4 ms·

I feel like this archetype (wanting to have fun, make friends, etc) is actually very common, at least around SF/SV. I bet you'll find it soon enough. If I can

I feel like this archetype (wanting to have fun, make friends, etc) is actually very common, at least around SF/SV. I bet you'll find it soon enough. If I can be candid (and hopefully still amicable) behind my random-string username, I do have to say: I don't get the approach, though. Can you help me understand? Why does it really matter if you can share dank memes with your coworkers or have fun little in-jokes? Isn't it far, far more important to find out things like: How do people communicate? How do people disagree with each other? Are people able to separate emotions and ego from the team's work output and outcomes? What values does each person want to embody in the work that they produce? Are people willing to sacrifice momentary comfort for genuine personal growth? Maybe I'm a grumpy old man. Maybe I've just been burned too many times by companies promising a "fun" work environment where "everyone is friends" -- only to discover what they actually mean is an environment where harmony and comfort are valued above all else. The net result (in my anecdotal experience) is an atmosphere of passive-aggressive collaboration and mediocre work, because even the slightest hint of disagreement is shut down brutally instead of being talked through and genuinely resolved. I'm not really disagreeing with you, because, like I said, I've seen so many people who want what you describe. I only wonder: How does it work? What happens when a colleague treats you unprofessionally? What happens when one person is dragging down the team? In your live/love/laugh philosophy, how do you have meaningful, uncomfortable, worthwhile conversations that result in a genuine, deep relationship forged through facing hard truths together?

qazxcvbnmlp 4y ago
To answer your question ‘how do we separate ego and emotions from our work outcome’. Rarely are there people that are completely emotionless. Often when people say they are rational, it means they don’t have a good cognitive understanding of their emotions. So, in the context of a work environment, I’ve found it’s very helpful to take in account peoples emotions when getting tasks accomplished. And like, there’s countless studies signifying the importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace. Fun in-jokes are a way of getting to know a person in a casual way. This is really important, because knowing someone allows you to know their motives, what’s important, potential hurt points, etc. This all becomes very relevant when there is an important issues to be addressed. I can adjust timing, who hears the message, context of the message, etc based on what I know about the person. Eg, if during small talk, I find out someone has been up all night because their kid is sick. Sure, that kid is not my problem, but if I wait till they are more rested to tell them about an issue in their design it will be more likely to be resolved in a productive manner.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
jrumbut 4y ago
> In your live/love/laugh philosophy, how do you have meaningful, uncomfortable, worthwhile conversations that result in a genuine, deep relationship forged through facing hard truths together? That sounds like the kind of relationship I'd have with my spouse, sibling, or very old friend. In those relationships, you can't avoid it. At work, I try to be mindful that ultimately everyone is there so they can feed their family and not get cold in the winter time. That's an uncomfortable truth, and everyone has to face it, so it's good to stay light and breezy when possible. Enforced fun is its own kind of hell, I try to share only the most anodyne memes at work, and I have seen harmony overvalued, but harmony and comfort do have value. If I see a team where every decision provokes a lengthy and probing inquiry into values, and they weren't building a warp drive or cancer cure, I might be a bit put off. Is camel case vs snake case really so important? Disagreeing productively is an important skill, but so is picking your battles.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> Why does it really matter if you can share dank memes with your coworkers or have fun little in-jokes? I probably put negative value on this. But I can’t work without emotion. Knowing there is someone who has deep awareness of what you’re doing, whom you can trust and occasionally lean on, and knowing you’re there for them when they need you, it makes the experience more human. Almost all the heavy-lifting stuff happens away from the office, in my opinion, unless you’re in 24/7 co-habiting start-up mode. And then you get inside jokes, as friends do, and have to suffer the dank memes. To be clear, I don’t have this relationship with everyone I work with. But I do with some, it transcends the corporate containers we’re presently packaged in, and it makes the whole thing quite fun. (It helps when the people we work with tend to be deeply intelligent and interesting folks.)
- wnolens 4y ago
  Yes, I'm also quite an emotional person. I need to laugh and complain and work closely with others who can be vulnerable. Too many 8-10h days without and I get depressed.
jatins 4y ago
I agree with you on this one. But it ("fun" or the impression of it) really used to be an attractive aspect early on in the career. > Isn't it far, far more important to find out things like: How do people communicate? How do people disagree with each other? Are people able to separate emotions and ego from the team's work output and outcomes? What values does each person want to embody in the work that they produce? Are people willing to sacrifice momentary comfort for genuine personal growth? I wish there was some easy way to gauge these in interviews. Seems like the only way to know this is knowing people who work at the company.
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
  Yeah, I also used to value that sort of stuff when I was just starting out. Learned the hard way on that one. > Seems like the only way to know this is knowing people who work at the company. As far as I can tell, even this isn't enough. Is there some way you've been able to get a read on this just from talking to people who work at a company, before you start there yourself? In my experience, the real litmus test is the first time there's a meaningful disagreement: team A wants XYZ architecture, team B wants 123 architecture, they've both got data and emotions backing up their approach, and they need to sit down and figure out what the right way to go is. When done well -- in a healthy culture -- people are able to disagree, have a thoughtful debate about ideas instead of egos, put aside optics and performance reviews, and converge on a solution in the best interests of the broader company. To me, the ultimate sign of a healthy culture is that all the working relationships are genuinely stronger after something like this. I'm about to start a new job, and these sorts of "crossing the Rubicon" moments are definitely on my mind. I've been told that "wrangling stakeholders" is an important problem to solve for my team, and I'm optimistic (and admittedly a bit nervous) about seeing how it'll all play out over the first 90 days.
wnolens 4y ago
Thanks for the inquiry, I'd love to be convinced otherwise as it would really lower my requirements. I might not even want to leave my current gig! I think my original comment made it sound like I'm trying to have fun and get drunk with a bunch of SV clones. I'm not. First, it's largely about the amount of time and energy spent at work. It's roughly most of my time and most of my energy. So if I have a multitude of near-term goals in life (make money, make friends, care for family, maintain my health, make art) and most of my bandwidth is spent pursuing one (money), then the rest of my goals suffer. Second, the "make friends" is an important value of mine. I'm not talking about forced friendship from "fun" work events. I can't stand that. I mean working with deep and interesting people willing to open up about themselves. Currently everyone I work with has very little similar or interesting life experience (from college grind to big tech grind to family+kids). My attempts to break out of daily conversations about the weather and traffic fall utterly flat. It's often suffering through a difficult shared experience that brings people together, but my current remote-only and heavily silo'd work environment doesn't provide that. My current slog is wake up, log-in, scrum, work remotely, converse with others only to further my work or their work, log off, spend a few hours of the evening alone, sleep, repeat. My approach to a job search would be a bit different if I had a partner, kids, network of close friends nearby, able to visit family without a plane ticket. Honestly a job in tech doesn't really fit what I want out of life anymore, but I'm over a decade into it, it pays SO well, and provides quite a bit of intellectual stimulation without have to do any legwork to get it. Just trying to make it palatable.
antod 4y ago
It seems like different people imagine very different things when they read/hear "wanting to have fun, make friends, etc". I am also a grumpy old man, but I still want that "wanting to have fun, make friends, etc" in a job. But, my picture of that is closer to your "having meaningful, uncomfortable, worthwhile conversations that result in a genuine, deep relationship forged through facing hard truths together" than "share dank memes with your coworkers or have fun little in-jokes" The best friends I've ever made at work have been ones where we've faced adversity together and helped each other through it - often involving some black humour to keep us going.

qazxcvbnmlp 4y ago

To answer your question ‘how do we separate ego and emotions from our work outcome’. Rarely are there people that are completely emotionless. Often when people say they are rational, it means they don’t have a good cognitive understanding of their emotions. So, in the context of a work environment, I’ve found it’s very helpful to take in account peoples emotions when getting tasks accomplished. And like, there’s countless studies signifying the importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace. Fun in-jokes are a way of getting to know a person in a casual way. This is really important, because knowing someone allows you to know their motives, what’s important, potential hurt points, etc. This all becomes very relevant when there is an important issues to be addressed. I can adjust timing, who hears the message, context of the message, etc based on what I know about the person. Eg, if during small talk, I find out someone has been up all night because their kid is sick. Sure, that kid is not my problem, but if I wait till they are more rested to tell them about an issue in their design it will be more likely to be resolved in a productive manner.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

jrumbut 4y ago

> In your live/love/laugh philosophy, how do you have meaningful, uncomfortable, worthwhile conversations that result in a genuine, deep relationship forged through facing hard truths together? That sounds like the kind of relationship I'd have with my spouse, sibling, or very old friend. In those relationships, you can't avoid it. At work, I try to be mindful that ultimately everyone is there so they can feed their family and not get cold in the winter time. That's an uncomfortable truth, and everyone has to face it, so it's good to stay light and breezy when possible. Enforced fun is its own kind of hell, I try to share only the most anodyne memes at work, and I have seen harmony overvalued, but harmony and comfort do have value. If I see a team where every decision provokes a lengthy and probing inquiry into values, and they weren't building a warp drive or cancer cure, I might be a bit put off. Is camel case vs snake case really so important? Disagreeing productively is an important skill, but so is picking your battles.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> Why does it really matter if you can share dank memes with your coworkers or have fun little in-jokes? I probably put negative value on this. But I can’t work without emotion. Knowing there is someone who has deep awareness of what you’re doing, whom you can trust and occasionally lean on, and knowing you’re there for them when they need you, it makes the experience more human. Almost all the heavy-lifting stuff happens away from the office, in my opinion, unless you’re in 24/7 co-habiting start-up mode. And then you get inside jokes, as friends do, and have to suffer the dank memes. To be clear, I don’t have this relationship with everyone I work with. But I do with some, it transcends the corporate containers we’re presently packaged in, and it makes the whole thing quite fun. (It helps when the people we work with tend to be deeply intelligent and interesting folks.)

wnolens 4y ago
Yes, I'm also quite an emotional person. I need to laugh and complain and work closely with others who can be vulnerable. Too many 8-10h days without and I get depressed.

jatins 4y ago

I agree with you on this one. But it ("fun" or the impression of it) really used to be an attractive aspect early on in the career. > Isn't it far, far more important to find out things like: How do people communicate? How do people disagree with each other? Are people able to separate emotions and ego from the team's work output and outcomes? What values does each person want to embody in the work that they produce? Are people willing to sacrifice momentary comfort for genuine personal growth? I wish there was some easy way to gauge these in interviews. Seems like the only way to know this is knowing people who work at the company.

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
Yeah, I also used to value that sort of stuff when I was just starting out. Learned the hard way on that one. > Seems like the only way to know this is knowing people who work at the company. As far as I can tell, even this isn't enough. Is there some way you've been able to get a read on this just from talking to people who work at a company, before you start there yourself? In my experience, the real litmus test is the first time there's a meaningful disagreement: team A wants XYZ architecture, team B wants 123 architecture, they've both got data and emotions backing up their approach, and they need to sit down and figure out what the right way to go is. When done well -- in a healthy culture -- people are able to disagree, have a thoughtful debate about ideas instead of egos, put aside optics and performance reviews, and converge on a solution in the best interests of the broader company. To me, the ultimate sign of a healthy culture is that all the working relationships are genuinely stronger after something like this. I'm about to start a new job, and these sorts of "crossing the Rubicon" moments are definitely on my mind. I've been told that "wrangling stakeholders" is an important problem to solve for my team, and I'm optimistic (and admittedly a bit nervous) about seeing how it'll all play out over the first 90 days.

wnolens 4y ago

Thanks for the inquiry, I'd love to be convinced otherwise as it would really lower my requirements. I might not even want to leave my current gig! I think my original comment made it sound like I'm trying to have fun and get drunk with a bunch of SV clones. I'm not. First, it's largely about the amount of time and energy spent at work. It's roughly most of my time and most of my energy. So if I have a multitude of near-term goals in life (make money, make friends, care for family, maintain my health, make art) and most of my bandwidth is spent pursuing one (money), then the rest of my goals suffer. Second, the "make friends" is an important value of mine. I'm not talking about forced friendship from "fun" work events. I can't stand that. I mean working with deep and interesting people willing to open up about themselves. Currently everyone I work with has very little similar or interesting life experience (from college grind to big tech grind to family+kids). My attempts to break out of daily conversations about the weather and traffic fall utterly flat. It's often suffering through a difficult shared experience that brings people together, but my current remote-only and heavily silo'd work environment doesn't provide that. My current slog is wake up, log-in, scrum, work remotely, converse with others only to further my work or their work, log off, spend a few hours of the evening alone, sleep, repeat. My approach to a job search would be a bit different if I had a partner, kids, network of close friends nearby, able to visit family without a plane ticket. Honestly a job in tech doesn't really fit what I want out of life anymore, but I'm over a decade into it, it pays SO well, and provides quite a bit of intellectual stimulation without have to do any legwork to get it. Just trying to make it palatable.

antod 4y ago

It seems like different people imagine very different things when they read/hear "wanting to have fun, make friends, etc". I am also a grumpy old man, but I still want that "wanting to have fun, make friends, etc" in a job. But, my picture of that is closer to your "having meaningful, uncomfortable, worthwhile conversations that result in a genuine, deep relationship forged through facing hard truths together" than "share dank memes with your coworkers or have fun little in-jokes" The best friends I've ever made at work have been ones where we've faced adversity together and helped each other through it - often involving some black humour to keep us going.