Ivy League psychologist: 'Bring your whole self to work' is bad advice
57 comments
·October 24, 2025jawns
pinkmuffinere
Definitely. In fact, I'll say it is the same in almost _every_ interpersonal relationship. I engage with my parents, grandparents, siblings, etc in specific ways that we have agreed we have overlap. Depending on the person, I soften my utopian ideals, my fascination with drugs, my progressive-ness, my math memes, even my accent when I talk. I don't think this is unhealthy, I think this is just what it means to be alive. I express my "authentic self" through my life as a whole, and it is probably witnessed by no individual person; only I can see / enjoy it.
gompertz
I behave this way too. But I also fear it leads to a degree of split personality disorder... and feeling a bit like a fraud.
oceanplexian
What a time it was to be alive before the Culture War (tm) in San Francisco.
I worked at a household name tech company and you could draw a pie chart of Libertarian, (Self described) Communist, Progressive, Anarchists, and everything in between. Drugs weren't really controversial but you had an entire spectrum of personalities and drugs that were popular in different groups. Everyone kind of accepted each other to be honest.
hyperliner
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claytongulick
Manners are the grease of society, as they say.
everdrive
>I feel bad for anyone who doesn't see this as obvious.
I don't mean this in a rude way, but inexperienced, or socially-immature, or spectrum-y people really fail the most with regard to this kind of advice.
There's a (correct) stereotype that spectrum-y people are overly-literal. However, from the perspective of a spectrum-y person this is totally perplexing. Why do people frequently state literal facts which have a secondary, contextual and metaphorical meaning? "Bring your whole self to work" has a really straightforward and literal meaning. It's not a metaphor which requires interpretation. However "bring your whole self to work" is quite obviously not meant to be taken strictly literally. So then why the hell say it like that? Why would people go around saying things which are definitely incorrect and rely wholly on subtext or cultural knowledge? It'd be like if I said, "hey by the way it's safe the change the lawnmower blade while the spark plug is still in" or "looking at the sun won't blind you quickly enough to be risky." And then people are just supposed to know I didn't mean my very literal statement literally.
And if everyone who's normal and socially well adjusted understands that you're not meant to take "take your whole self to work" then what work is this phrase even doing? Why does anyone even say it?
pseudosavant
My own experience has been that even if it was "safe" to do at a company at a certain point, people and managers will change, and your next manager won't care at all that the previous one valued your "whole self". Anything that can make you an outsider (disability, culture, etc) will likely eventually harm you if it is a meaningful part of your work persona. Sadly, less is more when it comes to sharing yourself at work.
duxup
It's always the executives, who likely face no consequences.
Or the folks celebrating it are just playing the game.
dhutvjhfguhg
Great, so you have to pretend 40 hours a week. Great system we built for ourselves. Maybe we should tell kids that in school. That will motivate them.
yathern
> Great, so you have to pretend 40 hours a week
You don't have to do anything - if it's more important to you to bring your authentic beliefs and opinions in front of others - you're free to do so. But if your number one priority is getting ahead at work - or simply aiming to develop social cohesion with a group around you, conforming to that group's beliefs and culture are helpful. This applies not just to the 40 hours you work, but to any group you want to be welcome in, whether it's your school, country, church or sports team. And after a little while, it's not really pretending anymore.
> Maybe we should tell kids that in school
Half of the reason we have school is to socialize kids to these very concepts. We obviously lecture about peer pressure, but most of this is learned innately. Society couldn't exist without these social pressures, even though they're not always beneficial.
oceanplexian
> Half of the reason we have school is to socialize kids to these very concepts.
School is a brainwashing machine that limits the range of acceptable dialog and therefore leads to a culture of mediocrity.
Don't get me wrong, you should always be polite and empathetic towards others. But the most world-changing ideas don't come to you when you're dedicating huge amounts of your processing power to self-censoring or arbitrarily creating constraints because you're worried that the group will cancel you over them.
ElevenLathe
The whole point of school is to teach kids social facts like this. It's certainly not to teach them algebra or literacy.
only-one1701
It doesn't though. You can't get fired from school.
mulmen
> It's certainly not to teach them algebra or literacy.
Billions of people have learned language and algebra and thousands of other topics in school.
nemomarx
The kids already have to pretend during school and maybe at home to please parents. I think they're aware
duxup
Pretend what exactly?
I find it easy to go to work and do my work and just choose not to share some things. That's not pretending as much as good healthy boundaries.
I once sat next door to a group of HR folks who brought their personal lives into the office every day. People in conference rooms I booked crying and so on. Now a random one off of that, whatever, but it happened a lot and people bringing their emotional issues TO work really felt like a weight on me and those around me.
Boundaries can make work a heck of a lot easier to deal with. Depending on your situation it can even be an escape at times.
harvey9
I can't guess at the specifics of that situation but if someone has cause to cry it's not like you can just ask them to do their crying outside of working hours. On the other hand maybe they have very little cause.
ecshafer
Yeah, its a perfectly fine system. You don't have a friend who you don't talk about the same things that you talk about with another friend? Or things you don't share with family? whats the difference?
SaltyBackendGuy
Isn't this just baked into the social fabric of humanity?
vorpalhex
Living in a society with other people who you interact with is about compromise and that means behaving in a way that aligns with social and cultural norms - which change from place to place.
I interviewed for a major company and was rejected for being "too combative" after I corrected an interviewer on what unit tests are supposed to cover. I got hired somewhere else and my boss mentioned he had also been rejected by the same company, so I mentioned that they rejected me over being combative. My boss laughed, like rolling on the floor laughing about it - because our company culture was so different that he considered me a peace seeking negotiator between teams.
Culture fit is real.
lawlessone
Have you never worked before? This is most jobs. lying to kids isn't going to help.
hexbin010
If there was ever an "it's a trap", it's bringing your whole self to work/being completely honest/being completely yourself/forgetting it's a game
wasitwrongto
Was it wrong to not keep any personal mementos on my desk, as a no-benefits contractor in software in a civilian hospital? (10 years before COVID-19)
harvey9
I never put personal mementos on my desk in any job regardless of employment type. Didn't know I was supposed to.
aydyn
I mean if you want to go the extra mile, you could keep fake personal mementos that align and ingratiate yourself with the ingroup.
wasitwrongto
A person shouldn't say things like this - re: interviewing with a swizzle stick in one's pocket and confetti in one's hair - if they are a manager:
"George Carlin - Tell the boss (who's the boss)" https://youtube.com/watch?v=p5x7-0mR86A&
I've had to hide laughter in probably almost every interview since learning of this approach to interviewing.
CLI: Clean Language Interviewing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_language_interviewing
I'm more of a three-hour workweek sort of manager.
wasitwrongto
On professional boundaries:
"The Secret of My Success (1987)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_My_Success_(1987...
Professional boundaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_boundaries
Metaphor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor
angryGhost
Disagree. You can be your authentic self and be respectful of a workplace environment
tester457
It depends on the workplace and the person.
Some workplaces:
- penalize black women for having natural hairstyles like locs
- make Sikhs remove turbans
- deny chosen names and pronouns
There are entire swaths of groups who can't be their authentic selves.
card_zero
My authentic self is in bed right now drinking cider, so no, I can't.
JohnFen
Yes, you can! I do it.
What I don't do is bring all of myself to the workplace. Professional relationships are different than intimate relationships and not every part of me is appropriate for both kinds of relationships simultaneously. But every side I show is authentic.
mathgeek
Some people can, some can’t.
tekla
The most "bring yourself to work" places I've worked at always the most "don't be like that". I've been disciplined at a place that literally had a entire HR ceremony of "bring yourself to work" because I cursed many times when many systems were failing and I was a on-call line for hours,
Not even the most conservative white collar place (super super well known big classic old school engineering company) has ever mentioned jack shit when shit was burning to the ground and we were trying to keep things working
vorpalhex
It depends on your authentic self.
I've known people who were just deeply genuinely nice people. Yeah they can go totally authentic and are entirely welcome. Hell they can invite themselves over for dinner to my house and I'll be happy about it.
My authentic self is sharply sarcastic, critical and at times brutal. My coworkers don't want to deal with that - that's a very chaffing personality especially towards the end of a stressful week and it can very genuinely hurt morale. I very much tone myself down, avoid sarcasm as much as I can, carefully massage critical and direct messaging as best I can and generally try to be aware that the people around me have different communication needs.
And I think people do get a taste of the real person under the facade. I know I get that from my coworkers - I have coworkers who are great coworkers but whose friend I have no interest in being because same thing, their "out of work" authentic self I find off-putting even though they are amazing coworkers.
lm28469
Having worked with people from all around the world what you think is respectful and normal might be seen as batshit insane to others.
f1shy
If I could only make this comment more visible. I worked in 2 extrema of the spectrum. Ones would say nothing personal, strictly professional, never curse, like robots (any experience in Japan) The others would come, curse constantly, even calling a college would imply calling him literally “you son of a b*”, people would loudly talk about sexual encounters, and other private things (south Italy, south America). I asked both groups (as I have friends in both camps) what do they think about the other way of interacting: both think the other group is abnormal, awkward, and would not like to work in “such a terrible place”
BeFlatXIII
Did it really take someone with Ivy League training to figure this out?
zoklet-enjoyer
If you're doing your job and not being an asshole to the people you work with, then you're welcome on my team.
hyperliner
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jpitz
To every commenter offering incredulity or sarcasm at the apparent obviousness of this advice:
A great swath of us did not possess the social intelligence to arrive at this conclusion independently upon our arrival in the workforce. I didn't. I got lucky.
snozolli
I have never in my life heard anyone use this phrase. Is it actually common in modern, corporate America? It sounds like an HR trap, just like anonymous suggestion boxes.
nemomarx
Yeah, it's pretty common. A little less so this year than back in 2021 I would say
only-one1701
Very much around and very much an HR trap
politelemon
Definitely heard it in several US and European firms. Quite possibly spread through linked in contamination.
only-one1701
No shit?
carabiner
Millennials are the generation of chesterton's fence. We're just rediscovering professional work culture.
y-c-o-m-b
Hmm not sure I agree. I think we tend to be the centrist group in this duality. We give some flexibility in allowing people to "be themselves" while still holding them accountable to professionalism. I've held many different jobs in the past 20+ years, and that seems to be true anywhere I go. This makes sense because we were of working age before professional work culture changed to what we see today. We may have broken some of the older traditions and paved the way, but I don't think we're responsible for what you see today
carabiner
Well, look at the time dependence. 20 years ago we were leftist, today centrist, tomorrow right wing. We're just following the same pattern but are the first to be wholly expressive on the internet about it.
readthenotes1
But, sadly, probably not the tale of the fence
narcindin
Bring your whole self to work, at this point, is the term you use to criticize this policy, not to describe it.
Maternity leave is a version of BYWSTW. As are PRIDE/ethnicity related activities as work. Should we jettison those?
I agree it can and is taken to far, but I'd prefer to read an article about actually navigating an office with different types of real people. For example, for example, thermostats preferences, volume preferences, "we a family/team" vs "just a job" preferences, etc.
onionisafruit
That's not what the article is about.
> People whose behavior and beliefs align with their company’s prevailing culture may benefit from sharing more about themselves at work, Chamorro-Premuzic says.
> However, people who express “authentic” opinions that run counter to the group’s views may risk damaging their reputations or relationships.
I feel bad for anyone who doesn't see this as obvious.
I've seen a lot of folks celebrate that their work allows them to be their authentic selves, even though they're well aware that the same opportunity isn't afforded to those with disfavored views or characteristics.