cutbacks... it can all really get to a geek. But we keep ourselves busy with LAN parties, hockey games, rafting trips, you name it. It really helps to be able to approach any of your co-workers when you need help, because you know them all from outside the workplace. And it really helps to relieve the stress brought on by layoffs, difficult customers, *ahem* hostile takeovers... So I say Damn the man! You geeks go out and have yourselves a good time too!
"The only source of knowledge is experience" -A. Einstein
The reason the computer is cool is because its not as stressful (emotional can easily turn into stressful) as life OFFLINE.
Because when online gets stressful, theres always the off button.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
It is certainly less contradictory than saying Sales Geeks. Who are Notorious for such get togethers.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I'm too busy shopping. I mean, 90% of all television, magazine, and radio commercials are all aimed at me, the upper-middle-class tech worker -- I'm supposed to spend that "quality time" watching commercials and TV programs where people do those "social activities".
"First you gotta do the truffle shuffle."
No seriously, Ive worked at 4 main places the last 8 years, the first a small upstart with a younger owner, it was great, we would all go to the gym and play basketball at lunch, come over each others houses on a regular basis, hang out yeah all the good stuff. It was nice and probably one of the reasons I stayed as long as I did, the pay was mediocre at best, but it was the same for everyone we were small and starting, the company did well and has weathered the IT storm very well, I still keep in contact with all my old cronies and boss on a reqular basis
And the other 3 well not soo much
The last company I worked at withing my dept.We were all kinda close knit, we were sysadmins and developers and we still talk and hang out on occasion.
The one thing I have noticed is youre much more likley to form an out of work bond if none of your duties overlap completley, we never stepped on each others toes, someone could always ask and often did for help or a better way, but no one ever forced their ways on someone else.
Besides
whos else is going to give a rats ass about most of the geed speak us socially malformed geeks spew, our wives , yeah right , our family, depends, the only other people that think this stuff is cool is another geek....
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
I get together with current and former IT co-workers once every other month and we play 8-20 hours of board games (SPI, AH, Placebo Press, Settlers). We gab, joke, rag on (Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, Linux, etc.), and talk shop. It is great fun. I even win a game occasionally. It just takes a little longer to recover now that I am in my 40s.
the place i work has gone through changes. when i first started here it was a satelite office and only 2 of us in the office all day and a part time person after 5.
honestly we didn't socialize outside because really we were from different generations and such, tho i did socialize once in a while with the part time people. we couldn't do the during work beer thing as there was only 2 ppl here and we kinda had to be there.
a little over a year ago our office and the head office merged, so we got more people here. then we started to be more social. still tho we mostly stuck to our own generation.
once the office got populated tho we did start to do things such as go out for beer and what not at lunch.
tho some of them do things together after work, mostly cause they were friends before they worked here, we don't really do a lot of things together outside of work. only one of the guys do i really know his girlfriend and such outside of work mostly cause we share a lot of the same intrests and i drag him and his girlfriend to concerts in a quest to make him mo' poe or so he claims and we do the occasional night of mindless debauchery.
personally i think the anti-social thing is pretty relative. it all depends on the place, i've been in factories where they aren't social after work at all and same with other jobs. so this question really shouldn't be limited to just the tech community it should be about all job places.
Personally i would never socialise with people i work with thier all a bunch of sad, geeky hyper intelligent freaks. Oh and they say i'm to crap at quake join their LAN games.
--
Burt "Out of my mind back in 5 minutes"
Actually, when I want to have a drink, have a dinner or have a party, I don't want to do it with friends from the IT work.
Some of them are really kewl dudez. But IT people often can speak about computers, and nothing else. That's not a good thing to refresh one's mind.
{{.sig}}
You know that saying about managing software developers is like herding cats? The same thing kinda applies to drinking with your IT coworkers. None of the people on my team really works a normal schedule. I try to keep to a normal 9 to 5 schedule. My boss usually takes off Wenesdays to take care of her family. One will put in longer hours during the week to take off Friday afternoon to see his Fiance for the weekend. Another could just as easily show up shortly after I do, or show up as I'm walking out to lunch. Only seems that we go out to drink as a group is when someone is leaving the company for another job.
:-/
That being said, I do try to go out to lunch with my coworkers. I have even taken a vacation to ride roller coasters that included current and former coworkers. And it really sucks when one of your friends got the ax in the last round of layoffs.
Brought to you by Team SPAM! where we believe: "Information in the noise!"
A lot of my social interaction doesn't involve co-workers at all. I read a mailing list that a bunch of friends from college are on. We are all geeks and I really enjoy the list. Gives me something to do at work!
There\'s no place like ~
Perhaps the difference between IT and the professions listed in the story is that, for me, IT is a job. For policemen, Firemen, etc, perhaps it's a calling.
Second: I'm currently self employed; but, when I had to attend social events, I had the following thoughts:
1) I don't like you people. If I had a choice, I wouldn't associate with most of you if I didn't work with you. You're rude, coarse, hyper-agressive, etc.
2) I was travelling alot at the time, for business. Again, if I had a choice, I'd be at home with my wife, rather than at a hotel with people I don't like (see point 1) ) Amazing how business travel can turn you into a homebody.
At my previous job, way back when dotcoms could afford things like staff, I used to have a team of coders and we got along very well. We, or at least several of us, would visit local pubs a few times a week and brainstorm about products, or high flying ideas for on-line games. I should, however, point out that several of us knew each other even before we got to work together and were already quite familiar with the others' company. In addition, we were only a small subgroup within the company. The suits, the marketeers, they had lives of their own and rarely socialized with the long haired geeks upstairs. We were very much forced into an 'us and them' situation and that brought us together on both a professional level and a social level.
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with fraternizing with your fellow office geeks, but it does lead to certain tensions, especially when people go a step beyond fraternization. When two of my employees and friends got 'involved' with each other for all of two weeks, they both came to me for, if nothing else, consolation. For quite a while I has to keep them on different projects, or at least on different parts of projects. It messed up our group dynamics and did little good to our productivity.
Now, a year after I left the company, I still consider many of my team-mates good friends and some of us occasionally get together and reminsice about the old days. I currently work as a contractor in a company otherwise devoid of techies and although I get invited to the occasional dinner or night on the town, I'm really not one of them. It's much harder for a geek, thrown together with non-geeks, to form the same friendships he or she can easily form with fellow geeks. There's simply less common ground to cover.
In summary, I don't think the IT industry is very different to other, 'dangerous', professions, but I do think geeks have a harder time finding common ground with non geeks than other people might.
I want the fire back.
Then things sort of went to shit and I was starting to look for other work. Here is the important lesson, if you find cool people at work, you'll probably find cool people at work most places. I made it more difficult on myself then it needed to be leaving because I was leaving friends. When you think about it, a place of employment should have people you like since you spend so much of your life there. Being an open person that can make new friends makes that much easier. but friendship is also usually a little bigger than a 9 to 5 and if you have to go the friendship will survive.
At my new place, I made a lot of friends quickly. Very very cool. They are much younger and I enjoyed it quite a bit. In fact I meet the woman who is now my fiance there and you can't beat that. I kicked myself a little about not working at a younger place earlier. It was a blast, it felt a lot like high school or college with less stress than college (CMU is hard) and a lot less of the social bullshit in highschool.
On the other side though, after a while I noticed that there is a definite social structure there, a little on the clickish side. There is a sort collective esteem problem there, very few people had social lives outside or work. There was a definity set of people who were clearly not the "cool kids" when they were younger and were now "in with the cool kids" if you know what I mean. There was a lot of compensation for childhood mishaps and lack of inclusion. The games people play when there is personal stuff going on are far worse than the normal politics and when you have nothing outside of work and your work is getting crappy because of stress and deadlines, your whole life can get crappy. Don't get me wrong, for the most part it was good and pretty cool but when things got bad things got really bad. I'm still amazed at how inclusive the place was, it didn't matter who you were how you looked or anything, you'd be invited to lunch, to parties, to happy hour, etc.. There was also kind of a family or ownership thing going on, this company gave you a job, gave you work, gave you friends and pretty much worked its way into your life in a very deep way, or so they thought. I have a lot of friends outside or work and almost made myself an outsider by not going on the Moab trip with the rest of the company or not getting drunk every Friday with the rest of the team. When I left there it was a personal thing to a lot of people and it was pretty unpleasant.
So what's right? I think balance is the key. I'd never work at a place where I didn't think I could make friends. That's just too much of your life to waste, a third to a half of you time is spent there, right? On the other side, I wouldn't make it my only social outlet at all. If it is then you can't get away from work very easily and you will need to do that at times. The bowling league and happy hour thing does happen, if it doesn't it's not too hard to get something like that started. I fell in love with a woman I meet through work and it was only because we got together outside of work and talked about other things that that happened. I've also meet one of my business partners at a job. You should make some kind of effort to enjoy the social aspects of it.
Do you go bowling, play poker, or help your colleagues pave the driveway of their new home?
I'm helping a coworker put a second story on his house in December. Does that count?
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
I've definitely been in shops that do that sort of stuff. We go to a bar after work (IT consultancy) every few weeks, for example. My last shop (in-house IT dept.) had poker parties, though I never took part.
A week ago, though, I did my first stand-up performance, and more than 20 coworkers and their significant others showed up to support me. I was honestly touched.
----
WWJD...For a Klondike Bar?
Make friends with the boss hoping he will give you a raise. You fit into the kiss the bosses ass catagory.
Almost like the people I remember from school who made friends with the teacher to get a better grade (teachers pet)
But hey, YOU'd get the raise alot sooner than I would, thats the benifits to kissing the bosses ass right?
Friends at work? No such thing. Ass kissers at work? Plenty.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
When I was cable modem phone support, I was a non-alchoholic reclusive square with few friends, but since I have become Network Support Engineer, I can not stop daydreaming about a gallon of stout with the people I despise here. h00t!
*I used to be quite irreverent and ignorant. I am probably much smarter now. I seem to realize this every 45 days or so.
The other IT guys and me at my company are pretty well bonded. Though we don't have a few cold ones at the barbeque, we will sometimes get together for a nice LAN party. Amazing how our lives revolve around computers even outside the workplace... Of course, we only hire true computer geeks too! That could be because during the during an interview for an IT position, the lead developer will ask, "What's your favorite FPS."
I left after graduation to work for a major player in the industry. I kind of expected the same kind of social situation when I got there. I figured 50 new hires starting, all straight out of college, not ready to wind down yet... Boy was I mistaken... There were a few people that would get together weekly to play drinking games at someone's house and once in a while we could organize a larger group for a road trip to 6 Flaggs or something but wow! What lamers!
I left and returned here after about a year and a half. Partly because the social situation sucked and partly because the work here is much cooler. The group here that goes out is a little smaller. Some have gotten married since before, others have left but we still do wings on Thursday and Clubs Friday and Saturday. We have a mailing list at yahoo we use to organize events which now has grown to about 40 members and is no longer limited to just this company but others around town.
The company I work for does R&D in Virtual Reallity (among other things). Which is way cool. The company is very laid back. I play bass in a metal band and was hired w/ long ass hair. (Well, not ass hair... you know what I mean :-) The hair's gone now but that should give an idea of the atmosphere around here.
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel. You wouldn't understand...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
I know i cant be the only person here who knows that the first rule is never trust anyone at work.
The second rule is never try to make friends with people at work.
If that have that attitude, then I think you won't get very far in the workplace. The IT field is one that is very broad. A single person does not have the abilities to perform all the functions needed to accomplish a project of any decent size. Informal knowledge networks and friends are what are needed to get tasks completed.
The reason why so many IT projects fail is because they don't understand this concept. At least within your project group, you must create the group cohesiveness that can be the strength that blasts through all obstacles. If you can build that relationship outside your own subgroup as well, even better.
Why? Because if person A is the boss of person B, person A is going to HAVE to make decisions that are in the company's best interests, even if they're not in B's best interests. The mere possibility of that kind of situation places massive stresses on any kind of workplace relationship. It only takes one accusation of favouritism to utterly wreck a close-knit team of employees.
Then, there's the fact that the workplace is invariably a pyramid. There are fewer positions of greater authority. Always. Especially in times of economic insecurity, you HAVE to make yourself valuable. That means a friend might get fired (always a good source of resentment), or a friend might get promoted ahead of you, even though you were "in line" for that promotion, and the job situation is just too tenuous to simply walk in, somewhere else.
The only way to work "well" is to check yourself in at the door, do the work assigned, and don't build close relationships at work.
This is not, IMHO, "ideal". The entire heirarchy concept is one that is the corporate form of feudalism. The reason we don't have feudalsim today, as the major political system, is that it works really badly. It's inflexible, and vulnerable to corruption, paranoia, "gang warfare", etc.
Corporations are people, same as countries, and therefore should function better under similar conditions. That means more openness, and (yes) in-work relationships & friendships. "Should" and "Do" are two very different words. Company structures have changed little in the past 10,000 years, and are really unlikely to change any time soon. (I was going to say that serfdom had been scrapped, but then I thought about the unpaid student labor that companies use for the grungy stuff that nobody else wants to touch.)
Until such time as you are employed by a non-heirarchical company that is psychologically sound, keep your friends and work as far apart as you possibly, humanly can. Then, and ONLY then, you can start being a person, rather than a puppet.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The one time my (ex)company brought out beer for a staff meeting was when they announced we were all fired!
I meet a few of my fellow IT folks in Camelot! We all play DAoC (Dark Age of Camelot) outside of work! That's social time! Ohhh yeahhh!
Gives us something to talk about while at work. heh
--Xan
"Congratulations, Boots. Your robot has become self-aware. You're a daddy now." -- Dr. Rho Bowman
Now, picture Slashdot. Look around at your fellow posters. Do *you* get together on weekends? Do your spouses know any personal details of your fellow posters' spouses, beyond what may have slipped out during a long forgotten KDE/GNOME flamewar? Do you go trolling, play Counterstrike, or help your colleagues with the latest EFF petition? Do you even IM them to go out and get something to drink after work? Is it just the professions who share some element of physical and other danger from their incompetent, overzealous bosses where this stereotypical bonding occurs, or can it occur with everyone outside of Slashdot, too? What are your experiences with Slash relationships in the Dot?
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
one quick phrase should clear up alot...
lan parties, heh heh.
people that don't drink. Hell, I am reading through all of these messages (and look at the "socializing" that happens in my office) and it's easy to see that someone who does not partake in mass quantities of alcohol usually will have nothing to participate in.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I've been in a larger company, I've been in a smaller company. Definately now in my current workplace, a smaller company, this happens more often. But - I do remember a few headache creating evenings at my previous workplace too, where I didn't even know all the people that were gathered there. But it was fun.
It depends on the company a bit too - if the workplace creates a mood where getting to know others is easy, this happens more often. Unfortunately though, there's places that make sure that people don't cooperate, but compete together. And that's a very sure way of avoiding any communication outside work hours.
I hang out with the other sys admins that work in our little corner of the company. We usually organize an "off-site admin meeting" in which we go to a local mall, have lunch, take in a movie, and throw in the obligatory "So. Are the servers up?" "yeah." "Ok. Meeting over. On to 'team building.'"
.02
We also get together during the summer with our families (we all have very young children) and let the kids beat on^H^H^H^H^H^Hplay with each other.
And when someone needs a hand with something like moving, an extra set of hands wiring a house for network connectivity, they're always there.
Just my
"It compiles, SHIP IT!" -Overheard at Microsoft's development lab
Personally I think that "middle class bonding" is a myth, Iv'e lived on the same block twelve years and I still don't know anybody's name. Still, the fact is Geeks are antisocial and probably will always will be.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Bowling? Playing poker? Paving driveways?
I don't do these things with my colleagues because.. well I don't do these things. However we do frag together, go to local linux sig meetings (okay, use too but they are so boring), go out to lunch and beam each other the latest games we download for our palms, swap tech stories and just normal nerdy stuff like that.
Kenny
The environment I work in it is a cut-throat atmosphere where I don't really trust anyone. I suspect that is much the way it is other places but I can only speak for myself.
Besides, I am young and single and everyone else is at least 5 years older and married. They can't possibly keep up without finding themselves on the threshold of divorce.
I think that the only way to properly "hang" with a coworker in my kind of atmosphere without fear of backstabbing is to make sure they either stand nothing to gain from your downfall or that they are comfortably ahead of you.
I'm sure I wouldn't want to work alongside you. Socializing during/after work is a very important part of the day - it develops better teamwork skills and increases your trust in your coworkers. Plus how can you stand going to work every day if that's your attitude?
Hey, I have a hangnail, and yesterday my cat died. I need people in this time. I'd better post to /. and beg for friends.
I work for the "Internet/Intranet development team" of the IT department of a retail business. There are about eight of us. Then there are the girls in the "Telecom" department. Then there is the girl from HR and her roommate, the girl from "Purchasing." We all get together on weekends and go out and have a good time. There is a local pub we like to go hang out at, and one of us has a house where he lives with his girlfriend, who is also in the IT department. We all go play pool, ping-pong, and PS2 there, and watch movies and drink beer and other tasty alcoholic beverages.
We all get along really well. There are actually four of us that live in the same apartment complex, 3 of us right next door to each other and the other not too far away. We are a pretty close-knit group of people.
If one of us needs help moving, or a ride to work or anywhere else, we are all there to help each other out. The management we work for sucks, but we all get along well, and that fact makes this place just bearable enough that we don't leave.
So, I would say yes, there is that kind of bonding and friendship among at least some in TECH/IT.
I am with a somewhat large firm (10,000+) and our section DOES go out for weekend BBQ's and Friday breakfasts, but, our favourite fun is Lan parties where we go non-stop fragfesting in UT & Q3.
Panic now, beat the rush!
I wouldn't be your friend anymore. A better solution is to have all the friends chip in $20 for professional movers.
I'm in IT for a reason. No manual labor (except moving heavy servers). If I want exercise I'll go to the gym like god intended.
People at work will backstab you every chance they get, report you to the boss, spy for the boss, even lie about you to move up.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I was very fortunate to have some great people in my first development group. We'd go out for lunch, a bunch of us, once a week or so. We'd go out for beers after work. We threw parties, BBQ's, all the stuff you're talking about. Our wives knew each other (or husbands, for that matter). I thought all groups were like that, until I transfered within the company.
... get a new job! Jesus. Work is a place you go to for a few hours a day to pay your bills. If things are that ugly where you are, find a new place to trade your soul for money.
My new group is nothing like that. I have one good friend within the team; we get together and play games, drink, and bitch about work. The rest of these people are pretty stick-to-themselves. I can't imagine hanging out at some of these people's houses, or meeting their wives and kids.
Weirdly enough, I still get together with the people from the first team. Just this weekend my wife and I went over one of their homes to watch football and visit with him, his wife, and their kids.
I think it's just pure luck that decides these things. Some teams are just not meant to socialize together.
As for those that talk about how it's impossible to make friends with work people due to backstabbing, office politics, etc.
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
We've seen stuff like this on TV and in movies
I think you answered your own question there mate
Whoever said TV was reality FFS!
You dont ever see films of people sat watching the TV do you
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
At my company, we tend to replace the boredom of the IT days with extreme sports... we leave at 4:00 and go wakeboarding or mountain biking. We even have company paid for "off-site" meetings at the sand dunes to go quading with our directors. (ever try to teach your boss how dns works near a campfire on a the cardboard from a case of beer before?)
Let's see. I go riding (motorcycles) with my boss and a few of the other guys at his level. I stood up in another developers wedding. I've gone drinking with just about everyone I work with. Oh, and we're going to go see "The One" this Wednesday after work.
Now, what has this cost me? Uh, I only got a total of 133% in raises over the last 4 years. Damn, I'll bet the guy who was in my wedding screwed me over. Oh, and there was that time when they gave me choice of projects. I'll bet my drinking buddy was holding something back then. And all those nights out that got put on the expense report, that must have cost me about $0.01 dip in my stock value.
Having friends sucks! Except the time when a customer was bitching about me and everyone stood up for me because they knew me better. Maybe friends aren't so bad.
Most of the other IT Workers in my department aren't geeks, so there isn't much we have in common. Also, I'm a great deal younger than them, and so again, there is a social divide there. We've done after work things as a department, but those were more teambuilding events than genuine social activities.
If there were a fellow geek I had stuff in common with, I'd hang out with them. The closest thing to that in my department is at another location sixty miles away.
XeoMage
Your typical Tokyo after work get-together costs you ~$80/ea. Crappy dinner, beers and karaoke. Add $20 for cabs if it goes after midnight.
To counter this a bit, I did the following:
At my last job, I dreaded these things, so I instituted "Jim's Movie Night" where I would clear a big space in the document warehouse. set up a screen, speakers and one of those projectors usually reserved for PowerPoint. Everyone was told to bring their own food and beer and Just kick back and relax.
They were really a great success and management looked the other way.
When picking a movie became difficult, I hacked together a CGI voting program on the company intranet. I'd wget reviews of the movies from wherever and then let people vote on this week's movie.
It was a really nice thing - cheap and easy and a lot of fun. I'd recommend it to anyone who's got access to an old conference-room projector and a bit of space.
Start it out for close friends and let the thing grow as it will. You'll be surprised how many people will show.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
Obvious troll, but I can't stop myself from responding.
You are so misguided.
Everyone at work is not your competition, they are all your network. Work well with them, have respectful professional relationships with them and keep in touch even after they/you leave the organization. There will be opportunities to help one another out throughout the years, and the more you help one another then more you all benefit.
Over years of working well with others this way you will find yourself with a million dollar rolodex. Your value to a company will be far greater than what you can individually accomplish, because you have a network which supports one another. Those relationships can lead to sales, answers to tough questions, a reference that can lead to a great hire or avoid a disasterous one.
Oh man I'm drunk right now. And it's only 9:52am!
Do it for da shorties
I socialise with friends that used to be colleagues in ex-workplaces, and I'll count some of my current colleagues as friends and socialise with them - after we no longer work together, which likely won't be long in the current economic climate.
I have a laugh inside the workplace with my current colleages, but I don't see them outside work, nor do I go to work outings, nor even attend the regular and mandatory "Whoo yeah! Go us! We da best! We one big family!" pep talks (I choose to invest that time in boosting my morale by messengering my actual friends and family).
Work is the place where I get paid to provide services. It's not a substitute for friends and family, and I won't be drawn into that mindset, nor will I stay in work mode for one moment more than I'm paid for (which inevitably happens to a greater or lesser extent when you socialise with colleagues). If I enjoyed work, I'd do it for nothing, which is pretty much what I did as a games programmer. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt, bought into the whole "We're doing something special! We're special people!" bunk, got screwed, moved on, stayed in touch with the actual good guys.
To paraphrase the great philospher Eric of Cartman: "I'm going over hyah, you guys can go over thyah. Hyah. Thyah."
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I work for a software startup that has been having all of the same problems that many other software startups are having right now. We've had two rounds of layoffs in the last 6 months.
I'm convinced that one of the reasons that I made the second cut is because I socialize with my co-workers outside of work. In the last round of layoffs, they let people go who, if you compared solely on experience and programming skills, should have been chosen over me. However, I think that personal interaction and communication skills are also very important, especially in a small company. My personal style and communication skill must've come through in some of the interactions with management and others at these social events outside of work. I'm not saying that you can get by solely on your drinking buddy skills, but a balance of both has served me well. You can't underestimate the power of making ties outside of work hours.
i knew this guy from a mailing list--when he got promoted to manager, his first task was to replace his old spot, which he did with me. Then six months later he hired my then-girlfriend as a contractor to help do rollout. Then a year later we hired another guy from the list to be a workstation tech. Most of our second-level support, therefore, either has known each other for years or bonded (they're all from Philly or Ireland, or both) so we spend a lot of time pounding Guinness. We have so few technical staff, in an environment full of brainless users,heterogeneous servers and non-standard machine configs, that we have to get along and trust each other or nothing would ever get done.
Of course, the bunker mentality we developed fighting against an infrastructure group full of old mainframe codgers and ex-librarians (I kid you not) helped build esprit de corps in a "wish I was dead...you too?" kind of way.
It's a miracle National Geographic ever gets a magazine out...
"I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing."
Now you'll know to never trust anyone at work.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
What you end up with is an inability to relate with them. Now the people I end up hanging with (Is that the cool and hip phrase?) are Fireman, construction workers, Marines, Police, etc... so it is no wonder that we can simply enjoy life, relax and enjoy each others company. Since we do not spend our times in pissing contests, we have fun. Its like drivers on the road... you will notice that race car drivers are the most careful drivers on the road. Why? Because they are the real deal. Johnny Snotnose in his Loosermobile that swerves through traffic, cuts others off and drives on the shoulder is basically a pansy that is running from the reality of his pathetic existence. Same with fighting. You will notice that the punks that act tough and pick fights are those that are the biggest pansies. By the same token, you often see the PC 'warrior' that fights from behind a desk and talks real big and makes sure everyone sees them in their uniform... however they do not understand what a true warrior is. Therefore they are the ones that cause the most destruction and loss. Bill Clinton touted himself (and I am sure many here agree with it) that he was peaceful. Well, being the dishonorable draft dodger he is, he ended up commiting our military to more foreign matters than ANY president of the 20'th century. Granted, that counts the World Wars in terms of theaters of operation, not individual battles and localized deployments.... then we get into his deployments domestically. Fucking commie.
When our company was young and small, we did do a lot together outside work.
Back then, everyone knew everyone and we all worked closely together under difficult circumstances (we were among the first to build and run billing services software for the nacent cellular industry in the mid 80's). Our work was very stressful and the demands were high.
Nearly every Friday we would gather at the local establishment and wash our cares away with a variety of brews and distillations. We had a bowling league, we arranged picnics and softball/volleyball outings. We were all pretty young (many of us, this was our first job out of school) and we didn't have families and our work pretty much consumed us. We worked long hours in very chaotic conditions. We shared many common experiences and many of us were very close.
Then something happended. Not all at once, but over time our company got bigger and more stable. We had more and more employees and more work but and we became much more corporate. We moved into a different building further away from the city. People working for the company tended now to have families and such and the climate became much more professional and calm.
Now, employee gatherings outside of work are mostly team outings during the workday that happen 2-3 times a year. I don't know many of the faces I see everyday (as opposed to 10 years ago when I knew _everyone_). I have a family of my own now. Most people (like myself) put in our workday and go home to a busy life outside of work.
No, it is very different now.
I know i cant be the only person here who knows that the first rule is never trust anyone at work.
The second rule is never try to make friends with people at work.
If that have that attitude, then I think you won't get very far in the workplace. The IT field is one that is very broad. A single person does
not have the abilities to perform all the functions needed to accomplish a project of any decent size. Informal knowledge networks and friends are what are needed to get tasks completed.
The reason why so many IT projects fail is because they don't understand this concept. At least within your project group, you must create the group cohesiveness that can be the strength that blasts through all obstacles. If you can build that relationship outside your own subgroup as well, even better.
Our advanced networking department used to be 6 guys ages 18-25 and a really cool manager. We used to go out to lunch every day and talk about anything but work. A few of them regularly came to my parties, and their wives and girlfriends hung out sometimes. A lot of them have since been laid off, and we've been re-organized to Hell and back, but we still try to do lunch, attend weddings, etc. I think the fact that most of us are still in college has a lot to do with it.
I don't know if that counts as "friends," but it's the same kind of office comraderie that my dad had in the Air Force. I miss the block parties and squadron picnics, but those started dying out long before my dad retired.
> 2. Buying Rounds
Hollowpoint...
-- My Weblog.
Or the lack thereof. I work for a very old company (over 150 years!) - and there are a lot of people here who are "lifers". At 3.5 years working here, there are about 100 people (out of 150 total) who have been here 5 years or longer - one person has been here 35 years, about a half-dozen more over 30 years, and another 10 or so 25-30 years. So there's continuity, and that's one factor in having a strong social culture. The longer-term people are, the more the culture is preserved.
We also have a golf league in the spring/summer, and a bowling (candlepins) league in the winter - each league has around 30-40 participants (with some people doing both). That encourages interaction, too. Basically, a lot more people here are friends IRL than I see at most places. And people mix across the layers of hierarchy - Vice-presidents golf and bowl alongside mailroom workers, and it's pretty comfortable for most.
At my previous company (my successor reads here regularly, so he can speak to it if he wants), it was still social to a point, but it seemed to be more a core of us at the management level (many of the managers were members of the partners' families) that socialized together, and then the "rank and file" pretty much hung together by department. There wasn't quite as much mixing, and the one real attempt at a "group" thing when I was there (a softball league) fizzled out after a couple of years. Mind you, it was still a very good place to work, and I'm still friends with the people I befriended there - they were pretty much all good people, there just wasn't as much mixing.
It may have changed since then, but I doubt too much. Higher-pressure environments and younger companies (like that one) don't seem to have quite as much socializing across boundaries.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
First of all, all those guys are unionized (firemen, police, etc.) or close to it (army), so they have standard rates of pay. Each of those guys knows what everyone else makes. IT, on the other hand, seems to be more individualistic and market oriented.
:)
The other thing I notice is that all those jobs involve the possibility of danger. With my job, the closest I come to 'danger' is tripping over a power bar. You'd be surprised at how interested you are at getting to know your colleagues when you depend on them for your life.
Do you even have drinks with them after work?
Are you kidding me? I never would have developed my final stage alcoholism without the help of my overworked and overpaid collegues in the IT sector. Who's more likely to throw down 100 bucks at a bar. A police man, or a crazed, BASTARD OPERATOR FROM HELL?!
1. HUGE company, one of the big ones. Social life sucked, until I met up with some of the younger people who worked there who hated it as much as I did. We hung out at lunch, and would go have drinks at least once a week. Great crowd. There were 3 of us who kind of made up the core group. After about 4 years, we all quit and went our separate ways. I later found out the social scene died there shortly after that.
2. Went to a startup company. Fantastic work environment, everyone loved their jobs (as much as you can). We didn't hang out hardly at all, but every once in a while we would. This was in a large city, and everyone commuted, so nobody really wanted to hang around after work. Startup died after being there 2 years.
3. New company is big, corporate, cubicles as far as the eye can see. There are forced social activities. (i.e. It isn't mandatory, but if you don't go, you have to work). Several people pretend to be social, because that is the corporate standard. At the end of the day I just want to forget this place exists.
I have friends outside of work, but at work I am kind of anti-social. I mean, it is a work environment, not a social environment. Don't try and make it social (mandatory fun), pretend we are all one big family, then force the corporate standard on me. The sheep seem to like it, but I don't.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Why is Ok for artists to drone on and on about technique and musicians making asses of themselves jamming in a bar (no they are not the line-up act), all while sipping wine or snorting coke, but geeks are being "geeky" when they get wet over cat5 cabling and Q3? Even in the eyes of other geeks?
I cant count the number of times I've been stuck at a party where the drummer and guitarist fucking bored me to tears with their top 100 countdown (girls swooning over this shit too !?!), and yet it's socially unacceptable
for geeks to talk amongst themselves or to others about a common interest, something that is no longer a "fringe" interest.
You took a huge risk, work is not the place to take such risks, Your life is on the line literally.
So you met your wife at work, GOOD for you, most people meet a backstabbing liar who wants a raise or an ass kisser to the boss.
Lucky is winning the lottery, Lucky is becoming a millionare, Lucly is running a successful business without getting purchased by Microsoft, Lucky is a person who makes friends at work.
Work is all about competition, alot of the people you think are your friends really arent, and its not worth the risk. Money first, Friends second.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
My current co-workers and I get together now and then for beers after work. But I tend to see more of my former co-workers.
Now, when someone else escapes from the place we all used to work we get together to celibrate the escape of the new person. There is even a mailing list for former employees where we can all trade stories, gripes, complaints, and horror stories of our former employer. It's a great way to heal from having worked for one of the demons from the seven gates of hell.
Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
Ahem. Sorry. Been watching too much Invader Zim lately.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The people I work with live anywhere between 20 miles and 5000 miles away. No way we can meet up to cheg a few.
Then there's the possibility of sexual harassment suit after a few cold ones, not to mention making 'politically incorrect' jokes... It all puts a big chill on the so-called 'fun'.
Get a job somewhere else dude
Life is too short to put up with that kind of soulless shit
Frank Zappa must be turning in his grave
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
To be on topic again, I even think that those stereotypical bonding-rituals described in the "Ask Slashdot", don't really exist. It's all TV and you shouldn't believe what is on TV. ;-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
"Certainly this won't happen if you are in a telecommuting position"
After three years of telecommuting as IT support for a dotcom, I dispute this. Thanks to email and instant messaging, you can form tight bonds with coworkers online, chatting around a virtual watercooler. It's nice to back that up with some F2F (Face to Face) meetings, but hardly necessary. Many coworkers have come and gone (as have I) but the friendships remain strong.
Telecommuting also helps preserve office friendships. You don't hear and see the annoying realities of your coworkers or vice versa.
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
However, I'm not sure if you should take the tactic of "work people aren't potential friends". Sure, there can be problems at work (promotion competition, office politics, too many friendly favors), but the benefits are many. 70% or more or the problems at work are lack of communication between employees. I've worked for weeks on problems that would have been solved in an hour over beers with another co-worker. It's ranged from little things like not knowing about a useful global variable or obscure Unix command to finding out an impossible problem I was working on wasn't even a line item in the contract. Even better is when the guy who left for another company thinks of you for a position in his new company. Horizontal promotion is a lot easier when you have friends in the new company.
Of course, this is mostly theoretical. I spend a month at a time with the guys from work, because we spend a month at a time at the customer's office in another state. We eat together every night, share stories while the backups run, talk politics, religion, technology, and hobbies. And, when we get back to the home office, we never go for a beer. Lunch maybe, but no weekend time.
Yeah, there was a place I worked at for about five years where we did that. Got together after work quite a bit, did stuff on the weekends, played poker, stuff like that. There were about 15 or 20 of us, and we all stayed in the same group for about 4 or 5 years before people started to leave (they had to, the company was going down the tubes...damn marketing idiots). The product was great. I think that's the only thing they were able to sell off in the end. Best damn place I ever worked at....best damn manager too. I still keep in contact with a lot of those folks. I was really sad to have to leave that place.
At my first IT-type job with a dot-com I had quite a lot of after-hours interactions with co-workers; this was mostly due to the fact that we were all roommates in the same house, but before we even moved in together we'd hang out, Quake III with eachother and whatnot (I'm not sure if playing Quake III counts, but it gave us a chance to interact). My wife knew stuff about the others and vice versa, that kind of thing, as well. But I suppose this is almost a given when people are shacked up together.
My second job, on the other hand, was quite different. I wasn't exactly outgoing, but it was my general impression that any relationship I had with my co-workers terminated at the end of the day-- don't get me wrong, they were great people and wonderful co-workers, but there wasn't much in the way of personal interaction or after work activities (in fact, in this latter category, I can recall NO after-work activities whatsoever). I mostly attribute this to my closed-off nature at the second job though, I think under different circumstances (eg: the prior dot-com not screwing me over) I'd have probably been friendlier.
To get to the juice of your question though; yes it does happen, it's perfectly normal and okay, and while it doesn't happen with ALL people (see my two examples above), it can. Some people may just not like that kind of thing (if you're questioning yourself and why it is you haven't had these kinds of 'bonding' relationships), I know that I enjoy my privacy after work, and the time it allots me to work on my hobbies (which are pretty much an addiction). If you have a similar all-consuming hobby, it's likely you don't interact with co-workers on this bonding-level you speak of, and it's likely normal given the situation. Now if you find yourself sitting around the house/apartment on the sofa watching more TV than is normal (or simply bored beyond words), I'd suggest speaking up or arranging something with your co-workers that might be fun for all of them. (EG: Bar/club, maybe just out to eat at a restaraunt, perhaps a movie, or just about any fun-to-do-in-groups activity.)
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
I blow off steam with friends I *don't* work with. Several of them are in the IT field. We all know each other and trust one another. I can bitch and moan about management and the utter BS initiatives that come across - "They wan't you to do *what*? Are they INSANE?!?!" - and not worry about it coming back to bite me because someone couldn't keep their mouth shut.
.357 or .45 through paper targets is a great way to unwind. :)
Besides all that, I can't think of any of my coworkers I'd feel comfortable taking to the firing range. That's a fun way to take out your aggressions Forget FPS or bowling - real bullets and real recoil are a lot more fun. Blowing a few rounds of
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
It's a nebulous term trying to roll lightweight programming jobs under one umbrella: CGI scripting, website Javascript, "enterprise" applications written in Visual Basic and Delphi, SQL and other database interfacing, etc.
I can understand that jobs involving the above are a lot less techie and stable than classic programming work. In the latter, the programmers are the key (think of embedded systems) where in the former you're just a tool of management.
Our UK team (9 developers) regularly socialise - perhaps because most of us were around when we were a startup, or perhaps because there's so much great beer around here. Anyway, here's the evidence. Rob
-- Freddie Starr ate my empeg
Wow. That is the most idiotic company I've ever heard of in my life.
Grammar school...
Yeah, it's called being social. Try it. Make some friends. People can be cooler than computers. Especially chicks. Trust me on this. Oh, and take a shower for chrissake. Use a comb too. Hygiene is important.
Sig missing. Reward.
it's funny in that i do not actually spend that much time outside the office with people i directly work with, but the company i work for is quite large and has an extensive intramural sports program, and that has been the way i have met most of the people i would call 'friends' with whom i share an employer.
one of the main issues with not hanging out after work with coworkers is that most of the people i work with are easily 20 years or more older than me, and quite frankly we don't have many similar interests. they have kids, dogs, etc.
if it weren't for the intramural sports and meeting people my own age, it would be a very lonely place to work. probably enough to make me change my profession or find someplace else to work.
-sam
burn the computers. go back to the abacus.
When I started out at my new company, all of the developers were very quiet and focused on work. All day long coding, coding, and more coding. I decided to change all of this, and I must say, it has worked out wonderfully! All I did was organize get-togethers and little breaks during the work day. Now we are downright silly with each other! During the day its not uncommon to break into the occassional game of "jizz biscuit" (last man to cum on the biscuit has to eat it!), or the occassional circle jerk. Sometimes, when we feel extra silly, we play the "slap and tickle game" where we beat each other about the head, neck, chest, throat, and back. There is no greater team building exercise than the 'ol "stealth crotch-grab" game where all day you and your co-workers attempt to sneak up on each other and grab the other's crotch. Fun will be had all around! And, have you ever eaten your lunch off of a co-workers groin? Its a real moral booster. On the weekends we swap wives and beat our dogs.
the last office i worked in (here in nyc),
was such a tight crew that when the company folded (not our fault, i promise), we started an email list for all the techies to keep in touch, and some subset of us gets together for drinks more or less once a month.
if you can't joke w/ the people you work with. . .
how can you enjoy the layoffs?
At work, you dont know who is your friend, and who is not.
IF you treat everyone like a business partner, then theres no way for them to backstab you.
If you were steve jobs, you'd tell bill gates all your ideas over a beer one night, because hes your "friend"
Then you'd be at his mercy when he comes out with ideas based off of yours.
You can gamble and try to make friends at work, i mean if you knew people before they got the job or know the boss before he was a boss then its not so bad, but most people didnt know people before they got the job.
Essentially, they are all competition. Everyone doing anything they can to make sure they get more money.
Theres no friends in business, theres no friends in work, theres only assosiates, and business partners
to think that theres friends is like thinking IBM is our friend because they help promote linux.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Sorry, but just because you're an IT worker, does not mean you should be working 60+ hours a week, continuously. That just isn't healthy! Maybe for a couple of weeks, as you need to finish up on that big project, but pretty soon, this will cause all sorts of stress-related problems. Now if working that extra 20 hours a week brings you great joy, go right ahead.
Fortunate for me, my boss believes employees should be left an ample amount of free, personal time. He also likes to obey labor laws, which some companies apparently don't care about.
I've worked in several teams that
worked hard and played hard together.
Tom DeMarco speaks of "jelled" teams
and if a team is to come together in that
way I think you socialize too.
I worked on the Multics operating system for
16 years, and the annual Multics picnic was
one of many social events that I look back on
with pleasure: see
http://www.multicians.org/picnics.html
Other places I've worked didn't have that
kind of social interaction. People went home
after work and didn't socialize unless they
had some previous association. It was less fun.
we go drinking, scam'in on chicks ( I tell them I am a bus painter!!! works like a charm! ) fishing, snowboarding, drinking, scam'in on chicks, drinking.....
Yes, I definitely hang out with a couple people I work with, but not all the programmers do.
If you want friends and a family, get out there and make friends.
Your coworkers are just that... coworkers.
What will happen if you change job? Will your friends remain your friends? Will you got "friendless" just because you switched job? What happens if you loose your job? Will you loose both your job and your friends?
You work for money, for your carreer... Not for making friends or extending your family.
That's a trap! Your boss might want you to do it... but don't.
My IT department frequently goes to a local gun range and shoots small caliber firearms at targets. I want to put up our used targets on the outside wall of the server-room door, but we don't want people to be afraid of us...
--- rapper/producer/bachelorette party stripper
First of all, obviously, movies: not reality.
Of course, I agree that certainly policemen, firefighters, and military personnel do socialize quite frequently. Astronauts? Who knows. Probably.
The trait that these professions have in common?
Well, in the case of the police and firefighters they are bound together by duty and by a profession that causes them to truly rely on one another in life and death situations. I would wager that the military has a similar climate, and it would seem logical that astronauts do as well.
In the case of the police, there is definitely an 'us vs them' mentality, fostered by their role in society.
That being said, one will see much more of this type of socializing in blue-collar type professions. Even so, neighborhoods are changing, lives are changing. One doesn't work with one's neighbors down at the mill, warehouse, or factory very often anymore. One's co-workers children may not know one's own. So even those tight-knit groups are disappearing.
IT, as we all know, is a far more mercenary type profession than most. Although there are exceptions, many people are transient employees, and the environment in the technical world has fostered this. There aren't many chances to becme intimate, and it seems that people on all sides are hesitant.
A few years ago I was a tree-trimmer, and that was an entirely different ball game.
You would not only spend an enormous amount of time with those with whom you work on an everyday basis, but with others of the same profession.
You're drunk right now, aren't you?!
Of course I "bond" with my IT workmates - considering the amount of time I spend at work, I better.
sic transit gloria mundi
I work in IT for over ten years now, and I very much appreciate meeting my colleagues at parties and inviting them to mine. Of course, sometimes there is a boring one, but most of them are nice and fun to hang out with. Some of them have become good friends.
It might help that I work in Europe, and that most people here try to keep to weeks of about 40 hours in the office. That leaves some time to have a social life of your own. If you are working long days, you might need the small amount of free time you have just for staying in contact with your family and old friends.
It might also help that my friends have always been of the nerdy type: mostly male, mostly into science & technology.
Inez{R}.
Oh, hell, it's after midnight here and I've been drinking. Sue me...
:-)
(Anonymous to try to preserve karma...)
You dont choose the people you work with, YOU CHOOSE your friends. Its usually a bad idea to try to create emotional ties to something like work, work is competitive.
I dont know what kinda enviornment you are in, but at work, if you dont compete for the raise, you wont get a raise EVER, the guy who backstabs everyone or kisses the bosses ass usually gets the raise.
Perhaps you dont work for the money, BUT alot of people DO work for the money, especially people who arent making 100k a year like you must be making, money really matters when you have less of it, and people will do ANYTHING to get more of it, especially when they have children and wives.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I've been in IT for 10 years, no old timer but I do have a good cross section of jobs to draw upon to comment on this post.
I've been a sys admin, sales engineer, developer, infrastructure architect, dba, and code librarian. Every job that I have been at I have interacted with those within and outside of my department. This extends past the simple 5-9 (or is it 9-5? nah...) grind. I have close friendships that I have formed along the way, and above all wherever I work I intend to have fun! And I do, I've drunken into a stupor many a time. And I'm not just talking about the Christmas Party.
This is a stereotype that is actually very inaccurate. If you live in a social vacuum I suggest you immediately down a bottle of Vodka (or two for good measure) and engage in intelligent conversation with all in your company.
I've virtually eliminated more of my co-workers than anyone else I know!
But, hey we get together for less violent social interaction to. I feal bad for the spouses/s.o.'s though. We are always talking about sci/tech and they just sort of glaze over.
We all get together to espouse the greatness of Windows. Now that XP is out , we talk about how great it is going to be to support it.
Lets see, several of us have met at Bandimere to drag race our cars. About half the team went downtown one friday for dinner, drinks and clubbing. There is a small group of us who have semi-regularly gone to strip clubs. Of course we have also had monday night Diablo 2 games :) There have been several get togethers and such, so overall I would say the group that I spent the last 2 years fixing PC's with are pretty social!
I don't get together with any of the people I work with in IT at a smaller community college, but my wife's co-workers get together all the time at her boss's house for pool, card and to tap a keg or two.
Might have to do with the fact that 50% of my co-workers are tee-totalers and all of her co-workers were matriculated from the same frat house out of college.
Obviously, you're not going to be friends with everyone you work with. But it certainly is possible. One definite advantage is a work environment that encourages having fun.
For example, a bunch of us from my first job still share a yahoo groups email list and get together every few months. Why? Because we had so much fun at work. (Our shared office was even nicknamed "Slack Central" and we all became known as "Slackers". In this case, slacker was a badge of honor, for a slacking attitude, not an indication of a slacking work ethic.) In fact we're getting together for a Xmas event with all the spouses and children included.
And another place I worked, with just a handful of people, we had beers and board games every friday after 4:30 or so ("Beer-thirty"). Family were welcome to stop by and join in. And a number of us still get together for lunch and occasional poker nights.
And the biggest reason to make friends at work is so that you can network with them the next time there's a recession and you get laid off.
It depends on how you view work.
When you go to work do you think "Lets go make some money today" Or do you think "Lets go have some fun"
Some people actually want to make money, Some people are serious, some people have bills to pay, families to feed, and backstabbing a co worker so their kid can have something he wants for xmas or so they can pay off a bill, it becomes a very logical move to make.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I used to work for VA LINUX, I thought the programmers were egostical , braindead morions who thought they were the bomb even though there stock sank to the bottom of the stock market. case in point this guy geoff harrison could not write one damn peice of code that worked 100% correct. He never paid attenion to his build configuration. It was a pure nightmare qaing his code.......
Where I work, everyone is pretty friendly and afterhours socializing is really common. We always do lunch together. We have friendly games of paintball on the weekends to help relieve stress from the work week. Sometimes we go to a nearby larger city/town for a night out since we work at a rural Tennessee college that is more wired than most other campuses in the state. I think that our social environment is one of the main reasons that we can look at the top 50 wired colleges list every year and say, "Even though they have never heard of us, we did *that* two years ago."
Great posts so far! Lots of different experiences. Here's mine. I'm 26. I have worked in "old-school" companies since graduating. Banking, insurance, and the like are where you'd find me. I'm a network/sysadmin, they guy who keeps the trains running, so I'm not really a true coding geek. I'm happily married, no kids, just cats.
Everywhere I've worked, I've been the youngest staffer by at least 10 years. Not kidding. My next youngest co-worker is 37. Oh, I know I'll catch up eventually, but the social situation isn't the greatest. All they ever do is bitch about work, their wife, their kids, their child support, winterizing their boats, etc. And when we do hang out, it's tough being "the kid." Plus, you've got to worry about office politics. It sounds paranoid, but I know people who have been run into the ground for saying something they shouldn't have in a social setting.
My wife, OTOH, works as a retail manager (very different from a PHB...they actually work!), mostly with people close to her age, or maybe just not as bitter. We have a grand old time with them. I wish that would translate over to my workplaces a little.
When I was doing helpdesk work in college, our group also had a good social interaction thing going on. Maybe that was school-related, but it was fun.
How can I socialize with my three IT co-workers when I live 50 miles west of the office and they live 15-25 miles north-east of the office? The company Christmas party is the ONLY time I socialize with any of my co-workers.
Also, I'm not the only one who travels that distance to work. It's getting to be the edge of normal in bustling Atlanta, GA.
int 20h
We're all cool with each other.
These kind of activities are perfectly normal in my work environment.
We go out for drinks, we go over to each other's houses. We play billiards, we bowl, we watch movies, we play video games.
In fact, my wife invited everyone over for Thanksgiving. We are now having 2 other families coming over. This is normal behavior for our team. Maybe other places should try it.
It amazes me that there are so many posts saying that these kind of relationships cannot happen at work. It obviously depends on the kind of people that are brought in by HR/management. All the people here (NetAdmins) are friendly, and young, and have fun. Those are probably the keys. Do I have other friends? Yes! Do I REALLY consider the relationships at work friends? Yes!
If I leave the company, I will definitely stay in touch with these people. They are great. They are my friends.
-- Not creative enough to have a sig
It's pretty friendly over here. I don't know about helping people pave their drives (hell! The very thought!) or learning spousal details (why?); but we certainly eat, drink and play together. If spouses get involved, all the better, although the problem is that we're a fairly closeknit team, so people who don't hang out with us all day tend to get accidentally left out of a lot of "in" jokes.
It's not just firemen. In fact it's not just men (women making the salad! You wouldn't have got away with that comment over here, chum!). The women in our team are as keen on beer and giggles as the rest of us. Everyone who takes the sort of stress levels you get in I.T. HAS to have beer and giggles. It should be mandatory.
H.
Flash forward to my current shop, where our manager tried in vain more than once to put together some kind of social outing - even a simple departmental lunch. He was met with responses like, "if I don't have to be at work, I've got better things to do at home," and "I just don't like to go out much." Now, these weren't 60+ hour a week, stressed-out folks; we had a regular work week, and they just preferred to stay isolated in their cubes rather than actually interact with other people. They were nice enough people, but yeesh, that's where stereotypes come from...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Nope. Two reasons:
one) I'm still a student in college, so I don't really have any time for a social life unless it's over break or during downtime.
two) I prefer to keep my professional life and my personal life separate. Things that happen at work stay at work; things that happen at home stay at home, and never the two shall meet. When you start letting your co-workers into your personal life, those little details that slip out can complicate your work life to the point where it all falls apart.
Keep them separated and you won't have any problems.
Proteus' Child
Doko ni datte; hito wa, tsunagette iru.
If you ask me, general-purpose socializing after work, with the people with whom you work, is idiotic. Hmm.... you're post-college, with a job - isn't there anything more productive you could be doing? Exercising, learning something, relaxing - anything besides just hanging around somewhere with people you see more than your own family anyway?
How could you be so bored in life that wasting an evening or a weekend dicking around with your co-workers seems worthwhile? Sheesh.
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
People who make 30k to 60k will do anything to make more money because theres people want to move up the ladder.
Some of these people will do anything, and i mean anything, to make more money. Including exploiting people, talking to people claiming to be their friend, listening to the person complain about the boss or something work related (most people complain about work all the time) and then report it to the boss to gain the bosses trust so the boss gives them a raise.
You must be making more money than the average worker, so moving up doesnt really matter much if you are at the top.
I dont know WHERE you work, but most work places and i'm talking most of them, they are filled with competitive people, who want more money than you, and because theres only one person who can get a certain position, or who can move up, everyone fights each other for the spot.
Connections are important, social skills are vital to moving up, social engineering is important, but friendship is not.
You dont need to have friends at work, some people want to have them, I wouldnt mind having them if i am not working in a competitive field, working at non profits, i didnt mind having friends at work, working for a corperation, things are diffrent.
When you have bills to pay, and you know everyone else has them too, friendship comes second, survival comes first.
Its easier to avoid having to choose between survival or your friendships by simply not having friends at work.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
At my last job doing corporate IT support, I formed a number of strong friendships. All my users loved me, and I liked most of them quite a bit as well. The (non-IT) co-workers that were around my age, who were predominantly female, always went out to happy hours and such that I organized and we always had a collective blast at the company Christmas party as well.
My location's department was small-- It was just my then-boss, me, and during the summer of 2000, one intern and we supported about 100 people. I remain good friends with my boss from that job though it's been over a year since he left and almost a year since I left, and I was good friends with the [gorgeous female] intern before she worked in my department-- she had been working in Accounting while going to school for Computer Science. We remain close today.
At the job I took in January, I get along well with everyone but we don't really spend enough time together in the office to really get to know each other well. But that's life a a busy consultant.
~Philly
when I started working in HiTech a friend told me the following. " always be friendly w/ your co-workers and keep the peace. The HiTech world is small and you never know who will be your next boss, emplyee or reference."
7 years later I can't tell you how many times his advice has proved true.
My dad has been a normal employee ranging from accountant to auditor and I don't think he went often to parties or that we invited anyone anytime. Hey, perhaps it's just a thing in upbringing?
Note that I think that a lot of people I met in IT tend to be very very individualistic which would probably interfere with what one could call "typical social bonding".
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I have no union that says I only have to work 8 hour shifts. As a result I work between 10 and 16 hour shifts on average. After 5 days of doing that, the last people I want to see on a weekend are the people I saw 16 hours a day for the previous 5 days.
after work cannibus parties happen all too often around here.
There's no "I" in Linux.. err..
...and honestly, thats already too much ;-)
I don't befriend my coworkers. While I'm a "permanent" employee, I think like a mercenary: as soon as things look bad, I'm out the door and back on the job hunt. Given my attitude, it is sensible to avoid becoming attached to a given coworker. I keep my distance, and expect others to keep theirs.
Everything you have stated is short-sighted and ultimately ineffective for your goals. In the real world, its the relationships you make with others that get you ahead, NOT YOUR TECHNICAL SKILLS. Personally, I'm glad I don't work with you -- obviously I shouldn't trust you, a self-described back-stabber (unlike most of my friends and co-workers).
True, as you climb the ladder, trust does become a trickier issue (meaning: choose your enemies carefully), and, true, you should control the information you release to co-workers, but that applies to friends and families too. While they are technically competitors, but they can also be your allies. If you are too short-sighted and paranoid, this can be easy to miss. The best jobs I have gotten, and almost everyone I know has gotten, have come through friends -- including co-workers.
Take some time to trust people, you might actually learn something from them. I have a great job and friends from almost every job I've worked at (and there are many)... who's the real sucker here?
* If you look around the room and think that everyone is an idiot, the real idiot is almost always you.
a lot of IT workers are anti-social
That's not true! I'm a wannabe IT worker,
(my emphasis)
Wannabe. Exactly. While there are social IT workers, gaining true guru-hood requires countless hours tooling with computers. Developing/practicing social skills takes time away from the computer. So the rule is:
Guru computer expertise is inversely proportional to the amount of time spent socializing.
m00.
As far as the users go "HELL NO" is all I can say.
When i first started as a Help desk Tech I thought That it would be keen to go to to the Company Socials, when I got promoted to a day job I went to some. What usually happened was people cornering me Wanting to know how to do shit in EXCEL. I was sitting there going Uh this is my time off guys......I would put up shit that for a while but This one time an accountant corrnered me and started babling on abut how we should replace the 4 AS400's with a (Single) NT system was pritty much the last time that I went to a company event.
As for coworkes, When I had a coworker who also listened to Ska/Reggae/Oi! and punk We would go to shows all the time, however he left and every one else listens to the Gypsy Kings. So I do not assoiate with them either. (Outside of the ocasianl pint of beer, and ending up a a ripper joint)
LOTB
D.A.K.D.A.E.---- Deny all Knowledge, Destroy All Evidence
As an IT consultant, it's way too dangerous for me to get close to co-workers. On rare occaisions, I can socialize with other consultants. But usually, it's only after working with them for a few months. Wage slaves and their managers are nearly always completely in the dark about what it's like being a consultant. I'm not sure if they just don't do the math, or if they think the consulting firm gets 90% of the rate. But when people discover what I can usually make, they seem to go a little nuts. Maybe it's the programmer who thinks they work harder than I do (which is probably right), or the manager who thinks they've done their time and deserve it more than me. But if they get too close, they see too much. My comfortable $700 car is my only cover. Co-workers that work for the client, without fail, always ask me where I live for some reason. I'm always vague because I live in a neighborhood with million dollar homes (mine is nowhere near that) on a well known golf course in the chicago area. So I can't invite them over. And the wife and kids mean I don't really want an active after work night life. So I keep to myself at work. I don't have pictures on my desk. And I only consider a closer friendship with other independants who already know the well-known secret. My right-wing political opinions and religeous leanings are also frequently unpopular.
To advertise my personal life is to invite disaster.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
i have found that most of the people i've worked with in various IT groups have been the type of people i prefer being with anyway... intelligent and creative types who know their stuff and know it well.
it's oddly refreshing to hang out with people who don't mind talking shop and actually understand the jargon, but maybe that's just me who enjoys that type of thing.
I'm an army brat, my dad was an officer. These stories you cite of "middle class" get togethers are all too common in the military world. Atleast once a month we did something like this.
However, I spent the last summer working for the now closed Electronic Arts.com Virginia office, and the testers/quality assurance guys always hung out with each other. Some gave rides to other people to/from work. They went out atleast once a night drinking. And we spent every night playing EverQuest with each other.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
Yup, but it is typical.
You could've hired me.
I'm paid to associate with the people I associate with at work. That means I'm a lot more tolerant about how stupid, weasely and annoying my coworkers are. They aren't my friends, they aren't my homies, and they don't need to know anything more about me than what's required for me to do my job with them. It never pays to get personal.
If a few of them turn out not to be stupid or obnoxious, I'll keep in touch with them AFTER I leave the company. But there are precious few of them. Many of those people become friends and homies.
When I'm not paid to be around people, I get a lot more selective with who I hang out with.
Testify, brother!
With that kind of attitude there must be a ton of backstabbing going on in your place of work. Of course you are all probably competing for raises and advancement, but if you can't trust each other then that is directly hindering your performance.
You have to be able to separate work from your social life, then you can compete for raises and still trust each other. Done correctly and maturely, you will acheive the best possible efficiency and you will also develop lasting friendships whether you like it or not.
Where I work, we're all pretty much friends, and it works out great. It's not always frictionless, but whenever there's a problem, that problem stays at work and is only dealt with at work. Our friendships may only help to quicken the resolution to the problem, not make it worse.
But whatever, enjoy living your life of backstabbing and distrust, it sounds like a load of fun...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
This is your survival on the line here, your job is your survival, you make money here, and you cannot allow people to stab you in the back and make you lose your job, get less money, etc etc
Its a competition, despite what anyone may say, when it comes down to it, its competition. Thats how capitalism works, corperations compete, employees compete, and the competition creates better products
This doesnt mean people competiting should be friends with each other, i suppose if everyone whos competiting is a rich CEO, then yeah, but if you are all struggling to make ends meet, how can you be so friendly to your competition, the guy who wants to get YOUR spot, or the guy whos competiting with you for a spot?
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I'm the lone sysAdmin for 200 lusers in 3 locations. The only thing I want to do with them involving drinks would involve 151 and fire.
I think so, Brain. But where will we get a duck and a rubber hose at this time of night? --Pinky
I'm on my way.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Is it just the professions who share some element of physical danger where this stereotypical bonding occurs, or can it occur with nerdy programmers? You've obviously never worked in my office before.
Here at my office we have regular (usually once or twice a week) 'attitude adjustment'. Generally, it consists of the people on our team going out to a bar, and bitching about customers. Whoever is in the worst mental shape gets all his/her drinks bought for them.
Once our boss heard us talking about going to a bar for 'AA' and thought we were a bunch of alcoholics who had fallen off the wagon.
BigCat79
"The dead have risen and are voting Republican!" --Bart Simpson
...and who you are. If you are a paranoid corporate climber, then you likely won't want or have friends at work. If you love what you do and respect the people that you work with, you'll have a better chance of wanting to hang out with them.
My experience, the last place I worked at was a small startup company. We did a lot of things together after work (beers, house parties, gigs), during lunch (fooz), during work (Quake, chess), etc. People like me who have left the company still hang out with people in the company and still consider them friends. Being able to enjoy what you do and have fun with the people you work with not only makes you happier but, in my experience, more productive. It can foster a team spirit that none of the bullshit company sponsored team events or HR consultant inspired circle jerks can ever do. I think that this only works in small companies or in your local team. I think it also depends on you, the type of person you are, how you secure that you feel, and how much you respect your co-workers.
In contrast, I'm working for a big company now that tries to promote team spirit by having team outings, recreation areas, fitness areas, etc. None of which does anything for me. But I'm sure that it works for others.
So I think it can happen. You just have to find the right fit for you.
Life after work -- I doubt there is such thing.
Do your homework you idiot.
Bill gates is the richest man in the world not because of smart investments, not because he worked harder than everyone else, not because hes the smartest.
Hes the richest man in the world because he backstabbed every idiot who thinks just like you do "Bill gates is my friend, he wouldnt dare take my idea"
"Bill gates? I trust him, he wouldnt use that affair i had with my wife against me"
"What? Bill gates? Hes an honest man, he would never do something like that"
Imagine the shock on everyones faces when bill gates backstabbed all of them, every CEO whos ever tried to make friends with bill gates has ended up being backstabbed,
Why? Because bill gates KNOWS this is a competition.
Thats why Microsoft is so successful, Microsoft is a competitive company, an aggressive company.
If you were rich, chances are you stepped over alot of people and backstabbed quite a few to get where you are.
Some people get lucky and end up rich, but the people who are rich and who have friends dont usually stay rich.
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When I started in IT 5 years ago, about half of my group frequently socialized. I was the youngest of the group at 21, and I think the oldest in the "clique" was about 28. We'd go to lunch every day, have parties on the weekends, go barhopping a couple times a week, etc.
Then most of the people in the "clique" left. After that we really didn't do much, I went out for takeout chinese every day and made the rare appearance at department outings and other work functions.
Eventually I moved into our information security group. We're very close and tend to go out at least once a week if not more, have long happy hours for no apparent reason, go to each others weddings and suchlike. There are usually even invaders from other engineering and security functions within the company.
A lot of it also comes from the large number of 5-15 year workers here and the fact that everyone knows everyone because most of us have been here so long.
And yes, I have passed up large raises to stay where I'm at and work with the people I work with. Not massive raises, but big enough that it could have been a lot more fun money.
(Typically we consume massive amounts of alcohol too, so I guess we're like the ol' sysadmins in one respect...)
I've read some of the comments saying things like: "why would I have friends at work?" or "why take my personal life into my job?"
Humans are social beings and as such it is completely impossible NOT to bring your personal life to work. Everything you do has an effect on everyone around you, wether you like it or not.
I've had enough luck to make GREAT friends with the people I work with and worked with...
I play poker with a former co-worker and a present co-worker.
One of the people I work with is someone I can trust to ask him advice in my personal life (as well as my professional)... and I think it's great to have someone to trust.
As to socializing in group, in my current job, we being one of those start-up hip crowds, we used to have parties where everyone stayed and had drinks, danced and had their idea of fun.
I think it is hard enough to find good enough people to have as friends to discard workmates right away.
Other observations: New co-workers who want to go out to dinner all the time after work can get irritating really fast. Hanging out with a bunch of co-workers and a few non-co-workers can get ugly quickly; the conversation tends to always turn to work or geekish topics, no matter how hard we try otherwise. In my experience, much of the socializing with co-workers is really thinly-disguised work. Maintaining a friendship with an ex-co-worker who leaves bitter about his job can be difficult. Dating a co-worker has its advantages and disadvantages; it's likely best to avoid having to directly work together often.
I think that it mainly depends on the age groupings of the workplace.
I now work for a company with over 3000 employees. Due to the type of business that it is, the age ranges shotot all over the map. Most of my co-workers in my department have 10-20 years on me. We do occasionally go out to a movie once every few months or so or to a restaurant. But these always occur in place of the last hour of the day or something to that effect.
At my prior job, there were about 15-20 people in my area whose age was within 5 years of mine (older and younger). We ALWAYS partied. Sometimes the management would even foot the bill for beer and we'd end up getting wasted at the office on Friday nights.
So, I think that it basically comes down to the age of the employees and if they're close to one another's or not.
There is exactly one person out of these jobs and people that I consider a friend.
Software Wars
You're paid to be around your coworkers. They're paid to be around you. If the money stops, most of your coworkers would split and you'd never hear from them again.
You shouldn't go out of your way to make their lives miserable, but you shouldn't go out of your way to be friends with them either.
Your free time is precious. Be selective with who you spend it with.
I very much like to leave work at work. And that means leaving the poeple you work with at work too.
Why would I want to socialize when I have levels to get for my characters on Everquest?
Well, I'm sitting here wondering how long it takes to cook a hotdog over a computer monitor.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Burritos are the answer. I worked at a dotcom startup and between the sustainence wages, insane hours and daily grillings by management, the only thing that made it worthwile was our daily trips to Chipotle Mexican Grill for lunch.
Imagine, the whole development team sitting around a brushed aluminum table inhaling chunks of delectable foil-wrapped burrito. Dollops of sour cream sail gracefully over the tabletop as massive cylindrical food units are consumed voraciously.
Yes, we only really connected over lunch. And then just tenuously, at best. Sad, true, but very tasty.
Justin
"Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
Its hard to get friendly with co-workers and include your spose when from her perspective they are the ones whome are keeping you from your family, somehow getting you to work 100hrs a week covering for the ones that won't or just suck so bad that either you do the work or your project gets tanked.
She knows all about the slackers "vesting in piece", she knows this by talking with thier SUV driving spowses at the elementry school PTA. Many of them are wives of marketing dip shits getting payed 6 figures for making up crap.
Nope, having that classical back yard cook out with coworker buds, as family and friends just isn't in the cards, its a myth.
Get over it, and make friends elsewere. Vollenteer somewhere, do some good for others, you'll make friends. Learn to work 50ish hours a week for a change.
If you don't know anything about your coworkers, or if you don't have any interaction with them outside of work, you have a PROBLEM! First of all, going out for a beer or going to a party at a coworker's house has advantages in your work relationship too! Geez. Every once in a while I think that I must not really bee a geek because I'm not as completely socially incapable. It is IMPORTANT to interact with other human beings, OUTSIDE of q3 games. The continuation of our species is somewhat dependent upon it!
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when I was working 17 hours a day who the Hell wanted to see these frigging people?
Now I have some I go to baseball games with had some over for the annual Halloween Party... but a true friend? Someone that I wouldn't sell out for 20K more a year, and who wouldn't do the same to me... probably not.
This
I used to in the late 80s. Alas, it led to romance, which has undesirable side-effects when you have to work with someone, especially when she's married! When I finally got out of that, I said Never Again. And in the 90s it was easier to keep some distance, since I didn't personally like my co-workers as much, and also wasn't as young/impressionable/tolerant. If I didn't have to go to work, I think I would make a good hermit. Someday... [Sloppy slips into a wistful daydream]
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
At least at Red Hat, people do meet in the weekends - on the net, to keep hacking on Linux. ;)
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I made friends with some of the users I took care of, and it was a very smart move. We all looked out for each other, passed on gossip to those in the group who needed to know, etc. I hooked up my friends with unapproved software like AOL, AIM, Napster, etc. I helped them use it so they couldn't get caught. If I got word that corporate IT was going on a witch hunt for AIM and/or Napster users, I'd give my friends a heads-up so they could clean the bad stuff off their PCs and not get in trouble. I always responded to their help desk calls much more quickly than those from people I wasn't friends with. In return, I seldom paid for my own drinks when we'd all go out to happy hour. The tabs for my birthday celebrations went on corporate cards and into expense reports. And my farewell luncheon when I finally left the company had the highest attendance of any I had seen in all my time there-- even the busiest, most important people I took care of, the people who didn't go to anyone else's luncheon, MADE time to show up.
Working in a place, where You being naive, trust everyone, allows YOU to be the one to get backstabbed.
Talk bad about the boss? You'll be the one in the office answering to the boss when the person you talked to reports you.
Complain about the job? You'll be the one not getting the raise because YOU complained about the job.
40k is not comfortable living in the USA, 40k is studio apartment living in the USA.
Where you live, perhaps people arent as competitive, I dont know,
To some point it does have to do with the work enviornment, some jobs are naturally not competitive, jobs like non profits, or jobs where no one is able to move up the ladder and you get paid by preformance.
The problem is most jobs arent like that, most jobs have managers, bosses, and levels, when you have levels, you are put in a situation where you must compete to move up to the next level.
This competition destroys all trust because now everyone is NOT equal, and if everyone is not equal, then you cannot trust anyone because everyone wants the raise, wants to move to the next level.
Your way of thinking is like in the playoffs a competiting teams star player deciding he wants to switch teams because his friends are on that team, and deciding he wants to play for all the teams his friends are on.
Its stupid because he'd be the one to make less money when HIS team losses and his friends all win.
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I'm just starting out really. Had half a year of work after getting my Master's, then I took a year off to travel to Australia and New Zealand. Getting back to Europe, I'm now in my first 6 months, so no, I'm not in the top bracket.
But I also do not feel the need to claw my way to the top. And actually, the path I've plotted for myself keeps myself from the fastest way to the big money. Precisely because there are things more important than the money, for example, interesting and innovative work where my coworkers are a source of inspiration rather than a source of backstabbing.
But that's just my current goal in life. I have enough money to pay the bills, very decent to good future prospects, and am happy at my work. But if others'd rather go for the money, well, e my guest!
Does playing the latest MMORPG with people from work count as socializing?
Yep,
I work for a big company but work in a group that does a lot of things together. We play softball, drink, play poker, drink, go to strip clubs, drink, hang out, drink...
Having said that, I don't know of any other groups at this very large company that actually do this so we may be fairly unique.
Maybe my work situation is different because of the small number of people in our department, but I hang out with people from work all the time. One of my best friends works here. She introduced me to almost all my friends in town. I go lift weights with my boss and (sometimes) his girlfriend.
Some of the other guys have families and don't hang out after work, but we do have fun hanging out here. We have a pool table and get very competitive and have fun with each other.
I am also working on organizing company wide team sports, and have gotten quite a bit of response.
I am a software developer at a 30 year old banking regulations publishing company, so its definitely not a dot-com.
I hang out with a lot of friends from work, except for the fact most of us are not married so the wives and kids don't factor, but the drinking, games, talking shop, helping with DIY and talking more shop all goes on.
I said not to make friends.
I'm nice to people, i talk to people. But i know what not to talk about, when to change the subject, or when not to answer.
I know not to take it too far, I know not to trust them.
I'm not bitter at all, I'm not going to be mean to anyone, I'm just not going to be a stupid fool who tries to trust competitors.
I can talk and socialize at work, but i know not to give anyone any ammo which can be used against me.
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I hang out with my coworkers every now and again. We share something in common - a general distaste for the users. I've had BBQs at my bosses, go to concerts with them, drink for no apparent reason - heck, I even bought a parts car from one of them.
I've found that we have a lot in common, actually, and not just computers and stupid users. We come from similar backgrounds, believe it or not, and thus have similar tastes. Maybe my company just got lucky to get a core group that works well together. Who knows...what I do know, though, is that it makes work much more enjoyable.
If you are known as the guy who dresses up in the suit and tie, who only talks about work, and who isnt known to get personal with people. And some guy known to start rumors about people, starts a rumor about you.
Who are people going to believe? The guy known for starting rumors, or the quiet unknown guy who just does his job every day.
If a rumor is from a source which is not reliable, then people dont really pay much attention to them.
However if you are friends with the person starting the rumor, now the rumor is from a reliable source, people are likely to believe it.
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I didn't see this mentioned, but if it has...shoot me.
I think the common denominator of all the jobs mentioned in the original question is that they involve a real risk of death as part of the occupation. It stands to reason, to me at least, that this type of environment would foster group bonding and outside-work socializing...as opposed to IT, where the closest you'll ever get to death is sleep deprivation or stress
r0wan
If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
Magius_AR
The graphic designers and the sales droids tend to be easier to socialize with, for some reason. Well, a couple of reasons: the designers are demented partiers and fun to be around, and the sales droids tend to be attractive women. Also, they don't talk work or computing when the Guinness is being poured. I almost feel obligated to speak geek with my direct cow-orkers.
Jack
At one engineering company that I worked at, there was a tradition that after the first week at the company, a new engineer would buy "New Guy Beer" on Friday, and everyone would hang out at the office after hours and get to know the new engineer.
Any other field outside of IT, where people rarely work more than 40-50hrs a week...
If IT people are so focused on their own situations to really think they are the hardest workers in the business world, then they definitely DO need to get out more.
Believe it or not, some of the LUSERS actually work as many hours, in as demanding a role, that is as crucial, as the gods of IT.
Try to see the rest of your company for a change - you might be surprised that eveyone isn't playing Solitaire, screwing up OS configs and having beers.
You always want to live day to day wondering how you'll pay bills? what about when you have a wife and kids
you always want to worry about how your kid will afford school and always worrying about your wife?
Think about it for a moment.
Either you be stressed out with bills, or you go for the money.
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You want cameraderie? Forget firemen -- what about accountants? Take your typical CPA firm. Not only do they refer to their collegues as their "brothers" (or "sisters"), but I've heard a typical accountant will even let his brother accountant borrow his pencil sharpener.
We play Everquest, does that count?
I did work for a big corperation
and I will admit, when i worked for non profits people werent competitive.
However everyone at a non profit is making the same amount of money (next to nothing) so theres no reason to compete!
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I come home from work every day to pull bongs with my co-workers, who are also my roomates. NITG repruhsent.
In my IT shop, none of us are 80lbs overweight.
We do some socializing - a few of us went out to the woods to cut firewood a couple of weeks ago. Of course, I was a little nervous about one of them attacking me and leaving me for dead in the forest, but that's beside the point.
We also went, as a department, to see Harry Potter last weekend, and every month we have a "geek lunch" where our manager buys lunch and we all eat together in awkward silence interrupted occasionally by bursts of stimulating conversation.
Salsa Shark. We're gonna need a bigger boat.
when your jobs on the line, your survival is on the line
You will do anything to survive.
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I work in a software house in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Now without succumbing to national stereotypes, I work with a bunch of complete lunatics who seem to be powered by alcohol. Every Saturday morning I wake up, simply glad to still be alive after an intensly serious after work piss-up on Friday !!
If the trees are in the west
I dont have either, but i plan to someday.
A man who barely makes enough money to survive on his own, is NOT going to make enough money to take care of a wife and kids.
When you have to put your kids through school and college, and buy a house, Then money will start to matter.
What do you want? A happy wife and kids (the people who matter most in your life) Or are you selfish and just want to have fun at work while your kids suffer and wife struggles?
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Theres simply no way to easily see the diffrence between someone whos a backstabber, and someone whos a true friend.
In fact, Theres absolutely no way to tell what someone is after short of reading their mind.
And you've never been backstabbed? You've been very lucky havent you.
In the real world people get backstabbed on a weekly basis.
And also, you must have never worked in a big company in all your life, because in a big company, theres usually only one or two spots with 20 people or so competiting to get it.
And PLEASE dont tell me you've never been in highschool and had people pretend to be your friends for whatever reason and backstab you.
Tell me your secret to "judging" people before you actually know them.
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Having worked previously in a police department, and after reading the comments on this list, I can say it probably IS the life-threatening danger, or the charactistically different nature of physical labor-intensive jobs. In terms of the life-threatening occupations, it's clear that the bonds of dependence are much, much tighter by necessity. Sure, there are coworkers you hate in every job, cops are no different. But the fact that in the end maybe your life will depend on this guy/gal means that otherwise common decency is boosted with a little self-interest. In that same vein, I've never seen more character assassination, sniping, and backstabbing as in my more recent IT job. Maybe if geeks carried guns they'd be nicer to each other? In terms of the physical jobs, the simple fact there is that you don't necessarily use your brain for much while doing the work. Your mind, and thoughts, are your own. After a hard day of back breaking labor laying sod, I'm happy to suck down a beer or eight with buddies sitting watching football. After a hard day of debugging thousands of lines of badly-commented code, I just want to stick my head in a bucket of ice and be left alone. Probably the nature of the beast.
-Styopa
I used to work for a company downtown, where everyone was fairly young, we used to go out for drinks all the time.
However now I work with a more Mature/Older crowd they have no interests in these kinds of activities
So who's compensating for the 190+ in your avarage of 140?
Around here the G.I.S. community is totally dominated by this huge network friendships and hookups... all sorts of parties, dinners, lunches... there's a definate literati situation, and once you've been invited to lunch you are in. It's crazy, but nice.
yes.
It's bad enough that I have to put up with these [people] on a daily basis, the last thing I want to do is hang out with them outside of work. I can't stand the backstabbing, nepotism, and people playing freecell all day while I'm busting my hump to get [stuff] done. The LAST thing I want to do is hang out with them on a day off. This is why I don't do picnics or even christmas parties or even management meetings anymore. Granted, I have valid and legitimate excuses why I can never go to such functions, but I don't want to hang out with them either. I really can't stand them.
How can you compete yet trust.
Ok so if you were Steve jobs, how can you "trust" bill gates.
Do you know how stupid you sound? You are saying Steve jobs was the wiser man and not bill gates!
Bill gates is the richest man in the world, NOT steve jobs. If your theory or way of thinking were correct, Then Steve jobs would be the richest man in the world not bill gates.
Also, why do you put the blame on me for being not being trust worthy?
Look around, the richest people in the world happen to be the most manipulative, and the people who run this country happen to be good liars.
Whats that tell you???
IN order to get to the top, either you compete, or you stay at the bottom.
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My opinion is that people who share similar interests and similar job duties will usually get along at work. Personalities of various coworkers will determine whether or not this translates into friendships after work. Some people just don't want to socialize, especially with people from work! They think of work as something that you do during the day, and leave it at that.
At my previous job I had coworkers who were all near my age, had similar interests, and were easy to get along with. We were all in our 20's and liked computers, games, etc. so had something to talk about. We went out after work to drink and play pool on occasion, though certainly not every day or even every week. A more common occurence is that we would set aside a short period of time in the late afternoon to play Quake or Nerf Arena (sic) with each other over the LAN. We were all either designers or developers, or both and most were pretty sociable.
At my job now, my coworkers are from 30-60 and all have families, kids, even grandkids. They talk about things such as home decorating, problems with the kids, etc. We don't get together after work, and I even feel somewhat uncomfortable when we are forced to do lunches together. We do know details about each other's lives, like spouse names, kid names, etc. but that's about it. Of course, now I am the only one whose job is coding or even computer related. For some reason, they decided that my job should be part of communications and marketing rather than IT. Even if our jobs were all computer related, I just don't think that the personalities would click together like they did at my last job.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
I have worked at one of Belgiums biggest ISPs. They frequently organise all sorts of events.
...
Some things I remember out of my head:
- every monday Company Breakfast
- every friday "Happy Hour" after work
Every floor has got his own kitchen, with names like "Bunny Heaven" or "The 7th Heaven" (the 7nd floor).
There are two company mailinglists, one for announcements like birthdays, out-of-offices and the likes, and one for jokes. Also, each department has got his mailinglist for department-wide communication. This helps to get to know other people from other floors, which is not so obvious when you're helldesking all day long.
Then there are company parties... And when I say party I don't mean "everybody takes off his tie and chats in his suit", but "the party was so good we weren't allowed to hire that building ever again."
There is karting, paintball, city-by-night,
When I left there was an action "The sales people challenge the Support people to help sell DSL accounts. If the helldesk sells X accounts by X, there will be a party. If they sell XX accounts, there will be a huge party, if they sell XXX accounts, there will be a giant party..." You get the picture...
Anyway, it was a nice place to work, and you definitely got to know other people. But indeed you didn't know much actual personal details of one another, but I think that's mostly because of the type of job. (or the lack of private life of the other employees)
Well at least you understand my point.
The problem is, if your boss tells you something and you tell anyone at work, then they MIGHT tell your boss.
You take a risk and you could suffer for it.
So the key is, dont take any risks at work, theres no reason to do so.
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"It really depends on the people you work with. If you have common interests, then it's easy to get together after work."
Actually, it's amazing the similarities and common interests you will discover that you share with others if you will just take the time to get together with them.
And you will also find that even (and especially) in the ways that they differ from you, they will teach you a lot.
Its not all soulless. Sometimes people just want a job where they don't have to deal with the "good ol boys" knocking back a few and then being as obnoxious as they can be and the next day expecting you to brush it off when they say "Hey it was all in good fun, don't be such a tightass!"
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
i can already know all their deepest secrets. why waste time getting superficial information in person? ;-)
L'etat n'a pas besoin des savants.
- Robespierre, refusing clemency for Lavoisier
We also have "geeklunches" with our IT Director on occasion. Usually its a working lunch..telling us what we are doing wrong. Sit there and choke on your meal while your getting a lecture on customer service :)
Some people say stupid things but to all people saying they will resign because they dont like the people they work with
how the hell did you get through school?!
School was way worse, highschool anyway.
Everyone backstabbed everyone DAILY.
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The responses to this topic has really surprised me, particularly the *number* of self proclaimed back-stabbing Psychos.
Their claim's are completely counter to my experience in the UK IT. At every position I've had in 12 years there has been a social crowd. A group that go boozing/clubbing/parting every week-end, I've also played sport & activities (Cricket/Soccer/Motor-Racing/Skiing/Driving/Kartin g/Sailing) and holiday with them, on one occasion even double dipping the same trollop. So yes my colleagues are my friends, some better friends than other and not my only friends, but certainly my friends.
Indeed to take a recent example, the night England beat Germany at soccer I was at a beer festival, with 5 Work Mates including my ex-boss, two direct colleagues and a subordinate. I got drunk, danced, before getting trashed and crashing (both metaphorically & actually) on one colleagues floor. Now there are people who are not invited or included in these activities, or even hinted at there true extent, but I guess that's the down side of being back-stabbing psycho.
MIS, IS, IT = clueless windows jockeys.
At work, there are people I like and people I don't.
With people I do not like, it is strictly business.
With people I like, you name it we do it:
- BBQs
- Parties
- Hanging out after work
- Vacation
Oh yes, sometimes the talk is around business, or more epsessialy around the people we don't like. But only sometimes.
One third of your (daily) life is sleeping. One thrid (at least) is working. The other thrid oughts to be recreatinal. Otherwise, sometime you're gonna break.
For me, IT is the department that doesn't want me to install Linux and instead tries to force expensive Win2K solutions where Apache, CVS, PHP, the gcc suite and all their friends do a better job. They're the ones who don't talk to me and go to my boss because the background of a webpage isn't the mandatory white. They're the ones who say i've got a server because my computer hosts a cvs tree, because they don't offer any versioning system, and they're the only ones who can have a so-called server so i can't do this. They're the ones who withhold my ordered computers for months because they must install win2k on it, only for me to then fdisk the whole thing to ext3-land, but they still won't give me the computers sooner if i tell them; but IT says installing Red Hat is "ok". As long as it doesn't do any server things, like hosting a cvs tree for the coop students...
Fortunately, my boss knows i'm doing all this because the existing solutions aren't applicable and are too expensive, so i didn't get fired yet.
But IT will never invite me to their BBQ.
clique
I never assumed anything, in fact you all have a right to your opinion, but everyone knows certain things
i've sure i'm not the only one whos said dont trust people at work.
I'm sure some of your family members have said it, your friends.
You can trust everyone in the world if you want, I dont mind, I just know i wont be doing that.
I dont care if people trust me or not really, Thats not for me to worry about, I have to worry about who can be trusted with what.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
What the hell is a "spose"? Could you have meant SPOUSE?
payed? Vollenteer? SPOWSES? Learn to use a spell checker or the English language.
The people i party with today maybe the ones i fire tomorrow.
I am a firm beleiver in bowling while you should be working. At some point in the day, usually on a Wed, somebody exclaims, "Fuck it, Dude! Let's bowl." That's it. All the sysadmins leave signs on their doors saying they've gone fishing and everybody goes bowling for the afternoon. The boss is mystified, and you've been payed to bowl. What could be better?
who are anti social.
Society has to give them some name, Nerd, Geek, what now? Autistic, what next? give them pills to change them?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I dated a coworker, but I'd hardly consider (after the horrible breakup and subsequent harrassment via nasty e-mail messages sent to me on company equipment) it a friendship any more.
Of course, I know my male charms still disgust her. With a court order.UNIX: Find it, fsck it, forget it.
Fire fighting is a profession where you have to put much trust into your co-workers. It would not be possible unless you know them to some extent. Here fire fighters have a 2 hours physics pass every day. It's hard to not learn things about each other in a locker room. I think "bond-making" is encouraged more in their line of work than in others.
And of course they work in teams, and then I mean that they do everything in teams, not just decide what to do.
But you see, that's not the choice I'm making. I have enough money to sustain the lifestyle I want. I also have a bit left over by the end of the month. And good enough future prospects which allows me not to worry too much about the future.
It's not go for the most money or worry about the bills, it's about choosing which bills you want, and going for enough money to meet those bills and seek the healthiest environment which meets that criterium.
Money is just one criterium, an important one, but not the only one, and for me, certainly not the most important one.
Maybe it's because IT workers already spend lots of time in "virtual" social forums, where they sit and chat about work with other similarly inclined types, like, umm, "Slashdot". Who needs a real person when you have thousands of like-minded geeks ready to reply to your every inane comment? *grin*
dr. chop chop
On another point, who ever said backstabbing wasn't hard work?
In most cases, people who are rich didn't get that way by just being lucky.
You are a sad, bitter person. Try to be a bit more optimistic, and have a happy Thanksgiving. I'm off to enjoy my vacation.
I met 3 of some of the best friends I've ever had at Stream, doing telephone tech support. We all went through training together, we'd all go out for lunch together, etc. All but one of us has left the company, yet we three that escaped manage to go out and eat once every week or two, and the fourth I meet online whilst playing Everquest.
Oddly enough, we talk tech when hanging out.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
First off, a disclaimer: I've never worked for an IT shop per se. I've been a consultant (independent or otherwise) since I had my first real job about seven years ago.
In the consulting world, I've always found that most friendships are as enduring as the lifetime of a project or the assignment to a client site. For some reason we consultants tend to be (I think) a bit more closed socially. Why? Maybe because we interact with so many people for what are mostly short amounts of time.
Not to say none of those project-oriented relationships (for lack of a better description) never develop into more lasting deals, but it's not very common.
There's also the culture clash thing that is so much more common today than even a few years ago -- ever try to invite an Indian to a barbecue? Buy some chicken (OK, that's a stereotype but you'd be surprised how often it holds up). Ditto for people from other countries. Scotts just want to drink, Brits just sit there and so on. It's not good or bad, just different to what one is accustomed to.
As for human interaction within a corporate setting, with the possible exception of commercial software shops it's mostly a matter of company-sponsored "relationship building" that applies as much to IT as it does to HR or PR. In my experience there's really not that much of a difference.
I think it's more a matter of quality social interaction being more important for geeks, as opposed to social interaction in general being less important.
An anonymous poet wrote:
True friends are like diamonds,
They're precious, but rare.
False friends are like autumn leaves,
They're found everywhere.
I think it takes a certain degree of intelligence to understand the difference between a true friend and a false friend (an acquaintance). People in technical careers are generally (not always) more intelligent than the average Joe.
I don't think we're anti-social, just selective; and not even in a snobbish, elitist way. My (few) friends aren't intellectual giants, philosophers, and Nobel laureates. They're a mix of people whose company I enjoy and on whom I can rely.
How many people do you know who label passing acquaintances as friends? Odds are in favor of many, but how many of them have more than half a brain in their heads? How many are geeks? I'll wager it's a significantly smaller amount.
Sadly, experience has shown that it does take a genius to figure out who your friends are. After you figure out how to tell the difference, you're simply less inclined to freely associate with mere acquiantances when you could be spending your time more constructively with your true friends.
I used to have an ex who loved to run around repeating this phrase about work from his father:
;) The point is, it's *boring* to watch to people type at a computer for 13 hour stretches, even if they're giggling.
;) Until problem 1 is solved, and geeks can be shown doing what makes geeks interesting, they're not going to be shown on TV/in movies except as plot expediters ("Oh No, we need information that is unattainable about the villain! Call in the "hacker" who can "break into" the local library and pull up their credit card numbers!"
"It's work, that's why they call it work. If it was fun, they'd call it fun".
I've *never* understood that philosophy. Why would you knowingly consign yourself to unhappiness the majority of your waking hours for most of your adult life? Seriously, if you're not getting some sense of joy from what you're doing, you're wasting your life.
Part of that enjoyment comes from liking the people I work with. In general, the people who are drawn to IT are like me: Geeky, smart, and into the same general set of "strange" hobbies. It's natural that they've also become my friends. Even as I've moved from job to job and city to city, I've kept in touch with people from my old work places. I haven't like everyone I've worked with (Lord knows), but the ones I've made friends with, I've stayed in touch with.
As to why geek friendships aren't shown on TV, two reasons:
1) The things we do for "fun" aren't generally very visual. For example, a co-worker and I spent a weekend dinking around on a project for a programming contest. As we were debugging, we stuck in several debugging messages that I thought were hilarious. We fucking laughed our asses off, but that might have been sleep deprivation
Think about how Hollywood has bent over backwards to make programming visually "thrilling" (the girl in the first Jurassic Park movie navigating through a 3-d "unix" OS/Application/whatever). No one's found a good way to make the "fun" and "smarts" of problem solving in programming translate to the screen. Or in other words, geek fun don't play well in cinescope.
2) Everyone "knows" geeks aren't attractive. Baywatch potential is low. With very few exceptions, would you want to see your IT co-workers in bikinis?
I think eventually we'll get past the stereotypes, as writers get more savvy about explaining to a lay audience the types of problems being solved my techies. It's already happening in books (Cryptonomicon is a good example), so I assume it'll eventually make it to the big screen.
"...you can steal my woman, but you ain't done nuthin' smart."
And because nobody knows him no one can spread rumors about him.
I dont care about spreading rumors, I'd prefer to be an unknown guy who just does his job.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I already have friends; I don't need to become artificially chummy with people just because we share the same profession...
Someone you still socialize with long after neither of you work for the same place.
At work you have professional associates. All previous mentioned issues about job politics are very true. I've found nothing more uncomfortable than a company "social event" where all the politics of the workplace are in full force.
It's who you still hang out with when you have long since parted ways with the company that makes a friend.
If you make a friend at work, you will not really know it until neither of you work together.
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
I'm half looking for a new job at the moment,
Only *half* looking ?
I would be long gone, never forget there is cronic shortage of IT staff, in every developed country around the world. So employers need you more than you need them, so do yourself (and every geek) a favour, and exercise some natural selection and make help make shitty
employers extinct.
How is this supposed to happen if techies don't have jobs?
I work for a mid-sized hosting/colocation facility in Bothell, WA, and I work with the Administration and Support team. We actually get together pretty often, since we seem to get along pretty well. Even if it's as simple as a couple ours of Unreal Tournament/Marathon Rampancy, going out to get a few beers, or having a barbeque, we tend to invite each other along. I work with a *great* group of people.
- oZ
// i am here.
Sure, I hang out with the people I work with. It sure isn't like what is protrayed on Televison. (Who comes up with that crap.) In our off time we go snomobiling, play paintball, drive R/C cars.
I just don't see myself as the type who throw BBQ parties.
The obvious answer to this question is yes, IT people get together on weekends and "bond" with one another just in a different fashion.
Policemen, Firemen, Astronauts and Army guys get together at a BBQ and drink beer. IT people can be found at "LAN" parties consuming pizza and mountain dew which can't really take place in the back yard.
We don't go bowling, play poker or help our colleagues pave their driveway. We surf the net looking for our next toy, window shop at CompUSA, and help our more novice colleagues re-build their PCs when they crash, not to mention of Fireman or Policeman neighboor too.
We do not have drinks after work because after work because work never ends. We go have drinks after the server crashes and we spend 48 hours as a team baby sitting a bunch of electronic children.
So no it is not only professionals who share physical danger that share **stereotypical** bonding you just have to expand you definition of **stereotypical**.
I use to work for an outsource company, and the desk I worked on, most of us still hang out. We had enchilada wednesday that eventualy died, but we all still go to the 2600 suroot meetings. We usualy go to a movie afterwords, or to a members house and get drunk. Yesterday through tomorrow were having a thanksgiving party at said house. Weve become a closely knit group of friends, we have birthday partys etc. Like minds attract, not opposites.
Here are two things to try for meeting people outside of work:
* Sports teams. You mentioned that you play basketball. Check to see if your community or nearby towns sponsor winter basketball leagues. You can usually get on a "sub list" if you don't have your own team, or sometimes the league will know of a team that needs an extra body...
* Volunteering. It sounds hokey, but it does work. You meet people with a shared interest but that are generally from a wider cross-section of society than you have at work. And often these people are pretty interesting.
In my experience, a life of late night coding, hard deadlines, and passionate programming add up to no wife or kids.
Shame though.
I think this might have a lot to do with the age of people who work in IT. While it's certainly not closed to older people, as far as I've seen there are definitely a *lot* more younger people in IT, proportionally, than in most other areas.
Younger people are more likely to have existing social cliques from college/university/highschool. And I think these sorts of relationships will tend to endure for longer these days than they would have 20 years ago - communications technology is far more widespread and accessible, and people working in IT in particular will tend to make use of it. Cheap phonecalls and email (not to mention cheaper airflight!) mean that moving away from someone is far less likely to lead to drifting apart.
I feel that a lot of "workplace socialisation" is due to people spending significant proportions of their lives in a workplace environment, socially gravitating towards the people in it. But given that the "younger IT-worker demographic" is more likely to maintain preexisting relationships, and less likely to spend years and years working with the same people, I don't think it's all that surprising that it doesn't happen a lot in IT.
Where I work it is so laid back that we hang out at work. Out of a 6 hour work day (4 for some of us) we are working a total of 1.5 hours, the rest of the time we are playing quake or planning a keggar in the upstairs office.
4 of us (two from management, and two in the trenches) own BMW motorcycles and make it a point to take regular rides together. I feel a lot less concerned about the layoffs around here than the non-motorcycling techs.
I'm surprised that there's an overwhelming response of "no". My department (at my last company) was known and respected for the fact that it was so closeknit and tight. There was so much drama and backstabbing going on in every single other department and both IT departments were so close.
;)
I strongly believe that there is a powerful drive for camaraderie when you have a common enemy. My college was like that. We were all very close - we were all fighting the school that was trying to beat us down. In my department, we were fighting the users and the upper management. We were close. We stayed late on weekends together. We went out drinking with each other. We took care of each other and were protective of each other. I would stand up for my guys if they got shit from anyone, and my guys would defend me and were loyal to me - especially when I was laid off. (One guy commented to me that he was shocked at how concerned everyone was if someone was out sick or was overly late for something/didn't show up.) We are still very close friends. Every single one of them (excluding of course those two or three out eight of that we didn't socialize with or didn't get along with because they were power/knowledge-mongers). Granted the department was small, but as far as I am concerned, it still proves the point that IT can be close-knit too.
I think that when you're not under fire all the time, you start competing with each other, trying to oust the others. When you're all afraid for your lives/wellbeings/somethings, you stand together to be strong. I miss the guys that I worked with. They're all terrific and they're all great friends. But then again, we/I hired people who are Good People, so my sample base may be tainted.
People in the IT industry have a great deal of searching resources at their disposal which they use on a regular basis. This reduces the amount of personal privacy you have. Your only recourse to preserve your last remnants of privacy, or at least, the illusion of privacy, is to distance yourself from personal relationships.
I don't socialize with C coders who use goto. Didn't Dijkstra teach you not to say naughty things like that?
In true OOP form, it should be...
this->Go(location);
Damn you coders and your stinky habits... beer and goto's... will this never end?
Do we need a socializing HOWTO?
There already is one.
:)
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
While I worked for a repair shop in Cleveland, Tennessee, I had several get-togethers with my co-workers. We would frequently enjoy catching movies with our families, having dinner parties, helping each other out with babysitting or moving, etc.
We were a small shop, though. At any given time there were only four employees besides the boss and his wife. Actually, there *was* a time when we had six employees, but one of them got fired and the other one left for school in Alabama.
Of course, the entire previous paragraph is irrelevant to your query, so I'll just forget that I ever typed that.
The IT department that I work in seems to be very close. I'm one of 4 programmers, 1 phone tech, 3 grunts, and 2 network admins. We regulary get together after work for things like LAN parties, D&D, hiking, and other semi-social type things.
For many years, I hardly had any friends who weren't from work. Yes, we would go out drinking a few times a week, play video games, Make Science, all the normal things people do.
Of course, I was in the video game industry, and maybe we're a more social breed of tech types. But the places I've working within the game industry have always been filled with the best people to work with, and it's very natural for us to spend time together.
It wasn't until I was a victim of layoff that I started developing friends outside of work.
=Brian
--
"Proogread everything."
http://www.subluminal.com/ - Living life at just under the speed of light.
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
Have you considered doing something you enjoy for a living? I'm sensing some bitterness here.
But what do I know, I work for a non-profit. We don't waste time backstabbing for raises here, there are more important things on the agenda. If you want to measure success by the size of a paycheck, then I guess I'm a failure. Funny, I seem to be enjoying the ride.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
I would have to agree with this poster.
I have been working in IT for 20 years and have rarely had to work 60 hours.
If someone have IT skills and their employer mandates 60 hours, look for another job.
I suspect some people stay for the inflated sense of self importance.
"This place would fall apart without me."
You have to realize you are making choice.
To those that are working 60+ hours: find some other way to feel good about yourself and get a life.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
But then again I'm English
One IT group where I work used to got out every friday to a local pub. My group doesn't but I do hang out with some folks I've worked with.
For that matter, I know some firefighters and cops who don't do the group picnic thing. There probably is a tighter bond between folks who have actually risked their lives together though. I've seen it with military folks too.
Also, on TV they would have much of a show it everyone was anti-social. They might have too much of a show if they had to introduce the coworkers, drinking buddies, old friends, spouce's friends, kids' friends, etc. etc. etc. for every major character. It's easier if they are all buddies and we won't need so many extras.
I have at least 2 good friends I work with at my job, one of them ended up being my roommate. My department is pretty close knit, and we have all hung out after work for beers, or to watch a fight on pay per view, and yes, at a bar-b-que with significant others involved. We each work on seperate projects, but they do intersect from time to time, and I dont find it to be tedious to hang out with them. I met my girlfriend at work, she sys-admins, I engineer, and that works out fine. I think as the current IT industry gets older, and friendships made at work mature, we will see more of the get togethers described in the question above.
This is not my sig
...
Okay, nevermind.
Blessed are the geek, for they shall admin as root.
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
I wouldn't even trust Bill Gates as far as I could throw him! But I do trust everyone I work with, and it is a good enviornment.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
yeah we all get together. we got wasted at a local irish pub, share BOFH stories, and go to FlashDancers in ny. IT guys need "mens entertainment" clubs to have fun. There is nothing like a strip club to break the ice and make us tech guys open up. Even the tech grrls are welcome to come. I have convinced one of our female tech workers to come and even got her a lap dance.
For example, just a few weeks ago, I was chatting with someone here at work, and it turns out he's this expert on SOAP, XML, COM, DCOM, HTML, XHTML, CORBA, RPC, with experience building enterprise-ready web sites supporting VPN, secure access, and all sorts of cool stuff.
Now, sure, he was no "compiler jock" like me, but, seeing as I work primarily in an office here at home, on my own, and compilers aren't exactly cutting-edge technology, so I don't really do a good job of keeping up on what's new and hot in the industry, I appreciated the opportunity to learn what I could from him rather than just say to myself "he probably couldn't tell SPARCv9 from PDP-8 assembler, what an idjit". And since I don't need to work more than a few months a year these days, thanks to the relative dearth of people with certain skills, I had time on my hands.
So I asked him all sorts of questions about his areas of expertise, the client/server model, the prospects for .NET, his experiences getting and having an MSCE, and so on.
I really learned a lot, and wanted to talk more, but didn't want to get him in trouble with his boss, so I politely let him get back to work.
You see, it was getting dark, and he had to finish mowing my lawn.
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
When I hired onto a small software company back in early 1999, my social life extended into the workplace. The company size was about 40 people then. In fact, the company was so tiny, I shacked up with one of the VP's until I could find an apartment, and partied each weekend with coworkers.
Now, things are different. Our company has grown to 100+, which is a proud accomplishment, but I sense the growing pains. No longer can we indulge like we did, because that might be construed as favoritism...if only a handful of employees are hanging out with the head honchos.
Has anyone else been in this situation? It's great that the company I work for is growing fast, but I primarily hired on because it was a small company, much more lax than the company I left. Sadly, it's becoming more like that, though.
i work at a large corporation.60 techs support millions of dollars worth of equipment.typical corporate-whores-get-ahead environment.to be brutally honest,i am green with envy after reading and finding out that there ARE places where you can look EVERY one of your peers in the eye......and expect the same.the layoffs of late haven't affected our area mainly because of our small size and neccessity,but the tension has gone from bad to ridiculous.to be sure,there are people here whom i share an affinity with,and several that i genuinely like,but the majority are just another last name to be seen on the monthly schedule listing.hell,i don't even know the names of,say,more than 10 of the people i work with after being here for 2.5 years.the company doesn't give a fuck about us,and we know it.savor the flavor of a comfortable workplace,for there are those of us stuck in the it hell you have no idea existed! techs>unite|users>be damned
that you have to justify your obvious lack of social skills with the fact that you work 60+ hours a week... when i am working 60+ hours a week i tend to drink more, not less... and i code... and so do some of my friends... and some of them use hammers for a living... does it matter?
i cant believe this community is this sad... whatever... start talking to people, most of them dont bite and the ones that do are sometimes really cute and you want that...
....................
the sheep are scared.
Also, being right out of college, Dragon Ball Z and Diablo II just don't seem to thrill too many people around my office. I still hang out with my college roommate because we LAN on D2.
Point of this message from what I've found...
Of course, I'm just a kid, I could be wrong.
%blow
%blow: No such job
^how did the sex change go?
Modifier failed
Taco's and Beer at the local Mercado, starts at 12:00 ends about the time we go home, only the poos SOB with the duty pager is at work.
I find that the friends I made working mid shift as an operator are closer, and I still see more of them than the ones in the programing group I work for now. There is definetly somthing to the adversity bonding theory. The gang I worked with in server recovery is still closer than half my family, somthing about 10 hours sessions late at night brings people closer.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I think that there will always be at least one person whom you bond with at work. As the Webmaster for my company I deal alot with the Network Admin. I feel that because of the constant communication we share all the time this has brought us closer as friends than it has with the guy in the payroll dept. Would I help him pave his driveway? Probably. Only if he buys the drinks ;)
"I think you know what I'm talkin' about, Mr. President; We're gonna kill us a mummy!" - Bruce Campbell as Elvis Presley
at the last place i worked we used to go out ever .com, but we still get together and drink, play pool, hit on chicks and make total asses of ourselves knowing that the data of the world is in our hands. only thing different is that its at least 3 nights a week now, not one.
thursday and get tanked. most of us have moved on
from that
im not an alcoholic. alcoholics go to meetings.
im a drunk.
Huh? Survival?!?! Paying your bills is hardly a major problem when you work in the tech sector. And, almost anyone working a decent job (barring bad luck, and I do mean luck) can plan a decent future for themselves.
Survival and money are hardly the only incentives in life and work. Pity you never noticed the difference.
At my last job, most people I worked with were at least twenty years older than I was, and had a truly "corporate" mindset, and that made it hard. There were a couple of people that I got to be good friends with, but that's out of a few hundred. It was just hard for me to really bond with someone whose main preoccupations were online gambling and keeping their teenage daughters out of trouble.
Now, at my current job, we're all mostly the same age, and we're all a lot more casual - and that makes all the difference. My fiancee's roommate married one co-worker, who was my roommate for a while. Another coworker and I built a high-power rocket together. And my boss and I go shooting together on a regular basis. Several of us go see new movies on a regular basis, and several coworkers come over to watch older movies on my home theater setup.
Whenever one of us has needed help on our house, be it drywalling or cutting down tremendous tree limbs, there's always been a couple of people from the office there to help out. Being the same age, and having common interests and attitudes makes all the difference in the world.
I do have to say, though, one of the more "elderly" employees (the director of sales) is the only reason that the owner hasn't been able to make us get rid of the two ferrets that we bought for the office....
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Since I work(ed) for a company with 11 people total, 6 of which were software engineers, we knew each other fairly well. The engineers would get together occasionally. And we usually let each other know how our lives were going. Especially when they started laying people off.
Ah well...
-> Capt Cosmic <-
Your psuedo-code needs a bladder object and isFull and empty methods.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Finding ones who aren't burned out, and are divorced after years of working 60-100hr weeks is an entirely different story, however.
So, let's be completely un-pc, and lump the general IT community into a few social groups:
- Loner : You know the type. They work, they go home, whatever. Odds are, whomever asked the original question is one of 'em.
- Lush : The ones who come in hung over at least 3 times a week, and take a liquid lunch.
- Raver : Kind of rare, unless you're working with the creative folks, like graphic designers, etc.
- Family Person : As soon as they get home, you know they're being yelled at by their spouse.
- Gamer : You have to work a weekend, and you come in to find 5 bastards who won't stop shouting back and forth to each other while they cheat at whatever game.
Odds are, most of us fall somewhere between these categories...You get the quiet, social drinker, who will show up at the occasional lan party (Loner/Lush/Gamer), and for some reason, Lush/Family seems to go together way too often.People's personalities also seem to vary greatly by how much free time they have. Someone who lives 5 min from work, and is gone by 4pm every day doesn't tend to be quite so pissy as the sysadmin who normally fights 2hrs of traffic each morning, and hits the bars when they finally get the server fixed at 8pm.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
In my office, hanging out with the co-workers is both enjoyable and desired. But at first, it felt almost like the bosses demanded we go out. I started when the company was made of a whole 7 people, and since then has grown to over 30. It's been a fun ride, and thanks to that "required" feel many of us have become long-term friends out of it. I've had sleep-overs, jam sessions, trips to water parks and a host of other things together either on our own, or in a "full office" method. It's created a very close workplace, we all like each other, and everyone kinda watches out for each other. It's a well rounded group, imho.
I guess you dont have "REAL" Friends now do you.
If someone backstabs you, how the hell can you call them your friend?
You see, what you call a friend, I call an assosiate.
What I call a friend, is somenoe who does NOT backstab, someone whos honest, and who is a REAL friend.
Not someone whos a friend one moment and then backstabs you the next, if those are you friends, what are your enemies like?
And if someone backstabs you, how the hell can you trust them?
The best way to deal with the bad stuff, is to aviod the "bad" stuff.
You dont want to be in a situation where you lose your job over a so called "Friend" backstabbing you, what you do is you dont put yourself in such a situation rendering it an impossibility.
Your definition of real life = people who backstab each other but still consider each other friends and trust each other. Essentially people who never learn from their mistakes, who tolerate everyone even people who backstab them, etc etc
You live your life the way you like, I'm happier living life this way and would never want to live yours based on what you described.
Better to have a few true friends, than a ton of fake ones.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Most of the posts here seem to miss one of the most common forms of geek social interaction.
I mean, everyone points out drinking, and thats a given, but what about gaming?
In my ofice, more than half of the employees are at least withing punting distance ofa hardcore gamer. During off hours we have regular lan-games and death matches. Occasionally well all jump out on the net and hit the same server.
Heck, more than a few of us go to national lan-games together. Who cares about turkey, after thanksgiving most of the 3rd shift is dragging their pc's over to another ones pad to langame.
Bill gates wasnt always rich you know.
No, I don't "hang out" with my co-workers. We get together on Sunday mornings out at the local shooting range. Between the four or five of us that go, we usually have around eight different calibers of weapon:
.45, .40 S&W, 12 gauge, 20 gauge, .308 rifle, and .22LR rifle and handgun.
.270 rifle, 9mm handgun,
Unlike going out and drinking, we can blow off a LOT of stress at the range.
Of course, the Employee Handbook says we can't bring the weapons to work, so we can't really go to the range before or after - it needs to be a day when none of us are working.
Specialization is for insects. - R.A.H.
Here in my company the entire IT team socializes a lot. In fact, we drink EVERY night. 4 of 5 nights, some folks from other departments join us.
On weekends, we usually end at someones home, to drink (more), watch DVDs, or play Age of Empires. Of couse, at night we go to bars (again).
The atmosphere here is plain friendly, our ladies know each other, and we do cover our friends when someone wants to "jump the fence" (if you didnt get the analogy, dont ask).
Even some Directors come and join us (when time allows).
[]'s Carlos Cardoso - Becoming a brazilian ProBlogger, typo by typo
I sure would like to be him, The richest man in the world, doesnt have to worry about anything, doesnt even have to work anymore, has a mansion, a wife, and kids, and will never have to worry about any of them because they all will be set for life.
You see, Family comes first, Family is more important than money, but money helps family.
If you understand this, You'll understand why people sell their souls for money.
I havent sold my soul for money, but i know that at work, alot of the higher up people, or the people you are working with have. This is why i say dont trust people you work with.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Perhaps during the days where there was a shortage and anyone could get a job in the tech industry, but things are getting competitive now.
Theres no more easy to get
Also while some of the jobs do make you 100k a year or so, you act as if you'll get these jobs at entry level?
All said about "not mixing with users", "not mixing work and family/free time" works (plus the jokes :), which apply) if you are in an english-speaking country, probably not far from where you already have friends (high-school, college etc) or even relatives.
:) Legally there, anyway.
But consider for a moment how things change if you're working as an expat...
You basically arrive in a country with having no knowledge of the local language (very bad for socializing - and I don't consider paying for sex to be in this category), you know almost no people (maybe the ones that hired you - that's at most 2), you usually have problems to find your way, for chrissake.
Your only chance is to make friends/buddy with your co-workers, at least to get the idea of what's going on. Unfortunately, in my case, I've never been in one place for more than two years, so I had to start this again and again from the very beginning.
On the bright side, working outside the us is fun-fun-fun anyway, if you're not a gun freak who feels naked without the "piece". You can actually work 40h weeks and get paid as a network/database administrator, for example.
And the ladies are nicer, in general... and you can go to Holland and have a... oops... never mind.
I know my co-workers spouses, and some of their kids and a handful of their parents and inlaws.
I don't usually hang out with them regularly, but do get invited to their halloween and christmas parties.
Some people play squash together. This past winter I went skiing with a co-worker. For the closest of them, I know how many sexual partners they've had, wether they've ever cheated on their wives, their bowling scores, their salaries and finances...
And they know all that stuff about me as well!
Thats true.
Single males are the only people who go to slashdots, I'm sure no one here has a girlfriend or wife, or children and only has to worry about themselves.
When it comes to women and money I'm sure they will compete with me, I mean really, thats not something i doubt, because everyone worries about their own survival first.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
but at the software firm where I work we have a bowling league (two teams), have beer at the friday engineering meetings, and quite often go out to bars after hours when we're not deathmatching on the company lan.
The bar hopping from work got our legal department scared, so they told us that we couldn't go out right after work and had to go home first (something about breaking the chain of events, so they couldn't sue the company if one of us did something stupid).
I should note that my wife is our sysadmin and she doesn't drink very much (alcaholism in the family) and doesn't like our games (prefers quake3 to aoe2), but other than that our sysadmins and users socialize with each other just fine ;->
Please explain that
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I'm surprised to see so many people say that they don't hang out and drink beer after work with fellow geeks.
Every Friday me and my friends drink beer at The Church. A couple of geeks are from my company, others from other geek institutions. Before the dot.com bust, a lot of single pretty nongeek girls would hang out there too. And every month or two, Pittsburgh Geeks throw a big beer bash among other events (check out the pictures from Geek Nights past).
I also have Saturday afternoon Dreamcast sessions (that turn into Sunday morning) with geeks from my previous job, but I find I am better friends with the guys I drink with, and the gaming is more just about the games.
I also disagree that depending on your job for your social life is a bad thing. When we're in school, we depend on school for our social lives. No different when you work. It's natural you meet and share things with the people you spend the most time around.
Lies about crimes
They also love Microsoft. Bill gates is an honest man who earned his way to the top, unlike someone like you, He has friends and used them to get to the top. You are too paraniod to ever make more than minimum wage
SOME people actually lie about it, telling people they trust everyone at work, letting everyone think they are real friends, and then when the time is right BOOM.
I'm honest, I never try to make friends at work, I dont lie to people, people know i'm going to work to make money, and hopefully with them but if it came down to it, then I'd have to make money at their expense.
Work is just like that, sometimes you are put in situations where you have to choose your job, or your friends, why have friends at work to make that choice more difficult and make you feel guilty about it if you make the right choice which is also the wrong choice
you lose either way.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
[I]We've seen stuff like this on TV and in movies. Policemen, Firemen, Astonauts, Army guys, etc, all gathered round a BBQ on a sunny weekend, chugging a few cold ones and maybe talking shop, wives and girlfriends preparing salads, kids running round the garden. [/I] I think it tends to be a more Blue-Collar crowd that would socialize together on the weekends. The white collar IT crowd would rather just go home and tweak on their personal machines, unless it's the tech support crowd. I think they just stay together and discuss Draqgonball-Z all weekend. ;)
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
I don't think you really get to know someone watching movies. You sit in a dark room not seeing anyone else. You watch the movie and then leave.
:)
That's why when I sense a first date may be awkward I suggest a movie. You don't have to talk much, you have fun, and hopefully you've relaxed around the other person and built trust for the next date. If I don't think a date is going to be awkward, I suggest dinner or coffee at my apartment where we can talk and kick back.
Beer is good for this too. My coworkers and I get to talk and know each other better, and the beer takes away inhibitions. Works for dates too!
Lies about crimes
Generally, after you spend forty hours a week in close proximity with somebody, you don't want to spend your weekend with them too.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
all these answers are either lan parties (acceptable) or sports (count me out). isn't there anything more to life? i'm serious; is there?
free (as in mp3s) electronic music
I worked in IT for 4 years as tech support, and have worked another 9 as a programmer, and I don't put up with those long hours either. It seems to me some of you younger/newer IT folks allow subtle (or not so subtle) work pressures get the better of you. Unless it's a critical emergency, you shouldn't have to spend more than 40 hours a week on the job. If you find yourself working critical emergencies every week that require 10-20 hours a week overtime, then I would submit to you that your boss is a major dumbass--or you are. I'll leave it up to you to figure out which.
But then again, I'm not properly socialized, and tend to interact mostly with my wife and kid.
I have a great fear of the HR Issue, so I don't even look at the females in my workplace.
The males are... males... and interest me not in the least, so far as being around them outside of working hours would go.
So instead, I try to limit my social interactions to people I meet outside the workplace. Especially females. If I make some of my time available to a woman, it's because I have reasonable expectations of hot showers and wet sheets.
If I make some of my time available to men, it's because I consider their attention to be of some value to me.
My time is my most valuable resource. My needs are simple. It's hard for me to understand how "hanging out" with "the guys" from work would benefit me.
BTW this was 6 months ago. My 'friend' now does not talk to me. I was friends with his wife too and she doesn't talk to me either. I also redesigned and reimplemented the entire application, so there is no evidence he ever worked here. There are 60% fewer LOC in the new version with all the same features plus some. I also heard he is working 80 hour weeks at his new job. Muhahahaha!!!!!!
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
we try to get everyone together for lunch but it's hard to find a place that fits all the multicultural diet restrictions - vegan-Klaat kosher-sushi-within-10-Weight-Watchers-Points anyone?
Years ago, a Tier I ISP was born, in a tiny office, above a Chinese restaurant, in the town where I went to high school. Sometime around the same span of years, another Tier I ISP emerged on the opposite coast of the US. Both of these companies have long since been swallowed up by bigger fish, so their names aren't important, but they were two of the early seeds that eventually grew into the vast sea of kudzu that I call "The Old Geek's Network."
Many of the early employees of these two ISPs (including people I went to high school and college with) also played MUDs. As time passed, many of their online friends in other parts of the country (and even in *other* countries) gravitated to these two hubs, like matter accreting into a planetoid. As the years passed, we have scattered to different companies, but rarely alone. Almost all of us work with someone we know.
So, yes, we hang out together at cookouts, parties, pool, and everything else. But, then, my company would be like that, even if I didn't bring friends here. We're a pretty friendly company!
Speaking of elitism (!), there's a vast quantity of ... er.... spooky folk in the IT industry. I hang out with a bunch of clever people that all seem to work in computer related fields - Sys Admin, Developers, Hell Deskers, Web designers, etc., tho a few work in other fields.
Hanging out after hours we all seem to be attracted to pretty much the same places. One of Australia's largest ISPs, Connect.com.au, doesn't seem to hire anyone else, and there's quite a few people who like the goff or metal `scene' (though that word sucks) at my own workplace.
Actually, I do hang out with the other IT staff, and not just at Christmas or holidays. We have a poker game every friday night. But it isn't just the other IT people. My two best friends are a Development (electrical) Engineer and the QA Manager. We Jet-ski on the weekends during the summer. I think it is very important to have friends in every situation.
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
...that faces most residents of first world nations. After your ancestors fend off the animals, put a roof over your head, duke it out over social management structure, fend off your neighbors to the north, build your social/ millitary/ technology/ industrial/ medical infrastructure, what remains for you in life is to start filling in some needs that fall a little higher up in the hierchy(sp?). Things like self actualisation, spiritual fufillment etc... (all that stuff that residents of first world nations do and everyone else envies).
YOU HAVE TO BE A PHILOSOPHER ABOUT PEOPLE. Television has taught us that friendship is an all or nothing thing, that people are either be willing to die for you, or they are your mortal enemies. In the real world, it's not like that. Surely you can socialise with people a little without being too shocked later when they decide to do something you don't like.
I've never been burned by someone that (at least in retrospect) I didn't, or shouldn't have, seen it comming. I have worked at 6 different companies in the last 5 years. I consider hopping from company to company to be a more viable means of securing promotions and pay raises (better that slugging it out for years in the same place, only to have someone else take credit for my work). Now this approach may piss a lot of people off, but I think anyone who doesn't change with the times (as opposed to expecting the world to be just like their parents told them) is just asking for trouble. Keep in mind that a lot of your angst about corporate life is due to the fact that you were lied to a lot when you were young. Life isn't the like "The Three Musketeers", it would be pretty boring if it was.
Yes, I agree in terms that one should be careful when building personal relationships on the work floor. Especially when it concerns direct boss-employee relationships, favouritism is an ugly word, even when the accusation is false the damage will be done.
It really depends on the work environment. On my current job, apart from a "coach" and the direct management, there's only three real degrees of seniority: junior, medior and senior, and there's no competition to get to the promotions. Of course, on every project, there will be a project/team leader, but that changes per project, even though the more senior or most able people tend to get those. But that's also well accepted. My coworkers are all there to help me out if I need them, they are a constant source of inspiration.
As for maintaining a professional relationship, well, it really boils down to building a fairly thick wall once you step into the office. If I botch up a job, I get my arse kicked. But I'll take that as a professional level and not at a personal level.
The trick is maintaining that balance, and making sure others on the work floor understand and respect that balance. Not all work environments cater for this, but then again, I can't imagine working somewhere where this is absent.
Eh? Chronic shortage of skilled IT staff.
Read the section entitled Why Don't Customers Wise Up? (Search for this section title within the page, as there was no internal anchor to link.)
It seems that since the 1960s, PHBs talked up the scarcity of IT staff to stimulate demand and cause a glut, so that they could drive down programmer salaries to reflect the 'true' importance of management to the managed i.e. managers earning multiples of their technical s[(a)(er)]vants.
From the article:
"The only problem with this arrangement is that most of today's working programmers don't know how to program."
Since there was such 'demand,' educational institutions found more applicants to CS courses. Due to the greed of the administrators who run these bodies, they lowered standards to let more people in.
In the UK, this has resulted in the merry farce which is the GCSE, A level and degree certification conveyor belt. Every Summer, we have Big Brother trumpeting the record number of students with higher grades, only to be confronted with academics complaining about the quality of undergraduates. The people at the coal face are then roundly denounced as elitists. I consider myself a plebeian, having experienced the vicissitudes of homelessness, which fact contributes even further to my anger at having been educationally shortchanged.
One need look no further than the consultancies to see the policies of absolute greed and pig ignorance in action. (Apologies to those of a porcine persuasion). In Britain, for this year alone, hundreds of millions of taxpayers' pounds have been squandered by Big Brother on their nepotic friends in industry who can't fscking even be held accountable. EDS, Siemens, Andersen, DeLoitte, Price Waterhouse. The list goes on and on.
We're actually very social. My immediate department, and a number of other friends in our group, go out for lunch every Friday. I also play soccer once or twice a week with about 20 other software designers during lunch. Sure, if you take longer lunches, you end up staying at work for an extra hour or so, but it's no big deal.
We also go out after work sometimes for movies, dinner, drinking, etc.
Where do I work? Well, let's just say it's a very large and "traditional" company that does some software development.
-- Jeremiah
...from IT manager to detective :)
In all seriousness, I regularlly get togeather with fellow computer geeks (although we all work at seperate companies) and get high togeather. It's great social bonding, makes for great friendships, and often we end up having sex togeather. It may surprise some of you, but a lot of geeks are gay/bi and into casual sex and drugs, especially in the bay area. I think it's a great lifestyle and doesn't interfer with our professional life. I'm only posting this anon, cuz I know otherwise I would catch a bunch of shit from the prudes in the bay area.
At my job, there's no real socializing. Everyone's in their thirties and older, and they go home to their families and pets, and that's basically that. Any friendships I have are strictly 9 - 5.
As one of the younger, single guys in the office, needless to say I don't really get together after work with anyone. So, since I don't hang out with coworkers after work, and I'm new to the area I live in, I don't know anyone outside of work either. I go home to my entirely empty apartment and console myself with the bloodiest videogames I can find (and of course, lots of Usenet Porno).
So, that's what IT has meant to me, so far: loneliness tempered with a great hobby (software development) a wonderful, rich fantasy life (videogames) and lots of flogging the bishop.
Surely I'm not the only one?
Thats about all I have ever done with my co-workers. Oh there was that time we carpooled to the AMD tech tour....
"...the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine." -Thoreau
If you want your IT workplace to bond like that, try to get "casual friday" changed to "nude friday".
I understand your ex'es sentiment. When you're at work, can you really say you're doing the kind of programming you would do if you had an entirely free hand? Few of us can say that, I think...
Take me for example. I'm at heart a java and perl guy, my favorite things in the world are Linux and BSD, and my secret heart's desire is to come up with my own, tiny, custom distro that has nothing but programmers tools and requires that you manually install every additional package you might want (thus forcing you to always acquire the latest/greatest).
You know what I do for a living?
I work for a state government building 3-tier Microsoft-based ASP/COM/Oracle web pages.
Work is work, sometimes, not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to do what they want to do (especially in this corporate climate).
P.S. Don't feel TOO bad for me, though. I may be stuck working with MS tools, but I can retire at 60 with a full pension and benefits. Kind of like Faust, right?
Geez, people, I really do not think this has anything to do with a profession. IT or not, I hang out with people from my current job - ones that I like as people. Some are from IT, others are from other prts of the company. I still get together on regular basis with most of the IT department from a few jobs ago. And I still could care less about anyone from one of my other jobs (buncha idiots). It's not about what you do, it's about who you are and who your co-workers are. -Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Are you saying IT isn't a dangerous job? You've obviously never been attacked by an angry user, or sprained your finger on one of those old IBM I-could-kill-you-with-this keyboards.
Live dangerously...
I think its as simple as this. What makes a group close knit? Chemistry. You either have it or you don't. I don't think you can create it. Every case I've seen, it just happens. You get the right people together at the right time on the right project and sparks just fly. Its great when it happens.
Last group I was in had it bigtime. We were unstoppable for a while until management doused the reaction with a bucket of cold water. Within a period 4 months, 7 out of 8 SW engineers became so discouraged that they left the project. Now both the product and the replacement group are floundering badly. The managers are trying in vain to create some sort of team spirit but they have no idea really how to go about it, and like I said chemistry isn't something you can create even if you wanted to.
I'm not going to lay out my whole sob story but suffice it to say, that when you have a group that is performing exceptionally well... don't F--- with it!
Here are a couple of things about our group that I think shows how special we were. Several times we got together on weekends for water skiing or sailing on the bay or just a BBQ. Twice we left work in the middle of the day to go water skiing. With boss in tow no less. (No, our work was not neglected and our products performance proved that.) We worked hard and trusted one another. We usually had lunch together. We had birthday celebrations, beer and pizza after work etc. And none of these activities felt contrived in any way. Indeed I don't think there was any one person who was the organizer. The group more or less self organized! And that was what made it special, its the chemistry. I can't explain it any better than that. Our chemistry was so good that even though the group is now scattered around at different companies, we still stay in touch and even get together for lunch several times a year. So that's my story. The bottom line again is, when the chemistry is working, don't mess with it. If you stop the reaction you very likely won't be able to start it again.
I don't know how many others are in this situation, but I am a young programer (24) in a fortune 500 company. I don't socialize much with my co-workers mosty because of the large age discrepancy, most of the people I work with have kids my age or older .. they don't seem to want to head to the pub after work anymore.
From my experience, your location is the major determing factor in how you socialize with your coworkers. When I lived in a small town in Oklahoma, we tended to socialize a lot with coworkers. They were the first people you met there with common backgrounds and everyone lived in fairly close proximity. When I lived in metropolitan areas, we rarely socialized with coworkers. We were dispersed around the city, so any type of activity involved coordination and travelling. It was easier to find friends nearby.
I've experienced lots of companies. I've seen a wide variety of people, not just one sort. Treating them all as enemies is shooting yourself in the foot. *You* become the enemy.
In my current job I've had mostly good bosses. I had one boss who tried to smear my reputation and get me fired, though. I'm still here, but she got laid off. Later, the new CIO tried to lay me off. An executive VP blocked it and brought me into his group instead.
Sounds like a lot of backstabbing, right? Well, it's lots of everything, good, bad, and even odd. Paying attention only to the bad parts is missing the big picture.
Neither my boss nor the new CIO had any idea how many people I had helped in one way or another, accumulating friends, or at least allies, as I went.
I didn't kiss up to anybody, either. That's not necessary. I just noticed when people needed a hand with something and gave them a hand, if I was able. Any halfway decent technical guy has the skills necessary to help a lot of people. So do it.
The real benefit is the fun of seeing how happy people are when you help them out. Often that's all you get, but it's still worth it. There are often side effects, though, such as having allies defending you in battles you aren't even aware of, going on behind closed doors.
People will still stab you in the back, from time to time and sure it hurts. But that's about all you'll get if you don't have some friends. With friends, occasionally the knife-wielding assailant will be stopped by a defender who, unbeknownst to you, is watching your back.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
The company I work for (http://snapmedia.com) announced that we were having a company retreat overnight ( a wed) and that we were needed to bring warm clothes and sleeping bags. We ended up at jungle cat world, a zoo in the middle of no where... some of us got lost and I spent the whole way to the zoo laughing at my coworkers trying to figure out where we were. Once we arrived, we spent an evening playing with wild animals (no kidding.. real tigers and baby lynxes) and then retiring to the campfire to kill a few braincells around a campfire before retiring to trailers with bunkbeds.
... but it was a very clever event!
I had a great time. I never would have thought it would be fun
Our xmas holiday party is going to be a private screening for lord of the rings on the opening day. I gotta say, I'm impressed at the resourcefullness our management has for cool outings. It really doesn't cost that much to rent a vip room, but it really makes you feel good that something was thought of... instead of renting a whole bar just for the company...
I feel like somebody really put some thought into what I would want to do in my spare time.
--m
It may give your first job if your lucky but since I was fired from my first IT job I am now screwed. Get solaris certification or something instead.
You still have the experience (they can't take that away). That should help you land another job.
P.S. If your ex-boss is making it hard for you to obtain work that might be in violation of the law.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
There are quite a few groups where I work, as follows:
1. many women tend to become friends thru work (and daycare/school), and go on lunch and shopping trips together.
2. a number of us have interest/affinity groupings - some of us speak French, some are into motorcycles, some do trucks, some ski, some do social outings (one of the guys and I here will go and cruise for girls at music events and personals outings; and there are others who do this too), some do fire performances together, some do arts outings.
3. some of us live in the same neighborhoods so we get together anyway, since we share bus rides or carpool sometimes.
It really depends on the individual.
I noticed when I worked in places with more young people there was a lot of going out for drinks and music events - we do that here too, but not as much.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
hey, can someone explain to me how this got not one, but TWO, moderations as "flamebait". A clue would be good here. I don't give a crap about the karma, I've been at 50 forever, but this is just absurd.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
my three or four solo trips to starbucks for the satisfying dialog with the cashier and a pleasant walk back to my car leave me with a warm feeling knowing that i am part of the community which guides me through all of the short days spent at home alone.
Seriously, there seem to be quite a lot of techies who do socialize together, going as an entire group to events like Burning Man and Rave-like events, many involving fire, alcohol, and other substances.
I have a number of friends who I really only meet when we get ready for an event, are going to the event, are at the event (usually 3 to 10 days), are on the way back from the event, or having a pre or post party connected with the event.
Some appear to work together. There's a couple guys at work who do this too.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Seriously, being able to socialize and getting to know everyone is critical to being successful. The antisocial person who walls everyone off is unlikely to go very far up the tree.
Let's look at two hypothetical employee's. A & B.
A & B are at roughly the same technical level, one may have the edge on the other but it's not overwhelming.
You play the boss.
A - Does his job
B - Does his job, goes to the employee mixers, hangs with everyone, is very friendly, and know's his co-workers wives and children.
When it's time to choose a project leader, is it A or B?
When it's time to promote someone who you must depend on, is it A or B?
When the task with lots of high level exposure comes along.. A or B?
You have one to give one raise.... A or B?
You just moved to a new company and you manager asks if you know anyone with A & B's skillset, do you refer them to A or B?
I submit that most managers would choose B, I would. You can get ahead by shear technical skill to a degree. But after that it takes a good attitude and the trust/belief of your employer/coworkers is essential.
This list could go on and on. Backstabbing is a relatively small risk that you can easily mitigated by performing well and being an open and up front person. If you're really worried about it can keep really good time and task accounting in case you're ever required to prove anything. As for slandering your boss to co-workers, I don't recommend it. In fact, I recommend being freindly with your boss, and if you have any criticism, make it as constructive and useful as you can and deliver it to them in person saying nothing to anyone else about it.
Not to mention that co-worker buddies make the work day alot better, and good freinds are hard to find, you gotta look everywhere.
-- Happy Cog
But in my current job, its strictly 9-5.
They just don't seem to want to socialise outside work...
---- Put Sig here:
My father is a police officer in the Oregone State Police, and he doesn't seem to have many office relationships. He doesn't have BBQ's on the weekend, talk shop and/or gf's, with kids running amuck. He doesn't seem to go bowling, play poker, or interact with his colleagues outside of the office place at all. I think that these television shows only depict such happenings between people because it is what people consider "ideal", and that's the type of thing that people want to see.
What you reap is what you sow
I play in my office-mate's RPG, I went to my boss's New Year's party last year, I'm going to a cow-orker's wedding party in a couple of hours. There's a weekly trek to a greasy spoon that's been going on for a decade or two (maybe more?), to which most every new employee is invited. And yes, there have been cook-outs, both here and at my last job, with bonding and beer-drinking, and even a few SO's (kids other than babies are pretty rare, though).
I'm a pretty social guy, and I feel a bit uncomfortable in a "strictly business" operation- I know a few people that have been uncomfortable with my 'prying,' but they learn soon enough that it's harmless and I learn soon enough that it's not appreciated.
--Matthew
I've heard all those arguments about how people at work are not friends but are just associtates etc etc. However even if everyone in your company were to think like this, the mere fact that you spend so much time with each other inevitably means that friendships *will* happen.
:)
You are in each other's company more than hours a day. You will talk. You will have things in common. You will make friends. Simple.
Personally I have made superb life-long friends in the workplace. Even though we know longer work together we are still tight and hang out regularly, these include people from management/contractors/peers/other departments etc.
Work doesnt have to be any different. If you buy into all that "competitor" crap then you are just being naive. Its just like at school. You have mates, sometimes you are better at something, sometimes they best you. But you are still friends. *If* someone uses a "friendship" to stiff you then thats just their personality and not because they are a work colleague. They aren't worth knowing....
Get over it, people are people
Regards,
Po
Must be fun spending most of your time with nervous, hyperactive slobs who talk so fast that they frequently have to wipe foam off the corners of their mouths.
I saw this sort of behaviour in a tinpot little suburban volunteer civil defence organisation which had an ingrained culture of not trusting anyone with different skills to your own. In a training course I was told that "A leader can never admit that they are wrong, and using anothers idea just because it is better undermines disipline."
I've been stabbed in the back at work, but not very often. If you can't trust your co-workers it would be very difficult to get anything done that requires the work of several people with different skillsets - the guy who is an expert on subject "X" could be telling you anything and you wouldn't know.
On Survivor I'd be the first to go - I would suggest the unpopular but obvious, and would refuse to go with the majority decision if it was really stupid (camp in a river bed at the start of the wet season, eat wild pig when they are notorious for parasites that attack people too etc.(OK local knowledge helps, but some things are just stupid)) - so I would probably not survive long in a workplace like the one you've described.
...but my college geek friends and I all went out partying, drinking, smoking, n other uhh substances most nights.....daylight is for working, nightime is always for fun ;)
I don't like wars and I don't treat work that way. In wars only a few people win and everyone else loses. And often even the winners end up wondering if they really won (coz everyone else hates them now).
Coz I believe there's a heaven, I figure making friends is infinitely better than making money.
Even if you don't, a bunch of good friends around could make even eternity seem a short time. Whereas if you only have lots of money to keep you company, it'll be hell wouldn't it?
Go ask any gamer: It's more fun to play with people esp friends than play by yourself no matter how many toys you have.
Why I say this is because you seem very focused on making money and winning "wars". And people usually get what they focus/concentrate on. If you know you will be happy with your goal then OK, just be kind enough not to squish too many of us on your way there.
Cheerio,
Link.
There's a heap of musical talent in our I.T. department which means friendships are easily formed on common ground other than shoptalk.
In fact, four of us in particular formed a rock band to record and perform original music, and we have our first CD coming out in a week or two. Other than that, I guess reaching the age group of starting a family will probably mean an increase in our social get togethers with colleagues. Oh joy!
If you're interested, our band is called Camel Toe, and we formed earlier this year after an initial one off get together to play covers at a after work drinks occasion... Here's a link to all of our music for free camel_toe_aus
Enjoy.
Best,
Pete
mp3.com/petealec (my solo stuff
And this is all organised by us, no managment involvement at all.
"i still program, but i find computers do not stimulate me the way people do."
:)
Your descendents are counting on that.
for understanding your friend with aspergers. not all of us even know we have it.
The tightest groups seems to be to be veterans of war. I've had the privilege to listen in on groups of former Rangers and Green Berets talking. They'll keep in touch with their old buddies their entire lives, and keep meeting regularly no matter where in the world they may live. It seems that relying on your "coworkers" to guard your back is the ultimate bonding experience. It is hard to imagine a situation where a techie would be in that situation, unless you count Quake matches.. ;)
I heard that people used to smoke dope at Atari. Is that true? If so, they may have outdone you.
In this day and age of large software projects, engineers need to be able to communicate with each other well in order to work together well especially when telecommuting.
Getting to know the other members in a remote group sometimes takes more effort and perception (you miss a lot of body language), but through establishing real social interaction, even over the phone, you end up with better communication between team members and, ultimately, a better hunk of software.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
The typical computer geek social outcast catagory, the one that all you slashdotters seem to frown upon,
I'm going to admit, people skills is not my specialty, technical skills are.
I wont try to pretend it is.
However as far as stereotypes go, it just shows how immature society is, when will society evolve beyond stereotypes?
Stereotypes are why theres racism, sexism and all of these other problems that ignorant people who stereotype cause.
I never judge anyone until after i know them and i never put them in catagories.
I dont feel any 2 people are exactly alike, I do feel some people fit into catagories more than others, mainly because they TRY to fit in to get acceptance by society (so they dont end up an outcast like me)
someone like me however does not CARE what society thinks and does their own thing, lives in their own world.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I'm tired of the excuse of "Its human nature"
Killing is human nature
Rape is human nature
Stealing is human nature
Terrorism is human nature
Hate is human nature
Geez, what exactly is human nature? the nature of humanity? Whys it make humans to be so bad?
Human nature must evolve. Technology evolved, Human nature must evolve or we will in a stunning act of human nature, destroy ourselves like we destroy everything around us because THAT is human nature.
In my opinion, Some things in this world must chagnge, this means ignorance must end, stereotyping must end, human nature is not an excuse, I'm sorry but i wont accept it.
I dont stereotype, I dont hate, I'm not ignorant, I may be a social outcast because of it, but hey, I'm sure i'm not the only person in the world evolved beyond the level of "human nature"
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
so you are poor, and you want to raise up kids who go to bad schools who get poor peoples education, so what if your kid wants to be a doctor or an astronaught?
"I'm sorry son but i dont have the money to pay for your schooling, you'll have to get a job at 15, drop out of school and work at mc donalds"
Why do you think most poor people in this country end up being the criminals? Because unless you have a degree you wont get a job, and your chances of getting a decent education if you are poor are slim, and forget about paying for college, if you are poor you have to beg people for money, take out loans, juggle work and school.
Sure its possible to be successful yet poor, but its a hell of alot harder, if you grew poor as I did, then you DONT want your children to have to go through what you went through to make it to where you are.
I mean isnt that the whole motivation to going to work every morning? What motivates you to go to work if not for your family or for the money? Why? Oh wait, you go to work because "Its so much fun!" and all of your friends happen to be at work.
Geez, I cant imagine myself thinking work is fun, i mean its work.
I tolerate work, but I cant wait to get home to have time to myself to do what I want to do, when i want to do it, talk to my friends, my family.
And if i have kids and a wife, spend time with them.
This is what motivates a person to go to work, They want their family to be happy, they need money for their kids education, people go to work because they have to, very few people go to work because they "WANT" to, perhaps a few people work for the fun of it, people who have cool jobs like a musician, an actor, a basketball player (jordan) or something like that, but most people have jobs which are very repetitive, and not very amusing, which lack freedom of creativity, etc etc
Its your choice, if you want your children to struggle through life working 2 jobs go ahead
Also, $8 an hour, thats minimum wage here in Boston, you wouldnt even make enough money to pay rent off of that, You'd need 2 jobs.
Where you live matters too, living where you do its cheaper, most likely in the south or mid west, living in a city, such a silicon valley, or new york, or any big city, you have a diffrent enviornment, its more competitive, rent is more expensive, money matters more in diffrent places.
Lastly, education, public schools suck everywhere, you can put your kid in a public school, give him a crappy education and hope your kid can learn to be successful on his own like most people do, or you can spend cash and put him in a private school, give him the best education, and watch him get a scholarship to harvard.
Choice is all yours really.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Of course we socialize, at ICQ bars, IRC restaurants, NNTP clubs, and GNUtella theaters. Don't forget BBS museums, and chicken surfing ;-P. If you mean those people that consider them selves IT "executives". I think you are posting on the wrong website. IT "executives" are IT because of "2 weeks classes in MCSE" then back to the board room to talk about the latest suits and surf the web via AOL. ie. users. eeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwww
And you get it all backwards.
Actually its the opposite, i feel most people arent trust worthy.
I dont care if people trust me or not, why should i be worried about what other people think of me? I suppose some people do, these same people are usually depressed all the time because "people" dont like them.
Face it, what people think about you doesnt really matter, what you think about yourself is what matters.
So I can play your game, I can assume you are a depressed person, who tries really hard to be liked, to fit in, to be accepted, who tries to make friends with everyone around them even people who dont like you.
However, I dont think its ever wise to assume anything about anyone. Everyone starts off with a completely blank slate, they create their profile through their actions.
Currently your profile says you stereotype the hell out of people and if you met me in person you most likely would stereotype me instantly because i am not what YOU consider to be normal.
Hm, its funny, but some people would stereotype you in the exact same way just because you use computers and happen to wear glasses.
Ok about being screwed over, yeah that did happen, but i'm sure it doesnt only happen to me, People screw people over.
Not being careful is stupid, Go ahead, tell your children to talk to stranger, tell your children to trust the strange looking man, get into his car, after all you can "trust" him right?
Open your eyes, see how the real world is, this world is a very cut throat and cruel world, with alot of cruel people in it, I am not saying everyone is this way but alot of people are, and you HAVE to be careful and watch your back at all times, especially at work!
Theres alot of maniuplative and twisted people, and just because I see how alot of people are doesnt mean I am one of them.
Does a rape victim then become a rapist? In most cases not, in fact in most cases the rape victim hates the rapist.
So your way of thinking is backwards.
I'm not saying my way of thinking works for everyone, but it works for ME. And despite what you say I never grouped anyone, I'm just treating work how it SHOULD be treated.
Do you walk into a battlefield with a peice sign and tell the people on the field how you love them and want to be their friend? Sure some of them will make friends with you, but not all of them, some of them will take advantage of you, and some of them will become your enemies.
Now most people i know, have enemies at work, have been backstabbed at work, it happens usually when people allow it to happen, and they allow it to happen by mixing the work and personal relationship alittle too much.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
It seems most people dont have the slightest clue of the diffrence between a fake friend and a true friend.
True friends are are, hard to find, and chances are you wont find them at a place like work.
Its possible to make friends anywhere, but in my personal opinion, work is one of the worse places.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
So now you tell me no on but my mother can be trusted and its impossible to ever make friends who wont backstab me.
You wonder why I'm anti social?!
You are right, most people do backstab, Thats why i dont make friends with most people, THAT is why I am anti social, because i dont have time for backstabbers, liars, manipulators, and "fake" people.
Quality over quantity, I'd rather have a few friends, than be surrounded by a group of fake friends just waiting for the right time to backstab me and take advantage of me.
If this is what you call friendship, you and I could never in a million years be friends. And i wouldnt want to be friends with any of your friends either since you describe them all as backstabbers.
Now perhaps your mother would make a good friend since she seems to be the only honest person you seem to know in life.
Thats sad.
"Better to have friend than to wish for the impossible.
Frankly, if you want somebody to roll over for you (your definition of a 'real friend'), get a dog."
This Quote properly defines you.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Of course we socialize, if we are in the mood for MAC boxes, we are on some web chat portal like MSN or Yahoo messenger ( even though we are 10 feet apart ) if we are on PC's, we hit ICQ bars, IRC restaurants, maybe a wild NNTP clubs, some time we go chicken surfing. If we are feeling good about the HP-UX honkers, we flame the terminals wild ( goddamn or bless X windows, it depends on what happens to you ;-)And when it's time for a LAN party.... hoooly smokes, no one dares to come near man. It's Pizza, pop, some guys do beer, some blue smoke, but mostly that party is a chance to catch up on the code and systems integration for our own boxes and apps that we cannot finish because of the users headaches. And when pagers scream like sirens that a router is down=party's over :-(
People kill other people too all the time.
If it came down to it would you kill your friend for a proper reward? I'm guessing you would.
This wasn't the typical IT setting I'm sure, but I had a blast with the guys (and girls!) when I worked helpdesk at the college I was going to.
Some were full time employees, some were part time students, but it really wasn't a large staff. I'd say about 15 to 20 people made up the whole department (the college was moderatly small). It helped that I knew a few of the student workers from on campus, but most of the staff was quite friendly anyway.
Some of the guys there just plain hilarious, as a good number of geeks seem to be, so it was ovearall a very pleasent work atmosphere. The helpdesk coordinator at the time would give all the IT employees a cookout at his home at the end of the year, those were always nice to be a part of.
One of our real vices was playing Quake II (yeah, I know, it was new then, shaddup) on the LAN after hours. Man I miss that job...
I was wondering myself about socialization and ostracization.
I don't live in US, but nonetheless I'm working in an IT company. I've recently been to US working for a small company, still IT, so I'd like to make some comments including both experiences.
Socialization in my home country is mostly about getting together with friends. Friends are people a) I made a long time ago b) I made recently. The A) category comprises people I know from school or from college - people I've long been friends with. B) is about people I met recently, through my new job or through other friends (friend of a friend).
A) are the friends I struggle to keep connected to, since we have a long array of memories between us. We usually go out on events, not on a regular basis. Events such as bowling, camping, etc.
People I've recently met - B) - are conjunctural friends, though over the time some of them went into the A) category.
Since the topic is about getting together with your workmates, let me state this doesn't happen a lot. Going out usually means beer. Back in US we had this weekly event where we played basketball (Thursday) and poker (every each other Saturday). Other than this, lunch and stuff you didn't wanna do alone anyway.
Now looking back, I tend to blame most of the desocialization on instant messaging. Before each of my friends had a working place, we kinda missed each other a lot and we tried to get together as much as possible. ICQ made it possible to talk to each other pretty much every single day, so that "I haven't seen you in a while" went off...
I also noticed that spanning over a couple of years, going out and getting together seem to be constant events in my life (const as in weekly or whatever). The events stay - the people taking part in seem to change.
__________
Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace!
Says it all, really.
Our company (mostly consultancy) has a long tradition of friday afternoon drinks, but us code-grinders switch to bloody carnage after a while.
Our director even sprung for half a dozen decent vidocards, "to enhance team spirit". He's cool!
Nothing enhances your team spirit as much as the sight of a Redeemer rapidly homing in on you, or your co-worker descending that slope in 5 flubbery pieces....
[HUGE GRIN!]
I cannot really pick the people I work with but I can pick whom I socialize with and people from work are not them! You need to be around people with different experiences to expand your world. If you hang with the people from work, you become stagnant.
Sonam Genphel
Nah. The last job where coworkers used to regularly hang out after work was a long time ago (over ten years). And, actually, we weren't IT workers but rather electrical engineers that just happened to do a lot of interesting things with computers during the course of our work (avionics systems). Another difference was that it was a university engineering/research lab that was involved in outside contract work. I haven't experienced anything like that sort of comradery (sp?) since moving to the so-called ``real world''. Part of the problem, I suspect, is that most of my current coworkers live so far away from work that they're not exactly thrilled with the idea of going out to socialize with coworkers and then have an hour's worth of driving to get home. I floated the idea of a project completion barbeque not too long ago at work and it wasn't received well. That sort of activity was common back in my days working in academia. In fact, I'd say I have closer relationships with some of my coworkers from those days than I have with current coworkers. Part of it might have related to the close working conditions, the stress of meeting the deadlines for deliverables, 18-hour workdays, etc. Not the same as getting shot at or running into burning buildings, mind you (though sometimes it might have been more comfortable having the director take shots at us than sitting in some of his meetings :-) ).
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Gone out to play pool during lunch and after work
Gone drinking after work and on weekends
Trashed bars together, including one place where we left a 50% tip and helped clean up the vomit, broken glass, spilled drinks, and toppled furniture (I'M NOT KIDDING!)
Gone to concerts, movies, etc.
Helped each other move
Been part of each other's weddings and gone to each other's bachelor parties
Watched each others' pets
Helped out with home improvements
Watched football, basketball, or hockey on TV, sometimes with spouses and girlfriends in attendance, and gotten smashed
Had BBQs with everyone, their spouses, girlfriends, kids, even parents.
Can't say I've bailed one out of jail, although one called me when he was released from the county jail after a one-night visit... Our spouses and significant others get along fine and often times talk about us behind our backs and gang up to tease us incessantly.
I don't think the difference between how IT people and fire/rescue people socialize has anything to do with the presence or absence of danger. I think it has to do more with the fact that a lot of our computing work is done in isolation. There might be people around us -- in the next cube or office, walking by, etc. -- but we can nevertheless go for hours or even days without every actually talking to anyone. So much communication in my workplace is done by email, not in person. I know people who spend hours (ab)using instant messaging, irc, and other chat means, meeting maybe 1% of the people they talk with online -- and let's face it, socializing online is very different than doing it in person. Many of us became obsessed with computers as kids while other kids became obsessed with sports, music, drama, whatever. So while they were socializing with people in the weight room or on the field, in rehearsals and such, we were in a room, alone in front of a computer. They learned socialization, we didn't -- unless we made the conscientious decision to walk away from the computer and do something with other people. A lot of kids didn't do that and really missed out on life; some felt they were too different and couldn't, while others felt that everyone else was too beneath them and actively chose not to. I did walk away, and while I might not know as much about computers as some others do, developing those social skills to experience rich friendsips, relationships, and now marriage made it all worthwhile.
Can't hold my liquor as well as some of these construction or fire/rescue types, though. Oh well.
why do I want to hang around non geeks? People that go to work 9 to 5 and leave ASAP. People that don't have a passion for what they do. And above all people who are stupid.
I much would rather hang out on irc or on a mud or EverQuest or code and chat on ICQ than be with people that don't have a passion.
What BBQ? When they see my dick, they point to it and collapse into howls of laughter.
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