This makes total sense if you have a therapist and / or have friends you can be vulnerable with (and know how to). But there are undoubtedly those who do not have that. For them the risk of career sabotage vs a change of improved quality of life might be worth considering. I don't know where the breakdown is, probably against mandatory sharing in the work setting on the account of an average workspace being pretty adversarial. However, if I could make a call for my younger self I would choose to share.

I think this shows that the boss was going out of his way which I "personally" appreciate.

I don't know what people expect managers / boss to do. Somebody on team expects their boss to X and somebody else on that same team expects their boss to be anything but X.

If I ever become a manager , I am probably taking this boss's approach , I think its good to have some talks like this. I am also much inspired by the likes of charles schwab and dale carnegie's how to win friends and influence people so probably there is a bias here

What they do should be related to the company work, otherwise they're overstepping. They're not social workers. They have to respect the privacy and independence of their coworkers.

> If I ever become a manager , I am probably taking this boss's approach

Please don't. Coworkers can obviously have social relationships but they should grow organically without being "managed".

You know the best way for that to happen is? Let them work together. They'll build their own relationships. They don't need your help. If they don't work together enough for this to happen naturally then they're strangers to each other anyway and that's ok too.

Friendships increase team communicability which bolster project success.

The actual respectful and considerate way is not to put people in such positions in the first place.

Like asking something from someone where it would be some unusual imposition or favor (like something that would be ok to ask a friend or family but not a mere aquaintance) and telling them it's ok if they say no. That is an empty statement. You were not supposed to put them in the position where they had to say no.

You can allow for people to not be robots without putting other people into awkward positions they didn't deserve to be put in.

It's definitely favoring some people at the expense of others. Like the gp comment, now they not only have to do their normal job, they also have to generate bs for their manager. The manager should be the one who has to figure out how to work with their different people, not the other way around. That is the managers explicit role that they supposedly get paid more for and what gives them the authority to manage and judge anyone else. That's their actual job rather than coding or whatever. Instead, they are making their team members all conform to them, on top of their actual jobs which are supposed to be something other than managing people.

I've read that, too, e.g. something from Google about psychological safety.

It seems to me that these "be 10% more vulnerable" increases safety / friendship for some people,

but decreases it for others who don't want to share anything.

Maybe there's better ways to go about increasing psychological safety ... For example, about Psychological Safety on Wikipedia:

> Two aspects of leadership have been shown to be particularly instrumental in creating a psychologically safe team. They are leaders using:

> Participatory management > Inclusive management

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_safety

Here's a nice comment (in this discussion): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42026278

The risk is way too high

Reading this comment and others feels like people have read a bit too much Sun Tzu and are treating what could be collegiality as warfare.

You got the order of events wrong. That was with the first manager, before the "10% more vulnerable" meeting. (Not saying it's a good idea though.) (Or did you mean sth else?)

From the article:

> I told my team I was struggling with depression and took some time off. ...

> My team was extremely supportive.

I've noticed this trend in recent years to be "open about mental health", etc. And I think by itself this is great, mental health is important. But invariably, especially in management/HR settings (or in the entertainment industry), it is done in an incredibly shallow way.

Mental health is hard. Just talking openly isn't magically going to fix things and may even initially make things worse. It may release feelings that need to be carefully managed e.g. by a therapist. Obviously, no company would ever be able to provide that. Instead, they're just looking for "I started running every morning and was able to fix my depression" kind of stories.

"Being on-call 24/7 helps me feel like I'm a part of something, fulfilling a deep want for belonging that being kicked off the Girl Scout troop created in me."

"I've always lacked a father figure. When you told me to spend less time browsing HackerNews and more time on Jira, I felt like I was part of a real family."

- secret slack room to help me overcome my depression (wasn't invited of course, I just spotted it several times while looking at my colleagues' screens)

- lowest paid member in the team, while also being one of if not the most productive. 12x: verified. 30x: speculated if I had control over the architecture.

- 70h/week, no vacations, for 3 years. No paid overtime of any form.

- Double bind situation where I was used as a punching ball between the CTO and the #2 employee.

- Excluded from secret negotiations to obtain a raise.

You know what I did ? I quitted, cold turkey. That's when the CEO started to hate on me, feeling betrayed. The #2 left shortly after confiding he wanted to punch the CTO in the face. After realizing hiring someone to replace me wasn't cutting it, they distributed overtime to everybody on the team. Result: unionization. One year after my departure I received a call from the COO telling me he was willing to hire me back at the condition I would behave (since I was thrown at every hot issue, semantic propagation tied in their mind the idea I was also problematic). He was let go shortly after and replaced by a manager from the holding company (if you know what I mean). I haven't worked in 6-7 years. Most colleagues who left have had a similar empty period.

Very creepy

HN doesn't smile on frequent account cycling, but throwaways for sensitive disclosures are possible.

OP could likely walk from their ID easily should they choose. It would be difficult to tie the account to a specific legal / professional identity, though there are some personal-ish details in their history.

We are not ready to discuss this kind of things. We are not equipped to deal with the kind of storms this can raise on the collective level and proactive openness on the individual level we're restricted to, no matter how hard we wish for a transcendance, is an enabler of these situations where no isolation of individual responsibility can pin-point the source of the issue. I mean I got along with everyone and the people I had the most temporary conflictual relationships at some point were also those I was closest too. In the beginning we all had good intentions. Nevertheless, double-bind propagated in the group like an epidemic, preventing us from having innocent relationships. Suddenly, invoices were issued, each party establishing accounts in different currencies.

In the end, from a cold-headed analysis of the situation, I still think I was the one that was behaving. If this was a story about my circle of friends, I'd be the asshole, placing economical matters in a central position, as if we were in a corporate setting. But it's my employer who behaved as if we were friends, and started neglecting economical considerations to its detriment.

In short, speaking of mental health made everybody unhealthy. In fact I'm not the one who overshared, my father did. I didn't show up for a couple days and blacked out communication-wise (because of a girl, a half-truth). The CEO phoned my dad who confided I was suffering from bipolar disorder since my teens which just isn't true from a clinical perspective (this is my sister's diagnostic in fact). Shortly after everybody was in the know. I could tell from their terrified eyes when they glanced at me when I came back. They were afraid I'd flip my shit. This is something we can't deal with. You can't just be designated as being a "little crazy". This expands to "a little [very-weird]". There is a perceptual threshold, including among health and sometimes even mental health professionals that makes people assume past a certain point you just flip your shit, that's your thing, an irreducible otherness that sleeps within you. Needless to say this has never happened to me (unlike my sister).

You can't just unveil taboos, you always end up exposing a mask. There is something very archaic to what happened to me, something attuned to the idea that naming illness is what propagates it: to deal with the mask, you have to wear one yourself (in the form of a secret slack channel for instance, even though as someone who used to belong to it told me, it was set up to find ways to help me). This idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Although I have only explained how my employer was contaminated by what ought to be called "panic" in light of its etymological and anthropological roots, I think you can easily picture how this kind of situation can make you crazy. And if I'm responsible in any way of letting myself get contaminated, this is by entertaining this very idea, that being designated as crazy was slowly turning a lie into reality. The epitome of madness, supreme injustice, that isn't that different of accusing someone of having cast a spell on you. Tough stuff that puts all of us back into the jungle.

To conclude, I'm not even out of this hellish loop, since I still have a gaping hole in my CV I can only mask. There is no way explaining the reason behind it like I'm doing here would diffuse or at least atone this red flag. Innocence is impossible, I have to maintain the mask in order for it to not cause explosive contagion.

To those worrying this I'm posting under my real name: I'm not. And I was able to work as much for so long because I was enjoying it. This wasn't that different than alpinism.

jesus, i don't know how you managed that for 3 years

This comment: "I'd rather not have my manager forcing me to do group therapy."

How did "if you’re comfortable" become "forcing me", and "try and be 10% more vulnerable" become "group therapy"?

Like will anyone care? Probably not but it's an incredibly awkward situation to toss people into when they're at work.

which would probably even work okay because everyone loves and applauds a success story or something that isn't your fault, but imagine someone sharing their ongoing drug addiction. People who think that workplaces are "safe" spaces for personal issues should try envisioning what the reaction to that would be.

It would be OK to discuss drug addiction with your parents. It would not be OK to discuss steamy night with your wife with them.

It's almost like adult people can understand environment and make conscious decisions what is acceptable and what is 10% they can bend the rules if they want to switch the mood a little.

Honestly it's hilarious how supposedly emotionally mature people panic and over-analyse in this thread.

Apparently not because in TFA, the author shared personal facts about their divorce and other people shared even "deeper" things they'd "never heard in a work setting". Quote: "it was awkward".

These aren't things that belong in a workplace context (sure, if you're going out for drinks after work maybe you can volunteer such things - but not during a workplace meeting!).

What does that even mean? Seems like it triggers people to share very deep stuff.

The boss mentioned above would be a “B” boss - good intentions, but a forced execution that shifts more of the burden to employees. I don’t necessarily mind these types, but it can be incredibly off-putting for those of us who work to live, rather than live to work.

Above that you have the “A” bosses, who invite that level of vulnerability by repeatedly displaying their trustworthiness to you and the team. I’ve had a few of these bosses before, and they’re amazing; sadly, they rarely last long in the face of “maximum profit” corporate cultures that demand everyone be a replaceable cog in a machine.

Okay, so at what point does that become “forced group therapy?” The C-D-F bosses.

C-rank bosses will demand vulnerability because they mistake it for honesty or loyalty. Good employees pick up on this and will placate them with some useless trivia nugget but otherwise have mediocre to bad rapport with said boss.

D-grade bosses are even worse. They’ll push and pull and drag and yank something suitably vulnerable from everyone, and even try to solutionize whatever was shared with the team. This is (in my subjective experience) the most common form of boss, born of MBA coursework and saddled with buzzword-laden articles of “how to be a better leader” from magazines no C-Suite would be caught dead reading.

Finally is the F-grade boss, who literally just wants to know who is going to need replacing imminently. Don’t get me wrong, this is something every other grade is silently doing as well (hence the “forced group therapy” metaphor), but F-grade bosses are bad enough to be overt about it. Got a coworker who mentions they’re trying to have a baby? They’ll make sure said coworker never has a positive review again, so it’s easier to replace them once they’re pregnant.

All of this is to say that if YOU are a boss, and an employee is being vulnerable with you in an unprompted or non-coerced manner, you have won their trust and you better respect that. But if you’re forcing them to be vulnerable somehow, you’re actually harming the trust relationship in the long run and will make your staff wary of your motives.

Prove they can trust you, and they’ll open up on their own.

Interesting to know. Seems people who reply here, a bit assume it's a group of competitive coworkers who mostly don't know each other, in a big cut-throat corp?

I'd been ok with that meeting at my first job (together with my closest coworkers only). It'd been weird at my 2nd job though. I guess it depends :-)

(But it wouldn't have been needed at all, there. I guess that's related to why it would have been ok.)

Worked out great, didn't it?

Now the above is probably a bit over top but it shows the typical American company culture effect. Going through this at work right now since we got bought by Americans and more and more fakeness is coming in.

It's completely fine to get to know your coworkers. But let the oversharing ones (the extroverts) congegrate together naturally. We had someone like that on the team. Was likeable enough but wouldn't stop talking about everything in their life. That was their choice tho and I am fine to listen but I'm not "sharing back".

And then there were introverts. Some that spoke very very little and some that were in the middle. They randomly shared some things from time to time in quieter moments with less people around and when they felt comfortable. Very real people and it was nice to get to know the a bit more.

I'm more on the introvert side there and if you group pressure me into this sort of thing I will remember that for a very very very long time. As in we are never gonna be friends. I'm still sour about what an extrovert HR person did 4 years ago and I don't speak to them any longer. They are also showing from time to time that they haven't changed and they'd be the type to use whatever came out in an oversharing session against you.

Now tell me to "report them to HR".

Now I understand that with remote work there may not be enough space for chit chat. But there are other ways than a forced group pressure situation to set that up.

For example, we decided as a team when Covid WFH started to basically use our daily 15 min stand-up for whatever. Sometimes we just did stand-up and we're out of there after 5 min coz nobody felt like talking. Sometimes it'd be a half an hour of just talking about whatever. We also have a dedicated time each week blocked off on the calendar for it as well and when we have ad hoc working session calls we get in some chit chat here or there as well. It's not all just business but it can be.

RE cat: see this is the internet and it's an anonymous forum. I used that example because our cat actually just died a few weeks ago. You thought it was over the top. Interesting indeed.

I don't quite get the difference between a blocked off time for chit chat and the way the manager asked for it here but totally, being forced like you have to say something you don't want to sucks.

I guess the difference is the same what I mentioned about stand-up changing: The team decided to do that. It wasn't a manager saying that's how we do things now.

EDIT: I also just realized you gave out condolences. See if I was in the situation from the article I might not be able to quickly come up with something fake and I'd instinctively just mention the cat thing (coz I don't want to be the guy that gets shunned). And then the next few weeks are gonna be very uncomfortable coz people will keep mentioning it.

There are ways of lighten the mood that are decidedly less abusive, such as "tell us something funny about yourself" or "what is your hobby?". You don't have to like such questions either but at least they're not open invitations for trauma dumping.

It could be just me enjoying remote work, but I am not looking to be friends with them 4000 km away. I’m too old for this, I know all my work friendships faded away in a couple of years and even in those years we focused on work and chat about career.

Don’t force me to share personal things with everyone. I’ll share it if I feel like it with the ones that I feel like it.

I find it strange that the same people that ask you “How are you doing?” Without expecting an answer, are so into this kinda fake buddy buddy thing.

It was the author and colleagues that decided to overstate, and seemingly did not regret. Groups of humans sometimes have connections like these, whatever the environment they are in.

I am sure other similar meeting with the same prompt only generated people saying they have two cats, they I am anxious about learning a new programming language or that they do not quite understand Stripe business model

And they have absolutely no right to do that. "Being vulnerable" is not part of any job description.

I ask because this is exactly the type of comment one of my siblings would make, and she is on the spectrum. She wouldn't be able to understand the social dynamics at play here, whereas for other folks it's just common sense. "Optional" is not really optional in some social settings, and that's something autistic folks struggle with being aware of, much less understanding. The activity may be optional in the most pedantic sense; you won't be struck down by lightning if you decide not to participate. But there will be consequences.

All of which is another reason why this whole exercise is an awful idea, considering that the number of autistic folks in software engineering is probably a bit higher than the population baseline.

What didn't work, however, was the office manager's increasingly awkward attempts to force socialising. When at some point we raised the issue (politely!) that this was often distracting, he became offended and lashed out. We later also found out that he was basically spying on us and reporting back to HQ.

It's one of the reasons why I'm incredibly wary of people who try too hard to be my "buddy" at work, especially if they're not peers.

Related: [Goodhart's Law](https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority...)

You can achieve that vulnerability via being a likable and honest person. I think often us technical-minded people forget that relationships aren't an optimization problem and don't respond like you think they would. Just being decent and trustworthy will take you there, saying things like "you can trust me guys!" often has the opposite effect.

I'm pretty sure this is not what they are expecting.

Really? If you are too honest, I am pretty sure you can fail spectacularly. Therapy is confidential for a reason.

Anyone starting to over-share becomes very problematic, because it forces everyone to conform. One of my colleagues didn’t feel like sharing anything personal, and he was silently outcast for the rest of the offsite and it continued to bite him in the ass for the rest of his time in that team.

The examples were very similar to those mentioned - people talking about their divorces, sex life, etc. I don’t think it’s fair to force colleagues to share such stories with each other.

Playing "I am somewhat therapist myself" in the workplace should be sackable offence.

Is that more than 10%?

Another option would be what Norm Macdonald did when Larry King asked him "what's something nobody knows about you" and he answered "I'm a deeply closeted homosexual." Just go over the top.

All the best to the author of the post, hopefully they can find more meaningful work.

It is funny how the more unimportant the company is, the more this kind of reverence is expected.

For me there was a stark contrast between two jobs I had:

Consultancy where I worked on software for local government that millions literally depend on? Keep your work-life 100% separate.

Marketing startup that spammed Google with crazy amounts of SEO-spam? Lots of instructions from HR to ask about personal matters in 1-on-1 meetings, weekly 2h mandatory confraternization followed by free beer, random CEO speech about his favorite topic for 1h every month.

I would have reported manager to HR for this and if they didn't take action I would take company to tribunal.

This is pure simple coercion into sharing personal data that then other workers could use against you.

I can't see the world where sharing personal stuff at work is ever appropriate, let alone be subjected to peer pressure to share it.

The boss had also become vulnerable asking you to be 10% more vulnerable.

I think I would respect it more than harsh cold calculating boss.

And also the chinese gospel's taking its effect here , the post above this paraphrased it differently and this has taken it to completely different level.

Nobody is forcing you with a gun to tell things or else you are fired

the boss just said , " Hey if you are comfortable , lets try to be a little vulnerable " and if you didn't like it you could've said " hey boss , I appreciate your gesture but I really really wouldn't like to share it as it would be a violation of my privacy , hope you understand "

This would probably be my approach if I was one of those people who hated boss asking him such thing but I don't. I think I like it.

Agreeing to work with a new manager is putting you in a vulnerable enough state. Build that trust over time - you likely don’t even need to hear about coworkers failed marriages.

That's really irrelevant. It's like taking your pants down, showing your privates and assuming your coworkers will do the same.

Absolutely unacceptable especially when it comes from position of power, where workers may think that if they don't engage they'll get fired or won't get promotion. It's coercion.

> the boss just said , " Hey if you are comfortable , lets try to be a little vulnerable " and if you didn't like it you could've said " hey boss , I appreciate your gesture but I really really wouldn't like to share it as it would be a violation of my privacy , hope you understand "

This is never innocent. If someone's life depends on the job, they'll comply as they don't want to second guess if their refusal will lead to them end up being homeless. They'll share details they don't want to and get injured.

People bring a lot of context into these conversations and make a lot of assumptions. There is a lot of nuance here and that's tough to sit with.

The jobs I stick with are the ones where colleagues have got each others back.

All this zero-sum game playing toxicity is what ruins work for the collaborative pro-social people. Find a work place that doesn't reward that kind of behaviour.

America is supposed to be this super-freedom, super-individualistic place. Except when you are a worker at a workplace. Then you are supposed to spend at least 40 hours a week (except you are supposed to want to spend more time than that; and most do [except they don’t want to]), you are supposed to leave your politics behind, don’t talk about politics at work, you are supposed to do everything your boss tells you without question, and certainly don’t bring in your morals. Your workplace is a dictatorship (in a freedom loving country) and you are not supposed to complain about it. You are supposed to like your work, so you are not even entitled to your feelings. And suddenly your workplace is supposed to be this communist utopia, where every worker has a task, and the work is supposed to make them happy, and the whole workplace has a comradery of peers. Except you are all making money for your boss (or worse, your shareholders) and only keep a tiny portion of what you produce, but you are not supposed to complain and definitely not supposed to unite in bargaining for better, only unite in being exploited (except you aren’t supposed to see it that way).

The American workplace is probably as far away from the American dream as it possibly could be.

Ignoring that, your characterization isn't accurate at all for American software companies in my experience. I'm an American and I've worked overseas in Australia. In addition, most of the current technical team that I am currently on is based in the UK.

If anything, I've found other western cultures to be more discouraging of openly challenging management decisions. However, the differences are very very small. Working for a UK/Australia/German company is exactly the same as working for an American company. The day-to-day culture depends a lot on the people who run the company rather than their nationality. Trust me, there are jerks everywhere in the world.

Any corporate environment. You'll get stabbed in the back sooner or later.

> where colleagues have got each others back.

That doesn't sound healthy if people have to get each others back - usually means there are some bad actors that you'll need to cover up for. Do the job, be polite and leave ego at home. There is no need for politics, gossip and other meaningless activities.

> work for the collaborative pro-social people.

That sounds dystopian to me. I prefer to have social life outside of work, with actual friends that I choose, not HR.

This. Companies doing social thing is nothing but trying to fool employees into feeling like they owe to company.

I get they are trying to create a sense of psychological safety for people, but this is a bit much.

I'm a parent. You can probably pretty easily infer what my greatest fear is.

Would I share that? Fuck no! Not only am I not particularly willing to get that intimate with a bunch of strangers, I also don't want to be a huge fucking downer. What I do want is to recognize that while you can speed-run friendship & bonding to some degree, it's fucking inappropriate to try to do so at work. It's work. I'll make friends if I make friends, but otherwise I'm out at 5, physically, mentally and emotionally.

“Whoo. OK. I’ve never talked about this, but here goes. When I was 12 I used a Hello Kitty doll to kill a man. Wow. Feels great to finally get that off my chest.”

I really don't like this trend of employers trying to act like we're all friends or one big happy family. It only serves to blur the very real boundaries of power in favor of the employer. Engaging with it in earnest feels like self-exploitation to me.

That attitude is a liability at work and I’ve learned the hard way.

We’ve all heard the phrase don’t shit where you eat. In modern workplace cadence that means don’t use your workplace as your source of therapy or friends or certainly family.

The way we present yourselves at work has to intrinsically be a performance because that’s how money works.

Find another place to express emotions and thoughts and find friends. That place should not be the workplace.

You choose your friends because you have shared interests and you make each other feel good. You have family because they brought you into the world and you have shared qualities and bonds. You chose your job because it pays you. You do it for the ducats. Don't get it twisted.

I thought he was a weird outlier, but I joined an invite-only Slack for management a while ago where I’d estimate 1/4 of the topics in the #1-on-1s channel are from managers trying to psychoanalyze their team or act as therapists. The good news is that the Slack is very good about correcting these people about their role and what is appropriate for work. The bad news is that these new managers are getting the idea from somewhere that they need to be some type of therapist and patriarch of the team. It feels like a weird iteration of new-age management philosophies that breed in B-list business books and social media like LinkedIn.

Otoh when dealing with peers at director or C level, things tend to get significantly more psychological, likely because their facility of judgment, which is ultimately psychological and moral, is functioning with far higher leverage due to their organizational authority.

A team isn’t a family. A company isn’t a family.

Both reasonable.

> and fake some confessions.

Could you find some other way to handle it, without lying?

That way I tick the participation box without making it therapy.

So it seems to me that it was voluntary, right? You could be okay sharing nothing, author felt better going proposed path.