[ue_]

This leaves me to think why it is considered best practice to separate work and friendships. It's certainly not frowned upon in most places to make friends with your coworkers, to go for drinks after work or to meet up on weekends.

[TheAdamAndChe]

Separating work from friendships makes frequent job-hopping much less painful. People in general care less emotionally about their work because the companies show absolutely no loyalty to the workers. When most people leave in less than two years, there's less of a reason to expose yourself.

Then there's risks involved in exposing personal opinions to people at work. If you two have a falling out due to different political ideologies, religions, hobbies, etc., that can make continued work more difficult.

Finally, it has the potential to foster a workaholic culture at the job. Why leave work when your "family" is there? But when that is the norm of the company, workers can feel compelled to work ridiculous hours, like Japan's work culture.

[sjg007]

I think you can be friends with some people but most, don't be Facebook friends necessarily. It would also depend on the size of the company etc...