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So obviously relationships are bad when there's a power dynamic, and between different management levels is a common subset of this. However it feels like many
by dokein 8y ago
So obviously relationships are bad when there's a power dynamic, and between different management levels is a common subset of this.
However it feels like many people are spending more and more time at work, and it also seems cruel to say: "you cannot get to know anyone romantically during 50-75% of your waking day."
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> you cannot get to know anyone romantically during 50-75% of your waking day Few companies have such strict relationship policies.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- amyjess 8y agoThe problem wasn't that she was a coworker. It was that she was a subordinate. Nobody cares if two engineers hook up, but it's a Very Bad Thing if your boss starts putting the moves on you. Relationships where one person holds real-world power over another are prone to exploitation and violation of consent.
- InTheArena 8y agoSee Clinton, William Jefferson... or Trump, Donald.... oh wait.
- poster123 8y agoIt's a good thing if you are attracted to the boss. How do we know that the happiness such consensual relationships bring to employees does not outweigh the unhappiness of potential sexual harassment, averaged over all workers?
- sdhgaiojfsa 8y agoLeaving aside the supposition of utilitarianism, we don't know. We can only make educated guesses.
- danohuiginn 8y agoThen one or both of them can quit their job, or get moved somewhere where neither reports to the other.
- geofft 8y agoThey can't outweigh each other, otherwise you get versions of the utility monster problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster If person A doesn't want to have sex with person B and person B would be inordinately happy to have sex with person A, just about all ethical systems would say they shouldn't have sex. If person A has money in savings and is clinically depressed and person B wants to take that money and go on a vacation that would make them very happy, just about all ethical systems would say, no, that's stealing. One of the things functional societies do is to limit the amount that certain people can make themselves happy as a mechanism of limiting the amount to which other people get hurt. Banning workplace relationships because of their serious potential for hurt seems like a straightforward case of this.
- poster123 8y agoIt is possible that a ban on boss-employee relationships reduces the average utility of employees (excluding the utility of bosses), if the happiness of employees from good relationships outweighs the unhappiness from bad ones. Maybe one could do a survey of whether employees in companies with non-fraternization policies are happier than those without such policies.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago>One of the things functional societies do is to limit the amount that certain people can make themselves happy as a mechanism of limiting the amount to which other people get hurt. Banning workplace relationships because of their serious potential for hurt seems like a straightforward case of this. Nobody the debate is not between "some restrictions" and "no restriction", the latter is very much a straw man. We are debating where in particular the line should be drawn. For any given behavior X there are trade offs across the entire spectrum from full restriction of X to no restriction of X and the latter extreme is almost always far from ideal but much better than the former extreme.
- xexers 8y ago> it's a Very Bad Thing It's happened probably 10s of thousands of times in the past few decades... and some of those couples are now happily married. I personally know of a boss who married his secretary and a professor who married a student. I think the words "Very Bad Thing" are a little excessive. It's risky behavior.
- Gargoyle 8y agoSee Bill and Melinda Gates, for one example.
- xexers 8y agoAnd Jeff Bezos https://www.cheatsheet.com/health-fitness/scandalous-office-love-affair-brought-jeff-bezos-wife-together.html/?a=viewall https://www.cheatsheet.com/health-fitness/scandalous-office-...
- coldtea 8y ago10s of thousands? Think hundreds of thousands...
- berbec 8y agoI hired the woman who would become my wife.
- kanox 8y agoClearly you should both be fired.
- ghein 8y agoAll relationships at work are a bad idea. They're dangerous to the firm and bad for the people's involved careers. Best rule for everyone is no relationships between co-workers and if one happens both people are fired.
- collyw 8y agoConsidering that 1/3 of all relationships met at work, your suggestion sounds pretty ridiculous.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- msisk6 8y agoAwhile back one of my co-workers got involved with a contractor. Apparently the relationship went "bad" at some point and one of the parties decided to get HR involved. Both were fired immediately.
- rimliu 8y agoBut do not forget to mention that "we are like family here".
- lagadu 8y agoThat is mind-boggingly ridiculous: the concept that a company would have any sort of opinion on who I have sex with. US work culture sometimes feels so incredibly alien when seen from the outside.
- LeftTurnSignal 8y agoIt's alien when you're on the inside too.
- sizzzzlerz 8y agoWe had a married couple working at the company, both engineers and neither reporting to the other. The husband was promoted to a managerial position where his wife would now become a report, not direct, but still in his chain-of-command. That is against company policy so they were given some options to resolve this. The wife ended up with a lateral transfer into another division.
- kanox 8y ago> Nobody cares if two engineers hook up It matters because if one of those people gets promoted it can break the policy.
- et2o 8y agoJust not people you have a supervisory role over, because obviously that could be coercive.
- coldtea 8y agoUnless you coerce the other part explicitly then this doesn't mean anything.
- tfha 8y agoAny relationship could be coercive. But just because it's possible for a relationship to be coercive doesn't mean that it is going to be. I don't see what's wrong with a supervisor dating a suboridinate if both parties are consenting and the supervisor is not abusing their power. This taboo has never made much sense to me. The supervisor can already be abusive towards their subordinates. You don't need to introduce a relationship to introduce the possibility for abuse. Why does a relationship automatically become wrong when these balanced power dynamics are already in place?
- danso 8y agoIt’s taboo because in practice, such relationships aren’t actually consenting, in the “no strings attached” sense. Keep in mind the potential problem isn’t just between the supervisor and the subordinate, but with the supervisor and their entire department. Because it’s natural to suspect the supervisor’s lover of getting preferential treatment in terms of pay/benefits/promotions. This suspicion tends to cause an unhealthy work environment.
- ilikehurdles 8y agoAn employee in a relationship with the supervisor getting a promotion, objectively deserved or not, has the appearance of bias and favoritism. A supervisor having to make layoffs and keeping their spouse around is another such example.
- dbt00 8y agoBecause it's not just impropriety, it's the appearance of impropriety. It erodes trust in the organization to treat employees fairly by their competence/skillset/behavior/etc.
- aljones 8y agoThat is not an accurate restatement of the policy.
- rahimnathwani 8y agoThe policy only applies to people who directly or indirectly report to you. If you're CEO, yeah that means you can't date anyone at work. But for anyone else it only eliminates some % of the dating pool.
- coldtea 8y ago>But for anyone else it only eliminates some % of the dating pool. And who said that love (and/or lust for that matter) can or should be confined by such BS rules? Or that someone would have to chose between that and their job? "dating pool" makes it clinical, as if every person is an interchangeable potential fuck/partner. In reality people are attracted to particular persons.
- YorkshireSeason 8y agoSo obviously relationships are bad when there's a power dynamic, In what sense is this obvious? And according to which substantial notion of power?
- tfha 8y agoYeah I never understood this either. Does that mean a bachelor US president can't date a US citizen? Yes, power can be abused. But anyone with a knife at home can abuse that knife by stabbing someone. That doesn't make it wrong to own a knife.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago>That doesn't make it wrong to own a knife. There exist a subset of people in the UK (and in other places but the a subset of the UK subset is particularly vocal and influential) who believe the opposite with varying degrees of passion and with various exceptions carved out. Edit: Pun not intended but I like it so I'm keeping it there.
- davidf18 8y agoWhat it definitely means is that President of the US can't have sex with an intern (as Bill Clinton did with Monica Lewinsky).
- dbt00 8y agoThe president is not the boss of citizens the way a CEO is employees at her firm. If that's your view of american civics, time to update your civics lessons.
- michaelt 8y agoI think the CEO's $19.1 million salary is adequate compensation for the fact his seniority stops him pursuing romantic relationships at work. If it's not, maybe he should have chosen a different job.
- coldtea 8y agoWho said it's about the money? The same rule would also hold for a janitor, and they wont have the "compensation".
- danso 8y agoThe Intel rule that was violated only applies to managers.
- kanox 8y agoThis doesn't only apply to the CEO. Middle-managers are people too.
- michaelt 8y agoMiddle managers who want to find love at work can do it outside their departments - unlike the CEO who is everyone’s superior.
- kanox 8y agoNo, that doesn't work because people can get promoted. It's also worth noting that the Intel CEO joined the company in 1982, apparently straight out of college.
- spatley 8y agoTell that to Melinda Gates
- geofft 8y ago> However it feels like many people are spending more and more time at work, and it also seems cruel to say: "you cannot get to know anyone romantically during 50-75% of your waking day." I feel like the solution to this is to engineer society so people spend less time at work, not so that they are encouraged to move their personal lives into the workplace.
- jhayward 8y agoAmong married people something like 50% of couples met their spouse at work. It's going to happen, it's best to have an open and above-board way of co-existing with fraternization rather than simply banning it, which is idiotic.
- knuththetruth 8y ago>Among married people something like 50% of couples met their spouse at work. What is your source for this figure? I just googled around and every survey appeared to put in the 15-20% range.
- jhayward 8y agoEvery survey of whom? Did it include people married for over 40 years? Most of the "surveys" you find are conclusion-driven to target an audience for an article, something like "how are people finding their SO's today"? It's going to be hard to come to consensus on a number because it changes over time. Are we talking about all married people today, people of a certain demographic (18-34, etc)? During what period? My source for the ~50% number is "common knowledge in the 80's and 90's". Anything you find by googling right now is going to have definitional problems. I'm not aware of something like a US Census that would be definitive.
- kmfrk 8y agoI don't get the rule either, but few things are worse for company morale than for employees to see the rules apply to everyone but the top brass, stupid rules or not.
- pfortuny 8y agoSomething you can choose and is not necessary to live (like being the CEO of Intel) cannot br deemed “cruel” in my sight.