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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?"
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.
/. is fucking ann landers
Are you mad? IT guys don't drink after work. Espescialy *WITH* other IT guys. We drink *during* work.
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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...
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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.
... why would i want to hang out with people that aren't as smart as me?
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?
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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.
It is more true of IT companies than others, mainly because a lot of IT workers are anti-social.
We are not fucking anti-social! Idiot.
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).
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.
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(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.
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."
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)
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.
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.
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.
> 2. Buying Rounds
Hollowpoint...
-- My Weblog.
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.
Of course, when you risk your life on a daily basis with a group of people in similar circumstances, you can't help but bond with them. I don't think many IT people (myself included) consider our profession life threatening (unless you're AOL tech support, and that's just from suicides.)
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
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
"I don't think many IT people (myself included) consider our profession life threatening"
You clearly have never had to deal with a Vice President or CEO who just lost a proposal an hour before their meeting.
*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.
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.
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 ?
There is a wonderful line in the movie "Twilight" about talks about how some people are broke, and others are just overextended.
I live in a rather poor area, and most people would consider my wages low (about $8.50/hr). However, due to my conservative lifestyle, I manage to save just under half of my paycheck each week (or about $150, or $500 a month). My car, while old, is dependable, and so is my truck, I rent a nice apartment on a lake in the middle of a national forest, I have a relatively new computer, and I have enough books to keep myself entertained.
I can live comfortably on $8.50/hour. Hell, I'm managing to further educate myself in my spare time. Sooner or later I'll probably get a better paying job, and I might pick up an old house to fix up, but that's a year or two down the road, at least.
I grew up dirt poor, the sort of "poor" where you go hungry occasionally, not the sort of "poor" where you drive a 10 year old car and don't have designer clothing. As long as I have food on the table and a roof over my head, I'm happy. My parents never paid a penny for my schooling, and I don't love them less because of it.
My GF doesn't care what kind of car I drive, what brand of clothing that I wear, or how large of a house I live in. If she did, we wouldn't be together, since I expect that a girl should love me, and not my possessions. If I had kids, I hope I raise them in such a manner that they don't measure other people by their car, clothing, and shelter. I'd be appalled if they did.
Just my $.02