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Working in person isn't the issue here -- not having friends is the issue. People do make friends at work, and that's a good thing. But it should never be you

Working in person isn't the issue here -- not having friends is the issue. People do make friends at work, and that's a good thing. But it should never be your primary place of making friends. (Friends and family won't lay you off like a job might. Having a network outside of work is critical if that ever happens.) Asking your coworkers to come into the office just so you can get some needed face time with other people doesn't seem fair to them. They have social lives outside of work and aren't being paid to be someone's social outlet.

pxue 4y ago
C'mon that's just bullshit. Once working, you spend 8h a day with a group of people. It's by far the easiest way to make friends since the needed repetition of making contact (a minimum requirement for friendship) is already solved by going to work together. Making friends as an adult is hard. Work is the easiest shortcut in establishing meaningful relationships with strangers. Edit: addressing some of the comments below. Some of the commenters describe a friend as someone who will maintain a connection with you no matter the circumstance (loss of job, moving to a new city etc) I believe that is an unrealistic expectation. Friend just means someone you have established a platonic relationship with right here right now. You may drift apart in the future, but what's important is that the connection and relationship is genuine and real.
- mettamage 4y ago
  Digital nomad here. I like being one. For me making friends, the best places are: Tinder (it took a lot of effort) and just giving compliments to people on the street (it took some effort to learn). Regarding complimenting people on the street and potentially turning it into a conversation, it takes some practice. 10 years ago when I did some solo traveling (before uni even) for the first time, I had the choice to stay inside and feel even more agony or to go out and experience social anxiety and pain. I've experienced a lot of social anxiety and pain (initially). It feels better than feeling lonely. There are courses on how to make friends (and influence people :P, see "How to make friends and influence people", it's a book, I haven't read it though). If you really want to, you can consciously make an effort on bettering social skills and meet anyone everywhere and maintaining it. A good channel (a bit too broad though) is Charisma on Command [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@Charismaoncommand https://www.youtube.com/@Charismaoncommand
  - calsy 4y ago
    What bizarro world is this?
    - mettamage 4y ago
      I'd prefer more thought and more empathy (note: not sympathy) in your statement. I'm presenting a different way to look at things. From the HN guidelines [1]: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - calsy 4y ago
        Why is my statement any different to what a person on the street would say when a random stranger tries to interact with them? People on the street always WANT something from you. It is rarely ever for the benefit of the recipient. Thats why 99% of people have their guard up and are not interested in random chit chat let alone making friends. Reading Dale Carnegie wont change that. These suggestions are being thrown around as preferred alternatives to meeting people at work.
        mettamage 4y ago
        Thanks for the reaction :) > People on the street always WANT something from you. One can learn to spot the difference. This is not always the case. Also, this mentality doesn't help. I see where you're coming from, but when you do what I do, this mentality doesn't help. > Thats why 99% of people have their guard up and are not interested in random chit chat let alone making friends. Only true for the first 2 minutes, in my experience. And yea, you can't make friends with everyone. The first 2 minutes people live on autopilot. Approaching them is tricky and needs to be done precisely because you're not talking to the real person (IMO). You're talking to the person who has a whole program in their head that they need to execute and the chance they see you as something that once to sell something is high. It takes a bit of time for most people to understand that you're really just there as another human being. For some people it takes 0 seconds though, for others it takes longer. I personally have noticed it takes less long for guys (being a guy myself), because they're not afraid I'm secretly trying to hit on them. > Reading Dale Carnegie wont change that. I mentioned in my comment that I didn't read him either. > These suggestions are being thrown around as preferred alternatives to meeting people at work. That's because for me they are. Like I tried to mention: this is my preferred alternative. I'm living this. It's a different perspective that I'm offering. It's a hard perspective to offer as it's a "show don't tell" type of thing. I've showed many friends, they were all amazed and all bestowed magical abilities upon me of how amazing I was socially. They couldn't explain it away as training. I'm not a naturally social person. I consciously trained it. They didn't believe it. So I trained a few of my friends to do the same. They see it. They're surprised. It takes a while to train, depending on the person. Though, as far as meeting people and making friends is concerned, 20 hours per week for max 3 months ought to definitely do the trick. So that's 240 hours of training to fix one of the biggest issues in people their lives: making sure they can consciously always build a social life.
- MattPalmer1086 4y ago
  Ummm, no! Maybe some people get their social life from work but many don't. I have 1 friend I've made during my entire career that stayed with me after the job ended. The others I've lived with, or went to school with, or met following other interests. If you just mean socialising with colleagues, sure, I do that. But they aren't my good friends.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    We are dismantling every place people form new friendships and then wonder why young people are becoming more lonely.
    - xboxnolifes 4y ago
      I agree, and it's a problem. But out of every place being dismantled, I'm ok with dismantling the workplace.
    - MattPalmer1086 4y ago
      No, we're really not. People still live together, people still go to school together, people still have interests out of work, people still go to bars and clubs. The office may have been a good place to make friends for some young people, but certainly not all. I was quite lonely in my early twenties. I had moved away from home and university and all the people I knew. It's quite normal. And nobody worked remotely.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - AussieWog93 4y ago
        >People still live together More and more people are staying with their parents because they can't afford to move out. >people still go to school together More and more people are doing online/remote learning. During the pandemic, all learning went remote and it ruined childrens' social skills. >people still have interests out of work Less and less of these out-of-work interests involve regular, face-to-face social interaction and community building. >people still go to bars and clubs People are definitely going to pubs less - this is an issue that has been in the media for a decade and a half. When people do go to pubs, clubs and bars they're less likely to talk to people they don't know. People are certainly less likely to chat up a member of the opposite sex at a bar in 2023 compared to even 2013.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > Once working, you spend 8h a day with a group of people. Until they, or you: - quit and move to another company in 2-3 years - move to another department in the company - get fired Then what?
  - mgraf1 4y ago
    Then you keep in touch with them. The best friend I've made as an adult was met through work. Then he took another job, and I moved across the country when I went remote. We still keep in touch and occasionally travel to visit each other.
    - projectazorian 4y ago
      Most work “friendships” are transactional. Always exceptions of course, like in your case, but it’s important to be clear eyed going in. A lot of people in my life have had their feelings hurt when their “work friend” stopped talking to them after leaving the company, because they failed to understand this important truth.
    - watwut 4y ago
      The kind of person who can't make and keep friends unless they are forced to work in the same office won't. It that person could keeping touch and would pick friends able to keep in touch, they would keep.in touch with whoever they studied with or was in their hometown. But, we are talking about someone who need coercion to make friends. And they can be nice super ethical person, but there is that skill they don't have.
      - dmitriid 4y ago
        At any point in life I keep in touch regularly with about 40-50 people. Most of them are from outside work. Because "but you spend 8 hours with them every day" is not true for most people. I now work with completely different people than I those I worked 3-4-10 years ago. I have friendships significantly longer than that, and I didn't have to work with them side by side all this time.
    - 4y ago
- givemeethekeys 4y ago
  > Making friends as an adult is hard. Pick a social hobby. Pick up sports, hiking / running / reading / trivia / sports groups. Take a class. Take up a cause - volunteer your time at the local farm, shelter, political office.. Kids don't go to school with the goal of making friends. The friends are a byproduct.
  - nprateem 4y ago
    Yes a byproduct of consistently spending time with the same people.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    I’d argue the socialisation is just as important as the formal education.
  - mustini 4y ago
    This is very easy advice to give and oft repeated, but I’m deeply skeptical that this is something that works for most people (unless we substitute friends with acquaintances).
    - scrollaway 4y ago
      It’s often repeated because a lot of people make friends this way. My board game buddies are my closest real life friends, and I met them exactly like this. However people do need to accept that not everyone makes friends the same way.
      - mustini 4y ago
        Maybe the more interesting question is what does it take for this to work? I’m just going anecdotal here from college friends that have dispersed across the US. Warm intros, so to speak, help. If you join a running group attended by a friend of a friend it seems to stick better than joining when you know absolutely no one. Public transit helps. It’s hard to be consistent when going to the activity requires slogging through traffic. And lastly, an activity that encourages repeated regular attendance. Hiking is an activity that is super flaky attendance compared to say training for a triathlon with a specific event day.
- sircastor 4y ago
  We tend to make friends early in life at school or church, but those friendships are because there's a very wide pool of individuals in a single location. Literally everyone in a geographic area who is your age. That inherently tends to include people of similar economic status and cultural background. You have this huge group of people and can pick your preferred subset from them. Walking into a job, literally the only thing you have in common with these people is an employer. While time spent together is an important component of building relationships, it lacks the other substantially important pieces of relationships: Common interests, similar backgrounds, similar worldviews, etc. (Though it doesn't mean they're inherently absent)
  - Joeri 4y ago
    Similar backgrounds and worldviews are not necessary for a solid friendship, as long as you have shared interests and mutual respect.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    If you are working in the same position then surely you share quite a lot of shared interests, likely have the same degree even. I had plenty of great conversations about different topics of CS with my coworkers (even though I’m way more “academically inclined” then most of them are) at every workplace. Sure, not everyone is interested in their own field of work, but imo that’s then the greater problem, one really shouldn’t waste half of his/her waking life on something they entirely dislike.
- TomSwirly 4y ago
  > It's by far the easiest way to make friends But I generally have nothing in common with the people I work with. I'm friends with people who share my world outlook, my moral and philosophical and aesthetic views, and there's no correlation between that and working with people. > Friend just means someone you have established a platonic relationship with right here right now. NO, that's not friend, FFS! That's an acquaintance or a coworker. Don't get me wrong - I'm a very sociable guy, I love hanging out with people, but I only have a few actual _friends_. > Some of the commenters describe a friend as someone who will maintain a connection with you no matter the circumstance (loss of job, moving to a new city etc) > I believe that is an unrealistic expectation. I'm sorry, but if you leave a job and lose all your connection with someone, _you were never friends._ I moved to a new continent in 2016 and I'm still in touch with my small group of actual friends, and I even made two more here.
  - pxue 4y ago
    OK. i'll give another example. I played WoW for a good 8 years everyday through high school and college, became great friends with some of the people I played the game with. When I finished school, I hung up my WoW character and said good bye to my friends in the game. Although I no longer keep in touch with any of them, those were some of the best 8 years of my life and I am truly fond of the memories I made playing the game and working together. Is that not the same as a work place?
    - TheCleric 4y ago
      I think the larger point is if you can walk away from a relationship after 8 years without an attempt to keep in touch, you're not friends.
      - StopHammoTime 4y ago
        +1. I have a group chat with my wow friends and we have been mostly connected (with some brief periods after Cataclysm where everyone stopped playing) for almost 15 years now. We’ve had in-person meetups and I have a solid conversation with them at least once a week on voice.
- deafpolygon 4y ago
  As a rule, I don't make "close" friends with people I work with. Falling out with people is a real thing, and getting judged for things that are in my private life (whatever they may be) is not something I want to deal with 40+ hours a week. With normal friends, I can at least avoid them. Co-workers? Not so much. I'm nice, I'll socialize, but I won't share or divulge any detail of my private life.
- prepend 4y ago
  > It's by far the easiest way to make friends since the needed repetition of making contact (a minimum requirement for friendship) is already solved by going to work together. I disagree as the workplace isn’t a good locus of interest for personal relationships. I’m not interested in my coworkers hobbies. I have developed friendships with co-workers but they are rare. Some of my happiest times at work are when I worked with friends. But they were friends before work and I worked with them because they are friends, I didn’t become friends because of work. I also think it’s valuable to have checks and balances in life and having my personal life wrapped up with work, although great for my employer, puts too much risk in losing my job. Add to this, that my workplace was distributed and I switched from driving into work to get in video calls with people in different locations to doing that from my home office. If someone doesn’t see humans for days when working from home, that is an individual problem to solve and there are many options to solve that. Work is not efficient for solving that problem. Join a gym, get a dog and walk it, join a grocery/csa co-op, use meetup, join a church, volunteer, visit seniors in your area, tutor kids, join a book club, do yoga/tai chi. The list going on and on and all those are more likely to result in human connection and friendships than going into work.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  I believe this comment and similar ones are evidence of how deeply society has been fucked over by sociopathic workaholics.
- potta_coffee 4y ago
  Work is the worst place to make friends. You don't get to choose the people you work with. If you change jobs or get sacked, your social circle is vaporized. Work is a place to make money. I work remotely, don't miss the socialization because many of my co-workers are sucky people. I have friends I've made through hobbies, veterans groups etc.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > Friend just means someone you have established a platonic relationship with right here right now. Ahhh, that makes more sense now. You're using "friend" to mean what I would call an "acquaintance". I think the workplace is one of the hardest places to find true friends, because the relationship is dependent on the job. And, can you really be truly open and vulnerable to workplace friends? Can you safely talk smack about your boss, or your cube neighbor, or the company? Can you show up on their doorstep in crisis at 3am and have it not affect things at work?
Gigachad 4y ago
I’ve got friends but you can’t fill 100% of your social interactions with meeting friends. Unless you have a very large number of them, you won’t be able to see them daily, and even if you do, you end up consuming all of your free time with socialising and having no personal time left. Remote work left me choosing between fulfilling social interaction or personal time after work, either option leaving me unsatisfied. I can’t wait to get back to the office, those were the best years of my life. Remote work is making me depressed and isolated.
- nostromo 4y ago
  Sure, friends are part of it -- family is the other part of it. If you don't have either -- filling that void by spending all day in an office sounds even more depressing. I'd focus more on making friends and finding a committed relationship. There are lots of solutions here outside of working in-person: Find roommates. Start playing sports. Date more. Find an in-person hobby. Volunteer.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    What I know is that those first few years of my career in office were the best years of my life. I’ve been scrambling around trying everything to fill the gap left by remote work, I go to meetups, I have family and friends, none of it is as significant as working together with people for the majority of your day. I’m going back to the office and I won’t take another job that has most people remote.
    - porker 4y ago
      > What I know is that those first few years of my career in office In that particular office. Ive had spells of time like that. Mine were at universities working together in labs. Ive worked software jobs in companies and startups where the developers sat in the same room all day and didn't speak. Completely unsociable. I found that much more soul destroying than remote working.
      - 4y ago
herghost 4y ago
Sorry, but I have to disagree. I'm happily married, children, dog, several distinct groups of friends, great job at a great company, lovely house in a nice village, etc, etc, etc. I worked from home for about 4 years as a freelancer and found it incredibly isolating (but lucrative, so endured it) but finally had enough and get a permanent job back in an office. This was 5 weeks before what would be the first of several COVID lockdowns and roughly 3 years later there's still no realistic "office culture" where I work. Last year was incredibly tough for me. Incredibly dark. Despite everything that I ostensibly had going for me I was suddenly crushingly lonely, anxious, probably depressed. 8-10 hours per day of constantly interacting on Zoom calls doesn't just cut it. It's not the same. I don't think the answer is to necessarily "return to the office" as a 100% arrangement. I don't think that's possible in reality. But something has to change; undeniable dilemma.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  You have to go back to the office. All my friends and coworkers who have tried it haven’t gone back to remote work. People weren’t meant to sit alone all day.
  - earthling8118 4y ago
    So how does the office solve that exactly? I worked in an office in the before times. It was me sitting alone all day. Sure I was surrounded by other people technically but I was working on my own stuff and didn't interact. There was more annoyance than anything: constant chatter, super bright fluorescent overhead lighting, sickness spreading, etc
  - spacedcowboy 4y ago
    I am very happy not going back to the office. Perhaps I'm a sociopath, I don't know, but I would rather retire than return, and my boss is well aware. My company is on "mandatory" 2-days-a-week in the office, but I haven't been asked to return, and still sit in my shed. Which is awesome.
  - squeaky-clean 4y ago
    Different folks, different strokes. I started working remote about 3 years before Covid and won't go back to the office.
kccqzy 4y ago
You are confusing between friends at work and the employer itself. Layoffs are irrelevant: your friends (including those at work) will support you if you are laid off, unlike your employer. Also, once you make a friend at work you can meet outside the workplace, or communicate with non-work communication channels.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  But you won't because the reason why you spent time together was someone paid you to. How many people are you still hanging out with the company you worked 10 or 5 years ago? Very few if any..
  - temprose 4y ago
    Depends on the person. I still text a guy that I worked with 5 years ago and we still play games together online from time to time. I don't keep in touch with my old boomer manager though because we don't have any mutual interests.
  - wlonkly 4y ago
    For n=1: Most of my friends, and definitely my closest friends. That said I made more close, long-term friends as hire #11 at a startup than I did as hire #111 at a midsize tech company.
ravenstine 4y ago
> People do make friends at work, and that's a good thing. But it should never be your primary place of making friends. Yeah... good luck with that. Not to say that people don't make friends outside work, but there are many variables involved with that. But just use Meetup.com, right? Sure, if you want to spend a few hours with people of retirement age, not if there's anything wrong with that. Not having friends is just the surface level of the issue. If all you want is friends and friends alone, then that really isn't that hard to arrange. If the use of "friends", however, is those who are in your age cohort as well as romantic possibilities, that's an entirely different beast that can be ironically difficult to conquer once college life has been long since left in the dust. For many, if not most, the office was the deciding factor as to whom you would associate with in adulthood. Plenty of people have met long time friends as well as their husbands and wives at the office. With remote work, this is extremely difficult to pull off. I've been fortunate to have made one or two good friends through my years of remote work, but I had 100x more social opportunities back when I worked in a physical office. I miss the fact that I could have a best work friend kind of like how I usually had a best school friend as a child. But it's usually impractical to make such connections when all you have is Slack and Zoom, neither of which are good for shared 1-on-1 experiences. There's no chance to say "Hey, wanna run to Starbucks with me?" I wouldn't give up remote work entirely, but I'm finding there's a lot left to be desired that would be met in an office. The office is the missing variable that gets people to spend sufficient amount of time together on shared goals. That's not easily going to be replicated by introducing yourself to random people in town.
- barefeg 4y ago
  Completely understand your point of view. In my case, growing up I was interested in computers, and back then (late 90’ early 00’) kids my age were not into that. So after school I would roam forums. I would some times exchange IM with people I shared interests with, and chat with them every day. Most of them were adults and young adults, I didn’t know where they lived, how they looked, or their names. However I never felt the need to meet them in person. And my interactions felt as real (or even more) than interactions in the physical world. Fast forwarding to now, I find myself mentally fine when working from home. Of course things are different since I have family to interact with at home, but for me, not engaging with colleagues about non-work related things is what makes remote work not as fun as the olden times. This is also harder to arrange because my colleagues would rather go out or do something else rather that keep chatting with me about something else.
closeparen 4y ago
All the friendships I’ve ever had have been, like, do something together for a few hours every couple of weekends. The only thing remotely on the scale of office life is a family.

pxue 4y ago

C'mon that's just bullshit. Once working, you spend 8h a day with a group of people. It's by far the easiest way to make friends since the needed repetition of making contact (a minimum requirement for friendship) is already solved by going to work together. Making friends as an adult is hard. Work is the easiest shortcut in establishing meaningful relationships with strangers. Edit: addressing some of the comments below. Some of the commenters describe a friend as someone who will maintain a connection with you no matter the circumstance (loss of job, moving to a new city etc) I believe that is an unrealistic expectation. Friend just means someone you have established a platonic relationship with right here right now. You may drift apart in the future, but what's important is that the connection and relationship is genuine and real.

mettamage 4y ago
Digital nomad here. I like being one. For me making friends, the best places are: Tinder (it took a lot of effort) and just giving compliments to people on the street (it took some effort to learn). Regarding complimenting people on the street and potentially turning it into a conversation, it takes some practice. 10 years ago when I did some solo traveling (before uni even) for the first time, I had the choice to stay inside and feel even more agony or to go out and experience social anxiety and pain. I've experienced a lot of social anxiety and pain (initially). It feels better than feeling lonely. There are courses on how to make friends (and influence people :P, see "How to make friends and influence people", it's a book, I haven't read it though). If you really want to, you can consciously make an effort on bettering social skills and meet anyone everywhere and maintaining it. A good channel (a bit too broad though) is Charisma on Command [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@Charismaoncommand https://www.youtube.com/@Charismaoncommand
- calsy 4y ago
  What bizarro world is this?
  - mettamage 4y ago
    I'd prefer more thought and more empathy (note: not sympathy) in your statement. I'm presenting a different way to look at things. From the HN guidelines [1]: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - calsy 4y ago
      Why is my statement any different to what a person on the street would say when a random stranger tries to interact with them? People on the street always WANT something from you. It is rarely ever for the benefit of the recipient. Thats why 99% of people have their guard up and are not interested in random chit chat let alone making friends. Reading Dale Carnegie wont change that. These suggestions are being thrown around as preferred alternatives to meeting people at work.
      - mettamage 4y ago
        Thanks for the reaction :) > People on the street always WANT something from you. One can learn to spot the difference. This is not always the case. Also, this mentality doesn't help. I see where you're coming from, but when you do what I do, this mentality doesn't help. > Thats why 99% of people have their guard up and are not interested in random chit chat let alone making friends. Only true for the first 2 minutes, in my experience. And yea, you can't make friends with everyone. The first 2 minutes people live on autopilot. Approaching them is tricky and needs to be done precisely because you're not talking to the real person (IMO). You're talking to the person who has a whole program in their head that they need to execute and the chance they see you as something that once to sell something is high. It takes a bit of time for most people to understand that you're really just there as another human being. For some people it takes 0 seconds though, for others it takes longer. I personally have noticed it takes less long for guys (being a guy myself), because they're not afraid I'm secretly trying to hit on them. > Reading Dale Carnegie wont change that. I mentioned in my comment that I didn't read him either. > These suggestions are being thrown around as preferred alternatives to meeting people at work. That's because for me they are. Like I tried to mention: this is my preferred alternative. I'm living this. It's a different perspective that I'm offering. It's a hard perspective to offer as it's a "show don't tell" type of thing. I've showed many friends, they were all amazed and all bestowed magical abilities upon me of how amazing I was socially. They couldn't explain it away as training. I'm not a naturally social person. I consciously trained it. They didn't believe it. So I trained a few of my friends to do the same. They see it. They're surprised. It takes a while to train, depending on the person. Though, as far as meeting people and making friends is concerned, 20 hours per week for max 3 months ought to definitely do the trick. So that's 240 hours of training to fix one of the biggest issues in people their lives: making sure they can consciously always build a social life.
MattPalmer1086 4y ago
Ummm, no! Maybe some people get their social life from work but many don't. I have 1 friend I've made during my entire career that stayed with me after the job ended. The others I've lived with, or went to school with, or met following other interests. If you just mean socialising with colleagues, sure, I do that. But they aren't my good friends.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  We are dismantling every place people form new friendships and then wonder why young people are becoming more lonely.
  - xboxnolifes 4y ago
    I agree, and it's a problem. But out of every place being dismantled, I'm ok with dismantling the workplace.
  - MattPalmer1086 4y ago
    No, we're really not. People still live together, people still go to school together, people still have interests out of work, people still go to bars and clubs. The office may have been a good place to make friends for some young people, but certainly not all. I was quite lonely in my early twenties. I had moved away from home and university and all the people I knew. It's quite normal. And nobody worked remotely.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - AussieWog93 4y ago
      >People still live together More and more people are staying with their parents because they can't afford to move out. >people still go to school together More and more people are doing online/remote learning. During the pandemic, all learning went remote and it ruined childrens' social skills. >people still have interests out of work Less and less of these out-of-work interests involve regular, face-to-face social interaction and community building. >people still go to bars and clubs People are definitely going to pubs less - this is an issue that has been in the media for a decade and a half. When people do go to pubs, clubs and bars they're less likely to talk to people they don't know. People are certainly less likely to chat up a member of the opposite sex at a bar in 2023 compared to even 2013.
dmitriid 4y ago
> Once working, you spend 8h a day with a group of people. Until they, or you: - quit and move to another company in 2-3 years - move to another department in the company - get fired Then what?
- mgraf1 4y ago
  Then you keep in touch with them. The best friend I've made as an adult was met through work. Then he took another job, and I moved across the country when I went remote. We still keep in touch and occasionally travel to visit each other.
  - projectazorian 4y ago
    Most work “friendships” are transactional. Always exceptions of course, like in your case, but it’s important to be clear eyed going in. A lot of people in my life have had their feelings hurt when their “work friend” stopped talking to them after leaving the company, because they failed to understand this important truth.
  - watwut 4y ago
    The kind of person who can't make and keep friends unless they are forced to work in the same office won't. It that person could keeping touch and would pick friends able to keep in touch, they would keep.in touch with whoever they studied with or was in their hometown. But, we are talking about someone who need coercion to make friends. And they can be nice super ethical person, but there is that skill they don't have.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      At any point in life I keep in touch regularly with about 40-50 people. Most of them are from outside work. Because "but you spend 8 hours with them every day" is not true for most people. I now work with completely different people than I those I worked 3-4-10 years ago. I have friendships significantly longer than that, and I didn't have to work with them side by side all this time.
  - 4y ago
givemeethekeys 4y ago
> Making friends as an adult is hard. Pick a social hobby. Pick up sports, hiking / running / reading / trivia / sports groups. Take a class. Take up a cause - volunteer your time at the local farm, shelter, political office.. Kids don't go to school with the goal of making friends. The friends are a byproduct.
- nprateem 4y ago
  Yes a byproduct of consistently spending time with the same people.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  I’d argue the socialisation is just as important as the formal education.
- mustini 4y ago
  This is very easy advice to give and oft repeated, but I’m deeply skeptical that this is something that works for most people (unless we substitute friends with acquaintances).
  - scrollaway 4y ago
    It’s often repeated because a lot of people make friends this way. My board game buddies are my closest real life friends, and I met them exactly like this. However people do need to accept that not everyone makes friends the same way.
    - mustini 4y ago
      Maybe the more interesting question is what does it take for this to work? I’m just going anecdotal here from college friends that have dispersed across the US. Warm intros, so to speak, help. If you join a running group attended by a friend of a friend it seems to stick better than joining when you know absolutely no one. Public transit helps. It’s hard to be consistent when going to the activity requires slogging through traffic. And lastly, an activity that encourages repeated regular attendance. Hiking is an activity that is super flaky attendance compared to say training for a triathlon with a specific event day.
sircastor 4y ago
We tend to make friends early in life at school or church, but those friendships are because there's a very wide pool of individuals in a single location. Literally everyone in a geographic area who is your age. That inherently tends to include people of similar economic status and cultural background. You have this huge group of people and can pick your preferred subset from them. Walking into a job, literally the only thing you have in common with these people is an employer. While time spent together is an important component of building relationships, it lacks the other substantially important pieces of relationships: Common interests, similar backgrounds, similar worldviews, etc. (Though it doesn't mean they're inherently absent)
- Joeri 4y ago
  Similar backgrounds and worldviews are not necessary for a solid friendship, as long as you have shared interests and mutual respect.
- kaba0 4y ago
  If you are working in the same position then surely you share quite a lot of shared interests, likely have the same degree even. I had plenty of great conversations about different topics of CS with my coworkers (even though I’m way more “academically inclined” then most of them are) at every workplace. Sure, not everyone is interested in their own field of work, but imo that’s then the greater problem, one really shouldn’t waste half of his/her waking life on something they entirely dislike.
TomSwirly 4y ago
> It's by far the easiest way to make friends But I generally have nothing in common with the people I work with. I'm friends with people who share my world outlook, my moral and philosophical and aesthetic views, and there's no correlation between that and working with people. > Friend just means someone you have established a platonic relationship with right here right now. NO, that's not friend, FFS! That's an acquaintance or a coworker. Don't get me wrong - I'm a very sociable guy, I love hanging out with people, but I only have a few actual _friends_. > Some of the commenters describe a friend as someone who will maintain a connection with you no matter the circumstance (loss of job, moving to a new city etc) > I believe that is an unrealistic expectation. I'm sorry, but if you leave a job and lose all your connection with someone, _you were never friends._ I moved to a new continent in 2016 and I'm still in touch with my small group of actual friends, and I even made two more here.
- pxue 4y ago
  OK. i'll give another example. I played WoW for a good 8 years everyday through high school and college, became great friends with some of the people I played the game with. When I finished school, I hung up my WoW character and said good bye to my friends in the game. Although I no longer keep in touch with any of them, those were some of the best 8 years of my life and I am truly fond of the memories I made playing the game and working together. Is that not the same as a work place?
  - TheCleric 4y ago
    I think the larger point is if you can walk away from a relationship after 8 years without an attempt to keep in touch, you're not friends.
    - StopHammoTime 4y ago
      +1. I have a group chat with my wow friends and we have been mostly connected (with some brief periods after Cataclysm where everyone stopped playing) for almost 15 years now. We’ve had in-person meetups and I have a solid conversation with them at least once a week on voice.
deafpolygon 4y ago
As a rule, I don't make "close" friends with people I work with. Falling out with people is a real thing, and getting judged for things that are in my private life (whatever they may be) is not something I want to deal with 40+ hours a week. With normal friends, I can at least avoid them. Co-workers? Not so much. I'm nice, I'll socialize, but I won't share or divulge any detail of my private life.
prepend 4y ago
> It's by far the easiest way to make friends since the needed repetition of making contact (a minimum requirement for friendship) is already solved by going to work together. I disagree as the workplace isn’t a good locus of interest for personal relationships. I’m not interested in my coworkers hobbies. I have developed friendships with co-workers but they are rare. Some of my happiest times at work are when I worked with friends. But they were friends before work and I worked with them because they are friends, I didn’t become friends because of work. I also think it’s valuable to have checks and balances in life and having my personal life wrapped up with work, although great for my employer, puts too much risk in losing my job. Add to this, that my workplace was distributed and I switched from driving into work to get in video calls with people in different locations to doing that from my home office. If someone doesn’t see humans for days when working from home, that is an individual problem to solve and there are many options to solve that. Work is not efficient for solving that problem. Join a gym, get a dog and walk it, join a grocery/csa co-op, use meetup, join a church, volunteer, visit seniors in your area, tutor kids, join a book club, do yoga/tai chi. The list going on and on and all those are more likely to result in human connection and friendships than going into work.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
I believe this comment and similar ones are evidence of how deeply society has been fucked over by sociopathic workaholics.
potta_coffee 4y ago
Work is the worst place to make friends. You don't get to choose the people you work with. If you change jobs or get sacked, your social circle is vaporized. Work is a place to make money. I work remotely, don't miss the socialization because many of my co-workers are sucky people. I have friends I've made through hobbies, veterans groups etc.
JohnFen 4y ago
> Friend just means someone you have established a platonic relationship with right here right now. Ahhh, that makes more sense now. You're using "friend" to mean what I would call an "acquaintance". I think the workplace is one of the hardest places to find true friends, because the relationship is dependent on the job. And, can you really be truly open and vulnerable to workplace friends? Can you safely talk smack about your boss, or your cube neighbor, or the company? Can you show up on their doorstep in crisis at 3am and have it not affect things at work?

Gigachad 4y ago

I’ve got friends but you can’t fill 100% of your social interactions with meeting friends. Unless you have a very large number of them, you won’t be able to see them daily, and even if you do, you end up consuming all of your free time with socialising and having no personal time left. Remote work left me choosing between fulfilling social interaction or personal time after work, either option leaving me unsatisfied. I can’t wait to get back to the office, those were the best years of my life. Remote work is making me depressed and isolated.

nostromo 4y ago
Sure, friends are part of it -- family is the other part of it. If you don't have either -- filling that void by spending all day in an office sounds even more depressing. I'd focus more on making friends and finding a committed relationship. There are lots of solutions here outside of working in-person: Find roommates. Start playing sports. Date more. Find an in-person hobby. Volunteer.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  What I know is that those first few years of my career in office were the best years of my life. I’ve been scrambling around trying everything to fill the gap left by remote work, I go to meetups, I have family and friends, none of it is as significant as working together with people for the majority of your day. I’m going back to the office and I won’t take another job that has most people remote.
  - porker 4y ago
    > What I know is that those first few years of my career in office In that particular office. Ive had spells of time like that. Mine were at universities working together in labs. Ive worked software jobs in companies and startups where the developers sat in the same room all day and didn't speak. Completely unsociable. I found that much more soul destroying than remote working.
    - 4y ago

herghost 4y ago

Sorry, but I have to disagree. I'm happily married, children, dog, several distinct groups of friends, great job at a great company, lovely house in a nice village, etc, etc, etc. I worked from home for about 4 years as a freelancer and found it incredibly isolating (but lucrative, so endured it) but finally had enough and get a permanent job back in an office. This was 5 weeks before what would be the first of several COVID lockdowns and roughly 3 years later there's still no realistic "office culture" where I work. Last year was incredibly tough for me. Incredibly dark. Despite everything that I ostensibly had going for me I was suddenly crushingly lonely, anxious, probably depressed. 8-10 hours per day of constantly interacting on Zoom calls doesn't just cut it. It's not the same. I don't think the answer is to necessarily "return to the office" as a 100% arrangement. I don't think that's possible in reality. But something has to change; undeniable dilemma.

Gigachad 4y ago
You have to go back to the office. All my friends and coworkers who have tried it haven’t gone back to remote work. People weren’t meant to sit alone all day.
- earthling8118 4y ago
  So how does the office solve that exactly? I worked in an office in the before times. It was me sitting alone all day. Sure I was surrounded by other people technically but I was working on my own stuff and didn't interact. There was more annoyance than anything: constant chatter, super bright fluorescent overhead lighting, sickness spreading, etc
- spacedcowboy 4y ago
  I am very happy not going back to the office. Perhaps I'm a sociopath, I don't know, but I would rather retire than return, and my boss is well aware. My company is on "mandatory" 2-days-a-week in the office, but I haven't been asked to return, and still sit in my shed. Which is awesome.
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
  Different folks, different strokes. I started working remote about 3 years before Covid and won't go back to the office.

kccqzy 4y ago

You are confusing between friends at work and the employer itself. Layoffs are irrelevant: your friends (including those at work) will support you if you are laid off, unlike your employer. Also, once you make a friend at work you can meet outside the workplace, or communicate with non-work communication channels.

ipaddr 4y ago
But you won't because the reason why you spent time together was someone paid you to. How many people are you still hanging out with the company you worked 10 or 5 years ago? Very few if any..
- temprose 4y ago
  Depends on the person. I still text a guy that I worked with 5 years ago and we still play games together online from time to time. I don't keep in touch with my old boomer manager though because we don't have any mutual interests.
- wlonkly 4y ago
  For n=1: Most of my friends, and definitely my closest friends. That said I made more close, long-term friends as hire #11 at a startup than I did as hire #111 at a midsize tech company.

ravenstine 4y ago

> People do make friends at work, and that's a good thing. But it should never be your primary place of making friends. Yeah... good luck with that. Not to say that people don't make friends outside work, but there are many variables involved with that. But just use Meetup.com, right? Sure, if you want to spend a few hours with people of retirement age, not if there's anything wrong with that. Not having friends is just the surface level of the issue. If all you want is friends and friends alone, then that really isn't that hard to arrange. If the use of "friends", however, is those who are in your age cohort as well as romantic possibilities, that's an entirely different beast that can be ironically difficult to conquer once college life has been long since left in the dust. For many, if not most, the office was the deciding factor as to whom you would associate with in adulthood. Plenty of people have met long time friends as well as their husbands and wives at the office. With remote work, this is extremely difficult to pull off. I've been fortunate to have made one or two good friends through my years of remote work, but I had 100x more social opportunities back when I worked in a physical office. I miss the fact that I could have a best work friend kind of like how I usually had a best school friend as a child. But it's usually impractical to make such connections when all you have is Slack and Zoom, neither of which are good for shared 1-on-1 experiences. There's no chance to say "Hey, wanna run to Starbucks with me?" I wouldn't give up remote work entirely, but I'm finding there's a lot left to be desired that would be met in an office. The office is the missing variable that gets people to spend sufficient amount of time together on shared goals. That's not easily going to be replicated by introducing yourself to random people in town.

barefeg 4y ago
Completely understand your point of view. In my case, growing up I was interested in computers, and back then (late 90’ early 00’) kids my age were not into that. So after school I would roam forums. I would some times exchange IM with people I shared interests with, and chat with them every day. Most of them were adults and young adults, I didn’t know where they lived, how they looked, or their names. However I never felt the need to meet them in person. And my interactions felt as real (or even more) than interactions in the physical world. Fast forwarding to now, I find myself mentally fine when working from home. Of course things are different since I have family to interact with at home, but for me, not engaging with colleagues about non-work related things is what makes remote work not as fun as the olden times. This is also harder to arrange because my colleagues would rather go out or do something else rather that keep chatting with me about something else.

closeparen 4y ago

All the friendships I’ve ever had have been, like, do something together for a few hours every couple of weekends. The only thing remotely on the scale of office life is a family.