What a sad world we live in...

That’s the world they live in. Personally I’m fine to share basically everything with coworkers.

Australia has much better legal protections for workers though.

I live in the US and I have normal social interactions with my coworkers, not really trying to hide my real personality. That poster is exaggerating the danger, IMO.

It depends on what you need to hide. I’m an introvert and not a neurotypical and struggle wearing a mask at work for extended periods of time. I’ve adapted to display what is expected of me in those settings but it’s tiring to not be able to be onself…

Not just that but totally different culture.

I also find that lunch and coffee are great ice breakers - otherwise an office can feel quite sterile and disconnected.

Yeah that's the thing about remote work I hate the most. It's so dry. To talk about anything remotely personal or spicy you have to be face to face at the cafe or something.

There are a few coworkers who come in to the coworking space with me and we talk about all kinds of things and get to know each other really well. No one does this on Teams/Slack. Not being able to assess the vibe of the room and having everything permanently logged just kills any personality.

> Our main way of relating ourselves to others is like things relate themselves to things on the market. We want to exchange our own personality, or as one says sometimes, our "personality package", for something. Now, this is not so true for the manual workers. The manual worker does not have to sell his personality. He doesn't have to sell his smile. But what you might call the "symbol pushers", that is to say, all the people who deal with figures, with paper, with men, who manipulate - to use a better, or nicer, word - manipulate men and signs and words, all those today have not only to sell their service but in the bargain they're to sell their personality, more or less. There are exceptions.

-- Erich Fromm, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu-7UDT0Xe4&t=94s

I think that's the common sense thing really

Bravo

Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please don't do it again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: more generally—could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing the site guidelines and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

we spend so much time w/ our co-workers. If i can make some genuine friendships by being myself, that's far more valuable to me than 'keeping my job'.

That's great if everybody you work with is someone you'd be friends with.

On the other hand, if we can all present our workplace self, we can get our work done, and then go home and be our whole selves at home where our incompatabilities don't clash.

A lot of employers advocate “bring your whole self to work”, which sadly carries an implicit “no, not that part of yourself”.

Yeah, anyone who takes that 100% at face value is in for a rough time.

I believe the intention is to say “it’s ok to be out as gay/trans/whatever, or to express your culture through dress/hair/etc.”. But we have a sloganized sentiment that opens the door for a lot more than that.