I’m past that point, as are all of my friends. Nothing in my comment is changed by that fact.
If anything, coworker relationships actually become more important as you get older and your other friends start to drift away. Post age 30, work is one of the best (if not the only, for most people) opportunities to socialize and make friends. I’ve noticed that people in other fields realize this and take advantage of it, but those in technical positions don’t, and many techies seem to even actively despise that aspect.
Plus, I've had several people -- all the way to the CEO -- assure me how much I am appreciated and even looked at as a superhuman, yet 2 months later boom, we have to lay you off.
Defense mechanism or not, it's pretty normal to not mix personal and work lives and you pretending it's not dysfunctional to have friends at work is actually a bit worrying. You just got lucky, mate. That's cool and I am happy for you. But you should recognise it should absolutely not be the normal state of affairs.
Being laid off has nothing to do with friendship. As your post even says, you should separate personal from business. I know several people who were separated from places of work and still maintain strong bonds with their now-former coworkers. I personally left my company of 5 years on not-so-great terms and yet several of the people in my wedding party are coworkers from that job. Work is a great place to begin friendships, and just because you no longer work at the same company does not mean your friendship has to end. And that’s the way it should be.
I too have a few pleasant acquaintances that are former co-workers, by the way.
I've observed a lot of Stockholm syndrome in people in offices and that made me believe many are forcing relationships at work so at to make their workplace more tolerable. I could be wrong though.
HOWEVER, when in a work setting I prefer to grab the problem at hand by the horns and start wrestling it. I like small talk -- maybe even too much! -- and that's exactly why I gradually learned to deflect most such attempts by colleagues so as not to be in an awkward position later after I have bonded with 10+ people but got zero work done. :D
You know?
- The employee who spends the day having extra long visits around the office.
- The employee who joins every social event team possible so much they are never doing their core role
- The helpful senior dev who spends all day teaching a junior only to avoid the bug queue and push their work to other seniors
- The company meeting where everyone listens as Sally is given an above and beyond reward for their work on a project everyone else did but Sally. Sally is very personable with the CEO
Let's just get our work done.
Thanks for the discussion.
It most likely wasn't their choice. You can't really have that affect your friendships.
We've all been there. The strongest bonds were made at my first few companies. Once you leave and are no longer friends hanging out you'll probably realize they are not true friends. But those times were great.
Besides we in tech need to go home to work on our side project.