from Hacker News

Loneliness on the Job: Why No Employee Is an Island

by fern12 on 3/15/18, 5:47 AM with 85 comments

• by tabeth on 3/16/18, 8:25 PM

  Inclusiveness is definitely important. I'd be interested about the following trade offs in a more practical, balance sheet, sense:

  1. Does providing job security at the expense of pay increase or decrease loneliness? Obviously if the pay is too low there will be turnover, but is there an amount X, where X is not market rate, but still high enough so that if there were security people would just stay? Surely low turn over will result in more relationship formation which can be positively correlated with not feeling lonely.

  2. How does a dining area and free food affect loneliness? Will it make it worse by highlighting things, or will it encourage everyone to eat in the [company provided] dining area, sparking new relationships? If both, what's the distribution?

  3. If measures to reduce loneliness results in the formation of cliques, is that a positive outcome if those left out feel alienated?

  In general, to what extent should employers focus on this? This reminds me of how some employers try to encourage an active lifestyle, which is generally positive, but at what point are things simply intrusive?

• by doyoulikeworms on 3/17/18, 8:50 AM

  My current job makes me feel very lonely. I’m not close in age to many of my coworkers and the place is very cliquey. It feels awful. I was on the verge of leaving, but actually ended up staying when I made a close friend. When that relationship dissipated, I interviewed elsewhere and put in my notice.

  The social climate really makes a difference in a way I didn’t appreciate until I started this job!

• by b0rsuk on 3/17/18, 7:33 AM

  Here in Poland it's very risky to connect with your colleagues. I think it's the case for all countries with low social trust rating. In theory, you're working together for common gain, because if your company is better off you should earn more and work should be easier and quality better, right? Yet in Poland people are very eager to get advantage of one another. It's got to the point where I don't trust coworkers by default. I'm helpful, but careful.

• by twoquestions on 3/16/18, 8:11 PM

  What I've always been taught is when you go into work, you cease to be a person, and become a thing. You have no dreams, desires, wants, emotions, or needs (You may be hired to project an emotion, but you're not to have any authentic emotions yourself). Your sole reason for existence is to provide the labor your employer is buying.

  Your own loneliness is your sole responsibility. If you don't have the information you need to do your job that is your manager's responsibility to remedy, but their job stops the instant you have the tools you need to do yours.

• by monster_group on 3/17/18, 11:34 AM

  On one of my jobs the entire team was a certain nationality and spoke a different language (this was in a country where English is the default and dominant language). When they talked to me they talked in English otherwise they would talk in their own language even when having discussions about work. I felt very excluded. I tried to stay on but couldn't. I left just after three months.

• by k__ on 3/16/18, 10:37 PM

  I never really liked co-workers.

  But I never really liked most people.

  Started remote working, because it gave me more time to meet with people of my own choosing.

• by Bertio on 3/17/18, 4:37 AM

  I've experienced lonliness on the job but I've come to realize it has more to do with having meaningful work than meaningful relationships. If I'm doing work that is contributing and adding value I will not care at all about the people I'm surrounded by or if they even know I exist. When I'm underworked I start to feel excluded and isolated.

  Currently I'm bordering on overwork and I find socializing taxing. When I work from home I do twice as much work but I don't need to sleep on the couch after work.

• by RickJWag on 3/17/18, 3:03 AM

  As a baby boomer, this would have confused me 'till recently.

  I've been studying generational differences for an upcoming talk, so I'm tuned into generational attitudes.

  We had a mail-list thread this past week about an employee who felt lonely. I found it hard to relate to, but someone on the thread mentioned a YouTube video by Simon Sinek, it's about Millennials in the workplace. It really clicked-- I can see how some people feel this way.

• by amorphid on 3/17/18, 5:14 AM

  As a developer, I've definitely felt lonely at work. I'd guess that it's caused by my personal feeling that development should treated as a collaborative effort by default; it's too hard to do solo most/all of the time, and yet my teammates & I are often expected/encouraged to work solo.