> It's the loss of water-cooler chat with people not on the junior employee's team. Not the random "did you catch the game yesterday" stuff. But, the "team x started using tool Y" or "we're using ML to solve for Z" - the little tidbits that might spur a curious employee to go do something unexpected.
I've worked in the tech for more than 2 decades, in different countries. I've worked for startups, for FAANG, and for companies of different sizes in between. I've built successful projects and saw my share of failures.
I've never saw this water-cooler experience you mentioned. It's always small talk of the "Did you see the game yesterday?" sort.
This "water-cooler effect" myth that is repeated often as if it was fact, and that completely puzzles me.
Those important conversation you mentioned, for me, always happened online even when I was in the office, normally through slack discussions (or email threads in the old days).
> I've never saw this water-cooler experience you mentioned. It's always small talk of the "Did you see the game yesterday?" sort
Does not match my experience at all. Depending on how you approach the water cooler you will get :
- People going to the water cooler to get water. And go back to their desk asap to stay focused (which is fine)
- People who go there and wanna have some chit chat about whatever interests them. Sometimes that means the game and sometimes not.
But yeah; but if you go in asking "what did you do this week end"; I have some colleagues who will happily jump in to say "I tried playing with Haskell, but those monads thing are are to fully grasp".
Never ever in my life, have I described my week end on slack. If I am going to be sitting in front of a screen and worsen my carpal tunnel syndrome; it's going to be for work related stuff.
I'm sure there was a time where people "never shared their weekend through text" either. I remember those types "I only use a phone for calling." Most of them are long gone now.
The water cooler experience extends beyond the actual conversations occurring to encompass a general camaraderie that gets built being in proximity to others. Schools had the same effect happen in over lock down - students weren't sitting next to other students and overhearing projects they were on, general grievances with school work, or miscellaneous "the game last night" stuff. Without that sense of community, you can really feel alone and things like imposter syndrome have a chance to creep it.
Obviously, I'm in the camp that thinks the water cooler myth exists. It can extend to just learning colleague Z has 2 kids. Things that can happen online, but also might not since small talk and casual conversations might not occur as often. It can happen more naturally during periods of "waiting" - like waiting for a class/meeting to start vs everyone logging into Zoom at exactly the start of the meeting.
Inevitably when you go out with co-workers or industry colleagues at a conference, you will end up talking about work. That is the one thing you for sure have in common (while someone may not even like sports), and it's an easy topic to fall back to.
But FWIW, I also think the small talk and getting-to-know your colleagues is valuable. Some of my deepest and longest-term friendships have come from former co-workers, former classmates, etc. While it's possible to cultivate a friendship via remote work, it's a lot harder.
Coworkers often share birthdays, weddings, random trips, and enriching experiences together that are not very easy at all to replicate over fully remote work.
I've noticed that as my career has gotten more remote, it's harder to even count on making new adult friendships into my 30s. I'm like a stranger in my own town, unless I really intentionally take the time to join clubs/groups outside of work. That's not a bad idea on its own, but it does take intentional effort and some degree of consistency that just sort of came automatically with working in an office. And some young people with less overall confidence / social experience may not even know how to go about that.
I think all of that def takes a mental toll. We're social creatures, even the introverts among us.
I have had some great friendships form at work. But I've also had really difficult situations. I've seen friends form and then become bitter enemies, transitioning from workplace disagreements to personal disputes.
The fact is we aren't in the army. This isn't band of brothers. Some people don't want to know anything more than how you're helping them finish some task for their job. There are going to be varying levels of motivation, care, etc.
> I've noticed that as my career has gotten more remote, it's harder to even count on making new adult friendships into my 30s. I'm like a stranger in my own town, unless I really intentionally take the time to join clubs/groups outside of work.
I think you should explore finding friends outside of work. I've seen many go down the "friends only at work path." Then they retired, switched jobs, and moved on, and that friendship faded just as quickly. It's amazing how many people will be your friend when forced to be with you (e.g. gotta go to work) but given the choice they aren't choosing you.
Yep. For me work is work and friends are independent of that. In 30+ years I have never had a friendship at work that exended to doing stuff outside of work. There were people at work who I was friendly/sociable with, of course, but at 5:00 we went all went home to our separate lives.
Totally opposite of my experience. I do an annual ski trip with some of my old coworkers from 5+ years ago (from a company not many of us work at any longer). I have been invited to weddings from coworkers I worked with 10+ years ago. I am still great friends with dozens of people I went to community college and university with. But since going remote it is far more difficult to make the same connections.
I'm still friends with old roommates from school too. That's different in my mind anyway -- I lived with these people, saw them naked in the shower, etc. It was a level of personal contact that was much closer than anything that has ever happened (or I would want to happen) with someone at work.
YMMV though, if you make friends at work that's cool, just never seemed natural or obligatory to me.
Wow, that sounds like a bummer -- I can't imagine spending a significant portion of my life working on something and never establishing any meaningful relationships with the people that I worked with.
Not everyone feels the same way and that's the point. Some people want deep relationships. Others want to get their job done and go home to their family. Others are so stressed out with this office culture worship draining them with a 2 hour commute that they'll go home depressed with no friends.
But statistically Americans have had a significant downward trend in the number of friends over the last decade (yes, before COVID). The office culture was always there. It definitely isn't helping.
The key for me is spontaneously reaching out to coworkers who you like. Invite them to parties, or to disc golfing, or a brewery, or whatever fun activity you do that needs additional friends. I find that if a coworker comes with me to these activities regularly when we work together, that the activity and the friendship can continue after we no longer work together. You need to develop the out-of-work relationship early and acknowledge that you like each other's company even when you aren't forced to be together. YMMV
Again - yeah sure, there are communication benefits to general proximity.
But the idea that this literally happens "at the water cooler" (or from bumping into each other in the hallway) to a significant degree -- such that it's worth dragging people into their cars for a 90 commute each way, on top of the obvious productivity-killing effects of the vast majority of office spaces, these days, just to benefit from these wonderful and sublime interactions -- is just nonsense.
Or like another commenter put it: one of these things people hear and like to repeat, without checking whether it has any grounding in reality.
Nevermind the number of businesses that don't give a shit about your creative, new ideas you had at the water cooler, they know exactly what they want and they're not interested in what the grunts have to say about squat.
>While it's possible to cultivate a friendship via remote work, it's a lot harder.
One of the problems that I feel is only going to get worse, is how remote work is entirely on record. To make real connections you have to be able to talk somewhat freely. With Microsoft going full steam ahead with AI built in to teams for auditing and summarizing, you just wont be able to talk and build friendships like you can irl for fear of being flagged for inappropriate speech.
I've seen it. But, it never seemed to make any difference to what I was actually given leeway to implement on the job.
It's like sideprojects and github repos during a job search - everyone says they are important, everyone thinks they are important, but at the end of the day, very few decision makers are willing to put in the time and risk of involving them in the process of their work.
I have seen it on more than one place. Interestingly, all those places are research-focused universities. (And no, mere research institutes don't seem to enable it.)
In retrospect, it is quite obvious why that happens. Just for a start, if your place is such that a high-level executive announcing a layoff would lead people to believe in him, instead of reacting like "what is he talking about? is he crazy?", then you have no chance of ever getting productive water cooler conversations.
Certain teams thrive off of word-of-mouth data flowing across. I've experienced both type of work environments.
Usually, people may casually walk over to the area where the office gossip happens to get some info. It doesn't have to be a magical hallway or a water cooler.
I've never saw this water-cooler experience you mentioned.
Oh I've seen it, but I'd say it's very rare - I sometimes do pick up useful snippets of information (so-and-so is working on X) while grabbing from the refrigerator, etc.
Like, 5 percent of the time. The rest of the time it's at best definitely tangential -- and sometimes outright nonsense (people talking at you for the sake of having someone to talk at) that grinds my gears and objectively disrupts my flow.
Well, I've worked in tech for half a decade, and I experienced plenty of it in my first job. It benefited me tremendously to be able to get context from other engineers and even people outside of engineering.
And I had none of it in my second job before covid. It's not a guarantee. But it's weird to me that people are going their whole careers without seeing it... maybe I was really lucky at my first job.
I've worked in the tech for more than 2 decades, in different countries. I've worked for startups, for FAANG, and for companies of different sizes in between. I've built successful projects and saw my share of failures.
I've never saw this water-cooler experience you mentioned. It's always small talk of the "Did you see the game yesterday?" sort.
This "water-cooler effect" myth that is repeated often as if it was fact, and that completely puzzles me.
Those important conversation you mentioned, for me, always happened online even when I was in the office, normally through slack discussions (or email threads in the old days).