I Make Friends at Work

Just this week, I left a company that I’ve been with for nearly four years. As I wound down my role there over the last few months, it had me thinking a lot about the takeaways from my time there and what things I value in a job. I think I’ve boiled it down to three things:

• Learning new things.
• Helping others succeed and improve.
• Creating real human connections with people.

Even in jobs I’ve been unhappy with, I’ve been fortunate to walk away with these three things and the feeling that my time there was not wasted.

I have never been very good at neatly segmenting my relationships into professional and personal buckets. That doesn’t mean that I force close friendships or personal details on my co-workers, but I have always let friendships develop organically without much intention, whether at work or out in the world.

This has resulted in having a lot of close friendships at work. Most of those friendships have outlasted the job, some by decades.

Some of those friends were made in terrible organizations that had great people on the front lines. Others were in amazing, high-functioning companies where I was incredibly proud of the work we did together.

Either way, I can’t imagine spending so much of my time around people that I didn’t like, respect, and care about.

If you search the internet for “Should I be friends with my co-workers?”, you’ll find a fair amount of advice, like this article in Psychology Today, that I find falls somewhere between Machiavellian and sociopathic. To be fair, you will also find plenty of contrary advice. I’m going to go through the main points these articles make and compare them to my personal experience.

Certainly, all of these can be true in some contexts. I recognize that many people are earlier in their careers and have less agency in choosing the co-workers they have to spend their days with. It’s an incredible privilege, and maybe not one that I will always have.

You can’t trust people at work, they will back-stab you and undermine your career.

These kinds of people exist in the world, so obviously they also exist in the workplace. At this stage of my life, I find that my judgment of character is pretty well developed. Whether I’m at work or a dinner party, I use the same sense as to whether I want to be friends with someone. I don’t think this is a good reason to avoid developing close friendships at work, just like it’s not a reason to avoid them in your personal life.

Having close work friendships invites drama.

This is adjacent to the above, but it’s a different concern that I do understand. These are people you are “stuck with” to some extent, and if the relationship experiences some strain you may not have any choice in how you have to interact with them in your job.

As above, these are the same risks you take on befriending roommates, neighbors, people who volunteer with you, people on your recreational sports team. There’s nothing unique here about the workplace.

You’re at work to make money not friends.

I don’t really know how to critique this statement, but I’ll just say that I can’t imagine thinking about life this way.

You’ll be distracted from your job and it will hurt your performance.

I actually find the opposite is true, as long as the organization is healthy and high-functioning. In practice, I have only seen this happen when the environment was toxic and coworkers developed close friendships to deal with the shared trauma inflicted on them by not being valued and respected.

In a high-functioning organization, close friendships help everyone be more open to sharing ideas and more honest in their critiques. Smart, talented people who love spending time together can accomplish amazing things. I’ve been lucky enough to be on teams like that several times in my life.

Friendships at work can make you too attached to the company and stay despite a toxic environment.

This is a fair point, and I’ve definitely stayed at companies longer than I should have because I valued my friendships there so much. But ultimately, I think it’s fine and healthy to value your relationships more than your career advancement or size of your paycheck. I certainly don’t regret the times I made this choice.

I never intend to give advice here. You should, of course, do whatever works for you given your particular circumstances and values.

If I had avoided friendships at work I would not have many of the friendships that I value so much today. So when I’m looking for a new company to join, if the answer to “Are these people I would like to hang out with?” is no, I will pass every time.