14 ms·

C'mon that's just bullshit. Once working, you spend 8h a day with a group of people. It's by far the easiest way to make friends since the needed repetition o

• mettamage 4y ago
  Digital nomad here. I like being one. For me making friends, the best places are: Tinder (it took a lot of effort) and just giving compliments to people on the street (it took some effort to learn). Regarding complimenting people on the street and potentially turning it into a conversation, it takes some practice. 10 years ago when I did some solo traveling (before uni even) for the first time, I had the choice to stay inside and feel even more agony or to go out and experience social anxiety and pain. I've experienced a lot of social anxiety and pain (initially). It feels better than feeling lonely. There are courses on how to make friends (and influence people :P, see "How to make friends and influence people", it's a book, I haven't read it though). If you really want to, you can consciously make an effort on bettering social skills and meet anyone everywhere and maintaining it. A good channel (a bit too broad though) is Charisma on Command [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@Charismaoncommand https://www.youtube.com/@Charismaoncommand
  • calsy 4y ago
    What bizarro world is this?
    • mettamage 4y ago
      I'd prefer more thought and more empathy (note: not sympathy) in your statement. I'm presenting a different way to look at things. From the HN guidelines [1]: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      • calsy 4y ago
        Why is my statement any different to what a person on the street would say when a random stranger tries to interact with them? People on the street always WANT something from you. It is rarely ever for the benefit of the recipient. Thats why 99% of people have their guard up and are not interested in random chit chat let alone making friends. Reading Dale Carnegie wont change that. These suggestions are being thrown around as preferred alternatives to meeting people at work.
        • mettamage 4y ago
          Thanks for the reaction :) > People on the street always WANT something from you. One can learn to spot the difference. This is not always the case. Also, this mentality doesn't help. I see where you're coming from, but when you do what I do, this mentality doesn't help. > Thats why 99% of people have their guard up and are not interested in random chit chat let alone making friends. Only true for the first 2 minutes, in my experience. And yea, you can't make friends with everyone. The first 2 minutes people live on autopilot. Approaching them is tricky and needs to be done precisely because you're not talking to the real person (IMO). You're talking to the person who has a whole program in their head that they need to execute and the chance they see you as something that once to sell something is high. It takes a bit of time for most people to understand that you're really just there as another human being. For some people it takes 0 seconds though, for others it takes longer. I personally have noticed it takes less long for guys (being a guy myself), because they're not afraid I'm secretly trying to hit on them. > Reading Dale Carnegie wont change that. I mentioned in my comment that I didn't read him either. > These suggestions are being thrown around as preferred alternatives to meeting people at work. That's because for me they are. Like I tried to mention: this is my preferred alternative. I'm living this. It's a different perspective that I'm offering. It's a hard perspective to offer as it's a "show don't tell" type of thing. I've showed many friends, they were all amazed and all bestowed magical abilities upon me of how amazing I was socially. They couldn't explain it away as training. I'm not a naturally social person. I consciously trained it. They didn't believe it. So I trained a few of my friends to do the same. They see it. They're surprised. It takes a while to train, depending on the person. Though, as far as meeting people and making friends is concerned, 20 hours per week for max 3 months ought to definitely do the trick. So that's 240 hours of training to fix one of the biggest issues in people their lives: making sure they can consciously always build a social life.
  • PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    Contrary to the other person, i find you, at least through this interaction, to be quite likeable.
    • calsy 4y ago
      Disagreeing with someone doesn't mean you dislike them.
      • PartiallyTyped 4y ago
        Fair enough, i had the impression that you were irritated by them hence the assumption.
      • mettamage 4y ago
        I'm a silly goose, haha. I didn't think in terms of "like/dislike" when I read your comment. With that said, I realize now that I over-interpreted the word "bizarro". I gave that quite some tone in my mind. I now realize there are a few wildly different tones you can give to that word.
• MattPalmer1086 4y ago
  Ummm, no! Maybe some people get their social life from work but many don't. I have 1 friend I've made during my entire career that stayed with me after the job ended. The others I've lived with, or went to school with, or met following other interests. If you just mean socialising with colleagues, sure, I do that. But they aren't my good friends.
  • Gigachad 4y ago
    We are dismantling every place people form new friendships and then wonder why young people are becoming more lonely.
    • xboxnolifes 4y ago
      I agree, and it's a problem. But out of every place being dismantled, I'm ok with dismantling the workplace.
    • MattPalmer1086 4y ago
      No, we're really not. People still live together, people still go to school together, people still have interests out of work, people still go to bars and clubs. The office may have been a good place to make friends for some young people, but certainly not all. I was quite lonely in my early twenties. I had moved away from home and university and all the people I knew. It's quite normal. And nobody worked remotely.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • AussieWog93 4y ago
        >People still live together More and more people are staying with their parents because they can't afford to move out. >people still go to school together More and more people are doing online/remote learning. During the pandemic, all learning went remote and it ruined childrens' social skills. >people still have interests out of work Less and less of these out-of-work interests involve regular, face-to-face social interaction and community building. >people still go to bars and clubs People are definitely going to pubs less - this is an issue that has been in the media for a decade and a half. When people do go to pubs, clubs and bars they're less likely to talk to people they don't know. People are certainly less likely to chat up a member of the opposite sex at a bar in 2023 compared to even 2013.
• dmitriid 4y ago
  > Once working, you spend 8h a day with a group of people. Until they, or you: - quit and move to another company in 2-3 years - move to another department in the company - get fired Then what?
  • mgraf1 4y ago
    Then you keep in touch with them. The best friend I've made as an adult was met through work. Then he took another job, and I moved across the country when I went remote. We still keep in touch and occasionally travel to visit each other.
    • projectazorian 4y ago
      Most work “friendships” are transactional. Always exceptions of course, like in your case, but it’s important to be clear eyed going in. A lot of people in my life have had their feelings hurt when their “work friend” stopped talking to them after leaving the company, because they failed to understand this important truth.
    • watwut 4y ago
      The kind of person who can't make and keep friends unless they are forced to work in the same office won't. It that person could keeping touch and would pick friends able to keep in touch, they would keep.in touch with whoever they studied with or was in their hometown. But, we are talking about someone who need coercion to make friends. And they can be nice super ethical person, but there is that skill they don't have.
      • dmitriid 4y ago
        At any point in life I keep in touch regularly with about 40-50 people. Most of them are from outside work. Because "but you spend 8 hours with them every day" is not true for most people. I now work with completely different people than I those I worked 3-4-10 years ago. I have friendships significantly longer than that, and I didn't have to work with them side by side all this time.
    • 4y ago
• givemeethekeys 4y ago
  > Making friends as an adult is hard. Pick a social hobby. Pick up sports, hiking / running / reading / trivia / sports groups. Take a class. Take up a cause - volunteer your time at the local farm, shelter, political office.. Kids don't go to school with the goal of making friends. The friends are a byproduct.
  • nprateem 4y ago
    Yes a byproduct of consistently spending time with the same people.
  • Gigachad 4y ago
    I’d argue the socialisation is just as important as the formal education.
  • mustini 4y ago
    This is very easy advice to give and oft repeated, but I’m deeply skeptical that this is something that works for most people (unless we substitute friends with acquaintances).
    • scrollaway 4y ago
      It’s often repeated because a lot of people make friends this way. My board game buddies are my closest real life friends, and I met them exactly like this. However people do need to accept that not everyone makes friends the same way.
      • mustini 4y ago
        Maybe the more interesting question is what does it take for this to work? I’m just going anecdotal here from college friends that have dispersed across the US. Warm intros, so to speak, help. If you join a running group attended by a friend of a friend it seems to stick better than joining when you know absolutely no one. Public transit helps. It’s hard to be consistent when going to the activity requires slogging through traffic. And lastly, an activity that encourages repeated regular attendance. Hiking is an activity that is super flaky attendance compared to say training for a triathlon with a specific event day.
• sircastor 4y ago
  We tend to make friends early in life at school or church, but those friendships are because there's a very wide pool of individuals in a single location. Literally everyone in a geographic area who is your age. That inherently tends to include people of similar economic status and cultural background. You have this huge group of people and can pick your preferred subset from them. Walking into a job, literally the only thing you have in common with these people is an employer. While time spent together is an important component of building relationships, it lacks the other substantially important pieces of relationships: Common interests, similar backgrounds, similar worldviews, etc. (Though it doesn't mean they're inherently absent)
  • Joeri 4y ago
    Similar backgrounds and worldviews are not necessary for a solid friendship, as long as you have shared interests and mutual respect.
  • kaba0 4y ago
    If you are working in the same position then surely you share quite a lot of shared interests, likely have the same degree even. I had plenty of great conversations about different topics of CS with my coworkers (even though I’m way more “academically inclined” then most of them are) at every workplace. Sure, not everyone is interested in their own field of work, but imo that’s then the greater problem, one really shouldn’t waste half of his/her waking life on something they entirely dislike.
• TomSwirly 4y ago
  > It's by far the easiest way to make friends But I generally have nothing in common with the people I work with. I'm friends with people who share my world outlook, my moral and philosophical and aesthetic views, and there's no correlation between that and working with people. > Friend just means someone you have established a platonic relationship with right here right now. NO, that's not friend, FFS! That's an acquaintance or a coworker. Don't get me wrong - I'm a very sociable guy, I love hanging out with people, but I only have a few actual _friends_. > Some of the commenters describe a friend as someone who will maintain a connection with you no matter the circumstance (loss of job, moving to a new city etc) > I believe that is an unrealistic expectation. I'm sorry, but if you leave a job and lose all your connection with someone, _you were never friends._ I moved to a new continent in 2016 and I'm still in touch with my small group of actual friends, and I even made two more here.
  • pxue 4y ago
    OK. i'll give another example. I played WoW for a good 8 years everyday through high school and college, became great friends with some of the people I played the game with. When I finished school, I hung up my WoW character and said good bye to my friends in the game. Although I no longer keep in touch with any of them, those were some of the best 8 years of my life and I am truly fond of the memories I made playing the game and working together. Is that not the same as a work place?
    • TheCleric 4y ago
      I think the larger point is if you can walk away from a relationship after 8 years without an attempt to keep in touch, you're not friends.
      • StopHammoTime 4y ago
        +1. I have a group chat with my wow friends and we have been mostly connected (with some brief periods after Cataclysm where everyone stopped playing) for almost 15 years now. We’ve had in-person meetups and I have a solid conversation with them at least once a week on voice.
• deafpolygon 4y ago
  As a rule, I don't make "close" friends with people I work with. Falling out with people is a real thing, and getting judged for things that are in my private life (whatever they may be) is not something I want to deal with 40+ hours a week. With normal friends, I can at least avoid them. Co-workers? Not so much. I'm nice, I'll socialize, but I won't share or divulge any detail of my private life.
• prepend 4y ago
  > It's by far the easiest way to make friends since the needed repetition of making contact (a minimum requirement for friendship) is already solved by going to work together. I disagree as the workplace isn’t a good locus of interest for personal relationships. I’m not interested in my coworkers hobbies. I have developed friendships with co-workers but they are rare. Some of my happiest times at work are when I worked with friends. But they were friends before work and I worked with them because they are friends, I didn’t become friends because of work. I also think it’s valuable to have checks and balances in life and having my personal life wrapped up with work, although great for my employer, puts too much risk in losing my job. Add to this, that my workplace was distributed and I switched from driving into work to get in video calls with people in different locations to doing that from my home office. If someone doesn’t see humans for days when working from home, that is an individual problem to solve and there are many options to solve that. Work is not efficient for solving that problem. Join a gym, get a dog and walk it, join a grocery/csa co-op, use meetup, join a church, volunteer, visit seniors in your area, tutor kids, join a book club, do yoga/tai chi. The list going on and on and all those are more likely to result in human connection and friendships than going into work.
• AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  I believe this comment and similar ones are evidence of how deeply society has been fucked over by sociopathic workaholics.
• potta_coffee 4y ago
  Work is the worst place to make friends. You don't get to choose the people you work with. If you change jobs or get sacked, your social circle is vaporized. Work is a place to make money. I work remotely, don't miss the socialization because many of my co-workers are sucky people. I have friends I've made through hobbies, veterans groups etc.
• JohnFen 4y ago
  > Friend just means someone you have established a platonic relationship with right here right now. Ahhh, that makes more sense now. You're using "friend" to mean what I would call an "acquaintance". I think the workplace is one of the hardest places to find true friends, because the relationship is dependent on the job. And, can you really be truly open and vulnerable to workplace friends? Can you safely talk smack about your boss, or your cube neighbor, or the company? Can you show up on their doorstep in crisis at 3am and have it not affect things at work?