[kunley]

Disagree. It's just admitting that the company can and will be cynical when it comes to the conflict of interests between them and the employee.

Making friends at the workplace is fine until there is such conflict, then where will they stand? If they will turn they back on you (and most of them will), then how much is such relation worth in the first place?

[lkjdsklf]

It’s also sacrificing your career.

Professional networks are a massive important part of growing/building a career. This is especially true in an environment where there are mass layoffs constantly.

Building personal and trusting relationships is a huge part of developing that network.

This doesn’t mean you should turn every coworker into your therapist, but the other extreme is also bad for both your career and your person.

[aljgz]

How's that different from friends at your sports club? How does the risk of your workplace friends not taking your side balance against the benefit of the possibility that they will support you?

Should I give up years of joy and sense of community and belonging for the fear that someday my workplace friends will betray me? And then years more of suffering in my next workplace?

A strategy that minimizes risk rarely maximizes reward.

[reactordev]

The tragedy strikes when you associate your workplace with belonging because here, at-will employment means you never truly belong.

[kakacik]

You see things in binary mode, world is anything but that.

If I am not making friends at work, it doesn't simply equate to "sad life". Maybe it would for you, but then you can question why behaving so, work isn't and shouldn't be one's central piece of existence. Maybe you were never fired, or never saw firing for all the wrong reasons. Maybe you work so much its hard to have an actual life outside of work. At the end it doesn't matter, but folks do see things differently to you and its fine.