> Being fired from Google amounts to not just losing a job but "friends" and the only people who the company encouraged socializing with.
I've never worked for Google so I have no basis for comparison but it's very common across white collar jobs for employees social circles to very closely if not entirely overlap with work.
Unless you participated in extracurricular activities that weren't school sponsored, you probably never learned to make friends outside of school. Work, like school, is how you develop your social circle.
The growing epidemic of loneliness is probably in part due to the rise of teleworking. No longer do people grab a drink after work.
The growing epidemic of loneliness is probably
in part due to the rise of teleworking. No
longer do people grab a drink after work.
Well, it can go either way. Depends on your situation. For me, teleworking has been a help to my social life.
Now that I'm a teleworker, I've got about 10 extra hours of time each week that I don't have to spend commuting. So that actually has benefits for my social life, since I never really hung out with my coworkers anyway!
Of course, I'm a best-case scenario. I have a wife. I have pets. I've lived in this area my whole life and have friends here. I don't need workplace friends. If you don't have those things then you might depend on your workplace for your social connections a little bit more.
To be honest I think workplace friends can really suck anyway. I have made great friends at various jobs, but these days I sort of like to keep "work" and "friends" separate. Having workplace friends can be healthy, but depending on your workplace for friends seems extremely unhealthy. I mean, what happens when you're no longer with the company? It's like you've left a cult and now all your connections have been severed.
Same here. While I did make some friends through work generally work is far from being The Source. Last time I had to go to work full time for someone else was 20 years ago so obviously my social life is totally unrelated to work as far as I am concerned.
Same - I do mostly remote work now and occasional client visits. I now take my kids to school every morning and have a good relationship with the school and other parents. I go into town for breakfast and have started to meet all of the local business owners. I have made closer connections to my neighbours and the local surf club.
When I was in my early 20's, my social life was all about where I worked but now that I'm an adult, I've started to build a solid social network within my town and its various groups. I would hate to socialise with people purely from my office now.
> Being fired from Google amounts to not just losing a job but "friends" and the only people who the company encouraged socializing with.
That's something I experienced. I was laid off after 15 years and really I was laid off from my friends too. The company even monitored social media accounts which at the time seemed bizarre but now it's common. I was told by someone still working there HR declared unfriending a fellow employee was considered bullying.
I'm trying my best not to put all my eggs in one basket. I'm trying to make friends outside of work. Everyone knows you shouldn't date a coworker but really we should also not base our entire social life around coworkers either.
But as mentioned above you are in that bubble. Apple even went so far as to encircle everyone with their new building.
I had a coworker I was training start crying because she got offered a better job and was going to lose all her new friends. I had to explain to her that her coworkers aren't her friends, her friends are whoever she wants.
This culture of being friends with your coworkers is odd to me. My coworkers suck as friends, the vast majority of the time. And heaven forbid you don't want to be friends anymore, because now you're stuck with them. I have much better luck making friends by joining and participating in clubs dedicated to my hobbies.
It's not that odd, you spend the majority of your time at work.
It's even more the case I assume to people at Google or other big multinational s. People there are much more likely not to be locals, and a lot of their colleagues are going to be in the same situation.
That's the perfect context for friendships.
From personal experience, clubs can be difficult if it is a tightly knit community and you're an outsider; especially so if you don't speak the language.
It's not that they are not nice, it's just that you need 2 people to form a friendship.
My club (that I joined after I moved) was so friendly I felt unworthy to be included so quickly. I felt like a pretender for the longest time. So I'm not familiar with this idea lol.
That said, I'm friendly at work, I've made many friends at work. Some jobs have been a lot friendlier than others. But the idea that you need a job to make friends or you'll lose your friends when you lose a job is alien to me. If they don't want to spend time with you outside of work, they're not your friend.
" I was told by someone still working there HR declared unfriending a fellow employee was considered bullying."
Would not go into detail but in my past I've encountered some peculiar things that HR was trying to impose on employees. I just told them to sod off and keep me away
from their kindergarten. The HR person I talked to was sort of shocked but they did leave me alone. No actions were taken. They just asked me not to promote my view among other employees which I was not interested with anyways.
If your social circle closely overlaps with your work colleagues, I would take that as a symptom of a dysfunctional work/life imbalance.
Teleworking is a major benefactor to breaking that imbalance. Typical IT workers out of every 24 hours you spend about 9 working, 8 sleeping, 2 on commuting and 3 on grooming, meals and chores. That leaves just 2 hours of uncommitted time in which to fit me-time, sports, hobbies and friends. So some things will have to give.
Teleworking doubles the amount of time you have uncommitted. That is not just a 100% quantitative increase. 4 hours can fit things that 2 hours just can not, as any outhouse activity (gym/evening class/pub/cinema/theater/...) has setup/travel/wind-down time as well.
Teleworking, or more general, the absence of the typical commute is what enables you to have a social life.
> due to the rise of teleworking. No longer do people grab a drink after work.
I spent 7 years teleworking and had no problem grabbing a drink after work. Now that I have to physically co-locate with cow orkers I can't do that because (a) I'm driving and (2) they want to join me.
One of my local bars has a really chill Tuesday happy hour. I've been loving going there to grab a drink and read a book and be gently surrounded by people. It's fantastic.
That's the common saying, yes. For an introvert like me, that always seemed like a cruel generalization. I don't have a lot of friends, so I don't get to drink?
I worked there until 2012. I find this opinion odd as I remain friends with many former colleagues, and probably 3/4 of them have left to work for other companies as well. The tech world is smaller than most people realize.
I've never worked for Google so I have no basis for comparison but it's very common across white collar jobs for employees social circles to very closely if not entirely overlap with work.
Unless you participated in extracurricular activities that weren't school sponsored, you probably never learned to make friends outside of school. Work, like school, is how you develop your social circle.
The growing epidemic of loneliness is probably in part due to the rise of teleworking. No longer do people grab a drink after work.