You may not like sports and kids, but it is so statistically improbable (to the point I would call you a liar), that there isn't something in the world no work related that you do enjoy talking about, and have had conversations about.
There are, but the examples you gave are indeed the most common, and therefore also the most tiresome to me.
Again, even in your examples, the reasons you left jobs was personal interaction, not financial. And if you worked at multiple jobs where the bosses were "bullying sociopaths" and the respective HR departments were caricatures of conspiracy theories, it sounds like the problem might not be them.
The problem was definitely them. You might want to look into what gaslighting and actual experiences with sociopaths does to people.
Psychologists estimate that as much as 3-5% of the population could be sociopaths. This makes finding one about 1 in 20, two 1 in 400, and three one in 8000. Its not impossible, but it is unlikely.
Please explain your notation there.
I worked for the same guy three times, so that was three occurrences of a sociopathic manager/boss. One of his habits was to kiss ass until he felt comfortable, then start challenging authority until he could no longer progress in a workplace. Then he would leave for another job, claiming the current workplace no longer aligned with his work goals (when really he had made a mess of things for himself and needed to leave, especially to maintain his self-delusion that he was in control and that everyone else was in the wrong without making himself look obviously problematic). He invited me to apply to the next two jobs as a way to stack the deck and supply himself with what he thought was an obedient and pliable subordinate... but the third time around involved me being a lot more assertive and having coworkers who let me know that things were not right, and it wasn't me who was the problem.
It really took until the third time for me to realize I was not dealing with a normal person, and others had to help me see it. I was too naive and willing to give people the benefit of the doubt at the first workplace, I had minimal interaction with him at the second, and I thought he was my friend up until he drove me from the workplace in tears at the third and final workplace, twice.
The HR department was either managed by and/or employed sociopaths, or utterly callous scumbags that are hard to tell from actual sociopaths (these are people who literally lie to your face when you know it's a lie, reframe all scenarios in a way that gaslights others, and still somehow sounds reasonable on the surface, using the system against itself). Hard to tell for sure. Organizations can be described as sociopathic by their collective behaviors.
Sociopathy seems to be greatly undercounted, from all evidence I've seen in day to day life/news... but ALSO, sociopaths are attracted to positions of authority, which means managers, bosses, executives, cops, layers, legislators, etc. will have a higher percentage of such people in their ranks, and therefore you'll encounter more in such positions.
Worse: American culture literally rewards sociopathic behavior with wealth and power. So it's more likely that we will encounter sociopaths in positions of authority.
The question is whether we recognize them as such. It isn't a simple discovery process. It takes targeted study or a lot of exposure to them (or knowledge about the personality disorder) to detect their habits and patterns. Some are more functional/successful than others. Not all are megalomaniac narcissists, and some succeed in never being openly hostile. Some are even charming on the surface.
The American psychiatric establishment (notably the DSM, last I checked) doesn't even recognize sociopathy as distinct from psychopathy (the UK system does, last I checked), but I think a distinction is absolutely meaningful and critically important (since psychopathic behavior tends to get them filtered out of society, while sociopathic behavior tends to get rewarded by our sociopathic institutions).
Aside from that guy, I previously worked for a sociopath/narcissist (not sure which or if both issues were present) in my second job, which was my first job in tech. I was very young and naive. I didn't understand why everyone else in the office hated him... until he started demonstrating at me with his insecurity and hostility.
After him was a potential narcissist or sociopath call center manager and sociopath HR manager... or as close as it gets without clinical observations of their behavior in the long term (listening to an HR manager construct a false reality right in front of you, to support their claims and decision making, and to refuse to directly answer questions, repeating stock phrases, is goddamned creepy).
Social lives will always be tied to jobs because working together is social.
One kind of social life, I'll grant that. There's definitely a difference between workplace social connections and non-workplace social connections. Indeed, we meet friends and partners where we spend most of our time: From a young age to graduation, that's school. From there onward, that's work. Of course we will make connections at work, and some of them will be life long friends or even relationship partners. Most will only be acquaintances, of the type that most people wouldn't choose to make a regular part of their personal lives.
But work social environments get complicated fast, and a lot of people have learned to participate minimally to survive repeat bad experiences. Some people are literally traumatized by them, and I am one of those.
Teams usually work efficiently than individuals.
"Usually" is a good inclusion there, because it depends on the work and the workers. You would find a very productive genius programmer in my girlfriend's ex boyfriend, and also someone who rarely interacts socially, but is a workaholic, and almost entirely self-directed. He's not nearly the only one I'm aware of, but he's a great example since he lived and worked remotely for as long as she knew him, moving from one state to another, every few months and rarely going into any kind of workplace. This was many years before COVID19 forced remote work on people.
One of my high school friends has been living similarly for almost 20 years.
And my 'anecdote' about education has years of worldwide data backing it up. Feel free to look at any genuine research covering the quality of education, test scores, and so on during COVID lockdowns. It may have been needed to help stop the plague (not trying to debate that), but it was certainly less effective. Look at how in-person universities - like Harvard - favor in person schooling over remote learning.
I think I posted a reply to that earlier in this thread.
