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ionwake 7 hours ago [-]
I know some of the younger folk may not realise reality is stranger than fiction, but I too have been on a "work mandated drink alchohol bus" where I remember even though I was young, I was terrified the whole time wondering why we were being forced to drink infront of C suite; forced on a hell ride through the black country ( Thats a region in England).
One might think it was naive and odd for me as a young autistic person to be so scared and negative, but sure enough, the next day the best contractor in the company was fired at 9am for calling the CEO an "alright c*nt" during the pub crawl.
The C word being used a token of affection around these parts, was perhaps not the true transgression which was, not to understand, that it was NOT a social function, but a horrifying legal flexing of soft hierarchical power, for purposes of satiating C suite ego, and humiliating everyone beneath them.
chrisldgk 6 hours ago [-]
I remember at the ad agency I used to work at (somewhere around 2018) we used to have a happy hour every Friday where from 5pm onwards all drinks (including booze) in the cafeteria were free, which led to people of all departments including C-Suite to get together and drink.
I remember it as a good time though, I don’t remember anything ever happening that led to people having repercussions for employees. Then again, this is German drinking culture and the stiffest drink you could have was wine, so people wouldn’t usually get wasted, just tipsy.
The Christmas parties were a different breed though. HR definitely had a lot of work to do after those.
lelanthran 5 hours ago [-]
When I was still in my early 20s, at my first office job, drinks after hours (beer, wine) were free from the company kitchen.
Only took part once (because I was new, first week and all), saw how openly employees spoke to the directors (luckily nothing came of it), and never again in my life ever consumed alcohol in front of a boss.
As GP said, it's a full on soft power thing - always keep your wits about you when in the presence of colleagues and bosses.
There is no safe space at work; you can be fired!
butlike 8 minutes ago [-]
Or, the company wanted to throw a nice party for the employees, but economies of scale say that no matter what you do, you're going to offend someone.
canpan 6 hours ago [-]
Japan here and there is a word for it "nominication" for nomu (to drink) and communication. Instead of Christmas party we have a year end party (bonenkai). Otherwise reads the same. It's common and many people actually like it. There can be negatives, like the pressure to drink too much. But I never heard of anyone getting fired in all my social circle.
stavros 1 hours ago [-]
I've been to a work Christmas party where one of my coworkers got so drunk that she couldn't talk and kept grabbing my arm and walking with me. I don't drink at all, so it was a bit surreal, and, compared to Greeks, Brits are on just a whole other level on the normalisation of alcohol consumption.
Obviously there were no repercussions, and when I mentioned something the next day, I got "you're not supposed to talk about that stuff in the office", which was interesting context for me. The drunk colleague and I went on to become really good friends.
not-kinsale-joe 7 hours ago [-]
UK had the most unhinged work drinking culture I had ever seen.
psd1 6 hours ago [-]
Amen. I only got my first job in tech because i put away 6 pints in the pub after the interview.
We conducted interviews after lunch, for this exact purpose. I saw good candidates interview but decline the pub afterwards - they did not get offers.
That company had at least two pub sessions a week, typically running to six rounds or more. We hit our medically-recommended maximum weekly intake by Tuesday; Fridays were carnage.
72deluxe 5 hours ago [-]
This sounds like hell. At one place I worked, they had free pizza on Fridays so the developers could sit around and socialise. If only they realised that socialising was the last thing the developers wanted to do (many of us on the spectrum) and awkwardly standing around chewing whilst avoiding eye contact; I wonder if they still do it?
Pubs sound even worse.
wiether 3 hours ago [-]
I see lots of small consulting companies doing weekly/monthly lunch/dinner events with "everyone" and then boasting about it on LinkedIn, with pictures of the tables.
You can clearly see who are the consulting people, and who are the HR/marketing ones based on who's got fake smiles, and who looks like they are dead inside.
Not only it's more of a redflag than anything, but also, since they are all doing it, what's the goal?
alibarber 5 hours ago [-]
I know this sounds awful - but perhaps hiring people that would turn their workplace into what you just described was exactly what they (as an organisation, not necessarily individually) wanted to avoid, just, perhaps not by overtly saying it.
72deluxe 5 hours ago [-]
Perhaps, but if they wanted any of their 6 million lines of COM-laden C++ to continue working into the future, they'd need those sort of people.
piguin 4 hours ago [-]
No, that's a bit reverse prejudice and also a bit wrong on assumptions. If you bring in people who are levels above they aren't inherently on the spectrum and it's once you bring them in that you have a dependence on finding more instead of working at a complexity and expertise level that might be more maintainable.
72deluxe 4 hours ago [-]
Of course, you don't have to be on the spectrum to be skilled. I was counteracting the argument that a company of developers who love chatting whilst eating pizza is the ideal for programming ability and maintenance of decades of code output.
Assuming that a love of social interaction equates to programming skill would be a mistake, as would assuming that lack of love of social interactions equates to programming skill. The two sets of skills are unrelated, but in a company of people who don't enjoy socialising, forcing a social interaction is counterproductive.
sillyfluke 4 hours ago [-]
Their numbers might be dwindling, but I would wager there are still some devs out there burning the candle from both ends.
To be fair, I find US forced company events like this way more unbearable than UK/European ones. In the US, the incessant combination of excessive alcohol with neurotic self-awareness gets you to another level of hell.
In another FAANG, the L7s were complaining that the level of office machinations that were occuring stateside was off the charts compared to the offices overseas.
UK afterwork pub culture should be under UNESCO cultural protection at this point, I'm always surprised it's lasted this long. One would have to admit it's fended off the decreasing consumption of alcohol in the new generation impressively even though they may despise the tradition.
JohnFen 3 hours ago [-]
> I find US forced company events like this way more unbearable than UK/European ones.
I'm not familiar with European ones, but I agree that forced company events like this is the US are unbearable. I rejoiced once I hit a point in my career where I could safely skip attending them.
oliwarner 4 hours ago [-]
> good candidates interview but decline the pub afterwards - they did not get offers
That's one hell of a lawsuit you're opening yourself up to there. People who don't drink have significant overlap with protected classes.
asdfasvea 2 hours ago [-]
Not trying to go ad hominem, but that's a very ignorant statement.
1. Which ones? I used to be able to stereotype with the best of them, but I cant quickly come up with any protected class that is assigned as teetotalers.
2. Saying you're not hiring someone because they don't drink is a perfectly valid reason for not hiring someone, even if it's a cover for not hiring them because of protected class membership. The laws protecting protected classes are super weak. It is virtually impossible to prove that is the sole reason they weren't hired. All you need is an actual other reason to not hire them--and of course don't put into writing that the real reason is their protected class membership.
oliwarner 30 minutes ago [-]
Saying they won't get the job if they don't come out for drinks excludes (on characteristic) recovering alcoholics, pregnant women, and about a quarter of the world's population on religious grounds.
And just more broadly, some people have lives, family where they can't just be expected out on the piss in the afternoon.
Admitting it on forum is the in. Just like admitting you've been working while up on ket.
lwelyk 1 hours ago [-]
Pregnant women are not supposed to drink.
Many religions discourage or disallow drinking.
I believe a recovered/recovering alcoholic could be considered a protected class.
Many medical conditions or medications cannot be combined with alcohol.
chronos00 2 hours ago [-]
Religion is a protected class, and many religions don’t drink. If the reason they don’t drink is their religion, it isn’t a valid reason to state for not hiring them. Yes, most hr people in this case would use some other alternate reason that isn’t linked to the protected class.
1 hours ago [-]
2 hours ago [-]
DANmode 2 hours ago [-]
> cant quickly come up with any protected class that is assigned as teetotalers
Religious or spiritual belief.
gib444 33 minutes ago [-]
It's particularly difficult to bring a suit against a company for their hiring and firing practices due to difficulty in acquiring solid proof.
The excuse is always culture fit, if that even gets recorded anywhere...
ajb 4 hours ago [-]
While the alcohol consumption can be a bit nuts, the UK has a relatively strong cultural tradition that what happens in the pub stays in the pub. That makes it a useful low-risk way to air work issues that would not be raised in a work meeting, either because criticism would be taken as an offense, or just because the person raising them would not get to speak to the person that needs to hear.
Of course, there's nothing enforcing that managers respect it. The main mechanism is that many managers realise it's in their interests to be able to hear unvarnished truths, and for their team to be able to relieve their feelings outside work instead of inside. And for them to be able to get to know their team better. But not all have the integrity or humility to do so.
stasomatic 3 hours ago [-]
I was in London a couple of months ago. That day there were 2 (or demonstrations), something to do with Palestine and the other with internal UK politics, around the Big Ben / Buckingham palace. Ended up dragged into to the current of the latter on, could basically body surf If I had an inclination. It seemed everyone was drunk, women / men, old/ young. I didn't know you get so drunk on beer. Also, was the first time I've ever seen portable open urinals, where grown man took out their Johnsons in public and released the beer back into the wild.
regexorcist 5 hours ago [-]
Indeed, and I kinda miss it. My first couple IT jobs were right in Central London and we would all religiously meet at the pub after work, along with hundreds from other companies of all kinds. The banter was glorious.
alibarber 5 hours ago [-]
Same - in Soho on a nice (or even not that nice) Friday (or Monday, or Thursday) the whole place would just be one big open air pub. You'd meet so many great people - the atmosphere was just wonderful.
Then COVID came around and I also moved to Finland where that sort of thing is just unheard of.
jamesfmilne 53 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, I worked in Soho for about 14 years and most Thursdays were out at the Pillars of Hercules or Dog & Duck. Fridays are for the out-of-towners.
The company has moved to Bermondsey now, and to be fair the drinks-after-work culture seems to still going fairly strong around this part of town.
The biggest spanner in the works has been my cohort all having kids and not having the spare time to socialise after work.
Definitely miss all that. My liver & pancreas don't miss it though, so it's probably for the best.
GJim 41 minutes ago [-]
> UK had the most unhinged work drinking culture I had ever seen
I prefer the term 'enlightened'.
Here in Blighty, if somebody got rat-arsed at an office party, photocopied their arse and puked in the Yucca plant, they would be regarded as an absolute legend (providing they didn't make a habit of it).
galangalalgol 14 minutes ago [-]
Have the recent studies indicating just how dangerous alcohol consumption is made any impact. Losing a few neurons was one thing but some of the studies don't put it as much less dangerous than tobacco. New guidance in the US is there is no safe quantity and no one should have more than one serving a day. I know a lot of younger sw devs in the US that simply do not drink ever. I once would have said that was a little unusual, but now it is the norm. I suspect it will be stigmatized akin to smoking not that far into the future.
butlike 7 minutes ago [-]
Everything kills you. At least alcohol feels good.
thom 6 hours ago [-]
My first job out of university was with a large local news organization. It's the only place I've worked that had beer on tap in its cafeteria (from 11am). You haven't seen workplace alcoholism until you've worked with a county cricket correspondent.
gadders 7 hours ago [-]
It's dropped off now. It was better in the 90s.
rwmj 6 hours ago [-]
It was pretty mad in the 90s, but I don't recall anyone ever being forced into it at companies I worked for. A company mandated "alcohol bus" sounds ridiculous then and now.
noir_lord 4 hours ago [-]
> A company mandated "alcohol bus" sounds ridiculous then and now.
Sounds like a law suit waiting to happen.
GJim 37 minutes ago [-]
We're not American!
gadders 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, fair. I think the default for a pub lunch would be to drink, but it was never mandatory.
dmos62 7 hours ago [-]
Coxnfused. Was it more unhinged in the 90s or less compared to now?
gadders 6 hours ago [-]
More unhinged and better, especially in banks. I had one senior stakeholder that would come back from the Pub on a Friday and complete change all his previous decisions.
I think my lunchtime record was 4 1/2 pints. Another IT guy on the same session had keys to the building's small data room so let himself in and had a kip.
fakedang 6 hours ago [-]
When I joined the UK division of a bank, back in 2016, we had the help staff wheel drinks carts around the house evey Friday at tea time. Adding Bombay Sapphire to your tea was pretty much the norm.
Didn't stay long because I got a PE offer at an American firm in their London office very quickly, and the culture there was so staid and lonely in comparison.
Part of the reason why we have an office bar with a bartender too set up at my current office. I don't drink, but nothing like drinks to help with bringing people together right after work.
gadders 5 hours ago [-]
I remember one head of trading had a fridge in his office and various bottles of whiskey for a cheeky drink.
dmos62 6 hours ago [-]
I doubt I could walk properly after having 4+ pints in a 1-2 hour window. Presuming it's 4%+ alcohol. You either need to be pretty young or have a pretty accustomed liver, or is it just me?
gadders 5 hours ago [-]
I would have been mid to late 20s. I can't swear I was very productive afterwards. Sleeping in a toilet cubicle was also a thing.
University in the UK is (or was) a great training ground for livers.
c0n5pir4cy 7 hours ago [-]
More unhinged - but a lot of people preferred it that way. To be really clear it's still pretty unhinged and even a decade ago it was much more unhinged.
alibarber 7 hours ago [-]
Being from the UK I’m pretty sure they mean more unhinged.
To be fair I did enjoy the ‘unhingedness’ but I’m also appreciating that being at least a decade younger was also great.
ownagefool 7 hours ago [-]
There was more drinking in the 90s.
You can decide whether that was better or worse.
7 hours ago [-]
Earw0rm 4 hours ago [-]
Mostly in the past tense now, for better or worse.
cosmodisk 6 hours ago [-]
I had a few company events that could easily become the foundation for one of those films where the main characters wake up in the morning in some random Asian country. No matter how crazy people go in these parties, there's always someone watching it and taking mental notes. I stopped getting too drunk in these events since I got into more senior Nowadays my aim is usually to rescue my colleagues and get them home safely:)
ljm 5 hours ago [-]
At risk of sounding like a grump, once I started at a company where almost everyone is partnered up and has kids, and almost everyone basically has nothing to talk about except their partners and kids, I had the perfect incentive to stay away from almost all social events. Or stick around for an hour at most because of how boring it is.
It became pretty clear that drinking culture in a lot of places develops around people having a lot in common, and certainly becomes worse when one of those things in common is 'enjoying drinking'.
I don't mind this. I had all of my 20s and most of my 30s for drinking after work. Now it's not really something I care about.
TFNA 4 hours ago [-]
Me, I've embraced occupational pubgoing as a childless person in my forties because unlike other social activities, it is a way to avoid boring people with children. At least in my country, those men get forced to stay at home, the missus won't allow them to go out socially into the evening.
whateverboat 4 hours ago [-]
I don't drink at work. It's simple as that. I treat every retreat as work trip. I am professional. No gossip, nothing.
sEver_codEs 3 hours ago [-]
Narrator: The CEO wasn't in fact, an "allright c*nt" after all.
ionwake 1 hours ago [-]
I just laughed out loud on the train
xnx 24 minutes ago [-]
Was the CEO David Brent?
croisillon 7 hours ago [-]
i'd believe the C-word is naturally made for the C-suite
gib444 7 hours ago [-]
UK here too. I've seen so many people fired after a work event with a free bar I'm starting to wonder if it's an HR strategy (eg to weed out the cocky sales people who would end up embarrassing the company. It's a trial run for late nights with clients)
> NOT a social function, but a horrifying legal flexing of soft hierarchical power, for purposes of satiating C suite ego, and humiliating everyone beneath them.
Very well described!
ionwake 60 minutes ago [-]
First compliment in living memory on HN thank you
archibaldJ 6 hours ago [-]
put them into a Cartesian Closed Category and you an emulate the whole thing with LLMs.
varispeed 7 hours ago [-]
I remember calling the whole board "cunts" to their faces. They all laughed.
Then I remember CEO only in his underwear emptying bottle of whisky into his mouth, shouting "I'll fucking fuck everyone in this bitch!" and then collapsing. His PA and another employee then dragged him to his room.
The 2000s were wild.
Now I consider anything involving alcohol as abusive. If company has a drinking "culture" or going to pub after work, I nope out.
Johnny555 15 hours ago [-]
Offsite retreats seem like a bad idea in general, I've never been to one where I felt the team or company worked together better afterwards, and I've seen some spectacularly bad results... like the time the facilitator tried to get to the bottom of tensions between the CTO and head of sales (the classic problem of "Engineering isn't shipping features fast enough" and "Sales is selling features before even consulting with engineering"). The discussion quickly turned shockingly personal and within a month after the retreat both the CTO and head of sales quit. At least they called an end to the retreat early.
gkoberger 15 hours ago [-]
I feel like our offsites, especially in a post-COVID remote world, tend to improve communication and productivity. People get to know their coworkers, and feel much more comfortable working cross-functionality.
I've had some bad experiences, of course, but overall I've found it to be incredibly worth it.
annzabelle 13 hours ago [-]
I think there's a difference between getting employees who work remotely from each other into the same room for a week, and a "retreat" offsite where pseudo-theraputic approaches are used to try to get employees to open up or bond socially.
gkoberger 12 hours ago [-]
I think “retreat” is used pretty colloquially and doesn’t imply pseudo-therapy.
annzabelle 12 hours ago [-]
From the article:
> “Vulnerability-Trust exercise”
From your parent comment:
> the facilitator tried to get to the bottom of tensions between the CTO and head of sales
I was referring specifically to these sorts of things. Retreat doesn't always include this, but sometimes it does, and when it does it's a stupid idea.
lukan 7 hours ago [-]
"Retreat doesn't always include this, but sometimes it does, and when it does it's a stupid idea."
Unless maybe done by professionals?
I never have been to one such retreat, but I know human conflicts and I know what difference it can make, if skilled people can mediate.
Swenrekcah 7 hours ago [-]
Such professional therapy should probably be administered privately and during the course of a regular workday.
lukan 6 hours ago [-]
Professional individual therapy is something different from professional mediation between people with conflicts.
SkiFire13 10 hours ago [-]
I've mostly seen "retreat" being used for cases where you go on a pseudo-vacation with collegues paid by your company, with or without pseudo-therapy bullshit.
I've been on a couple of them (without the bullshit) and people did indeed open up and bonded, but I should note that the conditions for this were positive in the first place (i.e. we weren't trying to invert some negative situation).
kakacik 7 hours ago [-]
Nothing that can't be achieved over couple of beers after work, thats how (not only) Czechs do it and it generally works very well. Bonus points if you can get customers for such event too, a lot of things can be figured out quickly instead of corporate meetings.
throw10920 11 hours ago [-]
Huh. Reading your comment and the parent above - maybe retreats aren't "therapeutic", but "exacerbatory" - as opposed to making interpersonal relationships uniformly better (bad -> good and good -> better), they make good relationships better but bad relationships worse?
wongarsu 7 hours ago [-]
The most valuable element is probably in forming positive interpersonal relationships where none existed previously. Whether that's people that work remotely and rarely see each other in person, or people who work in the same building but rarely interact
gkoberger 11 hours ago [-]
I would very much agree with this. If you’re at an offsite and it goes that badly, things probably weren’t solid to begin with.
kilroy123 6 hours ago [-]
I'll offer another antidote. Every single place I have ever worked at that had such retreats had a big layoff within ~6 months.
It's like the CEO or execs see there are a lot of problems and think this will magically fix all the "issues". It doesn't, so they turn to the next solution. Just fire a bunch of staff and start over.
ljm 5 hours ago [-]
Probably see it as the easy way out because actually bringing about change in a culture that is already entrenched is hard work and they don't have the mettle for it. Or don't trust the org to be on board with it.
Easier to just do a reset instead of thinking about how one might bring effective change over a reasonable period of time.
itake 8 hours ago [-]
I worked remotely with only seeing my team a few times per year. During our last offsite, I looked around the 80+ person room and realized that I just don't enjoy working with any of these people.
72deluxe 4 hours ago [-]
I wonder if we should "enjoy" it, or whether it's just that we can't relate to the other people in the slightest when in person? I work from home and very very very rarely do I go into the office, but when I do it's quite pleasant and all but I am glad to be free of the social environment; I am there to solve things and get stuff fixed and working, not make new friends. I don't mean that nastily - I mean I go to work to work; I don't go to socialise. Some people cannot differentiate these two concepts.
tesnorindian 7 hours ago [-]
+1. I too feel the same thing after 3 years of remote work. Sometimes I even feel that my colleagues are way more dumb than they appeared to look in online.
Cthulhu_ 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah that was me after 3 years during a company over the panny-D, I just had nothing in common with any of the people working there, the company didn't seem to have much ambitions, definitely did not realize they needed 5-10 more people to do the work they wanted to be done.
jraby3 12 hours ago [-]
We have one annually for my company. It's at a casino, with a few scheduled meals and some activities (video game room, trivia done by a professional company).
It's voluntary and employees are allowed to bring their spouse. I think it helps a lot with communication, especially since we are a distributed team and most peoplr don't see each other.
But it's hard for me to know for sure, no one tells the owners the truth. It is voluntary and almost everyone attends. I think most people think of it as a free vacation.
happymellon 9 hours ago [-]
I guess it's a personal thing, but I don't see how everyone going to a casino is a great idea, or developing team relationships.
psd1 6 hours ago [-]
I worked at a company that was pathologically thirsty and had only hard drinkers above entry-level.
For those people, just drinking was the bonding. It reinforced the tribal affiliation.
Casinos often provide free drinks. QED
happymellon 3 hours ago [-]
This makes sense its the:
> I like to spend the company budget on blow and hookers, therefore it makes sense for me to invite all the employees to a strip club as it is a little more restrained.
Mentality.
simtel20 6 hours ago [-]
I would guess that the casino is a relatively cheap space that can do entertainment and conferences and food, and it's not being chosen for the gambling aspects
happymellon 3 hours ago [-]
I get what they offer, I guess I just don't see that as team building.
eudamoniac 10 minutes ago [-]
Having fun with people in general is team building. Amusement park would do the same thing. It doesn't have to be any special format.
pif 7 hours ago [-]
> I think most people think of it as a free vacation.
I'm shocked that someone does NOT think so!
Hendrikto 5 hours ago [-]
Is it really a vacation if you have to spend it with your work colleagues?
iwontberude 5 hours ago [-]
Not as shocking when you realize you are wasting your downtime with work colleagues. I’d rather have control over my downtime regardless of who is paying.
KptMarchewa 1 hours ago [-]
Do you really think it's either or? I certainly don't use my days off for that.
erfgh 5 hours ago [-]
> I think most people think of it as a free vacation.
It's not free if the company is paying for it.
pif 7 hours ago [-]
> classic problem of "Engineering isn't shipping features fast enough" and "Sales is selling features before even consulting with engineering"
That's not a problem, in the sense that there was never any possible debate: if I make a promise on your behalf, I am a di*k.
ncphillips 6 hours ago [-]
It’s a mix. Partially a systems problem. We used to have that problem, then we changed the way work is selected. Sales is part of the process, so they’re forced to see all the things we could build and help decide which ones were saying no to. They still promise things occasionally but they hedge a lot more now. And our teams delivery rate has increased dramatically because we’re not getting yanked around all the time.
thmsths 50 minutes ago [-]
This sounds like a successful implementation of the conjoined triangles of success :)
crossroadsguy 13 hours ago [-]
These often happened on weekends and I used to simply ask my manager about the days off for this and answer often was a shocked face and a no. So I rarely attended those.
em3rgent0rdr 10 hours ago [-]
Work should be time-bounded. Weekends should generally be off limit, even if it supposed to be a "fun" work thing.
adastra22 15 hours ago [-]
Sounds like it was productive!
solatic 14 hours ago [-]
I might be reading too closely / projecting, but...
Sounds like an ineffectual CEO who didn't understand that his role, like any manager, is to help resolve interpersonal conflict between his subordinates that they're having trouble working out themselves. Outsourcing that to a random coordinator reeks of conflict-avoidant behavior. That they both quit tells me that neither one thought the other was the sole problem they were dealing with.
paxys 15 hours ago [-]
I agree, unironically. Not all workplace tensions can be resolved amicably. Often the only solution is for one of the parties to go. The sooner it happens, the better.
protocolture 13 hours ago [-]
Not one but 2 managers removed. Amazing result.
sublinear 14 hours ago [-]
No it wasn't. Those kinds of conflicts always have blame for the rest of the execs too.
fg137 4 hours ago [-]
We have a "retreat" every other year or so at a certain resort across the country. What happens is that the company flies everyone there + including overseas employees) do 3 days of meeting plus 1 day of free time before flying everyone back. 2 employees share a room, no family or friends allowed even if you want to pay for your hotel rooms out of the pocket.
I don't see any point of this. Such a waste of time and jet fuel. I would rather have those meetings at worksite and get a nice discount for the resort and go there with my own schedule and on my own terms.
toader 3 hours ago [-]
You are forced to share a room with another employee?
DANmode 2 hours ago [-]
The golden-handcuff stories just keep getting weirder as I go down the thread.
energy123 10 hours ago [-]
HR justifying their own bloat. The staff and shareholders pay the price. Agency conflict of interest. The fault is with the CEO for not getting HR in line.
riffraff 7 hours ago [-]
I had very positive experiences with some offsites, where the people 1) had fun 2) felt closer and able to interact more easily with each other (especially when working in a remote environment it's harder to grow closer)
But, like everything else, not all people enjoy them. I have seen people find obvious excuses to avoid them.
foobarian 14 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of that super cringy one that Wizards of the Coast did early on
alanfranz 10 hours ago [-]
Looks like a bad offsite handling, both in your case and linked article.
I feel that offsites work best when you let people interact on their own schedule, pace and topics. Trying to force hands via a lot of activities can kind of backfire.
Relationships happen. They are not programmatically built.
kube-system 14 hours ago [-]
Retreats like this just concentrate the social dynamics of the people the organization has hired. I think people’s experience with them is directly correlated with the caliber of people you work with.
All of the stupid shit I’ve seen happen at these events have been done by people who I don’t miss working with
Maybe a retreat would be a good 3rd round interview.
javier2 7 hours ago [-]
My experience is that its usually good for communications and cooperation, but not nearly as helpful as management envision.
lostlogin 9 hours ago [-]
Film it and you have a Netflix series. It sounds better than most reality TV.
gspr 9 hours ago [-]
Works well where I work. Some ground rules to help are:
* Do the bulk during work hours.
* Be 100% accepting of people who don't wanna spend free time on it. Or compensate.
* Add in loads of general fun.
* Let the employees be in charge of what constitutes fun.
* Go light on the actual work.
* Plan well ahead, respect people's own schedules.
11 hours ago [-]
Cthulhu_ 7 hours ago [-]
I think that ultimately it can help make a better company/team/etc, BUT you need a program / agenda and people that know what they're doing - can't just make it a bro fest.
Alcohol can be fine, but you will discover some people change when drunk, not always for the better. We had a few incidents at a previous company I worked for (involving people getting removed by bouncers or the whole company being banned from a venue - but tbf there was a lot of barf in the hallways and the like), but I gotta say, the people at the one I'm at now are all very conservative and mature when it comes to drinking and offsite behaviour. From what I know so far, anyway.
jitl 15 hours ago [-]
i’ve been to a bunch and all resulted in a big increase in trust between teams especially between tech and sales. i mended a few poor relationships at the last notion one in maui, made some lifelong friends. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ maybe for every shitty one there’s 2 that are great
sidewndr46 15 hours ago [-]
this could pretty much be it's own editorial, if you're feeling journalistic
rdtsc 15 hours ago [-]
> Adam Mendler, a workplace expert, told Inc. that this kind of exercise carries real risk when companies invite openness without ever clarifying how that vulnerability will be treated afterward.
I always felt that those trust exercises, "bring your whole self to work", "let us pay for a personality test so we can know each other better" are all ruses to find the most gullible people and then take advantage of them or get rid of them.
8f2ab37a-ed6c 14 hours ago [-]
Please don't bring your whole self to work, the rest of us don't need that from you. Be polite, congenial and professional. You have the rest of your day to let it rip however you'd like.
ksenzee 12 hours ago [-]
Maybe not your whole self, but I'd like the people I work with to feel safe talking about their family, their disabilities, their religion, their culture or subculture, the things they love doing, whatever makes them human.
lelanthran 4 hours ago [-]
> Maybe not your whole self, but I'd like the people I work with to feel safe talking about their family, their disabilities, their religion, their culture or subculture, the things they love doing, whatever makes them human.
Work is not a safe space. The people who say they want everyone to feel safe in their speech usually (actually, almost always) want people who agree with them on
> family, their disabilities, their religion, their culture or subculture, the things they love doing,
vintermann 10 hours ago [-]
Then I hope you have an extremely flat company structure, not just formally but in practice.
Don't try to fast-talk people into opening up. They have a better idea than you what's safe to talk about, about their lives. If they think they can't open up, they're probably right.
ksenzee 9 hours ago [-]
I don't own a company, and nobody reports to me. I simply said I want my coworkers to feel safe being themselves. I've had jobs where that was true, and they were better places to work all around, probably because "I feel safe talking about my transition/mental health/divorce" also translates to "I feel safe telling my boss this release needs to be delayed" and "I feel safe admitting I need some help writing this code."
happymellon 9 hours ago [-]
I really don't want to hear about your religion, and I don't want to see your Jesus Loves You gifs posted to the all tech Slack channel.
roryirvine 8 hours ago [-]
Sure, but that sort of behaviour is plainly abusive unless you're actually working in an explicitly religious setting.
But merely saying "I'm taking next Wednesday off to celebrate Eid" ought to be fine everywhere, as is "this weekend I'm singing in my church choir then going for a picnic".
Similarly, wearing a wedding ring or mentioning that you have a partner should never be a problem, but issuing a company-wide invite to your next sex party likely will be.
"Personal" isn't a synonym for "intimate". It's reasonable to assume that people are able to share the former without forcing their colleagues to deal unnecessarily with the latter.
chucksta 3 hours ago [-]
Both Merriam-webster and thesaurus.com have intimate as a synonym for persaonl. Thesaurus.com says its one of the strongest.
happymellon 2 hours ago [-]
I get that.
One persons level of comfort is not the same as others, so just saying I want people to be comfortable having their religious opinions respected is not a simple request.
Some religious opinions are basically oppression of others. I refuse to allow people to be bigots in my presence regardless of their reasoning.
ksenzee 2 hours ago [-]
Having previously been a member of such a religion, and having left it specifically over human rights issues, I am delighted to inform you that there are many individuals who identify as members of such religions but who are not personally bigoted, and who in fact may privately be uncomfortable about that aspect of their religious belief. If you already know someone, and you have reason to believe they're not bigoted, but then they out themselves as a member of some such group, you don't have to assume the worst.
happymellon 1 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately I am going to have to disagree.
Also as someone who was a member of church which had anti-christian ideals, pointing out the hypocrisy can be the only way for them to question what they are in. Doing and saying nothing helps no one.
ksenzee 17 minutes ago [-]
There's a large middle ground between saying nothing in the face of bigotry and proceeding immediately from "oh you're a member of <group>?" to an itemized list of hypocrisies, without stopping to find out what the individual person in front of you actually thinks about said hypocrisies. All I'm advocating for is that last: talk to people like they're people, not like they're mindless members of <group>.
joenot443 5 hours ago [-]
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mlrtime 5 hours ago [-]
This says a lot more about you than them.
happymellon 5 hours ago [-]
It says a similar amount about both of us.
swat535 1 hours ago [-]
As a Catholic I agree with the parent. "Street preaching" never works and bothers people. There are better ways to evangelize.
Work environments are professional environments.
Ekaros 48 minutes ago [-]
Some religions and cultures are more accepted than others. I don't think that works for less accepted groups. People are very intolerant in general. And they are especially not intolerant of those who are intolerant...
Silence is always the preferable choice in those matters.
bluecheese452 5 hours ago [-]
Does your religion proscribe death to those who leave it? They may feel safe talking about it but I don’t feel safe hearing about it.
iwontberude 5 hours ago [-]
My religion uses hallucinogens in ceremony and if I got fired for speaking about my religious practice I would certainly sue the shit out of them.
dmos62 7 hours ago [-]
Isn't this just an attitude you get when working in a bad environment or with people you don't like?
icepush 8 hours ago [-]
Why are there people that want this in the office? Don't want this.
arw0n 2 hours ago [-]
I'm spending almost a third of my life at work, no shade to the people having to work to pay the bills, but I'd like to get a bit more than just that out of that time: Learn new skills, meet interesting people, have good conversations, have fun. Having something akin to friendship with long-term coworkers and collaborators makes all of that much easier.
rkangel 8 hours ago [-]
I'm not saying that people should talk about this all the time, but are you saying you don't want people to feel able to mention key details of their personal life?
Mountain_Skies 6 hours ago [-]
I want to be free from being burdened with your unmet social needs and I want to feel safe when rejecting that burden you wish to push onto me. Make some friends or pay for a therapist, your coworkers aren't there to be your social support.
djeastm 6 hours ago [-]
It's the difference between allowing something and encouraging something.
harvey9 10 hours ago [-]
As long as it's a subculture that is tacitly approved by the group and by management.
ruszki 10 hours ago [-]
For example? Because usually, people who say this have something in their mind about which they should rightfully be ashamed. Like people who want other people to have lesser rights.
GoodDreams 10 hours ago [-]
Ethical non-monogamy is one example.
10 hours ago [-]
vkou 11 hours ago [-]
Their humanity does not serve the bottom line.
11 hours ago [-]
finnthehuman 9 hours ago [-]
>I'd like the people I work with to feel safe talking about their family, their disabilities, their religion, their culture or subculture
Yes, you want to feel like the people around you feel safe to share it. Everyone with things that are uncomfortable to hear have learned that they're not. They know the polite fiction to talk around it and make you feel like they're open. They're not.
ksenzee 2 hours ago [-]
Of course people know how to hide things that aren't safe to tell everyone. I do, however, genuinely mean what I'm saying. I worked somewhere once where the nature of the work meant almost everyone was of a particular political persuasion. I was of the opposite political persuasion. I was also one of the most junior employees there. It was a good enough bunch of people that I felt safe mentioning it in passing one day, and it led to a really great conversation. I was not afraid of being fired for it, but more importantly, I was not afraid of being ostracized for it.
finnthehuman 2 hours ago [-]
Oh. I see the disconnect between us.
To me, either the culture bubble is extremely strong in your area, or being able to admit alignment with ideas shared by a major political party in an area where another party is more popular is an very low bar.
On the scale of topics that I conceal about myself, politics is as easy as talking about the weather.
joe_the_user 10 hours ago [-]
Employers who expect to know things about employee's personal lives are despicable.
I expect to accomplish my tasks. I can be friendly, polite and humorous but you don't need to know anything about how I live.
The main factor is a boss or supervisor can act on their judgement of an employee and employees do not have the same leverage.
Archer6621 6 hours ago [-]
That is right. The hierarchical nature of this setting makes it impossible to be fully open, unless you truly are the most uninteresting person on the planet. If not, open and indiscriminate sharing is going to be a potential liability. Some things in life are very useful to know, and I believe being deliberate about what you share about yourself with whom is one of them.
everfrustrated 4 hours ago [-]
If you ask your employer to treat you like a robot - don't be surprised when you get replaced by a robot.
Plont 10 hours ago [-]
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DonsDiscountGas 6 hours ago [-]
I agree with you, and also the company shouldn't be encouraging people to bring their whole self to a mandatory work retreat and then firing people who do.
PepegaRoach 13 hours ago [-]
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unwise-exe 11 hours ago [-]
>>> bring your whole self to work
This one always seemed like an "invitation" to demonstrate that you have the correct life experiences and attitudes.
Like those holistic admissions essays that sprung up when universities got banned from explicitly treating applicants differently based on race.
busyant 55 minutes ago [-]
I don't have any shocking story, but I also was once made to participate in a day long group bonding exercise.
one activity was for each member of our department to grade the overall "personality" of our department using several personality dimensions (e. g., kindness, competitiveness, etc.)
what I think i learned was that each of us projected our dominant personality traits onto the whole group.
eg, the hyper competitive climber said our department was cutthroat.
the guy who avoided conflict said it was a happy department with few disagreements.
etc.
beyond that insight, I didn't learn much.
dlcarrier 12 hours ago [-]
It's more likely incompetence than malice. There's a reason people don't share everything about their personal lives at work, and sometimes leaders think forgetting that will make everyone better off.
jquery 15 hours ago [-]
Probably so, but it was incredibly ill advised of Netflix to admit to this. That’s what I find the most shocking, far more than the firing itself. I cannot fathom how admitting “yeah we fired them for going to therapy” plays to their benefit.
bjt 15 hours ago [-]
Because at some point their emails about the firing will be subpoenaed, and if they lie about it now it's going to bite them harder later.
nvme0n1p1 14 hours ago [-]
They still didn't have to outright confess to the crime though. When talking to journalists you're allowed to say "no comment".
eru 12 hours ago [-]
That's why we got training at Google that more or less told us not to put these kinds of things in writing.
Remember: the e in e-mail stands for evidence.
shrikant 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah when I worked at Deloitte Consulting, we had similar training that said something to the effect of "don't put something in an email that wouldn't feel comfortable as a newspaper headline".
red-iron-pine 3 hours ago [-]
"assume your mother, and/or the courts, will read it." was the version I heard
lukan 7 hours ago [-]
"Remember: the e in e-mail stands for evidence."
Were you told this literally?
Scoundreller 12 hours ago [-]
And the O in RTO stands for Oral-communication-only
DonsDiscountGas 6 hours ago [-]
And the s stands for secure
bsimpson 13 hours ago [-]
"Bring your whole self to work" was HR virtue signaling to the people favored by DEI, when it was still en vogue.
sssilver 11 hours ago [-]
I always observed that as "bring your whole self, as long as your whole self exhibits the exact same behavior and demeanor as every other corporate employee, ideally wrapped in uniquely colored skin for beautiful decorum".
watwut 9 hours ago [-]
I remember a "beer test" as a hiring practice recommended on HN and blogs. And pointifications about how culture fit is important. And effectively mandatory games playing after work. And "united meritocracy" slogan bullshit.
So, go outta there with complains about hr slogan and dei.
sethammons 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, beer test: would I have a beer with them / did they order a beer at lunch like everyone else
This was a practice that our company had to be explicitly coached away from. Early 2010s. Def before DEI was popular, which feels more like later 2010s.
kotaKat 6 hours ago [-]
> "let us pay for a personality test so we can know each other better"
CliftonStrengths, home of the Corporate Autism Test. Just which of those 35 Signature Themes(tm) will be the ones that get pulled out that look like the giant autistic red flag?
laughs in Ideation, Connectedness, Belief, Intellection, and Input
s1artibartfast 13 hours ago [-]
There's a huge difference between being yourself and not having a filter.
I absolutely think people should be themselves at work. In my mind this generally means not acting like a robot or treating other people like toasters. It is psychologically crushing to operate in a they're all workplace where people do that. The best managers I've ever had were those I could discuss my emotions or that of my team with.
That said, there are clear lines about workplace decorum.
It's one thing to say " I find this new Direction very frustrating for reasons x y and z, and the team morale is low", but another thing to say "i think the new leader is a dipshit idiot"
For some reason people think being yourself means having no filter
tchalla 5 hours ago [-]
The challenge is that your line for filter is another person's line for censorship and a third person's line for "not being yourself".
s1artibartfast 13 minutes ago [-]
Yep, that is inherent in the Human Condition. Other people have different opinions than mine.
I mostly curious why people seem to expect a world free of this challenge, and look for obviously wrong black and white rules to avoid dealing with that reality.
ikr678 9 hours ago [-]
I'm now in a team where I don't particularly like any of my coworkers due to all the things they have shared over the years which has accumulated in a persistent ick about all of them.
I can work with them fine, I just don't want to share any part of myself with these people and invite commentary from people I do not respect.
Lutger 11 hours ago [-]
Exactly. The 'whole self' also includes a deliberate thinking mind. People often equate feeling free and being yourself with losing all inhibitions and restraint. That may free great for a while, to unburden yourself, but its a strict subset of your capabilities.
Archer6621 6 hours ago [-]
You are still not being yourself though, if you have to suppress the tendency to call someone a dipshit idiot. It is arguable whether the "self" in that case needs some work or not, but the idea about "being yourself" is being able to express yourself freely without giving it any conscious thought. Think of the setting where you are with close friends, and let the conversation flow freely. Having to filter yourself is the opposite of that. In reality, you can never truly be yourself in an environment that you do not own without risking dire consequences or opposition (even when you own it, this eventually becomes the case). So I think not being yourself is a good and necessary compromise for harmonious functioning within an organ, and there is no need to soften this by saying that having a filter is different from not being yourself.
The real challenge lies in properly tuning the strength of this filter, being deliberate with it and knowing what can be said, and what cannot be said. The people who act like robots err on the side of extreme caution, and are unwilling to invest time and effort into tuning and developing this filter. They also don't realize that this makes it impossible to connect with people, to their own demise.
trhway 13 hours ago [-]
absolutely. I learned by example early on from our manager what one should say during something like a "vulnerability-trust exercise." : it should be something like "i'm too detail oriented", "i put too much time and effort into my job" or, max, "i trust/expect people to be similarly overly-diligent, etc.".
For an exec to talk about therapy - that is allowed only to the top dogs, like CEO, who can pass any personal crap upon his reports.
wxw 12 hours ago [-]
> He had been warned during his performance review that he should “drop one or two less f-bombs but don’t stop entirely.”
> It goes on to say that at the same retreat Baillie drank a Guinness standing on his head, after sharing that he had learned the trick from his former father in law during a conversation inspired by the trust session.
> “His colleague immediately asked for a demonstration, rather than withhold the openness that the session had encouraged, he performed the trick,” the papers say.
> Sad clown paradox is characterised by a cyclothymic temperament, which encourages the creation of light-hearted humour in a professional setting, despite inner turmoil.
xyzsparetimexyz 5 hours ago [-]
So?
reactordev 16 hours ago [-]
Your company, your coworkers, are not your friends. HR is not there for you, it's to protect the company from you. Do not disclose personal information to those who control your livelihood. Once you leave or if you build up a personal relationship with a coworker, outside of work, then maybe. Even still. I will never divulge what I have been through simply because corporate wants to be "inclusive".
aljgz 12 hours ago [-]
This is a recipe for a sad life. It's avoiding friendship for the fear of betrayal. You get a lot of benefits by being good friends with colleagues. There are, however important things to be aware of:
1- "Though shall not" limit their social life to their colleagues (or any single group that can disappear with a divorce, change of jobs, or hobby, maybe because of an incident).
2- "Though shall not" blindly help people with the hope of being helped in return. Help with generosity, but know the limits: don't sacrifice yourself, and certainly, don't count on people returning the favor as your main plan. It's incredible how much happier we can be just by helping people, if we fire and forget, rather than cling onto.
3- Do not define yourself with your job, your success in there, or with your colleagues' approvals. This is extremely hard, yet extremely important. Diversify what defines you. Be able to mentally afford being bad at some of them. Don't let any of them define who you are. This lets you act with true confidence (not insecurity disguised as overconfidence), which is extremely pleasant for yourself and others.
alentred 7 hours ago [-]
You seem to contradict yourself, or at least actually support the OP's point. If you don't define yourself with your job, but have other self-identities outside, there is nothing sad about having different takes to the amount of personal information shared in various circles.
Extending on that, I do not agree with "do not define yourself with your job". Why not? It's a big, if not biggest, part of almost everyone's life. What's bad is defining yourself with your job ALONE. Psychological safety comes from having multiple self-identities: be an engineer at work, a volunteer on weekends, amateur radio enthusiast on Thursdays nights, or whatever, and don't mix those!
reactordev 7 hours ago [-]
>”this is a recipe for a sad life”
No, this is a recipe for surviving corporate America. You can have and make friends but be cautious of coworkers that you work directly with. I’ve made friends outside of work. I’ve made friends at work but I do not expect to be friends with everyone I work with.
wasmitnetzen 6 hours ago [-]
>> a sad life
> corporate America
Sounds like you're saying the same thing.
red-iron-pine 10 minutes ago [-]
"work friends aren't real friends, but they sometimes can be"
kunley 9 hours ago [-]
Disagree. It's just admitting that the company can and will be cynical when it comes to the conflict of interests between them and the employee.
Making friends at the workplace is fine until there is such conflict, then where will they stand? If they will turn they back on you (and most of them will), then how much is such relation worth in the first place?
lkjdsklf 4 hours ago [-]
It’s also sacrificing your career.
Professional networks are a massive important part of growing/building a career. This is especially true in an environment where there are mass layoffs constantly.
Building personal and trusting relationships is a huge part of developing that network.
This doesn’t mean you should turn every coworker into your therapist, but the other extreme is also bad for both your career and your person.
aljgz 9 hours ago [-]
How's that different from friends at your sports club? How does the risk of your workplace friends not taking your side balance against the benefit of the possibility that they will support you?
Should I give up years of joy and sense of community and belonging for the fear that someday my workplace friends will betray me? And then years more of suffering in my next workplace?
A strategy that minimizes risk rarely maximizes reward.
reactordev 6 hours ago [-]
The tragedy strikes when you associate your workplace with belonging because here, at-will employment means you never truly belong.
kakacik 7 hours ago [-]
You see things in binary mode, world is anything but that.
If I am not making friends at work, it doesn't simply equate to "sad life". Maybe it would for you, but then you can question why behaving so, work isn't and shouldn't be one's central piece of existence. Maybe you were never fired, or never saw firing for all the wrong reasons. Maybe you work so much its hard to have an actual life outside of work. At the end it doesn't matter, but folks do see things differently to you and its fine.
ricksunny 10 hours ago [-]
#2 I believe that there is at least one entire culture on the planet that comports itself this way, whose emergent macro outcomes can be debated.
aljgz 8 hours ago [-]
Interesting... Can you elaborate? I did not get the reference.
_dark_matter_ 13 hours ago [-]
This is so sad. I have made amazing friends with my colleagues in the past. My days are made better when they can be funny, we can share moments, and we can support each other in hard times. Even remotely I have managed to stay in touch with them. It is a real friendship, built from a decade of learning just how this other person ticks.
Really hope I didn't have to ever give that up.
reactordev 7 hours ago [-]
You can make friends but don’t assume that they are simply because you share a common trauma of being cooped up in the same building.
I’ve made friends at work. I wouldn’t call them friend friends but I’ve made friends at work.
joenot443 5 hours ago [-]
I think if you consider your job a form of trauma then any judgements you have on it will be downstream of that.
reactordev 3 hours ago [-]
Everything is a form of trauma. Jobs are just notorious for it.
crossroadsguy 13 hours ago [-]
I was rejected in a hiring process because a co-worker worked there. They asked him for feedback in the final hiring decision. I was being considered for a senior staff role. The meeting room had two of my ex-co-workers. One was the person who had referred me and was my tech lead at a previous work place. This (feedback giver) co-worker (my peer; from yet another work place) told them all was great and hunky dory but "he is a work life balance kind of person". I was not hired. Also, my two co-workers there didn't know each other really and didn't know they both had worked with me in the past until that meeting. Company had connected those dots on LinkedIn.
p1anecrazy 12 hours ago [-]
Good riddance. A “work-life balance kind of person” is not a negative characteristic; even more so at a position where your behavior is an inspiration to many people
crossroadsguy 12 hours ago [-]
Well, I live in India. “Being available” and making others do the same is the national managerial obsession.
ocschwar 2 hours ago [-]
Which is why I am sitting right now in a meeting and the presenter is logged in from Bangalore and I don't even want to know what `TZ=Asia/Kolkata date` will tell me.
tesnorindian 7 hours ago [-]
People should reject this mentality and live their life.
reactordev 6 hours ago [-]
Their GDP would suffer.
dust-jacket 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah this person saved you.
They were asked if you'd fit in and they gave the most diplomatic, polite feedback that they knew would be be taken as a no. Their comment was a pretty clear admission that this was not a "work life balance kind of company".
reactordev 6 hours ago [-]
Once upon a time, when the tech talent pool was smaller, there was this really caustic individual I used to work with that loved to argue. They would never give praise or say something like "oh that's cool!" but would rather debate everything. A few years later, I'm now working at a different company and someone comes to me asking to help them review a resume. It was that individual. I was clear about what talent this individual brought but I also added my anecdote about their behavior at the previous company. I gave them room though to find out for themselves. During the interview with that individual, they asked a few questions that would elicit this kind of behavior and they did not disappoint. They did not get the job.
I treat everyone I work with with respect but I also don't go so far as to let them into the inner circle. I wish people could just respect people but I've seen too many office politics sessions to know better. I wished to make friends with some coworkers outside of work but it never amounted to much.
ido 12 hours ago [-]
Sounds like you dodged a bullet and the coworker did you a favor.
anderber 15 hours ago [-]
Exactly this. No matter how they dress it up, HR is there to protect the company, not you.
s1artibartfast 10 hours ago [-]
Genuine question. Can you tell me why people love saying this so much?
xquce 10 hours ago [-]
Because HR lies and say the opposite in the majority of companies. "Come to us with any problems, it's safe and anonymous, we are here to help you".
From personal experience I have reported gross treats by senior leadership to an HR rep who was shocked about hearing their HR employee evals being suppressed by only allowing score between 8-10 in a 1-10 score.
The HR rep confirmed it personally that it was happening and a few months later appeared on the other side of the desk with the leadership as they fired me for budget reasons.
kakacik 6 hours ago [-]
This is corporate default. Don't stick your head too much, don't make too much noise, vent off someplace else ie via some cool sports. Doesn't matter how righteous, how correct and good for the company, it will very easily back fire you. Its kafquesque catch-22 all over the place, be a good boy and accept the paycheck with crap it comes along. Or move, but its not always greener on the next site.
reactordev 6 hours ago [-]
There are no more patches of green grass left.
xquce 37 minutes ago [-]
Just to add a followup to my story.
If you can't find it, find people and create it!
What I did was to build my own grass field(started company with my team) and it has been fucking great.
We made a better product and made enough of a name of ourselves, that while I lost the battle that time with the former leadership, I fought long enough to see them all lose their jobs.
As a CEO myself now, I choose not to have an HR rep and try to do better for my people.
Also this is in EU so as a warning to others,like me then, who thought HR in the US could do this but not here.
andrewaylett 6 hours ago [-]
Even if the people working in HR genuinely want to do the right thing for the employees, and company policies support them doing that, interactions with HR are inherently adversarial.
The people within HR may be friendly, they've probably got friends :). It can be a very people-oriented role. But they are incapable of being your friend when you're interacting with them in their role as representative for the company.
I greatly appreciate my employer's HR folk, they're really lovely, very good at their jobs, and want to help. But if I have to have a formal meeting with them, I would definitely bring along my union rep.
reactordev 6 hours ago [-]
Entirely this. When you are interacting with HR, that person on the other side is trying to protect the company from whatever claims you are about to make.
andrewaylett 3 hours ago [-]
Any claims are irrelevant to the inherent adversarial nature of the role, which comes from the authority they wield.
Edit: which also means you're not wrong, if you've got claims that trigger damage control then HR are even less your friend.
yifanl 2 hours ago [-]
They have authority over you, therefore all interactions must be taken under that context.
vdomi 8 hours ago [-]
HR stands for Human Resources, as in how the company manages ones of its resources, the humans. Is this not obvious at all?
s1artibartfast 27 minutes ago [-]
I agree. If it is so obvious, why do people like saying it?
Do they also go around repeating the sky is blue?
UncleMeat 3 hours ago [-]
While this isn't necessarily true at the individual level, HR as an institution is this way. The first HR departments were developed to defuse feminist agitation against sexist workplace environments at Sears.
iwontberude 5 hours ago [-]
I have had multiple friends sexually harassed or had a coworker talk about sexual exploitation in front of them and when they went to HR, they were fired and the offending person not held responsible. This is very common. Never tell HR anything or go to them for help ever.
If you work for HR, please kindly ____ yourself.
mlrtime 5 hours ago [-]
Work as a Manager in a large tech org and you will see very quickly how the company operates (HR / HRBP). The higher you go up the quicker you see that employees aren't looked at as people, but as numbers or dollars.
My first manager job I was very naive, I went to HR to get help with directs. It was a bad idea, it put me and my direct at risk... never again.
The sad truth is that the managers who actually care and want to solve problems for people (personal and technical) usually get the wrong end of the HR stick first.
s1artibartfast 17 minutes ago [-]
I am a manager. I have those conversations regularly (its my job). I have had tough conversations about if we should burn out an entire team or not, likely losing them, so i get it.
My question was not about if it is true or not, but why people like saying it so much.
energy123 10 hours ago [-]
The workplace is one of the best places to find your spouse. It's where you spend most of your time and where you're most likely to meet someone with similar interests to you in the same location. It's anti-human to treat the workplace as this clinical saferoom with no relationships.
mancerayder 3 hours ago [-]
In the US, it's an extremely dangerous place to look for a spouse. I've seen some ugly situations. Maybe it's better to look for a spouse when the job market favors employees - that way, when you need to leave after the breakup, you can find a new job.
Also, in IT there's not a very diverse group of people to search from. When it comes to women, the ratio of hetero men to hetero women is insanely not favorable.
mfru 8 hours ago [-]
Workplaces that are dictated by a boss or C-suite are anti-human as well, as they are dictatorial, not democratic.
alpineman 7 hours ago [-]
If I were so terrified I couldn't share anything personal at work, I would be happy to be fired as it sounds like a miserable place to work
reactordev 6 hours ago [-]
You can share all you want, and you will be judged for it.
kibwen 4 hours ago [-]
They're already being judged for it by their bosses and coworkers, they just don't realize it yet.
reactordev 7 hours ago [-]
I heard this from older generations. Sadly this is no longer true as we all work remotely now.
kakacik 6 hours ago [-]
While totally logical (there are many matching counterparts for most people, its just about being close enough for long enough regardless of place), its not always ideal.
I wouldn't want my wife to work on same team for example. Heck, even same company may be less than ideal, time off each other is usually for the better. Also, if breakup/divorce happens, workplace can easily become a place out of worst nightmare.
I prefer looking at hobbies/passions groups, people there match me way more than people at work, it that doesn't work out its easier to cut off only that group if needed. In my case it was climbing events I was organizing, and I ended up with wife that matches me on basically all important levels
trismus 12 hours ago [-]
Is this your life? Quit.
reactordev 7 hours ago [-]
You first
tancop 8 hours ago [-]
hr and corporate are always your enemies but coworkers can be friends. they are on the same level as you and dealing with the same problems. just be careful who you trust because some of them might turn out to be class traitors and make up some allegations to get you fired.
reactordev 6 hours ago [-]
coworkers are your competition for that promotion though, how do you reconcile being someone's friend when they are your enemy? This is how corporate america thinks. I don't but the vast majority of seniors I know are trying to get to principal and there's only so many slots.
shimman 12 hours ago [-]
Never been in an office where there wasn't some solidarity amongst workers and not the owners. I can't imagine how alienating it must be to work somewhere you feel you can't trust anyone except yourself, sounds like a self made hell.
At least you get paid I suppose.
jamesfinlayson 11 hours ago [-]
Yeah I agree. I'm still very careful who I trust but it doesn't hurt to try and build a network.
s1artibartfast 11 hours ago [-]
Sounds like a fate worse than getting fired.
Do people not know how to make friends and develop trust. The solution is the same judgment process any human should go through.
Only an idiot would automatically assume coworkers are friends.
Only an idiot would assume coworkers can't become friends.
dozerly 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
reactordev 6 hours ago [-]
I take the defensive sarcasm as confirmation of my position.
idk1 3 hours ago [-]
I have witnessed this happen before. This was approximately ten years ago, but we had a similar thing, a new hire team building exercise. And during it, one of the new hires told a story about how they saved money by taking loads of reams of paper and stuff home from their old office in order to save money. And they were let go during the lunch break. I still feel a bit sorry for them, but I guess saying out loud you were happy to steal stationery didn't go down very well, so it makes sense, but still, it was such a tiny mistake for a 20-year-old. I wasn't in charge of management at the time, but I think I'd have just taken him aside and explained how bad it sounded.
riddlemethat 11 hours ago [-]
Last retreat I went on the CFO drove drunk around 350 miles to get there. The CEO insisted on heavy drinking for everyone. Then he ordered one of everything on the menu the next morning at a Cracker Barrel for himself and wasted a ton of food. I found out he had a cocaine addiction about a month before the company was acquired. They also had orgies in the office break rooms and gave out a machete to everyone as a Christmas gift. Amongst the many crazy times…
My fraternity was more tame and we used to have guys gazing each other in the main room during parties.
ocschwar 2 hours ago [-]
> My fraternity was more tame and we used to have guys gazing each other in the main room during parties.
Joining a fraternity makes you jointly and severally liable for anything your frat brothers do. It's the very opposite of working or investing in a limited liability company. Makes sense for a fraternity to be more tame...
waste_monk 10 hours ago [-]
>They also had orgies in the office break rooms and gave out a machete to everyone as a Christmas gift
Hopefully not at the same time, otherwise there would be opportunity for many kinds of unfortunate mishaps.
itsmemattchung 7 hours ago [-]
The image of these two occurring at the same time haha
jrflowers 8 hours ago [-]
>They also had orgies in the office break rooms
Bring your hole self to work
clemailacct1 2 hours ago [-]
Dude, that company sounds awesome!
DANmode 2 hours ago [-]
If you’re looking for employment that’s as stable as a minor-league cartel, sure.
Coke, machetes, and drunk driving gets your passion moved?
Concisely, seek help.
Der_Einzige 8 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of the tik tok of the guy who just starts giving out new machetes in packages to homeless people.
strictnein 16 hours ago [-]
" including one incident where Baillie performed a Guinness-related party trick after colleagues asked him to show it off."
Is this just splitting the G? If so, it's the most mundane thing in the history of alcohol related party tricks.
arjie 16 hours ago [-]
> It goes on to say that at the same retreat Baillie drank a Guinness standing on his head, after sharing that he had learned the trick from his former father in law during a conversation inspired by the trust session.
Honestly, the whole thing seems sort of innocuous. He had some particular medical treatment and then drank a Guinness upside down. Maybe there was something else to it but if you're a big corp then you probably should just give a safe answer.
jofzar 15 hours ago [-]
Mate needs to move down to Australia, he would have been promoted after showing that off.
cgriswald 15 hours ago [-]
But in Australia, he would have just been drinking it normally.
...I'm fired, aren't I? I'll see myself out.
muglug 15 hours ago [-]
Yeah you’ll never catch me drinking a Guinness while standing on my head at a company event.
Mostly due to a total lack of coordination.
Noumenon72 11 hours ago [-]
I will try to catch you, I'll just fail due to my equal lack of coordination. Never bring a pint of Guinness to a trust fall.
According to ChatGPT it's the skill of taking exactly one sip such that when you put the Guiness glass down the new beer level ends up precisely through the horizontal middle of the "G".
According to LadBible the actual trick was drinking a pint of Guinness while standing on his head.
It seems to be a challenge where you drink a specific amount from a pint in one try such that the bottom of the foam splits the Guinness logo. It's not even a huge amount. It seems to less than 20% of the pint eyeballing it.
tchalla 16 hours ago [-]
Remember this story the next time someone says "join our mission" or "bring your whole self to work". They all come with asterisks.
> Baillie claims he explained the reason why he had taken the drug but was investigated by Netflix. On March 18, 2026 a company investigator brought the incident up, “in a manner suggesting suspicion of recreational drug use,” the suit reads.
So the nominal issue is recreational drug use rather than ketamine therapy. It's also not clear that he was fired for the therapy itself. And I doubt Netflix would fire someone just for therapeutic (or even recreational) drug use unless it has a negative impact on the workplace performance. If it was proper & legal therapy (e.g, https://www.betterucare.com/), Netflix wouldn't fire a person since it would have positive impact on their workplace performance. But if Netflix fired an employee for a valid cause, I would expect the employee to try to counter with any option that would get them a severance or settlement.
It's likely that we're not hearing the full story and the news sites are just writing clickbait articles from one-sided excerpts of the lawsuit that the ex-employee filed.
wahern 12 hours ago [-]
Given he made $1 million+ per year as an executive, it's possible they needed a pretense to fire him "for cause" under a contract that otherwise stipulated some sizeable severance greater than the cost of litigation and settlement.
hack1312 13 hours ago [-]
Did you miss he received the therapy under medical supervision and Netflix’s attorney flat out admitted “the ketamine therapy issue has factored into the termination”.
ribosometronome 12 hours ago [-]
Did you miss that that's according to the one sided exceprt from a lawsuit an ex-employee filed?
hack1312 12 hours ago [-]
I notice you’re not calling them a liar.
ribosometronome 12 hours ago [-]
I've no idea what happened. Treating allegations in a lawsuit as undeniable true or "flat out admissions" is a bad idea, though. Doing that would have you believing that Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, after all, he claimed in a lawsuit he is.
hack1312 11 hours ago [-]
Do you think the fired employee’s lawyer would have included it if they couldn’t prove it?
ribosometronome 11 hours ago [-]
Are you under the impression that lawyers have never included things that later turned out to be false or unprovable in their initial filing of a lawsuit? If lawyers are so infallible, why would one have openly admitted to firing someone for a legal medical treatment they received?
I think that, per the parent who you initially replied to's point, that taking a tabloid's clickbait excerpts from one-side of a lawsuit is a terrible way of understanding the truth of a dispute.
watwut 8 hours ago [-]
Yes, that actually happens in real lawsuits. It is not even rare.
tomnipotent 12 hours ago [-]
Did you miss that a company attorney acknowledged "the ketamine therapy issue has factored into the termination?"
ribosometronome 12 hours ago [-]
Only according to the lawsuit filed by the fired party.
9 hours ago [-]
johndubchak 11 hours ago [-]
I cannot see this ending up well for Netflix. It sounds like it personally offended someone's sensibility and they decided to fire the guy. I expect Netflix to lose this lawsuit, but more importantly, settle it before it ever goes anywhere.
wongarsu 7 hours ago [-]
And don't forget the effect on employee morale, retention and hiring. They have now made the international news cycle for firing an employee for sharing after being encouraged to share, and doing a party trick after being encouraged by coworkers to do so
fullshark 1 hours ago [-]
They'll have no problem hiring, maybe one or two employees who deliver 10x will get demoralized and quit but this will not change a thing realistically re: their work force.
So he was fired for sharing he had ketamine based therapy for depression? Why? Like is it promoting drug use or something?
Zafira 16 hours ago [-]
We can only speculate, but it would not be surprising if someone was hunting for a reason to get rid of them and thought this was a good excuse. Personally, I don’t think this is a good excuse and while we don’t have all the facts, it sounds like Netflix conceding the therapy factored into the dismissal is probably something they will very much regret admitting to on the record.
DrJokepu 14 hours ago [-]
I’ve been working in this industry for 20 years. Nobody gets fired for this, not at Netflix or any of the other studios. Especially a VP. I don’t know how to express how unlikely any of this is. This was an excuse, not the real reason.
randallsquared 13 hours ago [-]
So they couldn't come up with an excuse that would have been a legitimate reason?
oaiey 11 hours ago [-]
Also HR has bad employees / agent once in a while.
bijowo1676 16 hours ago [-]
isn't this highly illegal, since it is used for medical purpose (mental health) ?
its like firing a person who was sedated by professional Anesthesiologist with Fentanyl during surgery (A friend of mine had a surgery and was administered fentanyl)
adastra22 15 hours ago [-]
Yes, IANAL but it seems very much like grounds for an open-and-shut wrongful termination suit, given that they have admitted it up front. They could be taken to the cleaners for this.
dlcarrier 12 hours ago [-]
This guy's back pay of income, severance, and benefits could really add up, but that's more a factor of him getting paid a lot in the first place than wrongful termination suits being particularly fruitful. I wouldn't really describe their payouts as being "taken to the cleaners".
adastra22 5 hours ago [-]
Bringing a wrongful-termination suit is career-killing, so damages could be as much as his entire expected compensation of his remaining career (including equity grants), x6 for punitive damages.
s1artibartfast 10 hours ago [-]
It is a lot more complicated than that. The details matter. Were they doing it at work? Did their usage patern or disclosure show poor judgment?
It is very likely Netflix's argument would be more complex.
adastra22 5 hours ago [-]
Clinical depression is a mental disability under California law, and thereby a protected medical condition. The bar that Netflix needs to meet is very, very high. Like, operating deadly machinery endangering others while on ketamine. Short of that, no. His employment contract can specify whatever, but state law trumps contracts here. Netflix's lawyer straight up admitted to firing for a protected medical condition.
DANmode 2 hours ago [-]
Legally, yes.
Medically…no. It does not seem to be equivalent, especially with any amount of regular repetition.
sidewndr46 15 hours ago [-]
not that I'm aware of, no. Maybe in some states sure, but not in most.
pibaker 14 hours ago [-]
"We have found you to be a poor cultural fit in our mission driven high octane growth mindset 10x company. That we reached this conclusion right after you disclosed your medical condition is pure coincidence."
stult 13 hours ago [-]
Yes, it seems likely they violated California's Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) and the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) based on the details I have seen so far. The EEOC’s mental-health guidance states both that an employee may choose to discuss his condition with coworkers and that the employer may not discriminate against him for doing so. https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/depression-ptsd-other-men...
That's only guidance, not binding law in and of itself, but it means that the employer can only discourage employees from discussing their mental health if they do so in a neutral manner that applies equally to all employees in a non-discriminatory manner, which was self-evidently not the case here.
Notably, the EEOC guidance standards are not wholly unlimited. Employers can take action against an employee if their discussion of their mental health is repeatedly inappropriate or disruptive. e.g., if someone is constantly cornering coworkers to trauma dump suicidal thoughts on them or something like that. But only in truly extreme cases where an accommodation is impossible (e.g., if they are violent) or if they fail to adjust their behavior after receiving feedback that it has become unacceptable. A single incident that does not appear to have even made any other employee uncomfortable certainly doesn't suffice.
Netflix's only real defense here would be to argue that they would have fired him anyway without the disclosure, in response to other issues. That is a challenging defense to make given the admission their lawyer made that the ketamine treatment factored into their decision to fire, but the ADA and FEHA require "but for" causation, i.e. he is protected from firing if they would not have fired him but for the admission of ketamine treatment. I doubt they will succeed given the relative triviality of their other accusations (somewhat excessive profanity in a context where a fair amount of profanity was considered acceptable) and the entirely inoffensive party trick (at least in a context where the CEO has been repeatedly photographed drinking alcohol at company events and the alcohol at this event was provided by the company). I seriously doubt they will be able to point to any similarly situated employees that Netflix has previously fired solely for profanity or consuming alcohol that the company provided to them (and from a PR perspective that would almost be worse for them to admit). Frankly, the profanity feedback also seems like the very common scenario where a manager is required to provide regular feedback but can't think of anything constructive to say because the employee is a high performer, so they reach for something funny and minor just to check the box. In the absence of extensive complaints from coworkers, it is unlikely to overcome the company lawyer's outright admission that the ketamine use was a factor in their decision.
What appears to have happened here is Netflix has awful in-house counsel and/or HR who utterly failed to carry out their duties with even minimal competence. They appear to have simply assumed that all ketamine use is automatically illegal recreational drug abuse without bothering to investigate whether that is true in general or in this particular case before escalating to the most extreme possible reaction. Those employees are the ones who should be fired, not only because of the gross incompetence it takes to so egregiously violate America's otherwise absurdly weak legal protections for workers' rights, but because they did so in a manner that seems practically designed to permanently destroy employee trust in the company while inviting unwelcome public scrutiny of their potentially discriminatory employment practices.
This is a fairly straight forward discriminatory-causation story: Netflix invited vulnerability and thus potential mental health related disclosures, learned of a psychiatric history, reframed treatment as drug misconduct, and then expressly treated it as a termination factor. It's honestly pretty rare to see such an obvious example of this kind of discrimination, usually companies do a better job covering it up with a pretext, and usually their *lawyers* aren't so unbelievably fucking stupid as to admit publicly to the discriminatory decision.
tdeck 12 hours ago [-]
Workers rights are "woke" and thus we're not doing them anymore in the US. He should have claimed he was fired for being white.
mlrtime 5 hours ago [-]
It's buried in the article but this is the way I read it.
1) Get invited to a trust exercise retreat.
2) Share that you have done ketamine in a controlled therapy environment.
3) Share a bunch of other things not in article <speculation>
4) Get fired for having a drug addiction.
We are to assume that #2 caused #4 ... but without all the facts it could have been something in #3 + #2 , again speculation.
dyauspitr 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
gleenn 15 hours ago [-]
It's not, although rules vary by state. Medical professionals can prescribe it even though it's a Schedule III drug. I get ads for these presumably legitimate therapy services online all the time on major social networks.
bijowo1676 15 hours ago [-]
should Netflix fire all women on maternity leave, since they most likely were administered fentanyl during delivery ?
why isn't Netflix firing anyone who had even a minor surgery or even tooth extraction done, since it most likely involved opioids
werdnapk 15 hours ago [-]
Medical professionals can also use fentanyl among other drugs that aren't legal for recreational use.
richiebful1 13 hours ago [-]
We carry ketamine on our ambulance where I work part-time. I wouldn't be surprised if some people were legally receiving drug therapy for depression
chickensong 15 hours ago [-]
It's not illegal if it's through a licensed channel.
chasd00 14 hours ago [-]
I think that’s the key, if it was prescribed to him by a doctor then probably not an issue. If it was just one of those don’t ask don’t tell therapy retreats then they may have a problem.
quietsegfault 15 hours ago [-]
Firing someone for taking a prescribed therapeutic medication for a medical condition? Yeah, that’s illegal.
s1artibartfast 10 hours ago [-]
So your heart surgeon can get high during surgery? Obviously the details matter.
anticensor 13 hours ago [-]
What if no medication history and perfect health was a precondition of that position, with equivalent disability position with the same task except to those with heavy disability offered separately in the same entity?
annzabelle 12 hours ago [-]
Is this an actual situation or a weird hypothetical?
Perfect health is only really a requirement for the military, pilots, and a couple other niche roles. No medication history would constitute illegal discrimination for 99% of jobs in the US, and the company even asking for it on hiring would lead to a HIPPA mess.
Nobody in America requires no medication history for office jobs, not even the CIA.
15 hours ago [-]
chasd00 14 hours ago [-]
If HR policy says no drugs then that’s a wrap. Allowing an employee to violate HR policy probably puts the company in all sorts of legal risks.
stult 13 hours ago [-]
You can't have an HR policy that discriminates against people for receiving mental health treatment from a physician, that is plainly illegal under multiple statutes both federally and in the state of California. This was not a situation where he was on ketamine while at work, and there are no accusations that his ketamine use even affected his work at all, even incidentally or indirectly. Even if it had, Netflix would be required to make a reasonable accommodation for him. But we know it did not affect his work because he received treatment in 2022 and Netflix only found about it in 2026 after he disclosed the treatment. Besides, he is a movie executive, it's not like he is operating heavy machinery. Ketamine is unlikely to have any effect on him that would in any way expose Netflix to liability.
Netflix seems to have simply assumed that all ketamine use is illegal and recreational, without bothering to conduct even the most cursory of investigations, which would have revealed that ketamine is in fact a clinically acceptable treatment for treatment-resistant depression. This is what happens when you have utterly incompetent idiots for in-house counsel and HR.
bijowo1676 25 minutes ago [-]
the case of unstoppable force (HR) meeting an immovable target (FMLA, ADA, EEOC, FEHA)
hack1312 13 hours ago [-]
HR policy is not the law
vel0city 12 hours ago [-]
No drugs even in a medical setting? Man, that's intense. Can't take anesthetics when facing surgery or similar situations. No epinephrine for anaphylaxic shock. Can't take insulin. Pretty rough.
Ketamine is an FDA approved drug.
delichon 16 hours ago [-]
Turns out it was a trust calibrating exercise that the whole team learned from.
mcphage 14 hours ago [-]
And all it will cost them will be a huge settlement!
reptation 16 hours ago [-]
As Benjamin Studebaker put it, bring your whole self to work just means the whole self should be professional
unwise-exe 11 hours ago [-]
>>> Adam Mendler, a workplace expert, told Inc. that this kind of exercise carries real risk when companies invite openness without ever clarifying how that vulnerability will be treated afterward.
(That's the Inc article)
.
Mandatory "vulnerability" is required to be staged and fake. Legitimate vulnerability -- that comes with legitimate risk -- has to be a free choice or else whoever's pushing it makes themselves vulnerable to consequences.
dgently7 13 hours ago [-]
am i wrong but doesnt the article say the dude worked at "eyeline" which seems to be consistently described in a quick search as a "netflix owned vfx company" which would not really make this guy a "netflix employee". no more so that somebody working at "x" is now a "spacex" employee. Eyeline has its own ceo and presumably culture, but "rando vfx company you've never heard of fires a guy" doesnt grab headlines i guess...
no comment on the actual content or context just a nit on everyone saying this was netflix did a thing... this seems like netflix owned company eyeline did a thing based on the actual article and a couple
of the eyeline press releases from when they got bought and recently rebranded.
dlcarrier 12 hours ago [-]
If you work for a wholly owned subsidiary, the parent company has complete control and the executives have no further hindrance to hiring or firing you than they would ton anyone else, anywhere else within the rest of the company. The CEO is always beholden to the board, and if the board of the wholly owned subsidiary isn't literally the same board as the parent company, then everyone the board is appointed by the parent company.
ButlerianJihad 12 hours ago [-]
It sounds like Netflix dividends have consisted of beers and private parties where AI bros brag about their race cars and tripping on Special K.
FaridIO 15 hours ago [-]
I didn't know Netflix was such a stick-up-the-ass garbage place to work at. What an incredibly dumb thing to fire someone over.
not_a_bot_4sho 12 hours ago [-]
I can't speak to Netflix one way or the other.
But the title seems to imply it was about over sharing, while the rest of the article seems focused on the culture of constant alcohol and drugs which likely has more to do with the way things ended.
Hard to say what is true with a publication like this.
FaridIO 4 hours ago [-]
The sharing and alcohol were company provided, the game of Guinness is almost certainly a silly one where after your first sip the foam lands in the middle of the G. And based on my own experience if you were to fire everyone who has ever taken psychedelics there wouldn't be many people left in at least SF and NYC tech. He shared the in California legal drug he used to deal with his mother's death. To be honest, the reason is so dumb, it feels like someone was just looking for anything to use against him..
nosrepa 3 hours ago [-]
To clarify, the article states that he drank a Guinness while standing on his head.
mrloopex 13 hours ago [-]
The stereotype is real. A guy I work with is part of what they call the Divorced Dad Club. He’s 56 and gets together with a bunch of other divorced dads to do ketamine and play video games. They’re all in the mid 50s, white, and in tech. And keep getting played by puffy lipped 30 somethings.
president_zippy 20 minutes ago [-]
What's wrong with being white?
drivebyhooting 10 hours ago [-]
Being infantry might’ve been a better calling than a divorced dad.
Hatrix 15 hours ago [-]
Some executives observe religions that abstain from alcohol. They see you with one beer at a company party and judge everything you do on that.
Remember: your coworkers aren't your family, your boss isn't your buddy and HR isn't on your side.
laweijfmvo 14 hours ago [-]
> Firing an employee for doing exactly what they were instructed to do during a mandatory retreat
So fired if you don’t play along, fired if you do.
cyanclouds 3 hours ago [-]
That’s why lying is the new meta. Lying works better than ever in fact they’re making us lie with the way things are going.
You’ll get more interviews and higher salaries with a simple lie.
Or you get fired for telling the truth.
I’m 1000% lying from now on.
archibaldJ 6 hours ago [-]
What if he only took it before his career, or before joining Netflix? And is it because his role is not an engineer/designer/etc so the history of having taken medically prescribed ketamine could mean greater risk during the operations designated to him that are of business-type nature?
What if my engineers microdose on ketamine for productivity? And will the HR decides differently if it is lsd, dmt, etc? So because of Steve Jobs these naturally have better "branding" to them?
What if Kevin Baillie made a documentary film out of this and became "the Steve Jobs of ketamine"? Do things on this planet work this way?
cmiles8 15 hours ago [-]
Keep work life and personal life separate. No exceptions. If a company tries to encourage you to do otherwise I’d strongly suggest you find a new employer.
Arainach 14 hours ago [-]
Most people prefer to work with humans, not robots. Common experiences and getting to know people are a huge part of that.
Sharing stories and getting to know people humanizes them. It's much easier to hate "that team in another country" you've never met than that person you've had a meal together with and learned about their hobbies.
solatic 14 hours ago [-]
There's a huge difference between learning that your colleague also happens to play chess, and sharing the vulnerability of how you handled personal grief in your life.
Your workplace is a community, not a friendship circle, and not a family. Community life has always had a certain level of formality to help paper over the differences between people in the community while still fostering a positive, inclusive environment.
annzabelle 13 hours ago [-]
I think that's something people have increasingly forgotten. My grandparents were active in their church for decades. They didn't talk about my grandmother's serious mental health struggles with the other parishioners.
People in the past had stronger community institutions, and I think a part of that was that nobody expected to bring their whole self to bowling club or the neighborhood potluck.
vel0city 12 hours ago [-]
It's a balance though, isn't it? Like, sure, don't bring your whole self to every single bowling game, you're there to bowl so focus at the task at hand. Nobody is going to have a good time if every bowling game devolves into every little emotional issue anyone in the group is having.
But that doesn't mean those relationships originally started at the bowling club need to stay purely about bowling, a big part of community is to then open up when the context is right and when the other person is open to the sharing. It's how you grow your community, how you grow your circle. Don't expect every person in your bowling league wants to become your best friend ever, but it's also not healthy to assume that everyone there only ever wants to just bowl and only cares about bowling.
I've had a lot of people from work relationships that stayed purely work relationships. I've had some become friends. I've had several become important people in my life. If I forced myself to silo off work contacts are only ever work contacts, I don't think I'd be nearly as happy as I am today. I know I'd be a lot more lonely and probably a good bit less successful.
We talk about this huge loneliness epidemic and yet so many people are like "I would never talk to my fellow coworkers about anything personal, ever." Huh I wonder why we're so lonely. We're all convinced we shouldn't be personal with the people we spend a massive amount of our lives with.
solatic 6 hours ago [-]
I don't think you're fundamentally disagreeing. Your work community can be a source of friendships (and sometimes but more rarely, more than friendship), but you shouldn't confuse the two. Finding out your colleague also plays chess can segue into an invitation to play chess outside of work, and launchpad that into building a friendship. But that's not the same as playing chess together at work (get back to work?), let alone being emotionally vulnerable as an intentional part of building relationships with people who you're trying to trust with that vulnerability.
The latter sounds good (if you could have that with your colleagues, then it can only help, right?), but then again, the linked article is literally about someone violating that and firing the subject of the article. It is simply not possible to build emotional intimacy with every coworker, let alone under forced circumstances, so attempts to do so are more or less predictably going to lead to pain.
vel0city 4 hours ago [-]
> Finding out your colleague also plays chess can segue into an invitation to play chess outside of work, and launchpad that into building a friendship.
Yeah, but if you make a point of never shooting the shit with your coworkers how will you ever really come across this kind of info?
I do ultimately agree forcing this kind of thing isn't usually good, and it definitely sounds like this retreat went sideways due to poor management. People probably shouldn't be doing things like keg stands at a company retreat, management should have stopped things well before people were pressured into such activities. And yeah, a company-wide forced "tell everyone your darkest secrets for trust" thing, forget that you're only going to get a watered down example. Management shouldn't be putting people in that kind of position.
Goes back to my point, things need to be balanced. It's good and healthy for a workplace to help people form these kinds of friendships in small nudges, but overly forcing connections that aren't forming naturally just isn't good. And excessive drinking at company events just leads to issues, that's for sure.
annzabelle 12 hours ago [-]
I mostly feel that people should be more selective about who and how they open up to in general in life. There's a lot to talk about that's not your past experiences with depression, and those don't need to be talked about to 99% of people, and discussing them too early is an easy way to burn bridges before they're even built.
I definitely talk to my coworkers about what I did this weekend, or travel, or the weather (I'm halfway around the world from my home country, so comparing the weather is a constant topic of conversation). I have a coworker I carpool with and we talk some about how I'm settling in to life here. But, I will never discuss my history of mental illness with any of these people. At best I will make a vague allusion to seasonal blues.
jamesfinlayson 11 hours ago [-]
I once had a coworker tell me about his young son's circumcision. Not really something that should be discussed in the office...
annzabelle 11 hours ago [-]
My high school government teacher told us about his vasectomy.
Not related to the thread but your comment just reminded me of that.
cmiles8 14 hours ago [-]
Not saying you can’t discuss basic details like did you do anything interesting this weekend, but these things like “share deep personal details” as mentioned in the article have no place at work.
esikich 14 hours ago [-]
Not to mention a lot of things get solved/decided over beers at happy hour. Coworkers shouldn't be your best friends but you're a fool if you're not friendly with them. Like you said, people aren't robots and a business isn't a machine.
singingtoday 12 hours ago [-]
Not yet anyways. Not all of them.
thmoonbus 12 hours ago [-]
If I’m going to be seeing the people I work with as much as I see my family, I’m going to try to make some friends. I’d argue the bigger risk is not making friends at work given the loneliness epidemic, especially among middle aged and older men.
eudamoniac 4 minutes ago [-]
During the pandemic I was uninvited from my company off-site because I was unvaccinated for COVID, despite consenting to a COVID test immediately prior. After that, I'm pretty sure my manager and many others conspired to set me up for failure, meetings with people I had never met were oddly hostile, etc.
I guess this is to say that when you have these offsites it is in your best interest to attend and assimilate. Never relax!
thot_experiment 15 hours ago [-]
It always surprises me when people don't understand that the employee-employer relationship is an adversarial one. Unless you're in a democratic co-op or similar your employer is the enemy and you should never forget that. The correct move is to try to screw them in every legal way at every turn because that is what they are doing to you. Never divulge any information that increases your attack surface, always try to extract the most money for the least effort. This is capitalism 101.
You must not allow them to fool you into thinking that these aren't the rules they're playing by. David Sirlin's "Playing to Win" is a good treatise on how to be good, and perhaps the most important lesson is to play the game by the rules as written, and not by some other set of rules that exists only in your head.
(Though in this case the victim was senior enough that I suspect he was playing the game to the best of his ability, trying to humanize himself to gain the upper hand in some other manipulation game and misplayed, kicking things into the legal arena, as one does)
arjie 15 hours ago [-]
Until this present universe I didn’t really care about that because retaining the job wasn’t a top priority. If you got fired over something like this you took it as a good way to go do something somewhere else.
Now of course it’s hard to say if the original employment shape is still valid.
imposterr 15 hours ago [-]
That sounds like an exhausting way to live.
DanHulton 15 hours ago [-]
I would say that the more-exhausting way to live would be to be unaware of this, to accept the “we’re a family here” lie at face value, and to be passed over and screwed over at frequent intervals without knowing or understanding why.
You don’t have to go full Patrick Bateman corp-bro, but keeping in mind the phrase “we don’t fire family” and adjusting your approach based on that counter-example can help you to keep things appropriately transactional and not be taken advantage of.
kube-system 14 hours ago [-]
The least exhausting way to work a job is to find people to work with who are smart, well adjusted, and genuinely interested in cooperating to make money together.
janderson215 13 hours ago [-]
This sounds like an exhausting perspective on the world. I’d rather be hurt by assholes than never allow myself to be vulnerable with anybody. You can mitigate the potential downside without thinking everybody is out to get you or thinking everything is a power game.
TheOtherHobbes 6 hours ago [-]
Not at all work cultures are toxic, but many have toxic elements.
It's very culture-dependent. You have to read the room, pick up clues from current behaviour and previous history, and try to calibrate accordingly.
There's a broad correlation between management stupidity and chaotic leadership and toxicity but sometimes you can still end up in pockets of sanity - or insanity if the surrounding culture is good but there are one or more Cluster B types on a team.
thot_experiment 12 hours ago [-]
I'm vulnerable with plenty of people, just not employers (in general). The incentive structures, especially at a company that's more than a few people are such that it is in their best interest to get as much from you for as little as possible, that's the entire point of the system.
sleepybrett 13 hours ago [-]
yes, employment is exhausting. To do other that what the poster says is accepting risk.
unwise-exe 10 hours ago [-]
>>> This is capitalism 101.
No, it's really not.
The entire point of capitalism is free enterprise and freedom of association. The way to apply that to employer / employee relationships is to recognize that you are not a serf bound to a single employer and keep half an eye on your options in case you ever tire of your current relationship.
thot_experiment 10 hours ago [-]
My freedom to choose an employer is orthogonal to the incentive structures within in that relationship.
wat10000 13 hours ago [-]
If it's adversarial then why are they willingly entering into a mutually beneficial arrangement?
thot_experiment 12 hours ago [-]
A mutually beneficial agreement can still be adversarial? If you're getting shaken down by the mafia it's beneficial for you to pay them protection money.
wat10000 2 hours ago [-]
You’d be better off without the shakedown altogether. Not true for a job you willingly take and stay in.
president_zippy 18 minutes ago [-]
"The man who gives me employment, which I must have or suffer, that man is my master, let me call him what I will."
-Henry George
ElProlactin 16 hours ago [-]
So this is where the money from the price increases goes.
conradfr 9 hours ago [-]
Funnily enough, that reminds of one scene in the Comedy Central TV show "Corporate", episode S01E05 titled... "Corporate retreat"[0].
I didn't know those trust/sharing exercises were real.
Wait, he was a creative worker, don't you want them doing drugs?
jnaina 10 hours ago [-]
in the creative arts business, the work that sells tends to come from people carrying something. a difficult history, a chemical affiliation, some level of quirkiness/flaws, or all of the above.
perfect flawless plain-vanilla creatives tend go work for Hallmark channel and product absolute drab cr*p.
not sure why Netflix HR would want to sabotage their own internal culture that drives their content success strategy.
RaSoJo 8 hours ago [-]
I doubt the events at the retreat were the only cause for his firing. Creative folks are usually given much wider leeway compared to the bean counters.
It feels like somebody in senior management had it in for Baillie. And the ketamine story provided a sufficient cause.
natbennett 14 hours ago [-]
The issue here isn’t that this guy shared something about his personal life it’s the particular personal details. It’s possible to share information about your personal life without talking about your drug use or your therapy or your drug use at therapy.
It is irritating that people expect you to understand what reasonable personal sharing is without explaining explicitly and goodness knows I screwed this up when I was younger but “don’t talk about your personal life at all” is bad advice.
mfru 8 hours ago [-]
Your work colleagues are not your family. Your superiors are not your friends. Treat every company as if they were going to look for a reason to fire you right now unless you can reasonably argue that they don't
gregdaniels421 16 hours ago [-]
The article implies it was from sharing his experience using Ketamine therapy for depression, which likely would have been done with a doctor. Which makes this seem much weirder to my ears.
16 hours ago [-]
cachius 4 hours ago [-]
Why the stigma? Does it come from the same direction as US American prudence?
dtagames 12 hours ago [-]
What this really makes clear is that you should neither trust people you work with nor share personal information with them.
shruubi 14 hours ago [-]
This is why you should refuse to participate in these "trust and honesty sessions". You don't owe your employer or colleagues any insight into your personal life and the HR people who often run these sessions are there for the company, not for you and generally should not be trusted with personal info.
thi2 4 hours ago [-]
> “Vulnerability-Trust exercise”
Sounds like an awfull time.
q8zd3 14 hours ago [-]
Bad move. Those corporate events serve the purpose to find "bad apples" (from the employer's perspective), to either shape you into what they want or cut you off.
Never sacrifice your privacy in such an environment.
zabil 6 hours ago [-]
I hate these alcohol fueled company parties. Every one of them I've been too (at-least 7) ended up with 1 or more people being fired because they can't handle their drinks. I avoid them of go back to my hotel room after they open up the bar.
Cider9986 15 hours ago [-]
Kind of crazy Netflix spend so much on engineers while piracy sites give a better UX and more shows for free and with better privacy.
mvdtnz 14 hours ago [-]
Sorry how is that relevant to the linked article?
TheOtherHobbes 6 hours ago [-]
Second order consequences. Piracy sites are more customer-focused, large corps skew more towards performing productivity for the internal hierarchy.
Cider9986 6 hours ago [-]
I just thought when I saw the guy made a million bucks a year.
orcasushi 7 hours ago [-]
Please solve ??? for X = K(special)
Do X -> ??? -> Profit
cyanclouds 4 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of a recent interview where they asked to what extent I used AI for dev and cautioned that it would be problematic if I said I never used it.
So I say the areas I use it.
Rejected: We need people who can work without AI.
Felt so dumb. I’m never telling the truth again.
natas 12 hours ago [-]
you should never discuss your personal life at work or with your coworkers.
ianm218 12 hours ago [-]
It really depends on your workspace. At a lot start ups people would find it strange if you never shared anything about your life.
3 hours ago [-]
ctkqiang96 12 hours ago [-]
Yea this I agree,
Good4boothee 8 hours ago [-]
Are we really discussing NYPost article? Even freaking Daily Mail is considered to be more trustworthy among tabloids.
stult 13 hours ago [-]
I'm shocked Netflix hasn't just settled to keep this quiet, because the entire situation makes them look not only like an abusive, discriminatory employer but even worse, horrifically incompetent at being abusive and discriminatory. Plenty of companies treat their employees like shit, that's not news. But any competently managed company knows how to do so without incurring massive legal liability like this, and it speaks to a remarkable lack of professionalism and basic competence at the leadership level and within the legal and HR teams.
If the accusations are true as reported, their in-house counsel fucked up terribly by assuming all ketamine use is illegal and recreational without bothering to conduct the very cursory investigation required to determine that it is in fact a perfectly legitimate option for treating treatment-resistant depression. That single error drove them to fire an otherwise exemplary employee for an obviously illegal reason in a manner that screwed him out of significant compensation including severance.
This was an obvious, unforced error by their legal team. Competent lawyers and competent corporate leadership would recognize that the relatively small amount of money they may save by litigating this issue is not worth the damage it is very predictably inflicting on their corporate culture and public brand. The lawyer who publicly admitted that ketamine factored into their decision should be immediately fired because he is demonstrably a terrible fucking lawyer, and he seems to be representative of the quality of legal advice Netflix is receiving, because any attorney with half a brain would have immediately recognized both the underlying legal error that incurred liability for the company and the business context that makes immediate heavily NDA'd settlement the optimal strategy for defending, even were the original legal error not so egregious.
My main takeaway from this situation is that Netflix is managed by remarkably incompetent leaders who are advised by even more remarkably incompetent lawyers.
comrade1234 16 hours ago [-]
"It's difficult for me to share this but I care about Netflix, some would say, too much. My mother died recently and rather than go to the funeral I worked through the last season of goop lab because I know the synergy of Netflix and Gwyneth Paltrow will enrich our subscribers lives like nothing before. Thank you for listening but I think I ate some bad fish at the retreat and need to go lie down in my room."
carabiner 16 hours ago [-]
Google banned political conversations at work. Tech companies are learning from first principles why work/life separation, traditional office culture exist.
netsharc 16 hours ago [-]
It seems the message of schizophrenic corporate America is, "don't bring your humanity to work". Because what is politics but an expression of how society should be. Even more ridiculous is this trust exercise, their idea is for employees to show their human side to improve employee-employee relationships for higher productivity, but wait, not too much of the human side!
No wonder all the CEOs are crazy about AI. All the intelligence, none of the human.
anigbrowl 14 hours ago [-]
Yes, this so-called trust exercise sounds more akin to a mutual blackmail pact.
denkmoon 16 hours ago [-]
At the same time they want to leverage all the "humanity" they can to get you to work more for less.
We're a family here, after all. You wouldn't leave your colleagues hanging, would you?
chasd00 14 hours ago [-]
You indeed shouldn’t bring your humanity to work. You should bring what’s required to do the job. That’s the deal, you do the job and the employer pays you for it. Stopping making where you work the same as where you live.
kanbara 13 hours ago [-]
what a terrible take. so many jobs involve ethical and moral responsibility, and so many jobs (especially in tech, where you are making products which shape lives on the global scale) are best fulfilled through compassion, human understanding, and yes also the desire to make the world a better place.
i have been fortunate in my career to have had many roles where i was able to create a better product and solution through the aforementioned ideals.
so much of what we build is made better by diverse thought, diverse ability, diverse ethnicity, and more. i believe being genuine is one of the most important things one can do when they are touching the lives of millions.
AbsurdCensor 16 hours ago [-]
Meh, some people’s politics have very little to do with humanity and how society should be. In general, best approach is to avoid GRAPE topics in general.
lokar 16 hours ago [-]
Remember why they erased the separation in the first place: to get massive unpaid overtime.
It's probably more likely that every era is the era of chesterson's fence.
Chesterson, being a good Catholic, probably knew about this adage
Proverbs 22:28 (KJV): "Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set."
And explained the usefulness of it
xyzsparetimexyz 9 hours ago [-]
God forbid anyone invoked with movies do drugs! They might stumble upon a creative thought!
Brian_K_White 14 hours ago [-]
I don't even explain why I'm taking a day off or a half day or whatever.
It's no one else's business to decide if they agree the reason is valid. Don't volunteer stuff like that especially when it would be something they'd likely agree with. Don't validate their right to decide or even be aware of anything like that. Next time maybe your need might not be so convinvcing to anyone else, but you've already established they have a right to know and a right to veto, so then trying to be private stands out as different from other times.
It doesn't mean being inflexible or uncooperative either. If there is actually some problem, they can negotiate and try to make the case and convince you that they really need you just that much just that day, and you can voluntarily decide to change your plans, but without ever volunteering what those were. And make it cost. Keep score. Claim a return favor.
finnthehuman 8 hours ago [-]
I feel like this thread is full of two camps:
People who think it's sweet that their colleague is taking vacation to visit family at the end of august this year.
And people who understand exactly why they told that lie.
finnthehuman 9 hours ago [-]
"psychological safety" in the workplace? Auzla always lies. HR always lies. HR always lies.
> Multi-millionaire Netflix executive, known for profanity-laden tirades and shotgunning beers at corporate events, claims without evidence he was terminated for medically sanctioned ketamine use
kotaKat 5 hours ago [-]
Forgot the rest of it "... and paid a crisis PR firm to go boost support for his lawsuit in right-wing shit tabloids like the New York Post while not providing any actual paper from the lawsuit to see Netflix's side of the story to justify a toxic executive being punted"
EGreg 13 hours ago [-]
“Trust” exercise is doublespeak in corporate settings
Come to think of it, Orwell’s 1984 perfectly encapsulates what corporations actually do — even in his own time. Down to the groupthink, wrongthink, doublethink, doublespeak, all of it. Synergy! Concerned. Trust.
15 hours ago [-]
dlcarrier 10 hours ago [-]
I'm disappointed that this has none of the drama of the Plex retreat in Honduras.
Don't engage in a parasocial relationship with your employer. They're not your friends.
JumpCrisscross 16 hours ago [-]
> They're not your friends
Your co-workers can be your friends. But we're not obligated to be. If you're my friend and colleague, sure, vent to me. If we're not, I don't give a flyig fuck about your views on geopolitics or gender or whatever, particulalry if you owe me a deliverable, doubly so if you've chosen a hot-button issue nobody actually has any new takes on other than blind agreement or condemnation. (And unless they’re voiced outside work in a way that affects me, I don’t have a right to care about it either.)
janderson215 13 hours ago [-]
Prrreeeeeach. Not quite on topic here, but when I started working at Big Co., they sent 3 weekly Teams invitations each for hula hooping and desk yoga sessions. That infuriated me to no end because I knew how ineffective so many of my new coworkers were there and that they were making more than some of my coworkers who were actually providing value. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have infuriated me because the people attending those people were probably having less of a negative impact doing that rather than re-opening a solved issue or whatever the fuck useless thing they were doing.
10 hours ago [-]
sleepybrett 13 hours ago [-]
I only become real friends with my peers at a company AFTER one of us leaves the company. Oh I'll be friendly, grab lunch with you, talk about tame hobby stuff.. but that's the end of it. I'm not coming to your summer bbq, I'm not inviting you to my birthday party and the only time I'm seeing you on the weekend is if we're both in the office trying to get something done.
pibaker 14 hours ago [-]
People need to stop abusing "parasocial." It meant forming a one way "connection" with people who don't even perceive you, like TV hosts on the other side of the screen. This case is by definition not a parasocial relationship because obviously the employer heard him saying things!
otterley 13 hours ago [-]
Fake news! Communism! Literally!
softwaredoug 16 hours ago [-]
I dunno, ketamine treatment for depression isn't that weird.
Loughla 15 hours ago [-]
Announcing your medications at a public work function is kind of weird though, regardless of what they are. Is that just me?
softwaredoug 4 hours ago [-]
Why stigmatize what should be routine?
Mental health discussions, especially among men, should be less fraught. Like “I have a cold”
colechristensen 15 hours ago [-]
Yes but getting fired for it is grounds for a big juicy lawsuit. So if you've got a rainy day fund why not?
antisthenes 15 hours ago [-]
Yeah, that's just TMI.
I don't think anyone ever pressed for more details after a coworker said "I had some issues with my health".
People show empathy, and move on. No need to ask for details.
faidit 14 hours ago [-]
In day-to-day work life or a meet-and-greet, yeah. But this was an executives-only retreat where they were apparently encouraged to drink and made a big deal out of getting everyone to open up to each other.
sleepybrett 13 hours ago [-]
seems to be ok to talk about if you're elon musk.
malcolmgreaves 16 hours ago [-]
“A retreat may feel more relaxed than the office, but it is still a workplace, and the power dynamics don’t disappear,”
Ah, so sad :( Another story of a person who believed other people in the workplace too much.
These kinds of exercises are unfortunately a waste of time. If you’re honest, you’re walking into a minefield. But if you’re not being open, then no one is really getting to know anyone else in any meaningful way. In the end, a bunch of money and time is spent with zero value gained.
And given that this was about someone sharing their experience with a medical procedure to help them process the death of a parent, the company will probably lose the lawsuit, wasting even more money.
What a tragic waste of resources. Also, my heart goes out to this person. Loosing a parent is terrible.
hack1312 13 hours ago [-]
How despicable do you have to be to fire someone for undergoing treatment for depression.
nekusar 16 hours ago [-]
Make shit up. Don't talk about your personal life at a company function, ever.
Hell, lie and make an embarrassing but completely legal story. Or something stupid like you were totally embarassed in HS or college.
But, never ever share your actual personal lives in a corporate setting. Not one time.
tlogan 16 hours ago [-]
I would strongly discourage anyone from making things up. I have participated in these exercises, and many people simply said, “I really have nothing to share that would interest you.” Those were the people others respected the most.
They might share personal things with close friends, but they had a clear definition of what friendship meant.
In other words, be a person of character.
It is perfectly fine not to be friends with everyone. Just be respectful and honest. Do not lie. Say, “I cannot tell you that because of this or that,” or simply remain silent.
garciasn 15 hours ago [-]
The problem is that responding that way could be seen as anti-social and counter to the cultural identity of the organization.
Companies will use everything and anything against you when they believe it’s time for you to go.
nekusar 10 hours ago [-]
Thats why I said to make up something mildly embarrassing and completely average normal happening.
Unless you admit it, you wont be caught in a lie. And you seem "normal" to whatever litmus test of sharing something.
brailsafe 16 hours ago [-]
Although it seems like this would be an extreme take to someone who's luckily kept a steady job despite not keeping their personal life out of their work life, I completely agree. It's not worth it.
I think everyone gets a pass for something kid related, and to a lesser—probably unequal—extent, something spouse or family related, everything else can and will be used against you unless you're just humming along as the most normal predictable person.
As far as people at work are concerned, you've never smoked pot, you're not taikng stimulants even though they're prescribed, you won't even drink coffee after 5pm, and you've definitely never had insomnia.
Have one drink with the team if you're inclined to, and then gtfo, go drink with real friends.
Managers only care about perception and control, and if anything at all doesn't fit into their directive or world view, it'll go into their mental spreadsheet of blemishes like a vindictive romantic partner next time you fight.
"Hey there was a bug last release in some code with your name on it, might be time to go to bed at a reasonable hour!?". Ya thanks, I'll note your advice for next time that happens I'm sure it'll help. Why did you approve the change again?
teeray 16 hours ago [-]
You can also politely decline to share. You are not obligated to share personal stories to your coworkers and employer for camaraderie’s sake, and they should have no reasonable expectation that you will. Sure, it may be difficult to overcome the peer pressure in the moment, but it is your right, so fight for it.
Brian_K_White 15 hours ago [-]
No. It's like with cops. There is no safe thing to say. The least damaging thing is simply say nothing. Even that costs, but it costs the least and there is nothing better you can do.
colechristensen 15 hours ago [-]
I'm surprised Netflix doesn't get sued more for their employment practices.
They are REALLY happy to fire people.
But it seems like they're on record firing someone for a legal medical treatment... in California no less.
He was already doing pretty well and will get a decent additional payday out of this.
morkalork 16 hours ago [-]
So like that interview candidate being asked about the hardest day of their life and answering honestly about a miscarriage or did this guy do something inappropriate with some ping pong balls in a Guinness-record way?
strictnein 16 hours ago [-]
Could always read the article to find out, since it answers your question.
marky1991 16 hours ago [-]
I'm not trying to attack you but did you read the article? Because I read it and I don't know the answer to either question either.
strictnein 15 hours ago [-]
I mean....
"He said he underwent physician-supervised ketamine therapy in late 2022 to treat depression following his mother’s death.
At a January company retreat this year at a Netflix-owned property in California, Baillie shared this experience "
...
"A company attorney acknowledged that “the ketamine therapy issue has factored into the termination.”"
marky1991 15 hours ago [-]
I read that but assumed that wasn't why they fired him. I don't understand, why would you fire someone for receiving some kind of medical treatment?
Ignoring the obvious legal landmines, what does that have to do with the job?
I assumed there was some other reason for the firing. If that was the reason (or if that's what the victim is alleging) then I think the article needs to be more clear, it all reads like vague gossip to me and it wasn't at all clear to me that that was what this was about.
dgacmu 15 hours ago [-]
The people to whom you are responding were talking about the lack of details in this article about the Guinness "trick", not the ketamine.
15 hours ago [-]
morkalork 16 hours ago [-]
They don't give any real details
strictnein 15 hours ago [-]
"He said he underwent physician-supervised ketamine therapy in late 2022 to treat depression following his mother’s death.
At a January company retreat this year at a Netflix-owned property in California, Baillie shared this experience "
...
"A company attorney acknowledged that “the ketamine therapy issue has factored into the termination.”"
tempfile 6 hours ago [-]
Very disappointing to see people rush to cynicism, with no effort at all to put blame on Netflix. I get it, you're stupid if you think your employer has your best interests at heart. Why does that mean they get a pass?
jmyeet 15 hours ago [-]
I wonder if this is a generational thing. I grew up before social media and have long taken the position that I never post anything to the Internet that I wouldn't want public. I don't have a secret Reddit account or anonymous Twitter profile where I post stuff that could be fired, charged or worse.
This goes moreso for work. I assume anything you do can and will be used against you. I have zero trust. You're being a sanitized version of yourself. Do people not know this?
It's part of the reason I hate these working bonding activities. Well, that and being neurodivergent. There are fiarly standard questions and I have prepared answers that may or may not be the truth. Just like with interview questions. Sorry, but none of you are my friends or can be trusted. You might be shocked how often confiding in a coworker is used against you.
The trick with coworkers is saying just enough so they think they can trust you without saying anything that might get you fired or have other consequences. You can't say nothing. That's almost worse. But you have to basically invent a persona, particularly if you're neurodivergent because the default position of neurotyhpical people is to not like you.
And at the end of the day so much of your work life is governed by whether or not people like you. And I hate it.
So for a trust exercise, I'd come up with something everybody has likely done or is at least sympathetic to. Like, nothing to do with stealing. That might get you fired. Here's an example: "when I was in high school, I lied to my parents and drove to another state for a party and got drunk with my friends".
It's better to base your sanitized answer on the truth but I'm not above wholesale lies. They're just harder to remember so you have to be light on details but not too light.
ctkqiang96 12 hours ago [-]
wait what ???
CSMastermind 16 hours ago [-]
I'm torn here because it does seem like Netflix brought this on themselves. At the same time the litigious nature of American workplaces are part of the reason large corporate environments are so soul-crushing, with language meant to deliberately obfuscate what's actually happening.
tlogan 16 hours ago [-]
I am not sure how old he was, but I would guess he was under 40 and relatively inexperienced.
Part of the purpose of these exercises is to train management, especially executives, to remain fully focused and make decisions solely on performance and the business, even when someone asks them to show emotion. Anyone who is in executive management position should understand that.
He failed the test.
fn-mote 16 hours ago [-]
He was born in 1978 (source: IMDB). He was a VP and other articles say his annual salary was $1.1MM.
He was not a beginner.
Edit: Also, “under 40” is ridiculous for a bar of being experienced / mature.
tlogan 15 hours ago [-]
I guess he just failed the test. Maybe the bar should be 55.
One might think it was naive and odd for me as a young autistic person to be so scared and negative, but sure enough, the next day the best contractor in the company was fired at 9am for calling the CEO an "alright c*nt" during the pub crawl.
The C word being used a token of affection around these parts, was perhaps not the true transgression which was, not to understand, that it was NOT a social function, but a horrifying legal flexing of soft hierarchical power, for purposes of satiating C suite ego, and humiliating everyone beneath them.
The Christmas parties were a different breed though. HR definitely had a lot of work to do after those.
Only took part once (because I was new, first week and all), saw how openly employees spoke to the directors (luckily nothing came of it), and never again in my life ever consumed alcohol in front of a boss.
As GP said, it's a full on soft power thing - always keep your wits about you when in the presence of colleagues and bosses.
There is no safe space at work; you can be fired!
Obviously there were no repercussions, and when I mentioned something the next day, I got "you're not supposed to talk about that stuff in the office", which was interesting context for me. The drunk colleague and I went on to become really good friends.
We conducted interviews after lunch, for this exact purpose. I saw good candidates interview but decline the pub afterwards - they did not get offers.
That company had at least two pub sessions a week, typically running to six rounds or more. We hit our medically-recommended maximum weekly intake by Tuesday; Fridays were carnage.
Pubs sound even worse.
You can clearly see who are the consulting people, and who are the HR/marketing ones based on who's got fake smiles, and who looks like they are dead inside.
Not only it's more of a redflag than anything, but also, since they are all doing it, what's the goal?
Assuming that a love of social interaction equates to programming skill would be a mistake, as would assuming that lack of love of social interactions equates to programming skill. The two sets of skills are unrelated, but in a company of people who don't enjoy socialising, forcing a social interaction is counterproductive.
To be fair, I find US forced company events like this way more unbearable than UK/European ones. In the US, the incessant combination of excessive alcohol with neurotic self-awareness gets you to another level of hell.
In another FAANG, the L7s were complaining that the level of office machinations that were occuring stateside was off the charts compared to the offices overseas.
UK afterwork pub culture should be under UNESCO cultural protection at this point, I'm always surprised it's lasted this long. One would have to admit it's fended off the decreasing consumption of alcohol in the new generation impressively even though they may despise the tradition.
I'm not familiar with European ones, but I agree that forced company events like this is the US are unbearable. I rejoiced once I hit a point in my career where I could safely skip attending them.
That's one hell of a lawsuit you're opening yourself up to there. People who don't drink have significant overlap with protected classes.
1. Which ones? I used to be able to stereotype with the best of them, but I cant quickly come up with any protected class that is assigned as teetotalers.
2. Saying you're not hiring someone because they don't drink is a perfectly valid reason for not hiring someone, even if it's a cover for not hiring them because of protected class membership. The laws protecting protected classes are super weak. It is virtually impossible to prove that is the sole reason they weren't hired. All you need is an actual other reason to not hire them--and of course don't put into writing that the real reason is their protected class membership.
And just more broadly, some people have lives, family where they can't just be expected out on the piss in the afternoon.
Admitting it on forum is the in. Just like admitting you've been working while up on ket.
Many religions discourage or disallow drinking.
I believe a recovered/recovering alcoholic could be considered a protected class.
Many medical conditions or medications cannot be combined with alcohol.
Religious or spiritual belief.
The excuse is always culture fit, if that even gets recorded anywhere...
Of course, there's nothing enforcing that managers respect it. The main mechanism is that many managers realise it's in their interests to be able to hear unvarnished truths, and for their team to be able to relieve their feelings outside work instead of inside. And for them to be able to get to know their team better. But not all have the integrity or humility to do so.
Then COVID came around and I also moved to Finland where that sort of thing is just unheard of.
The company has moved to Bermondsey now, and to be fair the drinks-after-work culture seems to still going fairly strong around this part of town.
The biggest spanner in the works has been my cohort all having kids and not having the spare time to socialise after work.
Definitely miss all that. My liver & pancreas don't miss it though, so it's probably for the best.
I prefer the term 'enlightened'.
Here in Blighty, if somebody got rat-arsed at an office party, photocopied their arse and puked in the Yucca plant, they would be regarded as an absolute legend (providing they didn't make a habit of it).
Sounds like a law suit waiting to happen.
I think my lunchtime record was 4 1/2 pints. Another IT guy on the same session had keys to the building's small data room so let himself in and had a kip.
Didn't stay long because I got a PE offer at an American firm in their London office very quickly, and the culture there was so staid and lonely in comparison.
Part of the reason why we have an office bar with a bartender too set up at my current office. I don't drink, but nothing like drinks to help with bringing people together right after work.
University in the UK is (or was) a great training ground for livers.
To be fair I did enjoy the ‘unhingedness’ but I’m also appreciating that being at least a decade younger was also great.
You can decide whether that was better or worse.
It became pretty clear that drinking culture in a lot of places develops around people having a lot in common, and certainly becomes worse when one of those things in common is 'enjoying drinking'.
I don't mind this. I had all of my 20s and most of my 30s for drinking after work. Now it's not really something I care about.
> NOT a social function, but a horrifying legal flexing of soft hierarchical power, for purposes of satiating C suite ego, and humiliating everyone beneath them.
Very well described!
Now I consider anything involving alcohol as abusive. If company has a drinking "culture" or going to pub after work, I nope out.
I've had some bad experiences, of course, but overall I've found it to be incredibly worth it.
From your parent comment: > the facilitator tried to get to the bottom of tensions between the CTO and head of sales
I was referring specifically to these sorts of things. Retreat doesn't always include this, but sometimes it does, and when it does it's a stupid idea.
Unless maybe done by professionals?
I never have been to one such retreat, but I know human conflicts and I know what difference it can make, if skilled people can mediate.
I've been on a couple of them (without the bullshit) and people did indeed open up and bonded, but I should note that the conditions for this were positive in the first place (i.e. we weren't trying to invert some negative situation).
It's like the CEO or execs see there are a lot of problems and think this will magically fix all the "issues". It doesn't, so they turn to the next solution. Just fire a bunch of staff and start over.
Easier to just do a reset instead of thinking about how one might bring effective change over a reasonable period of time.
It's voluntary and employees are allowed to bring their spouse. I think it helps a lot with communication, especially since we are a distributed team and most peoplr don't see each other.
But it's hard for me to know for sure, no one tells the owners the truth. It is voluntary and almost everyone attends. I think most people think of it as a free vacation.
For those people, just drinking was the bonding. It reinforced the tribal affiliation.
Casinos often provide free drinks. QED
> I like to spend the company budget on blow and hookers, therefore it makes sense for me to invite all the employees to a strip club as it is a little more restrained.
Mentality.
I'm shocked that someone does NOT think so!
It's not free if the company is paying for it.
That's not a problem, in the sense that there was never any possible debate: if I make a promise on your behalf, I am a di*k.
Sounds like an ineffectual CEO who didn't understand that his role, like any manager, is to help resolve interpersonal conflict between his subordinates that they're having trouble working out themselves. Outsourcing that to a random coordinator reeks of conflict-avoidant behavior. That they both quit tells me that neither one thought the other was the sole problem they were dealing with.
I don't see any point of this. Such a waste of time and jet fuel. I would rather have those meetings at worksite and get a nice discount for the resort and go there with my own schedule and on my own terms.
But, like everything else, not all people enjoy them. I have seen people find obvious excuses to avoid them.
I feel that offsites work best when you let people interact on their own schedule, pace and topics. Trying to force hands via a lot of activities can kind of backfire.
Relationships happen. They are not programmatically built.
All of the stupid shit I’ve seen happen at these events have been done by people who I don’t miss working with
Maybe a retreat would be a good 3rd round interview.
* Do the bulk during work hours.
* Be 100% accepting of people who don't wanna spend free time on it. Or compensate.
* Add in loads of general fun.
* Let the employees be in charge of what constitutes fun.
* Go light on the actual work.
* Plan well ahead, respect people's own schedules.
Alcohol can be fine, but you will discover some people change when drunk, not always for the better. We had a few incidents at a previous company I worked for (involving people getting removed by bouncers or the whole company being banned from a venue - but tbf there was a lot of barf in the hallways and the like), but I gotta say, the people at the one I'm at now are all very conservative and mature when it comes to drinking and offsite behaviour. From what I know so far, anyway.
I always felt that those trust exercises, "bring your whole self to work", "let us pay for a personality test so we can know each other better" are all ruses to find the most gullible people and then take advantage of them or get rid of them.
Work is not a safe space. The people who say they want everyone to feel safe in their speech usually (actually, almost always) want people who agree with them on
> family, their disabilities, their religion, their culture or subculture, the things they love doing,
Don't try to fast-talk people into opening up. They have a better idea than you what's safe to talk about, about their lives. If they think they can't open up, they're probably right.
But merely saying "I'm taking next Wednesday off to celebrate Eid" ought to be fine everywhere, as is "this weekend I'm singing in my church choir then going for a picnic".
Similarly, wearing a wedding ring or mentioning that you have a partner should never be a problem, but issuing a company-wide invite to your next sex party likely will be.
"Personal" isn't a synonym for "intimate". It's reasonable to assume that people are able to share the former without forcing their colleagues to deal unnecessarily with the latter.
One persons level of comfort is not the same as others, so just saying I want people to be comfortable having their religious opinions respected is not a simple request.
Some religious opinions are basically oppression of others. I refuse to allow people to be bigots in my presence regardless of their reasoning.
Also as someone who was a member of church which had anti-christian ideals, pointing out the hypocrisy can be the only way for them to question what they are in. Doing and saying nothing helps no one.
Work environments are professional environments.
Silence is always the preferable choice in those matters.
Yes, you want to feel like the people around you feel safe to share it. Everyone with things that are uncomfortable to hear have learned that they're not. They know the polite fiction to talk around it and make you feel like they're open. They're not.
To me, either the culture bubble is extremely strong in your area, or being able to admit alignment with ideas shared by a major political party in an area where another party is more popular is an very low bar.
On the scale of topics that I conceal about myself, politics is as easy as talking about the weather.
I expect to accomplish my tasks. I can be friendly, polite and humorous but you don't need to know anything about how I live.
The main factor is a boss or supervisor can act on their judgement of an employee and employees do not have the same leverage.
This one always seemed like an "invitation" to demonstrate that you have the correct life experiences and attitudes.
Like those holistic admissions essays that sprung up when universities got banned from explicitly treating applicants differently based on race.
one activity was for each member of our department to grade the overall "personality" of our department using several personality dimensions (e. g., kindness, competitiveness, etc.)
what I think i learned was that each of us projected our dominant personality traits onto the whole group.
eg, the hyper competitive climber said our department was cutthroat.
the guy who avoided conflict said it was a happy department with few disagreements.
etc.
beyond that insight, I didn't learn much.
Remember: the e in e-mail stands for evidence.
Were you told this literally?
So, go outta there with complains about hr slogan and dei.
This was a practice that our company had to be explicitly coached away from. Early 2010s. Def before DEI was popular, which feels more like later 2010s.
CliftonStrengths, home of the Corporate Autism Test. Just which of those 35 Signature Themes(tm) will be the ones that get pulled out that look like the giant autistic red flag?
laughs in Ideation, Connectedness, Belief, Intellection, and Input
I absolutely think people should be themselves at work. In my mind this generally means not acting like a robot or treating other people like toasters. It is psychologically crushing to operate in a they're all workplace where people do that. The best managers I've ever had were those I could discuss my emotions or that of my team with.
That said, there are clear lines about workplace decorum.
It's one thing to say " I find this new Direction very frustrating for reasons x y and z, and the team morale is low", but another thing to say "i think the new leader is a dipshit idiot"
For some reason people think being yourself means having no filter
I mostly curious why people seem to expect a world free of this challenge, and look for obviously wrong black and white rules to avoid dealing with that reality.
I can work with them fine, I just don't want to share any part of myself with these people and invite commentary from people I do not respect.
The real challenge lies in properly tuning the strength of this filter, being deliberate with it and knowing what can be said, and what cannot be said. The people who act like robots err on the side of extreme caution, and are unwilling to invest time and effort into tuning and developing this filter. They also don't realize that this makes it impossible to connect with people, to their own demise.
For an exec to talk about therapy - that is allowed only to the top dogs, like CEO, who can pass any personal crap upon his reports.
> It goes on to say that at the same retreat Baillie drank a Guinness standing on his head, after sharing that he had learned the trick from his former father in law during a conversation inspired by the trust session.
> “His colleague immediately asked for a demonstration, rather than withhold the openness that the session had encouraged, he performed the trick,” the papers say.
This reads like a sitcom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_clown_paradox
> Sad clown paradox is characterised by a cyclothymic temperament, which encourages the creation of light-hearted humour in a professional setting, despite inner turmoil.
1- "Though shall not" limit their social life to their colleagues (or any single group that can disappear with a divorce, change of jobs, or hobby, maybe because of an incident).
2- "Though shall not" blindly help people with the hope of being helped in return. Help with generosity, but know the limits: don't sacrifice yourself, and certainly, don't count on people returning the favor as your main plan. It's incredible how much happier we can be just by helping people, if we fire and forget, rather than cling onto.
3- Do not define yourself with your job, your success in there, or with your colleagues' approvals. This is extremely hard, yet extremely important. Diversify what defines you. Be able to mentally afford being bad at some of them. Don't let any of them define who you are. This lets you act with true confidence (not insecurity disguised as overconfidence), which is extremely pleasant for yourself and others.
Extending on that, I do not agree with "do not define yourself with your job". Why not? It's a big, if not biggest, part of almost everyone's life. What's bad is defining yourself with your job ALONE. Psychological safety comes from having multiple self-identities: be an engineer at work, a volunteer on weekends, amateur radio enthusiast on Thursdays nights, or whatever, and don't mix those!
No, this is a recipe for surviving corporate America. You can have and make friends but be cautious of coworkers that you work directly with. I’ve made friends outside of work. I’ve made friends at work but I do not expect to be friends with everyone I work with.
> corporate America
Sounds like you're saying the same thing.
Making friends at the workplace is fine until there is such conflict, then where will they stand? If they will turn they back on you (and most of them will), then how much is such relation worth in the first place?
Professional networks are a massive important part of growing/building a career. This is especially true in an environment where there are mass layoffs constantly.
Building personal and trusting relationships is a huge part of developing that network.
This doesn’t mean you should turn every coworker into your therapist, but the other extreme is also bad for both your career and your person.
Should I give up years of joy and sense of community and belonging for the fear that someday my workplace friends will betray me? And then years more of suffering in my next workplace?
A strategy that minimizes risk rarely maximizes reward.
If I am not making friends at work, it doesn't simply equate to "sad life". Maybe it would for you, but then you can question why behaving so, work isn't and shouldn't be one's central piece of existence. Maybe you were never fired, or never saw firing for all the wrong reasons. Maybe you work so much its hard to have an actual life outside of work. At the end it doesn't matter, but folks do see things differently to you and its fine.
Really hope I didn't have to ever give that up.
I’ve made friends at work. I wouldn’t call them friend friends but I’ve made friends at work.
They were asked if you'd fit in and they gave the most diplomatic, polite feedback that they knew would be be taken as a no. Their comment was a pretty clear admission that this was not a "work life balance kind of company".
I treat everyone I work with with respect but I also don't go so far as to let them into the inner circle. I wish people could just respect people but I've seen too many office politics sessions to know better. I wished to make friends with some coworkers outside of work but it never amounted to much.
From personal experience I have reported gross treats by senior leadership to an HR rep who was shocked about hearing their HR employee evals being suppressed by only allowing score between 8-10 in a 1-10 score. The HR rep confirmed it personally that it was happening and a few months later appeared on the other side of the desk with the leadership as they fired me for budget reasons.
What I did was to build my own grass field(started company with my team) and it has been fucking great. We made a better product and made enough of a name of ourselves, that while I lost the battle that time with the former leadership, I fought long enough to see them all lose their jobs.
As a CEO myself now, I choose not to have an HR rep and try to do better for my people.
Also this is in EU so as a warning to others,like me then, who thought HR in the US could do this but not here.
The people within HR may be friendly, they've probably got friends :). It can be a very people-oriented role. But they are incapable of being your friend when you're interacting with them in their role as representative for the company.
I greatly appreciate my employer's HR folk, they're really lovely, very good at their jobs, and want to help. But if I have to have a formal meeting with them, I would definitely bring along my union rep.
Edit: which also means you're not wrong, if you've got claims that trigger damage control then HR are even less your friend.
Do they also go around repeating the sky is blue?
If you work for HR, please kindly ____ yourself.
My first manager job I was very naive, I went to HR to get help with directs. It was a bad idea, it put me and my direct at risk... never again.
The sad truth is that the managers who actually care and want to solve problems for people (personal and technical) usually get the wrong end of the HR stick first.
My question was not about if it is true or not, but why people like saying it so much.
Also, in IT there's not a very diverse group of people to search from. When it comes to women, the ratio of hetero men to hetero women is insanely not favorable.
I wouldn't want my wife to work on same team for example. Heck, even same company may be less than ideal, time off each other is usually for the better. Also, if breakup/divorce happens, workplace can easily become a place out of worst nightmare.
I prefer looking at hobbies/passions groups, people there match me way more than people at work, it that doesn't work out its easier to cut off only that group if needed. In my case it was climbing events I was organizing, and I ended up with wife that matches me on basically all important levels
At least you get paid I suppose.
Do people not know how to make friends and develop trust. The solution is the same judgment process any human should go through.
Only an idiot would automatically assume coworkers are friends.
Only an idiot would assume coworkers can't become friends.
My fraternity was more tame and we used to have guys gazing each other in the main room during parties.
Joining a fraternity makes you jointly and severally liable for anything your frat brothers do. It's the very opposite of working or investing in a limited liability company. Makes sense for a fraternity to be more tame...
Hopefully not at the same time, otherwise there would be opportunity for many kinds of unfortunate mishaps.
Bring your hole self to work
Coke, machetes, and drunk driving gets your passion moved?
Concisely, seek help.
Is this just splitting the G? If so, it's the most mundane thing in the history of alcohol related party tricks.
From another article: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tv/articles/netflix-exec...
Honestly, the whole thing seems sort of innocuous. He had some particular medical treatment and then drank a Guinness upside down. Maybe there was something else to it but if you're a big corp then you probably should just give a safe answer.
...I'm fired, aren't I? I'll see myself out.
Mostly due to a total lack of coordination.
According to LadBible the actual trick was drinking a pint of Guinness while standing on his head.
https://www.ladbible.com/entertainment/netflix/netflix-execu...
Please don't do this. Quote a source, not an LLM that bullshits.
It seems to be a challenge where you drink a specific amount from a pint in one try such that the bottom of the foam splits the Guinness logo. It's not even a huge amount. It seems to less than 20% of the pint eyeballing it.
It's likely that we're not hearing the full story and the news sites are just writing clickbait articles from one-sided excerpts of the lawsuit that the ex-employee filed.
I think that, per the parent who you initially replied to's point, that taking a tabloid's clickbait excerpts from one-side of a lawsuit is a terrible way of understanding the truth of a dispute.
This is probably the first time I've ever said that a NY Post article was a useful source of information on a story.
its like firing a person who was sedated by professional Anesthesiologist with Fentanyl during surgery (A friend of mine had a surgery and was administered fentanyl)
It is very likely Netflix's argument would be more complex.
Medically…no. It does not seem to be equivalent, especially with any amount of regular repetition.
That's only guidance, not binding law in and of itself, but it means that the employer can only discourage employees from discussing their mental health if they do so in a neutral manner that applies equally to all employees in a non-discriminatory manner, which was self-evidently not the case here.
Notably, the EEOC guidance standards are not wholly unlimited. Employers can take action against an employee if their discussion of their mental health is repeatedly inappropriate or disruptive. e.g., if someone is constantly cornering coworkers to trauma dump suicidal thoughts on them or something like that. But only in truly extreme cases where an accommodation is impossible (e.g., if they are violent) or if they fail to adjust their behavior after receiving feedback that it has become unacceptable. A single incident that does not appear to have even made any other employee uncomfortable certainly doesn't suffice.
Netflix's only real defense here would be to argue that they would have fired him anyway without the disclosure, in response to other issues. That is a challenging defense to make given the admission their lawyer made that the ketamine treatment factored into their decision to fire, but the ADA and FEHA require "but for" causation, i.e. he is protected from firing if they would not have fired him but for the admission of ketamine treatment. I doubt they will succeed given the relative triviality of their other accusations (somewhat excessive profanity in a context where a fair amount of profanity was considered acceptable) and the entirely inoffensive party trick (at least in a context where the CEO has been repeatedly photographed drinking alcohol at company events and the alcohol at this event was provided by the company). I seriously doubt they will be able to point to any similarly situated employees that Netflix has previously fired solely for profanity or consuming alcohol that the company provided to them (and from a PR perspective that would almost be worse for them to admit). Frankly, the profanity feedback also seems like the very common scenario where a manager is required to provide regular feedback but can't think of anything constructive to say because the employee is a high performer, so they reach for something funny and minor just to check the box. In the absence of extensive complaints from coworkers, it is unlikely to overcome the company lawyer's outright admission that the ketamine use was a factor in their decision.
What appears to have happened here is Netflix has awful in-house counsel and/or HR who utterly failed to carry out their duties with even minimal competence. They appear to have simply assumed that all ketamine use is automatically illegal recreational drug abuse without bothering to investigate whether that is true in general or in this particular case before escalating to the most extreme possible reaction. Those employees are the ones who should be fired, not only because of the gross incompetence it takes to so egregiously violate America's otherwise absurdly weak legal protections for workers' rights, but because they did so in a manner that seems practically designed to permanently destroy employee trust in the company while inviting unwelcome public scrutiny of their potentially discriminatory employment practices.
This is a fairly straight forward discriminatory-causation story: Netflix invited vulnerability and thus potential mental health related disclosures, learned of a psychiatric history, reframed treatment as drug misconduct, and then expressly treated it as a termination factor. It's honestly pretty rare to see such an obvious example of this kind of discrimination, usually companies do a better job covering it up with a pretext, and usually their *lawyers* aren't so unbelievably fucking stupid as to admit publicly to the discriminatory decision.
1) Get invited to a trust exercise retreat.
2) Share that you have done ketamine in a controlled therapy environment.
3) Share a bunch of other things not in article <speculation>
4) Get fired for having a drug addiction.
We are to assume that #2 caused #4 ... but without all the facts it could have been something in #3 + #2 , again speculation.
why isn't Netflix firing anyone who had even a minor surgery or even tooth extraction done, since it most likely involved opioids
Perfect health is only really a requirement for the military, pilots, and a couple other niche roles. No medication history would constitute illegal discrimination for 99% of jobs in the US, and the company even asking for it on hiring would lead to a HIPPA mess.
Nobody in America requires no medication history for office jobs, not even the CIA.
Netflix seems to have simply assumed that all ketamine use is illegal and recreational, without bothering to conduct even the most cursory of investigations, which would have revealed that ketamine is in fact a clinically acceptable treatment for treatment-resistant depression. This is what happens when you have utterly incompetent idiots for in-house counsel and HR.
Ketamine is an FDA approved drug.
(That's the Inc article)
.
Mandatory "vulnerability" is required to be staged and fake. Legitimate vulnerability -- that comes with legitimate risk -- has to be a free choice or else whoever's pushing it makes themselves vulnerable to consequences.
no comment on the actual content or context just a nit on everyone saying this was netflix did a thing... this seems like netflix owned company eyeline did a thing based on the actual article and a couple of the eyeline press releases from when they got bought and recently rebranded.
But the title seems to imply it was about over sharing, while the rest of the article seems focused on the culture of constant alcohol and drugs which likely has more to do with the way things ended.
Hard to say what is true with a publication like this.
(I liked the last note, at the end of the entry)
You’ll get more interviews and higher salaries with a simple lie.
Or you get fired for telling the truth.
I’m 1000% lying from now on.
What if my engineers microdose on ketamine for productivity? And will the HR decides differently if it is lsd, dmt, etc? So because of Steve Jobs these naturally have better "branding" to them?
What if Kevin Baillie made a documentary film out of this and became "the Steve Jobs of ketamine"? Do things on this planet work this way?
Sharing stories and getting to know people humanizes them. It's much easier to hate "that team in another country" you've never met than that person you've had a meal together with and learned about their hobbies.
Your workplace is a community, not a friendship circle, and not a family. Community life has always had a certain level of formality to help paper over the differences between people in the community while still fostering a positive, inclusive environment.
People in the past had stronger community institutions, and I think a part of that was that nobody expected to bring their whole self to bowling club or the neighborhood potluck.
But that doesn't mean those relationships originally started at the bowling club need to stay purely about bowling, a big part of community is to then open up when the context is right and when the other person is open to the sharing. It's how you grow your community, how you grow your circle. Don't expect every person in your bowling league wants to become your best friend ever, but it's also not healthy to assume that everyone there only ever wants to just bowl and only cares about bowling.
I've had a lot of people from work relationships that stayed purely work relationships. I've had some become friends. I've had several become important people in my life. If I forced myself to silo off work contacts are only ever work contacts, I don't think I'd be nearly as happy as I am today. I know I'd be a lot more lonely and probably a good bit less successful.
We talk about this huge loneliness epidemic and yet so many people are like "I would never talk to my fellow coworkers about anything personal, ever." Huh I wonder why we're so lonely. We're all convinced we shouldn't be personal with the people we spend a massive amount of our lives with.
The latter sounds good (if you could have that with your colleagues, then it can only help, right?), but then again, the linked article is literally about someone violating that and firing the subject of the article. It is simply not possible to build emotional intimacy with every coworker, let alone under forced circumstances, so attempts to do so are more or less predictably going to lead to pain.
Yeah, but if you make a point of never shooting the shit with your coworkers how will you ever really come across this kind of info?
I do ultimately agree forcing this kind of thing isn't usually good, and it definitely sounds like this retreat went sideways due to poor management. People probably shouldn't be doing things like keg stands at a company retreat, management should have stopped things well before people were pressured into such activities. And yeah, a company-wide forced "tell everyone your darkest secrets for trust" thing, forget that you're only going to get a watered down example. Management shouldn't be putting people in that kind of position.
Goes back to my point, things need to be balanced. It's good and healthy for a workplace to help people form these kinds of friendships in small nudges, but overly forcing connections that aren't forming naturally just isn't good. And excessive drinking at company events just leads to issues, that's for sure.
I definitely talk to my coworkers about what I did this weekend, or travel, or the weather (I'm halfway around the world from my home country, so comparing the weather is a constant topic of conversation). I have a coworker I carpool with and we talk some about how I'm settling in to life here. But, I will never discuss my history of mental illness with any of these people. At best I will make a vague allusion to seasonal blues.
Not related to the thread but your comment just reminded me of that.
I guess this is to say that when you have these offsites it is in your best interest to attend and assimilate. Never relax!
You must not allow them to fool you into thinking that these aren't the rules they're playing by. David Sirlin's "Playing to Win" is a good treatise on how to be good, and perhaps the most important lesson is to play the game by the rules as written, and not by some other set of rules that exists only in your head.
(Though in this case the victim was senior enough that I suspect he was playing the game to the best of his ability, trying to humanize himself to gain the upper hand in some other manipulation game and misplayed, kicking things into the legal arena, as one does)
Now of course it’s hard to say if the original employment shape is still valid.
You don’t have to go full Patrick Bateman corp-bro, but keeping in mind the phrase “we don’t fire family” and adjusting your approach based on that counter-example can help you to keep things appropriately transactional and not be taken advantage of.
It's very culture-dependent. You have to read the room, pick up clues from current behaviour and previous history, and try to calibrate accordingly.
There's a broad correlation between management stupidity and chaotic leadership and toxicity but sometimes you can still end up in pockets of sanity - or insanity if the surrounding culture is good but there are one or more Cluster B types on a team.
No, it's really not.
The entire point of capitalism is free enterprise and freedom of association. The way to apply that to employer / employee relationships is to recognize that you are not a serf bound to a single employer and keep half an eye on your options in case you ever tire of your current relationship.
-Henry George
I didn't know those trust/sharing exercises were real.
[0]https://www.imdb.com/fr/title/tt7289250/?ref_=ttep_ep_5
perfect flawless plain-vanilla creatives tend go work for Hallmark channel and product absolute drab cr*p.
not sure why Netflix HR would want to sabotage their own internal culture that drives their content success strategy.
It feels like somebody in senior management had it in for Baillie. And the ketamine story provided a sufficient cause.
It is irritating that people expect you to understand what reasonable personal sharing is without explaining explicitly and goodness knows I screwed this up when I was younger but “don’t talk about your personal life at all” is bad advice.
Sounds like an awfull time.
Never sacrifice your privacy in such an environment.
Do X -> ??? -> Profit
So I say the areas I use it.
Rejected: We need people who can work without AI.
Felt so dumb. I’m never telling the truth again.
If the accusations are true as reported, their in-house counsel fucked up terribly by assuming all ketamine use is illegal and recreational without bothering to conduct the very cursory investigation required to determine that it is in fact a perfectly legitimate option for treating treatment-resistant depression. That single error drove them to fire an otherwise exemplary employee for an obviously illegal reason in a manner that screwed him out of significant compensation including severance.
This was an obvious, unforced error by their legal team. Competent lawyers and competent corporate leadership would recognize that the relatively small amount of money they may save by litigating this issue is not worth the damage it is very predictably inflicting on their corporate culture and public brand. The lawyer who publicly admitted that ketamine factored into their decision should be immediately fired because he is demonstrably a terrible fucking lawyer, and he seems to be representative of the quality of legal advice Netflix is receiving, because any attorney with half a brain would have immediately recognized both the underlying legal error that incurred liability for the company and the business context that makes immediate heavily NDA'd settlement the optimal strategy for defending, even were the original legal error not so egregious.
My main takeaway from this situation is that Netflix is managed by remarkably incompetent leaders who are advised by even more remarkably incompetent lawyers.
No wonder all the CEOs are crazy about AI. All the intelligence, none of the human.
We're a family here, after all. You wouldn't leave your colleagues hanging, would you?
i have been fortunate in my career to have had many roles where i was able to create a better product and solution through the aforementioned ideals.
so much of what we build is made better by diverse thought, diverse ability, diverse ethnicity, and more. i believe being genuine is one of the most important things one can do when they are touching the lives of millions.
Chesterson, being a good Catholic, probably knew about this adage Proverbs 22:28 (KJV): "Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set."
And explained the usefulness of it
It's no one else's business to decide if they agree the reason is valid. Don't volunteer stuff like that especially when it would be something they'd likely agree with. Don't validate their right to decide or even be aware of anything like that. Next time maybe your need might not be so convinvcing to anyone else, but you've already established they have a right to know and a right to veto, so then trying to be private stands out as different from other times.
It doesn't mean being inflexible or uncooperative either. If there is actually some problem, they can negotiate and try to make the case and convince you that they really need you just that much just that day, and you can voluntarily decide to change your plans, but without ever volunteering what those were. And make it cost. Keep score. Claim a return favor.
People who think it's sweet that their colleague is taking vacation to visit family at the end of august this year.
And people who understand exactly why they told that lie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpYs-aM8I8U
> Multi-millionaire Netflix executive, known for profanity-laden tirades and shotgunning beers at corporate events, claims without evidence he was terminated for medically sanctioned ketamine use
Come to think of it, Orwell’s 1984 perfectly encapsulates what corporations actually do — even in his own time. Down to the groupthink, wrongthink, doublethink, doublespeak, all of it. Synergy! Concerned. Trust.
https://www.inc.com/leila-sheridan/plex-tech-company-retreat...
Your co-workers can be your friends. But we're not obligated to be. If you're my friend and colleague, sure, vent to me. If we're not, I don't give a flyig fuck about your views on geopolitics or gender or whatever, particulalry if you owe me a deliverable, doubly so if you've chosen a hot-button issue nobody actually has any new takes on other than blind agreement or condemnation. (And unless they’re voiced outside work in a way that affects me, I don’t have a right to care about it either.)
Mental health discussions, especially among men, should be less fraught. Like “I have a cold”
I don't think anyone ever pressed for more details after a coworker said "I had some issues with my health".
People show empathy, and move on. No need to ask for details.
Ah, so sad :( Another story of a person who believed other people in the workplace too much.
These kinds of exercises are unfortunately a waste of time. If you’re honest, you’re walking into a minefield. But if you’re not being open, then no one is really getting to know anyone else in any meaningful way. In the end, a bunch of money and time is spent with zero value gained.
And given that this was about someone sharing their experience with a medical procedure to help them process the death of a parent, the company will probably lose the lawsuit, wasting even more money.
What a tragic waste of resources. Also, my heart goes out to this person. Loosing a parent is terrible.
Hell, lie and make an embarrassing but completely legal story. Or something stupid like you were totally embarassed in HS or college.
But, never ever share your actual personal lives in a corporate setting. Not one time.
They might share personal things with close friends, but they had a clear definition of what friendship meant.
In other words, be a person of character.
It is perfectly fine not to be friends with everyone. Just be respectful and honest. Do not lie. Say, “I cannot tell you that because of this or that,” or simply remain silent.
Companies will use everything and anything against you when they believe it’s time for you to go.
Unless you admit it, you wont be caught in a lie. And you seem "normal" to whatever litmus test of sharing something.
I think everyone gets a pass for something kid related, and to a lesser—probably unequal—extent, something spouse or family related, everything else can and will be used against you unless you're just humming along as the most normal predictable person.
As far as people at work are concerned, you've never smoked pot, you're not taikng stimulants even though they're prescribed, you won't even drink coffee after 5pm, and you've definitely never had insomnia.
Have one drink with the team if you're inclined to, and then gtfo, go drink with real friends.
Managers only care about perception and control, and if anything at all doesn't fit into their directive or world view, it'll go into their mental spreadsheet of blemishes like a vindictive romantic partner next time you fight.
"Hey there was a bug last release in some code with your name on it, might be time to go to bed at a reasonable hour!?". Ya thanks, I'll note your advice for next time that happens I'm sure it'll help. Why did you approve the change again?
They are REALLY happy to fire people.
But it seems like they're on record firing someone for a legal medical treatment... in California no less.
He was already doing pretty well and will get a decent additional payday out of this.
"He said he underwent physician-supervised ketamine therapy in late 2022 to treat depression following his mother’s death.
At a January company retreat this year at a Netflix-owned property in California, Baillie shared this experience "
...
"A company attorney acknowledged that “the ketamine therapy issue has factored into the termination.”"
Ignoring the obvious legal landmines, what does that have to do with the job?
I assumed there was some other reason for the firing. If that was the reason (or if that's what the victim is alleging) then I think the article needs to be more clear, it all reads like vague gossip to me and it wasn't at all clear to me that that was what this was about.
At a January company retreat this year at a Netflix-owned property in California, Baillie shared this experience "
...
"A company attorney acknowledged that “the ketamine therapy issue has factored into the termination.”"
This goes moreso for work. I assume anything you do can and will be used against you. I have zero trust. You're being a sanitized version of yourself. Do people not know this?
It's part of the reason I hate these working bonding activities. Well, that and being neurodivergent. There are fiarly standard questions and I have prepared answers that may or may not be the truth. Just like with interview questions. Sorry, but none of you are my friends or can be trusted. You might be shocked how often confiding in a coworker is used against you.
The trick with coworkers is saying just enough so they think they can trust you without saying anything that might get you fired or have other consequences. You can't say nothing. That's almost worse. But you have to basically invent a persona, particularly if you're neurodivergent because the default position of neurotyhpical people is to not like you.
And at the end of the day so much of your work life is governed by whether or not people like you. And I hate it.
So for a trust exercise, I'd come up with something everybody has likely done or is at least sympathetic to. Like, nothing to do with stealing. That might get you fired. Here's an example: "when I was in high school, I lied to my parents and drove to another state for a party and got drunk with my friends".
It's better to base your sanitized answer on the truth but I'm not above wholesale lies. They're just harder to remember so you have to be light on details but not too light.
Part of the purpose of these exercises is to train management, especially executives, to remain fully focused and make decisions solely on performance and the business, even when someone asks them to show emotion. Anyone who is in executive management position should understand that.
He failed the test.
He was not a beginner.
Edit: Also, “under 40” is ridiculous for a bar of being experienced / mature.