WFH means you can do other shit more easily because you have more time available to go to the gym, cafe, walking around, party etc..
Not to say that friends made at work cannot be friends, but all it takes is a trivial severance of that to reveal how close that connection was.
That's an interesting approach - how do you even do that though?
Honestly - WFH isn't much more time liberating for myself. Any amount of commute time I had (which was never very much - always under 20min each way, closer to 10min) was taken over by extra work demands or blurring separation of lines. On top of that - there's no happy hours, fun lunches, or what not now because WFH.
And I agree - but I guess what I'm saying is... You don't need lasting friendships for socializing to be enjoyable. Situational socializing can still be fun and it doesn't have to be this thing where you are going to have these people be your best man at your wedding.
Absolutely agree. This is why I mean more specifically that this shouldn't be relied upon entirely. If you stop being in the office, and your social life goes away, then maybe too much is coming from your work social life, whereas my opinion is just that it should be an augment. You may not need your casual work buddies to come to your wedding, but you probably want someone to come to your wedding, and it probably needs to come from somewhere else.
It's just a common thing I've heard—from particularly 9 to 5, somewhat more socially anxious people—that they have no idea how to make friends now that they realize their work friends don't necessarily want to go have a picnic. Work tends to usurp their personal lives in this sense, though I don't necessarily mean it to be so dramatic.
> That's an interesting approach - how do you even do that though?
It takes time and breadth. It's probably a better idea in general to just meet people through other means, but the big thing is simply forming enough of a connection with a small subset of your colleagues that they'd invite you to a party or something, then you might get to meet some other people, of which a small subset of those will vibe well enough with you.
It's just like meeting the friends of your current friends in that if they move away, you have redundancy. You wouldn't want 10/11 of your social group dependent on that one person you met them through, but that one person might give you exposure to the other 10. Ideally you get to a point with the other 10 where you'd invite them regardless of your first friend's availability.
Sure, as can be true after leaving school or moving away from family. Reason enough to always foster the skill of both making and keeping friends.
Until there's a conflict of interest between the two zones or between two colleagues and it all goes to shit.
Trust me, keep work and friends separated.
That's what you do by changing jobs. When you move on to the next company, those guys you met on the job become just "out of work friends".
I know, and I try and socialise with people who know, that work is just work, and its not worth sacrificing personal/social life just to simp for a boss.
I've met my best friends at work. I've moved across the world to another country with former colleagues. Created extremely deep connections with colleagues who've lead me to much personal growth.
It's not a bad thing per se. The problem is that it seems in some places there's no alternative
I joined a banking grad scheme many years ago in my first role out of uni. Have about 10 friends from there now 20 or so years on that I am in regular contact with.
I have moved to several different jobs since and pick up maybe one friend along the way but nothing as close as from our first job. Obviously age / place in life at the time was a big factor.
Damn, I've seen some random ass video on yt called "normal day of Googler" or something like that and it shocked me hard that "normal day" meant hanging out with coworkers
Don't get me wrong, it's not like we don't do it "here" - like going to pub or something, but it's definitely not normal day.
It's not an either-or. Both modes of working will exist in the future.