>For at least 8 hours of your day, you are at work, interacting with people in an environment toxic for creating trusting friendships (You're competing for the

>For at least 8 hours of your day, you are at work, interacting with people in an environment toxic for creating trusting friendships (You're competing for the same roles, titles, bonuses, etc.) I... man, I hate working at places like that. And I don't very often; I suppose it's the privilege of having in-demand skills and living in a place with a wide choice of employers, but yeah, I've had jobs like that and I got out quick. The vast majority of places I've worked came with sort of built in friend groups. I mean, "work friends" are different from real friends, but it is a built in social group that pretty much has to be friendly to you unless you do thing that are outlandishly unacceptable. And sometimes 'work friends' turns in to real friends. Friendship and competition can go together, and they usually do. I mean, look at normal people and sports, or academic high achievers and academics. If you can't compete without being friends, you either need to work on yourself or you need to compete with different people. As technical individual contributors, I personally don't feel a strong sense of competition, for that matter. In my experience, you get more points by telling the boss something true and good about a co-worker than you do for telling the boss something true and bad about a co worker. I mean, we all know, if you want to really get ahead, you switch jobs, right? and yes, in the abstract, you are competing with your co-workers for those other jobs, but you rarely know who else is interviewing for a particular position. But my own experience is that work is way better for meeting friends than high school. (I mean, unless by friends, you mean dates... which is a different sort of thing, and yeah, I personally don't have the social skills to date people I work with, so I avoid that whole can of worms)