Well, it sounds like you're mostly just an antisocial kind of person. I mean, if you decide to put an arbitrary wall between you and your co-workers where you are simply not allowed to make friends with anyone, that's a pretty sad existence. I mean, this job takes up ~50% of your waking life, and during that time you can't treat anyone around you as a friend?
If all your co-workers are such uninteresting people, maybe you're at the wrong company.
Whether or not my coworkers have unique and interesting lives shouldn't really matter in a work environment, no? Shouldn't the thing we're all working on and the goal were all striving towards be number one?
My bend at work is definitely more towards the antisocial simply because I would like to focus on work. Bother me if it's work related otherwise maybe wait until 5pm or whenever we're all wrapping up.
I'm down for making friends, but we don't need to talk all week long about the camping trip we're all going on this weekend. It's a thing, it's happening. Why don't we talk about it after it happens?
Honestly, I know it sounds cheesy, but I wish so bad to have worked on an Apollo mission or the Manhattan project. In my fantasy, those engineers just showed up and talked about the most interesting and fascinating and craziest shit and then went and built it. At lunch people talked about the minutiae of putting a dude on the moon or what the hell Rutherford scattering was and NOT the perfect temperature to roast a coffee bean or why the iphone sucks.
I know, I know, some people want to decompress and unwind throughout the day and not be so preoccupied with that intense shit all the time. I just think it'd be cool if people were more like that.
I think you answered your own question. If you're saving babies or firing a moonshot, yes work is number one.
Otherwise work is a priority, but not the only priority and maybe not the top priority. I love building things my customers love, but that's not the only thing I love. I expect to share some of who I am and learn some about my coworkers during the 9 to 5. The ability for my coworkers and I to click, on multiple levels, is important. It helps both for building rapport among teammates to solve business issues and as compensation in the form of a positive work environment.
And while I expect many intense work environments are much more focused, I also know some of the most intense environments still have small talk, sometimes intentionally thrown in to diffuse that intensity. It helps people view each other holistically as actual people, not just tools to solve problems or obstacles to overcome.
I agree. The problem occurs when the chatter occupies nearly 30% of my working day. I'm okay if it's 10-15% I guess. But not really. Ideally it'd be like 0-5%.
I don't like feeling like an unproductive schlub at work.
Y'all are paying me all this money to work, not to socialize.
Sorry it took so long to get to that point, but ultimately that's it. I'm getting paid a lot of money to work. Not to socialize. And I will gladly work my ass off so don't think I need to socialize a whole bunch throughout the day to get shit done or to enjoy myself.
> I don't like feeling like an unproductive schlub at work.
I am very jealous. Some of us have very boring, unchallenging, crap corporate-drone jobs in which the 30% social distraction is the only way to make it through the day without going mad.
Feeling 'unproductive' doesn't factor into it when one's work seems meaningless.
Quick riposte: 'just leave' doesn't pay the mortgage.
First, some people are introverts. They genuinely do not work well under conditions of heavy social interaction. This does not mean that they are "antisocial" or that they are sad; it means that they are more sensitive to some kinds of stimuli and so are more easily distracted and exhausted by it.
Such people should be understood and given the distance that allows them to work, not browbeaten into keeping up with the extraverts.
More than that, some people are antisocial and/or sad, yet are very good engineers. So employers and colleagues should be really interested in having those around, especially if they don't want to bother you with non-technical things.
I also recommend reading the book "Quiet" by Susan Cain. Even if you're more on the extroverted side of the spectrum, you will learn a lot about introversion and extroversion and how to deal with introverted people. (And even if you don't realize it, many of the people you know, whether they're friends, family or co-workers are introverts and have to deal with living in an extroverted world.)
Yeah, I know what an introvert is - that comic describes me very well.
This person still sounds more antisocial than introverted. And if they're just extremely introverted, then news flash: they live in the real world with /other people/.
I'm introverted but at work a lot of what people want to talk about is not work but /does/ align to my interests (software, engineering, etc.). So talking happens, and this person trying to shove their workaholic no-nonsense BS down everyone else's throat is no good.
It doesn't have to be about being an anti-social/introverted person or not. I love to have small talk with people about their personal lives, but not while I'm working, simultaneously.
I want to work, and only focus on work, then take a break, go have a coffee in the break room, and chat about whatevers.
The problem with open office plans is that it gets mixed up, and it's really hard to do the context switching when working on hard problems.
It really reminds me of being a first year student at university, when a lot of people prefer to study in groups, while having coffee, and are convinced it's the best way to study.
By the fourth year though, you know that to really do well, you need to withdraw and get into productivity mode, then socialize when studying is done, as a separate activity..
If all your co-workers are such uninteresting people, maybe you're at the wrong company.