They Told Me "You Are Not At Work To Make Friends"

from March 12, 2024

Christine Farrier Rosemin is the founder of TechWalk. a networking community for Tech and SaaS professionals that offers curated outdoor weekly walks led by industry experts. She also advises early-stage B2B ventures on strategy and marketing. Previously, Christine held marketing leadership roles at several tech startup unicorns companies, including Gusto and Demandbase.

TechWalk is an amazing way to build a network of business relationships. How did you come up with the idea? How has it helped you build your own network?

During the pandemic, my pod consisted of my fiancé (now husband) and my college-age son, hunkered down in our Harlem apartment.? It was…tight.? Early on, my husband and I started taking daily walks.? What else was there to do? Looooooong walks, down to Central Park, up to and around Yankee Stadium, basically covering the 5 mile radius surrounding our apartment.? These walks were like a pressure release valve.? Thank God, we were calm, we were healthy, we survived and we maintained the habit.

Fast forward to February of 2023, an offer for a new role had been rescinded, layoffs are escalating (quickly) while I’m trying to land my next opportunity.? The market was a hot mess! All those hours locked away in my home office, treating my job search like it was a job, were yielding a negative ROI.? I was stressed and definitely not feeling like I was showing up as my best self in interviews.

Knowing how much walks had helped in the past, I re-committed to the habit and invited my network, many of whom were in the same boat, to join me.? One year later, more than 2000 people have registered for over 60 walks! There is such magic that takes place IRL, and especially in a low-pressure environment like a walk in Central Park.? Our community has nurtured job offers, investor conversations, new friendships (I’m looking at you Ellen Schwartze!), Co-Founder meet-cutes, and I think there might even be a budding romance.

My time building TechWalk has cemented my beliefs about the importance of human relationships, no matter where they are sown. You are absolutely at work to make friends! Sure, these friendships might not look like the relationships of our childhood companions or college homies, but the attachments formed with our comrades in the professional trenches, at work or in networking groups like TechWalk, are no less real and their value, infinite.

TechWalk NYC takes place every Wednesday at 2:00 PM in Central Park.? To learn more about joining a TechWalk follow the company page or send Christine a DM.

Can you talk about the role that business relationships have played in your career? Do you have an example of a specific business relationship that helped you make a career move that you wanted to make?

My family is primarily from the Caribbean (Jamaica, St. Lucia, and Cuba), and my working-class parents instilled a mantra in their children that has taken me years to reverse - "You are not at work to make friends".

This well-intentioned, yet misguided advice (likely passed along from their parents) was intended to serve as a protective warning.? In their line of thinking, it was the hardest workers, not the most charismatic or relationship-savvy, that would be shielded from the whims of racism, and maintain the ability to protect their livelihoods.

Suffice it to say, after college graduation when I entered corporate America, as the first person in my family to attain a "white collar" job, the dissonance between my parents' guidance and the realities I was witnessing all around me were pretty stark.? My heads down, work as hard as possible ethic garnered me plenty of praise, and you guessed it, more work.? Meanwhile, some of my colleagues who I perceived as unserious chatterboxes, the folks who roamed our offices, stopping at every cubicle for chitchat and gossip, and never missed a happy hour, were getting promoted!

I knew that something needed to change, but at that early stage of my career, I didn't have the tools to diagnose the issue and to navigate a proactive and successful pivot.? So I slogged along on this gerbil wheel, scratching and scraping for the type of meaningful recognition that was accompanied by pay raises and title promotions.

Thankfully, and almost in spite of myself, I developed relationships along the way, but somewhat organically and accidentally, never intentionally. It wasn't until later in my career that an important relationship opened my eyes to the power of personal bonds at work.

My manager, Jessica Fewless, who is probably as extroverted as I am introverted, pushed through the boundaries of what I understood to be a professional distance with my co-workers and became a true friend.? For the first time in my career, I had a connection who was an advocate, recognized my contributions, offered course correction when necessary, helped me with blind spots, and PROMOTED me.

And the type of promotions, that were sometimes a surprise, sometimes a discussion, but never left me feeling like it was a war, but rather a natural next step.? I want to offer up my story as a cautionary tale to others who may be questioning the value of close bonds at work.