[BuildTheRobots]

This is one of the reasons I'm so quick to suggest Hackspaces to geeky adults looking for social contact. Due to the massively varied nature of activities there tends to be a couple of sub-groups that cater to your specific interests (even if it's only an interest that month) and overall tends to be a group of decent people that you can easily progress through the smalltalk phases and into actual friendships.

[adkadskhj]

Yup. My thought process here[1] is that real friendships only occur from time. So you need long hours with people, whom you either get along with or you don't. You can choose the group of people to increase your odds for sharing interests or personality overlaps to help your chances, but it still requires time.

This is why work friendships in my experience are quite easy, even for an introverted hermit like myself. Often common interests between people, and _tons_ of time bonding.

If i really cared about forming more friendships i'd do what you suggested - find groups that interest me and spend the time needed to form friendships. I'm also a little weird in that while i get along with a lot of people and i am (hopefully) easy to get along with, i'm generally not interested in relationships without common interests and activities. Because i don't like to socialize purely for the sake of socializing - i like building something together, or playing something together, or enjoying food together, or whatever it is i am actually interested in.. which is usually software.

[1]: Which is probably useless, as i'm generally an introvert who still has less friends than i'd prefer.

[selestify]

> This is why work friendships in my experience are quite easy, even for an introverted hermit like myself. Often common interests between people, and _tons_ of time bonding.

Really depends on your team, in my experience. Nothing wrong at all with being a middle-aged parent who's too busy to do things with coworkers outside of work, of course. It's a workplace, and we're here to do work, not hang out. But my friendships at work tend to happen with people who are around my age and are interested in doing fun things together outside of work too.

Maybe it depends on your definition of "friend" as well. For me, no matter how well I get along with someone at work, so long as we're only chatting with each other over lunch and coffee breaks and the occasional team event, we're just acquaintances, not "real" friends in the sense that you hang out just for fun and help each other out with things that come up in personal life.

[imbnwa]

Unfortunately it feels like a lot of "culture fit" is actually "do I want to hang out with you"

[selestify]

Yes, that is really quite unfortunate.

[throwawayboise]

Yes, I am friendly with many people at work, but these relationships have never developed into anything beyond that.

[em-bee]

same here. those people that became friends at work were those where we had a common interest besides work, and we would have become friends even if we had worked at different companies.

[ashneo76]

I don't think that is weird. There is only so much partying and drinking I can do. The real friendship happens outside the club. Meeting once a month at a happy hour doesn't cut it even. It's volunteering together, workouts, game nights, dinners, where that happens.

[em-bee]

absolutely, also linux user groups.

everywhere i travelled or lived i was easily welcomed to be an active member of the local user group and from several i have friends that still remember me a decade or two later.

i don't even remember any smalltalk phase (except for the smalltalk programmers group :-). there usually was some topic or someone with a question and we launched straight into technical discussions. all i had to do was show up and participate occasionally.