I disagree. I am not responsible for others feelings. There should be clear rules of conduct at any job and a clear process of enforcement. This make the situation fair and certain.
One easy rule is that if someone says "Only talk to me about work." then the other person has to respect it. No forcing of social acceptance , no shaming the other to believe what you believe, just focus on what you were hired for. This is a standard taught to many managers to keep the company out of harassment issues , its very robotic unemotional but its clear and will allow different groups to work together as long as this rule is enforced.
Basically we should not have to worry about a toxic culture because you should not be forced into one when you work. You should just be able to work and separate yourself from your task in any emotional way.
[California dev, 8 years, have held manager position]
As a manager, you're absolutely responsible for your team member's feelings. Both morally and practically because if they feel bad at work, they'll leave.
This comment breaks the site guidelines in lots of ways: name-calling, snark, using uppercase for emphasis. You can't comment like that anywhere on HN, and certainly not in this thread which was bound to teeter on the abyss from the beginning.
Where I work, even though there are some titles that have the word "manager" in, the organization refers to anyone that have people report to them as "people leaders".
They are responsible for the well being of the those that report to them. If you take away the part where you are responsible for your people, what is left?
Even if you take the most clinical and robotic view of the role, you still have to effectively allocate your resources. This means balancing strengths and weaknesses, allocating team members to places they are more interested in to improve performance. All this boils down to getting to know your people and making sure they are happy...
> You should just be able to work and separate yourself from your task in any emotional way.
This is also a crazy statement coming from someone who has people report to them. People don't turn off their emotions just because they are getting paid to perform a task !??!
>People don't turn off their emotions just because they are getting paid to perform a task !??!
Isn't that what we expect professionals to do? I mean yeah professionals still have feelings and emotions but they learn to detach them from their job. Like how we expect police officers to conduct themselves... Like trained professionals.
We expect professionals to manage their emotions; huge difference. As the other poster says, it's a literal impossibility for a human being to not experience emotions.
And police offers have to deal with stuff like PTSD and emotional trauma from their job, because of how intense it is. To a lesser degree than that, our (less intense) jobs have an unavoidable emotional impact on us.
Fair point about managing versus not having emotions.
For me the following hits home for me recently
>One easy rule is that if someone says "Only talk to me about work." then the other person has to respect it. No forcing of social acceptance , no shaming the other to believe what you believe, just focus on what you were hired for.
I don't think of my company or coworkers as family. I have my life outside of the office and prefer to keep it personal and private for the most part. Likewise, I not that interested in talking about what happened in everyone's 16 hours out of the office. I am interested in discussing the problems we are facing at work and getting work done, which ironically can involve this very topic and conversation we are having right now. I want to put 8 honest hours in, not 6 honest and 2 talking about outside matters, not 8 honest and 2 talking about outside matters. What sucks is culturally I seem to be a misfit because others apparently think I am anti social. But I don't believe I am. I don't come in in the morning and say hello because I don't believe my arrival is so important that I should interrupt people that I assume are hard at work focusing and concentrating. If you're at your desk, YOU need to say hello to me as I walk in so I know I'm not interrupting you. But also not get mad if I all I say is hi and blow off any small talk. On my commute in I am thinking about what I want to accomplish within the first hour of work so I'm already focusing on doing that. Want to chit chat? Catch me at lunch.
So what, you're going to punish someone who mentions they saw the shape of water last night and it was really good?
That seems rather ridiculous.
Or how about, I'm trying to learn rust and it's pretty neat but also pretty hard. I don't use rust at work. Is that work related enough since it's tech?
If I walk up to a coworker and say "You idiot, this damn bug is ridiculous" am I not responsible for them getting upset at that?
I can't make a fucking comment without you up my fucking ass about it. I was illustrating the point that I think the standard proposed is not a good hard rule.
One easy rule is that if someone says "Only talk to me about work." then the other person has to respect it. No forcing of social acceptance , no shaming the other to believe what you believe, just focus on what you were hired for. This is a standard taught to many managers to keep the company out of harassment issues , its very robotic unemotional but its clear and will allow different groups to work together as long as this rule is enforced.
Basically we should not have to worry about a toxic culture because you should not be forced into one when you work. You should just be able to work and separate yourself from your task in any emotional way.
[California dev, 8 years, have held manager position]