Divulging personal aspects about yourself in the workplace can be a pathway to forming stronger bonds and close-knit relationships—or it can be used against you the next time your performance review comes around. There's really no in-between here, and it depends completely on the culture, environment, and the people you're working with.
The reality is that your work time is for work, and your own time is—well, your own. But, in a modern "always online" world that's fueled by instant communication and where some employers want to squeeze their workers for every last drop of productivity, this line becomes increasingly blurred. Anyone who is already working 50 to 60-hour weeks and fielding communication from superiors, sometimes from three or four steps up the chain, knows exactly the feeling of strangling pressure from that constant weight that's always pressing down upon them.
In these workplaces, any personal interest a worker has is a threat. For one thing, it's distracting them from spending every waking moment thinking about that sales report that's due next week, and for another thing, it's giving them hope… hope that they might one day leave this place.
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We've seen several discussions online over this topic, and if it's anything to go by, there are quite a lot of employers and managers out there who think any income a worker is making from hobbies or side-hustling is in some way owing to or detracting from "the company." As always, responses to these experiences from other workers always tread somewhere along the line of never sharing your personal life with your workplace. While I see the necessity and line of thinking here, it would be better to land yourself in a less toxic line of work where self-expression isn't used against you. See the original thread as it was shared with Reddit's popular community for workplace discussion, and have a think for yourself.
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