Non-chatty work people?

June 2, 2022 10:17 AM

This seems like a silly question but I'm going to be open ended. I work freelance at a place where there's not a lot of people. I talk to someone like twice a week and they're only interested if there's a problem or not. That sounds great but I'm beginning to have a bit of a graduate student syndrome and always think I'm losing my job. Any tips for working remote and with people who aren't chatty?

I despise meetings but at the same time I feel as if all my communication is really formal at this point in my career/life. I tried having happy hours at work and those just kind of didn't go anywhere. Are there work Discords/Slack? Also I'm freelance so I don't really have a boss or coworkers. Certainly I can't be the first one with this problem. Any advice?

posted by geoff. to Work & Money (4 answers total)

I'm beginning to have a bit of a graduate student syndrome and always think I'm losing my job.

I've never worked as a contractor, but probably there's someone you report to? And not just on a green-yellow-red status board reports, someone who decided you need to do work for them and decides to renew your contract or not. Manager-Tools recommends 1:1s for contractors, as a tool for building relationships, but I wouldn't be surprised if a manager avoids it due to fear of misclassification. You can't make anyone at your job attend weekly 1:1's with you, but if you couch it correctly you can improve your odds of getting one set up, whether you call it a 1:1 or not.

Unless your worksite thinks IM chat is a misclassification risk, there might be an internal chat system in use to observe / collab with. Either way, consider professional communities. Externally, SRE/sysadmins/ops we've had professional communities in the form of Users groups for a long time, dating back to the IRC era. With FreeNode under intense turmoil, Slack seems to have taken over. We have is Hangops, which originated as a portmantaeu of ops and hangouts, as in fully remote ops engineers who wanted to use google hangouts to talk to humans occasionally. For tech leadership rands has an astonishingly large slack community. I'm sure one exists for developers, and maybe future commenters will recommend one.
posted by pwnguin at 10:59 AM on June 2, 2022 [4 favorites]

This is definitely a freelance thing! I bet there is some sort of Slack or other chat platform your client(s) use - if you have a client you have an ongoing relationship with, I would ask your contact if you can be added to it. Tell them you want to better understand the flow of work. If that goes nowhere, take heart, it almost certainly does NOT mean you're going to get fired. It's just a reality of being freelance many times. Your main contact is probably just limiting your time spent in meetings etc so they don't get billed for it (if you get billed hourly) or so you can stay focused on tasks (if you're on retainer/paid by project).

On the other hand, freelancing taught me A LOT about what I like and don't like in a workplace. Having so many different "employers" and workplaces in a short period of time was good for that. And I personally learned I work MUCH better when I have teammates/collaborators I talk to frequently. I'm more creative and happier that way. Fortunately I found a client who was willing to integrate me into the team and that made a big difference. So don't take it personally but also, maybe look for other clients where you can play more of an integrated role.
posted by lunasol at 11:11 AM on June 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Yes! 1:1s I feel as if a lot of times if I make a call or schedule a meeting it turns into an ordeal. I forgot all about those! I called them "peer one on ones" which is awkwardly business-y but keeps people from thinking you're looking for a managerial relationship. There is definitely something lost when you can't ask people to lunch, even if they decline you know they're alive.
posted by geoff. at 12:20 PM on June 2, 2022

Sometimes there's a distancing with consultants/freelancers because they're "not one of us". It isn't personal, really. Can you take coffee breaks and lunch at a nearby place where you can become a "regular"? That would give you the opportunity to interact with the same group of people every day and become friends or at least acquaintances, even if those relationships won't be part of your office hours.
posted by TimHare at 1:01 PM on June 2, 2022 [1 favorite]