There's a kind of snobby attitude at play here sometimes I think, as in: 'of course I wouldn't socialise with my colleagues outside work! They are nowhere near as interesting as me and my super-awesome, quirky and unique bunch of mates, I'm just slumming it for the money'.

I think it's more nuanced than that. If you hang out with them outside of work on a regular basis, then maybe they are genuine friends and that's great. The problem discussed is a different situation: You get along great with your colleagues, however you never spend time with them outside of work. Then let's say that getting along well with them nudges you to stay at the company longer even though your company/position is not a good fit for you and you should be looking for better career opportunities. You finally decide to leave the company 2 years later, then you realize that these colleagues weren't really friends after all and you should have started looking for better opportunities way earlier.

That is a great point, I've always found the true test for friendship is after I left the environment made us close.

This applies not just work friends, but college friends, activity friends and church friends.

Not everyone wanted to stay in touch, and I don't want to stay in touch with everyone. The few occasions where the desire to stay in touch is mutual, I cherish those connections for as long as they last, hopefully for a lifetime.

Depends a lot on your workplace. If its a younger workforce it usually easy to make friends and people do things together. Once people start having children it seems to change quite a lot.

Yeah once you push 30 your next cohort of friends going to be that bingo gang in your retirement home.

Yeah, I really feel sad when I see those articles and comments telling you not to share anything that you don't want your boss to know with your colleagues, or even better ignore them completely and automatically treat as deadly competition. If you cannot trust anybody and have difficulties with assessing if someone won't turn his back on you, it may be a problem with your social skills, not with other people.

This kind of thinking encourages situations where the employer may have total control over his employees, like with Amazon.

There are definitely personal details that are dangerous for you to talk about with your co workers. It is still legal to fire someone for being gay or trans in a significant minority of states. There are two Supreme Court cases right now purely because of workplace bigotry.

I also don’t know how safe it would be to disclose having a disability or chronic condition in the workplace.

It may make you sad, but do you think "don't share anything with your colleagues you wouldn't want your boss to know" is bad advice? Treating people like "deadly competition," is probably not optimal, but being wary of what you say certainly is. I can tell you the Slack Police at my work think so, too.

There is a difference between being friendly and being friends.

A friend can be someone you have not spoken to in decades but they will help you in a time of need and pick up with you as if it was yesterday.

In a workplace you may adore your colleagues and spend more than forty hours a week in their company but are you being friendly or are you friends? There is a difference. It is not often that a workplace friendship arrangement becomes a true friendship.

In previous times people were not hypermobile. People did not travel on vast commutes just for a highly specialised job. They could get work on their side of town. They could also sell up and move that bit easier for that job out of town.

In a workplace you are not going to become best of friends with someone who lives a 3-4 hour journey away from you as you know from the off that it is a long distance relationship. The drink after work will be as far as it goes.

Of course there will be exceptions.

I am not sure that the older generation have that many close friends anyway, plus there was the stay at home mum phenomenon back then and whilst 'daddy went to work' the true friendships were made by the kids, bringing their respective parents together. Kids don't get chopped and changed like how jobs do so there is more scope for friendships being made through them.

Unacknowledged fact. Due to Stack Ranking and modern day Machivellian work culture, colleagues are competitors.

Most relationships end up the same way. If there is some kind of comparative ranking/selection, even if it is just fame or some recognition. Even sibling rivalry roots in this.

I and some work friends made the mistake of disclosing our salary between us. Me being the one that earns more.

Our friendship and even work relationship was never the same again.

I would never tell how much I earn if I had the choice to go back. I do believe they should know. But it hurts our work relationship on a daily basis.

I had that happen too but the difference was trivial like a couple hundred but still bothered one of the people. I think the only way to share now is just post on glassdoors.

Yes, even minimal differences bother people.

I've had such a different experience than you. I feel that being friends with co-workers has always been more about mutual aid than competition.

Probably depends on the job.

We devs always got along well, even the idiots were kind of included.

But I had the impression, things were different sales or the management team.

I don't know, I tend to cross over into whatever part of the business if someone seems cool and just ask them to grab lunch or a drink. One of my closest friends is a management person I worked for and asked to grab drinks with when she quit. She's 20 years my senior and now we take girls trips and know each others family and friends. I think it's all about putting yourself out there and occasionally sitting through a painfully awkward lunch.

In my case it's not snobbery like someone else insinuated. I don't consider myself "better" than my coworkers -- just not close to them.

I tend to make few friends. Of those, I made most of my closest friends at school and the Uni, I'm still in touch with them, and we keep our friendships going through good and bad times. It's an age thing, I suppose. If I were still in my 20s I'd probably make friends at work, too.

I tend to occasionally keep in touch with former coworkers, but I'm an introvert, I tend not to enjoy "afterhours" activities, and eventually all these new bonds tend to fade.

It's a luxury concept: the idea that people can rely on having a social group outside of their employer and maybe their employer's vendors and customers.

Also, don't talk to people about how their parents met; they'll be in shock that they overcame the fear that they'd become awkward or unprofessional if things broke off.