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How to grow professional relationships

tej.as

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Re: How to grow professional relationships

#191

Post by Dracophoenix »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #148
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not used to putting effort into friendships, so it does sound like an unwelcome task. And it sounds phony, since I have never put effort before. If I have to put effort then am I not faking it?

I'm "on the spectrum," so human relationships are a bit foreign to me. I'd make a great hermit. Pretty much every relationship I have "doesn't come natural." I need to put conscious effort into every one. I have also been involved in an organization, for most of my adult life, that has been instrumental, in helping to force me to have relationships with others, and it has taught me to be a good friend, and has given…

> Pretty much every relationship I have "doesn't come natural." I need to put conscious effort into every one.

In what way exactly?

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#192

Post by Dracophoenix »

tejaskumar_ wrote: post #135
lovich wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transactional relationships are completely fine, and personally I prefer them in the work space. I was commenting on people who’s behavior creates transactional relationships when they wanted something with a deeper interpersonal relationships, and people whose behavior causes transactional relationships but also have nothing of value to make the transaction worth it. If a billionaire calls me up once every five year…

> I guess I’m saying you shouldn’t treat others as impersonal machines to be manipulated unless you are ok with that same behavior being turned back on yourself. This! However if you'll allow me—I think it's worth saying we shouldn’t treat others as impersonal machines to be manipulated _at all_ because we're never really okay with that same behavior being given back to us because of millenia of social, communal evol…

What one may call the treatment of an "impersonal machine" is another's assessment of what an appropriate relationship looks like. Some people prefer such associations even in deeper relationships because it prevents one person's encroachment upon another's individual agency and minimizes (or at least clarifies) the incurrence of "social debt" between the two parties rather than assume mutually shared rules of engagement right off the bat.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#193

Post by digging »

rowanG077 wrote: post #188
digging wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the misunderstanding, in fact, is in reverse, demonstrated by the above comment. The networking required for career growth is, for many people, never going to pleasurable. My social circles don't have much overlap with, for example, startup founders. Developing personal relationships in my network is not likely to ever benefit my career growth. When people give the advice to "network" to enable my career grow…

All relationships in some form require you to not be true to yourself. It's just the way it works, we are all very different from each other so being able to create a shared bubble of understanding is an essential skill. That's not disingenuous or something to be lamented. It's how people bond.

I don't at all agree with that. Or at least, it's only true enough to be misleading and to downplay/obscure the real concerns I'm raising.

Because, of course it's true not all my friends are just like me. But I don't have to hide who I am from them. I can be completely true to myself and we can disagree about some things but still feel genuine connections.

I consider that qualitatively different from a relationship with a person who would dislike and distrust me unless I hide important facets of my identity/personality.

edit: I see that I made the distinction in my original comment between "not being true" vs "hiding", so I think that's where you jumped in. My fault for leaving that gap open; I hope my position is more clear here.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#194

Post by digging »

lelanthran wrote: post #178
digging wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the misunderstanding, in fact, is in reverse, demonstrated by the above comment. The networking required for career growth is, for many people, never going to pleasurable. My social circles don't have much overlap with, for example, startup founders. Developing personal relationships in my network is not likely to ever benefit my career growth. When people give the advice to "network" to enable my career grow…

> When people give the advice to "network" to enable my career growth, the people who would be most helpful tend not to have much in common with me, and building relationships with them often means not being true to myself, or even hiding myself. Then it's best to recognise this early and decide if you want to be true to yourself or if you want to succeed[1]. [1] Depending on your definition of "success", plodding al…

Hm, I mostly agree, but I think that's a bit tangential.

It's not like people really get to make that choice and still have a good chance at success. In order to meet any definition of success[1], you need to get hired. And also, if you're in a job that's making you miserable, you once again need to get hired (somewhere else). Networking is the solution to that problem. If you're not someone who can enjoy and/or succeed at networking, your career is at risk. There's not much you can do about that except take a different path.

[1] excluding either "leave the field and succeed somewhere else" or "start your own company"[2]

[2] although starting one's own company without a robust network would probably also be a pretty difficult path

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#195

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #191
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm "on the spectrum," so human relationships are a bit foreign to me. I'd make a great hermit. Pretty much every relationship I have "doesn't come natural." I need to put conscious effort into every one. I have also been involved in an organization, for most of my adult life, that has been instrumental, in helping to force me to have relationships with others, and it has taught me to be a good friend, and has given…

> Pretty much every relationship I have "doesn't come natural." I need to put conscious effort into every one. In what way exactly?

Hard to explain. I don't "get" people, naturally. I don't feel the "proper" emotions, for situations, I have a fairly self-sufficient internal world, that doesn't really "need" other people.

It's made me a good coder, but has made my relationships challenging.

It's really a long story, and one that others have told, far better than I can.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#196

Post by ghaff »

beryilma wrote: post #106
ghaff wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you "like" a person, it's probably not really a transactional relationship. "Hi, I'm one of the 100K alumni who went to the same school as you did, can we do coffee?" is.

>> "Hi, I'm one of the 100K alumni who went to the same school as you did, can we do coffee?" is I have absolutely gotten similar requests from students through my Alumni organization and have accepted them in the past. I don't see a problem here. Here is a direct quote from a request that I have accepted in the past(redacted a little): "Hi , I am a MS in CS student at graduating in spring '25 and I saw your profile…

I was a bit flippant. Depends on the specificity of the request, how it's worded, and how big a request it is. (I'm far more likely to have a quick phone chat or answer a specific question by email than I am to drive to meet someone for coffee.) It's also a pet peeve when I spend the time to answer some questions and... crickets.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#197

Post by Muromec »

baxuz wrote: post #187
Muromec wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No big surprise here -- autism is not a social or emotional imparement anyway and the doll test is a lie.

> Autism is not a social or emotional impairment That is blatantly false.

That's what normies want you to believe.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#198

Post by reshlo »

alexpotato wrote: post #18
tejaskumar_ wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they consider kicking Bob out of the group?

This was highly discouraged as the whole point of the group projects was to teach how to deal with group dynamics.

Whenever a lecturer responded to a student's complaint about other group members doing no work by saying something like "I don't care, work it out amongst yourselves, in the real world you have to be able to work in groups", I would think to myself "in the real world, people who refuse to do work get fired".

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#199

Post by smcin »

LoganDark wrote: post #70
caseyohara wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it interesting that techspeak has a way of turning verbs into nouns. Ask, invite, compute.

Is "an invite" techspeak?

"an invite" is not specifically techspeak because it's widely used outside tech (esp. in US English), unlike "an ask".

Dictionaries say "an invite" has been used as a noun for centuries.

[0]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/can-you-use-invite-a...

[1]: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/68937/invite-vs-...

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#200

Post by smcin »

carlosjobim wrote: post #173
LoganDark wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is "an invite" techspeak?

The proper word is "invitation".

I thought so too until I checked, but the references I cite above say 'an invite' has also been used since the 17th century, at least for US English.
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