Hacker News Reader

I've always thought not being friends with your coworkers is a defense mechanism. Most of us have to work to survive, so getting emotionally involved and ending up with an uncomfortable or toxic environment (one with conflict and favoritism) is a big risk.

I've observed that the more highly paid and "professional" your work environment, the harder it is to make friends through work.

View on HN

This is one of those points of controversy that foreigners in Japan bring up. But for me the idea of making friends at work seemed unusual and I felt that the Japanese way of doing things was correct, and it come to me that the Japanese expat community is highly US-centric.

In Japan it is however common for people from university to graduate together enter their workplace together at the same job, and then get promoted together and change department together etc..

I used to work with a few coworkers in the same team and had a very 'defensive' approach as mentioned. Once we actually moved into completely separate departments we actually became pretty good friends. I think that removes the 'competitiveness' factor somewhat.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com