How Have Work Friendships Changed Over the Past Few Years?

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three professional young women laugh and talk at a shared table in the office

How have work friendships changed over the past few years, whether you work remotely, have a hybrid schedule, work in an office where other people have those options, or more? Some questions to kick off the discussion:

  • If you're still at the same job, are you still friendly with the same people you were in 2019? How have your relationships changed — are lunches more or less frequent? If you're hybrid, have you tried to align your schedule with anyone who isn't on your team?
  • Have you found it harder to maintain any specific friendships? For example, friendships with a big age difference (and maybe differences in preferred technology), or friendships with coworkers of a different sex?
  • If you have new coworkers, how have those relationships developed? Do you have new work friends? Do you think you're closer with people who you see often (same hallway, same team) or have you found a few friendly coworkers who aren't in your daily routine, but you're well aligned in other ways (such as a shared hobby or background)?
  • If you work primarily online, how have relationships formed? Do you have tiny side chats going with multiple people, whether via text, email, Microsoft Teams, or more?
  • What has your office done to encourage camaraderie and togetherness — and what are your thoughts about it? For example, summer associates used to have to go to a zillion Firm events, and group lunches were a frequent thing — and you often came out of that summer with a lot of new work friends that often became your partners in crime for similar work events once you worked there.
  • We've previously discussed the theory that “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with” — if your work relationships have changed, do you feel like you yourself have changed in important ways such as ambition or professionalism?
  • We've also previously discussed how to use friends of friends to network and get new jobs — have you felt that rules, etiquette, or custom are different, post-pandemic? Do you feel like your personal network is smaller than it was in 2019, or that your friends' networks are smaller?

On the flip side — if those work friendships have suffered, have you strengthened other relationships in your life, or formed new “work friends” who you see in your daily life, such as people you met via yoga class or whatnot?

Psst: in the past, we've discussed friendships and politics, how to make friends as you get older, how to choose your friends, and 10 ways to make time for friends if you work a lot.

Stock photo via Stencil.

5 Comments

  1. I feel like working from home has made loneliness worse. I’m friendly with a few people on Microsoft Teams but otherwise they’re just people I work with.

    W/r/t the question about five people………….the only people I see anymore are my partner, parents, and kids, and my ambition has definitely suffered.

  2. My whole office was in-office pre-2020 and now we almost are all full time WFH. My work BFF became one of my closest friends in the last 4 years. Anyone new who has joined my office in the last 4 years, I don’t know at all; some people have joined the company and left and I never met them. This is mostly because my function is very solitary and doesn’t require that I work with other people very much.

    As to my other friendships, they have gotten stronger because I have more time to meet for coffee or lunch or do a phone date over lunch because I’m no longer commuting and in the office; I just have a lot more flexibility with WFH. I haven’t made any new friends since 2020, but the friends I already had have gotten a lot closer.

  3. My five people are definitely my husband, two kids and parents, but I think that was true before the pandemic too. Even when I worked in an office I had a very individual role and only had brief meetings with others.

    I’ve never really had close work friends. When I worked in Big Law I felt like I knew my coworkers pretty well and we had inside jokes, etc. just due to the sheer amount of time spent together, but we never socialized outside of work except at work-related things (e.g., client dinners). Since moving to the government, co-workers are just co-workers, and I don’t really know most of them that well, which is fine with me. I’m an introvert and I think work friendships can be really messy and complicated. I prefer to keep my work life and personal life very separate.

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