> Work-related and private topics should be separated, IMO.

Why does it feel like people take this (reasonable) idea too far so often these days (and always on the Internet - I've never seen anyone in real life act like that).

Like, yes, don't treat your job like a family or spend your whole day talking about your personal drama. Be careful or avoid dating coworkers. Etc. But this stuff is, as the author said, the equivalent of water cooler talk.

If I had a salaried job that tracked the fact that I spent 15 minutes (when not on a time crunch, of course) talking about some random interesting blog post or a coworker's trip, I would... probably look into leaving that job. I have never had a job that met that description. (On the contrary, many jobs I had, especially back as an intern/student, let us get away with way too much time spent fooling around or talking, in retrospect.)

Even the stereotypical overworked fast food employee is allowed to chat with their coworkers when there's downtime, it's perfectly normal. I can't imagine pursuing the "work/life balance" ideal to the point one avoids regular old casual conversation with their coworkers.

Agreed. Some of the solutions I've seen and even experienced seem like something right out of severance

Please engage in the mandatory socialization experience

> There’s also the formal/legal aspect that the work-related topics can count as work time whereas the private ones doesn’t.

So when you're at the office, you never have a chat about a non-work topic at the coffee maker?

This is formally/legally a work break that you’re not allowed to count as work time. If I have a half-hour conversation about a non-work topic, which I sometimes do, it means I’ll need to work half an hour more. At the office it’s effectively at everyone’s discretion how exactly they count it, but on a chat platform it can in principle be tracked if someone spends substantial time on #offtopic.

Legal definitions vary country to country: I wouldn't be so quick to insist on some universal definition. I'm pretty sure you're wrong about US law there - docking someone's pay for "chatting" sounds extremely difficult to defend.

Besides, multi-tasking exists: sometimes I need to let my brain idle on another topic for 15 minutes, because I'm working through something complex, or just wrapped up a project and have a meeting.

Certainly, nowhere I've ever worked has tried enforcing anything like this. I've had plenty of co-workers who made a point of wandering over to socialize for 5-10 minutes every day, which must have easily added up to an hour a day - but they were also the expert that knew exactly where everyone was and who needed to coordinate with who.

I’m not in the US, so that may be right. In my view this is more about how the employee feels about it: I don’t want to get into a dispute whether the half hour a day I spent on the rambling channel counts as work or not. For that it makes a significant difference if people use the channel to discuss their hobbies or whether they discuss work-related ideas. I also don’t want to miss the work-related topics just because I’m not interested in the hobby discussions.

In my country, we are allowed an half an hour break that is not deducible from your work time. It is expected that you need to take breaks in a 8h or 8h24 shift and you are free to decide if you want to take one long one or several shorter ones. Also going into the bathroom is not deducted, even if one day you need 15 minutes to take a proper dump or another day you have stomach issues and need to go more often.

bottom line: YMMV. check your local laws and/or collective agreements.

What a terrible situation in which to find oneself.

> work-related topics can count as work time whereas the private ones doesn’t

All of these people are salaried, why does it matter?

I think building rapport with your team counts as work.

Depending on how much time you spend “building rapport”, HR might disagree.

My point is that channels should be set up such that it’s well-defined whether they are work-related or not.

I have never once had a contract that said I’m expected to work n hours a week.

In fact it is just the opposite, salaried employees are paid the same no matter how many hours worked.