All of my long-lasting adult friends came outside of work. I always make friends at work, but when one of us switches jobs, we usually lose contact and don't really talk anymore.
You Shouldn't Make Friends at Work
41–50 of 55 posts
Re: You Shouldn't Make Friends at Work
#42Ignoring an environment where you spend a big chunk of you life for things like friends and relationships sounds like a bad idea. Saying that this automatically leads to drama at work is questionable. We have a huge decline in friendships.
Also, you don't know if somebody is a good friend beforehand. You mostly find out if shit hits the fan. The same also applies to family members. Plus, people change. Sometimes good friends stop being good friends and normal friends stand up for you unexpectedly.
Maybe a better advice would be to manage you expectations. Don't expect others to stand up and risk something for you unless they explicitly said they would.
Re: You Shouldn't Make Friends at Work
#43Reaction after skimming article: Somebody who has that simplistic a worldview - either about the huge range of human relationships which are referred to by "friend", or about the nature of workplaces and coworkers - needs to have a long talk with a grown-up.
Re: You Shouldn't Make Friends at Work
#44I think a reasonable point is being made in the article, but it’s pretty clumsy. Work relationships are not like your school drinking buddies. They come with more expectations, boundaries, and can be more complexly transactional. No reason to avoid them though, and you would really be hurting your career.
Article title should probably be, “Remember the difference between your professional friends and your personal friends.” Most people learn that one in a few months of working.
Re: You Shouldn't Make Friends at Work
#45One of my very very best friends was my coworker. We went to Devops Days Berlin together which was a dream come true for two house music fans from Toronto. We went to Berghain! We’ve been hanging out for about a decade. He dropped everything with his wife and kid to bring me supplies when the building I lived in got a worst-case infestation of bedbugs during the pandemic. He always invites me to his DJ shows and we message almost every day.
Now that’s something to be grateful for.
As cgeier put it: hard disagree.
Love you buddy.
Re: You Shouldn't Make Friends at Work
#46Yes, please: let's keep pushing this narrative that we are supposed to all be lonely, isolated, selfish, individual people. Building friendships and relationships is bad for us, don't you know.
Sigh.
Utter tripe. Good Lord, the West is really psyching itself out on these topics at a time of record-low birthrates and societal decay. No, Psychology Today: we need to be making more friends everywhere we can, even at work.
Re: You Shouldn't Make Friends at Work
#47I'm friendly with people at work but I tend to keep boundaries on what I share. I wouldn't, for instance, discuss a romantic problem with them but I would tell them what I did for fun over the weekend. When I was younger I was more open with friends at work about all sorts of things but it came back to bite me in the ass. People at work like to gossip about everything and everyone so I avoid telling people anything I wouldn't want to be public knowledge.
Re: You Shouldn't Make Friends at Work
#48Hard disagree. I spent a very significant amount of my waking time working. This is one of the best opportunities to make friends, and IMHO it's also nicer to work with friends than with non-friends. Most of the friends I made as an adult came from a work related setting.
Very much agree with you and my first thought was, who has that much drama at work? If you do, the employer or the type of the job is the problem.
Re: You Shouldn't Make Friends at Work
#49Definitely do not fuck anybody you work with on a daily basis.
Never works out well. Got the T-shirt.
Re: You Shouldn't Make Friends at Work
#50Semi-agree - though with caveats. Some of my closest friends I’ve made through work but also having a larger attachment to the people at a company I’ve worked at makes it easier to justify staying in a bad position or being honest about the place being bad.
I worked at Lyft for a while and hesitated saying anything bad about it because I had lots of good friends who still worked there. I also stayed much longer than made sense and prioritized projects over my health cause of a sense of “if I let this slip everyone else will get punished”. Ultimately this was not true - the friends would have wanted me to make the best call for myself. But I can vouch, atleast personally, being nice and liked at work but avoiding making close friends on the immediate team I work on has been better all around.