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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?"
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"
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
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.
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).
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.
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."
It is THAT strange. I'd never go drinking with my co-workers, because they are not the kind of people I like to have as friends (doesn't mean they aren't nice people, just not the people I hang around with).
:-)
And as far as I've heard friendship of co-workers outside the work is very rare in the company I work. I only know of two people who go climbing some times.
I've made the experience that IT people generally lack social skills. Some more, some less, but I don't know a IT professional who's a 'party animal'. But maybe I just know the wrong people
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).
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.
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.
Or, there's the opposite point of view. Make friends with people all over the place you work. I've done this and it works great.
Where I used to work, my boss was my friend (we became friends before he was my boss) and the sysadmin was my friend. This meant a really pleasant working environment. A boss who is wiling to listen to reason and even the occasional excuse, but one who knows I'm not trying to screw him over. A sysadmin who is willing to listen when I say "I think the network is screwy". I hung out with both these guys after work and on weekends, and it never caused problems.
At the place I work now, there are 3 team leaders, and I'm good friends with the other two. We've been there the longest and get along really well. It's really convenient to be able to present a united front to management, to back eachother up, and to have someone to talk to when someone on your team is a real problem.
I think your first two rules (never trust anyone at work, never make friends with people at work) are ways to make your job unpleasant. Who's more likely to stab you in the back, a friend or an "associate"?
I think your third rule makes good sense, however. It's great (for you and the other person) while things work out, although it may bother, annoy, or sicken other people at work. But if ever you break up, you have to see your ex every day, perhaps flirting with other co-workers, etc.
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)
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.
I mean the kind of friendship where you go out or meet because of a company function or a wedding or something and then nobody wants to end it, even if one or both sides is not enjoying themselves.
The few friends we have ARE close, and we really enjoy their company. We try to see them at least once a month, maybe twice. Then there's family, too. We usually see my parents 2 or 3 times a month and my wife's about the same.
As for the I/T job, I went down this path because of a Coleco ADAM. Being in a profession where my main responsibilities are computer-centric means not having to rely upon humans for my performance. I interact CONSTANTLY with the people here, and in this and all previous jobs save one, my superiors have always commented on my social skills.
I have no problem with people or social situations. I'm not a shy self-conscious geek. I'm no Adonis either, but I can handle myself around people. I just prefer not to.
GTRacer
- You can't legally switch off annoying *people*
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
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...)
Indeed. I prefer meeting bots online.
I think it has more to do with the size of the company, than it being IT -- although I recognize that companies usually have to be of a certain size before the "IT department" is more than the office assistant who "knows all about computers".
When I was working for a company of about 300, we did that sort of after-work socializing thing all the time. Oddly, looking back - even with the people one didn't like. It was more of a family -- you can't not go visit that weird Uncle, he's family. Once a company gets much bigger than that it isn't "family-like" anymore, and so one feels perfectly comfortable not hanging out with people they don't particularly like.
At my last job, there were about 5000 of us (not just IT)... there were maybe 5 people that I'd consider myself "friends" with -- you know, not "friends I wouldn't see outside of work", but people that I genuinely liked and would go out of my way to stop by and see, or go to lunch with, etc.
I don't consider myself particularly anti-social, but of course, I'd probably be the wrong person to ask.
*shrug* I'm sorry, but I'm not lying.
.... I'm not advocating opening up your soul to everyone you meet).
In High School, I wasn't ever popular enough to have anyone want to pretend to be my friend. I settled in with my little clique, and got through. Why would anybody backstab me -- what would they have to gain? Did I ever have some dickweed beat me up? Sure. Did I ever have some cute chick act like she cared who I was so she could get some help on her math homework? Sure. Did I understand exactly why that cute chick was being friendly? Of course. Did I help her anyway? Depends on how cute she was!
As for work -- I've worked only in big companies -- I'm currently working for a large computer storage company. As far as I know, I've never been backstabbed by a co-worker -- if they did it, they did it so well I didn't notice.
I've been promoted quickly based on my competence. I've made friends with some bosses, ignored others. I've never felt any of them used any metric to measure me other than their perception of my performance (very different than my performance -- I am in touch with reality here, and I understand that someone who works late every night may be seen as a better performer, even if they suck, then someone who does a great job 9-5 every day).
As for my great secret, you stumbled right onto it. You can't tell what someone's like until you do get to know them. So get to know them. Make some friends. Use those friends to help you evaluate other people. Some new guy comes into the group, and tries to get all buddy-buddy with the boss, you and your friends will immediately know the guy's a kiss-ass. The boss will know, too. And he won't get anywhere.
Maybe I'm just a young idealist who has yet to have his cherry broken on this subject. But I'm heading towards 30 awfully fast, and I've got a little plaque in my cube saying I've been here 5 years, so it's possible that there are big companies where your rules don't apply....
(FWIW, read another reply of mine, where I tell people not to be idiots -- to balance their work relationships with their friendships and temper them wisely
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
Yes and No
I'm a geek, I'm also a former US Marine, and DV (Domestic Violence) Counselor for a large city police department.
In the geek jobs we get together occasionally after work for drinks and very occasionally on the weekend for a BBQ. It's not uncommon, but its much less common that the other professions I've been in.
You are at least partially correct about the shared sense of danger in the others. Marines and police officers share more of a sense of brotherhood than the typical geek. It does add something to the relationship when most of the folks at the party may be called upon to cover your back (or likely already has a few times).
That being said I'm headed over this afternoon to help a geek buddy hang drywall in his utility room. We refloated the concrete slab last week. Next week we'll be felling trees in my yard, and yes much BBQ and Guiness will be involved....
Actually, it's pretty much any sport.
Physical ability is independent (mostly) of mental ability, so you meet all sorts of people. Even Golf and Tennis (which I would say are stereotypically white-color sports) you get to meet those from the business side of the company.
Another advantage I've seen is that it gives me another avenue to meet females, as some of my teammates invariably bring their girlfriends, who often bring friends to keep them company. Of course, I still fall on my face talking to them, but it's easier if they're already impressed with my athletic skill; it's still the rare girl that is impressed with coding skill.
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
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 ?
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.
I have been there... I was the geek in school, harrased for any number of reasons, and stand out as different in a crowd. Like you tossed into the mix I have manic-depression AND I am gay (talk about a double wammy!).
The point is that about a year ago a friend of mine gave me a kick in the ass and started taking me out to places. Introducing me to people. It not only helped me break out of my shell, but now I socialize with the people at work.
We hang out, we go out, we do all kinds of things. Mind you, none are gay, but I can have fun AND be different at the same time. I take pride in my differences, rather than worry about them.
Give it at try.
Huh?
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?