In college, I always imagined working in tech would be similar to college. That is, we would end up working in closely knit teams, form good friendships and also do cool stuff. My work experience has been very different. I feel like I have a more polite, formal and personable relationship with my colleagues. But I don’t know them very well and don’t hang out with them after work. Is this how it should be? I feel like if you spent 8 hours a day in a workplace, shouldn’t we invest in having more concrete relationships (friends over colleagues)?
When I was younger, work friendships were really easy, kind of effortless like in high school. It helped that we all had similar interests, but the company culture was also very friendly. Now I’m older, and everyone has kids, the company culture is still friendly, but we don’t all have as much in common, interests-wise, so there’s not as much natural inertia built up to hang out after work.
If I was only friends with people who do exactly what I do, I think I’d be bored out of my skull.
Logitech, the real reason you can't make friends is because you are an asshole.
It's work, relationships are different, people are different. I have solid concrete relationships with people, but we each have our own lives outside of work.
Work is work, don’t expect to make friends there, especially now when industries are adapting to big data and craving more little fingers to mine it. Also, employment laws scare some from oversharing and it is generally discouraged in most workplaces to avert distractions.
If you make ONE really great friend at each company you work at, consider yourself lucky.
In companies that have a very rigorous calibration process, those relationships will be vital to your success.
Almost a year in, finally managed to make a couple friends on my floor that are more than just conversations while sharing beers. Took effort.
All the other posts are correct, but another thing is with how often some people change jobs, sometimes there isn't much incentive to get to know each other better. Other times there's a large age gap between team members (this is my case) and there's a huge laundry list of reasons why there might only be a professional relationship at best, ambivalence at worst. It sucks but sometimes you get lucky, I guess.
Don't expect deep friendships, but it's easy to find people with similar interests to spend time with, just ask around. Friendships can maybe develop from there but don't count on it.
In college, your ability to feed and clothe yourself didn't depend on how well you got along with your friends. This is why there is a personal/professional divide.
This