Friends - a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.
I have a theory. For every 2 years of career life, you loose 50% of your friends that you have made in your career life so far. Look at the chart and a sample data with an assumption that you had 10 friends during the first 2 years of your career & not made friends after that.
Not having friends at your work place would make your life miserable. Having a friend at your workplace would make your (work) life a lot more enjoyable. But I guess there will really be a point at your career where you would not have any friends at all. By adding more friends each year of your career you may put off the stage where you would be with zero friends.
Look back your career life so far to check the validity of this theory and share it.
14 comments:
I agree completely. To complement to your theory, As you grow in your career, the friends to hang out , party and have fun decreases. For example I used to have quite number of friends when I was working in TCS [my first job], this reduced over my career life. If you become boss, the relationship between you and your coworkers changes completely. They view you as their boss and you have to treat them as your employees. No friends :(. I explicitly told in management class that this is the best way to keep the work relationship smooth and healthy.
There is also age factor to this as well. As you grow in your career, you become old. Discovering and making friends is always easy if you are in early 20s than late 20s and so on. Real life example is me. I had lot of friends in college and I still have same friends in my life, my friends circle has not expanded at the same rate that it used to be in early 20s. I think this is because as you grow you have different priorities and responsibilities. This leaves little time for fun and discovering friends whether these friends are at work or from bar or from class. This is true for friends in your corporate life as well. Think about number of friends that your VP or CEO has from your perspective. They have too much to worry about, which leaves very little time for them to make friends. Also if you are working as professional , certain mannerism and professionalism is expected, you can't be cool and naive which i think is best way to make friends based on my human psycology knowledge.I think time, your perspective over life and maturity are the factors for having few friends over your career and personal span.
-MM(mala)
Thats True Seeni!
Mala has covered most of the point.
I am also a classic example for that. Friends @ work place (at least within same project) are almost moving towards a direction of zero.
But what I would say is, we should have influencing capability among the work place crowd when we move up in corporate ladder!
More over Global work force is predominantly increasing in the current corporate world.
Influencing people and maintaining healthy professional relation with involved parties is one of the key skills that are required to move up!
I have learned it in a hard way and in the process of acquiring these skills which is not a cake walk though !
Interesting topic seeni. The statistics is very true for me. When I look back my twenties, all I am left is my IR friends and few office friends (that too, who were with me in the early stages). Most of my friends are gone. Some of my close friends, I lost contact.
I explained this scenario to my friend in office. There are three lunch group in office. One is fresher gang about 10-12 people eat together. Next is our gang (6 -8 experience) 4 people will be eating. Next is my manager 11 years exp, eating alone in his room.
I agree with Mala, maintaining a diplomatic relationship with team, helps in project stability.
Friendship in the around 20, is a memorable and relatively lasting one.
Note to Siva - I haven't commented anything on globalization or market here :)- podhuma...
Mala / Barani / Arasan - Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
to arasan, okda. okda tension agathe.
an easy way to gain more friends - going back to college :-), though the friends from our UG days will be the most close mainly because of the stuff you shared and the closeness.
ada paavi....naan tension aaga la machi, unna thaanda otti kittu irunthaen :)-
Seeni, Share your experience too...
So far, my friends or wellwishers list has people from College, TVSE, HISL, and Infy (All are from Intital Days of my professional life). More Friends were added to the list in between 20-26 ages.
When was the last time I got a new friend @ professional environment??? That would be an interesting question to think?
Mmmmmmm.....Probably I would say 2004 would be the year where it reached stagnation.
In recent past, there was an addition of only one new friend to the list and he is the husband of my infy friend.
I think, re connecting to old college days friends, existing friends and expanding the network through them will be an enriching one.
Consciously, I know that I have deviated from the main topic of having friends at professional life :)-
I got another question, whether the chart holds well wrt personal life friends list.
anna,
Intha Charta Girl friendsku thaniya Customize Panna mudiyuma..... :-)
@ Arasa:
my experience is also almost similar to others. I am trying my best to keep in touch and maintain the relationship.
@ Sarang:
Girl friends?
Siva..are you reading this?
Seeni, you are right...a forgotten topic though...
I have somehow managed to maintain my frends count ;though i have missed out a few of my frends from college...
But I noticed a strange culture in Corporate World too. People gather in gangs just like in college or school. Then how is it possible to meet different minds?
If we notice the meeting place near a coffee machine the same gang gathers at the same time ;and guess what they tend to discuss the same topics again and again. Instead, if we ramdomly chose a frend/colleague
for coffee chat evryday i bet we could alter your 'graph'...Interaction to different people should be there. Who knows we could make good frends out of it...
@ Anu:
Good that you are maintaining the count. But I guess you are still in the first 2 years band. So you better wait and watch. :)
About forming gangs. It is actually true. But nothing is wrong in it. There is a psychological reason behind this. Most of the people when they are new to a place, they will try to acquire some acquaintances very consciously. After getting a few friends (or possibly a gang) they would tend to stop being very conscious about getting acquaintances. That doesnt mean that they would become aloof with others. Once they have a sense of belonging to a group of friends this process stops.
We have a gang of 9 people from college, almost to all 9 of us there are no friends outside the gang even after the college life. Still we are sticking together with that sense of belonging.
Saranga!
Friends nu sollittu Girls & Boys nu separate-a list podra.....
Oh you mean Girl Friend, Oh Oh gotcha did you meant the chart which shows no of Girl Friends...oh dear I cant give much input on this to you....
Nee Youth-la naan maranthutaen...
I still remember the day when I came to meet you @ TCE CSE class room :)-
Siva, Sarang needs a direction from you on this, guide him :)-
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