[legerdemain]

THIS, 100% this. I don't want to be "social" with you, I don't want to "bond" with you, and I don't care about you as a human being. You are 100% just a queue of work tasks and a source of pay checks. The less I see, hear, or know about the other people on my team, the happier I am and the better off they are. WFH forever, don't mess with a good thing.

[shannongreen]

FWIW, I would hate working with someone like this. You don't have to be super active, socially, but treating the other people (and they _are_ people) on your team as just drones is a) not conducive to good collaboration and b) pretty damn rude.

[IggleSniggle]

It doesn’t have to be rude. Seeing it as rude is an imposition on those of us who don’t see it as rude.

I’m pretty antisocial, personally, and love it when my workmates get to the point and focus on the actual “drone”-tasks. Why? Because that is why I do software. I don’t do software because I love people. I don’t do software because I love the paycheck. I do software because I love software and every second away from focusing on the concerns of producing quality software just seems like a genuine waste of time. Even here on HN, it’s mostly an opportunity to safely experiment with “politics” in a way that isn’t totally exhausting.

I get that everyone is not like me, and I’m okay with that. I don’t expect everyone to have my preferences.

I’d personally prefer to be treated as a respected “drone” (now THAT seems rude) and I don’t really want to spend time on banter, unless it’s being used as a metaphor that can improve our collective output.

This is “fun.” This is why I “work” (it’s not work to me). Discussing requirements and problem solving solutions is great; it’s fun. Happy hour is “work” to me. Please don’t act like I’m rude just because I don’t share your preferences.

[icebergonfire]

As someone who as been on both ends of that spectrum at different points of my life, I’ll attempt to explain: your core concept is completely legitimate and understood, at least here in HN.

Presenting it as a clear-cut _you are a queue of work and paychecks_ is where it breeds conflict. For the royal you that description is merely a description and expresses no judgement, it is simply the _why_ of your intentional lack of interaction with your coworkers.

To the people on the other side, that description brings back the negative feelings they felt when a coworker that held that same opinion (not you) was unnecesarily rude at work and shielded his failings behind the _I don’t do people_ cover.

I realize that asking you to use the human touch (for lack of a better term) is asking you to have to “work” to cater to the social aspects that you are trying to not get involved with…

So instead I’ll posit that your last paragraph is a perfectly acceptable response to the eternal “want to join and be social” question. It’s innofensive yet firm, and it conveys your position in a concise way that nobody can really pick apart unless they want to make an scene and look bad.

[strken]

That's not really the same as not caring about your co-workers as human beings, though. I'm happy to leave introverts alone and not drag them to unhappy hour with me, but they're still worth something as people, and I'd still help them out if they e.g. got hospitalised and needed someone to bring them clothes and a book.

I interpreted "I don't care about you as a person" as "I don't think you have moral worth outside your instrumental value to me", which goes beyond rudeness and into questions of whether the person can be trusted at all.

[ecpottinger]

First, I made friends with most people I worked with. I still see them years after I left the company.

So who do I not see, the ones who insisted I must follow their favourite sport teams, the ones who got so drunk on the weekend they could not remember what they did but thought I should have been with them. The one (thank goodness it was only one) who keep eyeing the high school girls while we were in our 30s and 40S. And last the ones who always had to go out for a smoke, I don't want to imagine what their places were like.

You can like some people, but some people you just do not want to be around when you are not being paid to work with them.