I don't want to sound condescending, but if being forced out of the job means end for your relationships built for years, maybe these relationships weren't built as they should. They should have been built with the people as people, not coworkers, and definitely not using company as the communication ground.
First thought was whether they meant corporate political capitol transactional relationships.
Second thought was maybe they meant that, inevitably (or so it seems, probably thinking depressed), they'd drift apart, since everyone's busy with family and work, and around the workplace was the only times they'd have to interact.
In the latter, even if you have beyond-work social relationships, the opportunities to interact outside of work and the lunchtime might tend to be like "drinks after work", and effectively disappear as well. If that was your mode while working together, that's fine, and probably you don't want to see even more of each other then. That doesn't mean you weren't seeing them as people beyond coworkers. So, once no longer working with each other, you both need to actively change things to make opportunities to interact.
Good point. I wonder how much in-office work contributes to this. Because if you are trapped inside an office building for 8+ hours with essentially randoms, most people will start getting to know each other at some point, because there is no other choice, and after work and commute there is no time left for anything else.
I feel sad for the author.
I think there's some stigma with confronting the fact that relationships are just ephemeral. We are social creatures in the sense that we can cooperate with each other on a task laid in front of us, but once that task is done, we mostly tend to drift apart onto the next task with another group of people. And that's okay. We're only weakly social with everyone except our direct family and significant others. The quality of a relationship is in no way measured by how long it endured.
Work forces you to be in contact, if the majority of your time is spent elsewhere due to changing job, or city, or gym, or having kids.. it's a blow.
I try to keep in touch with ex co-workers I cared about, but we live in different countries, at different stages in life, with different priorities, and it's hard to say the relationship is well.
That doesn't mean the relationships weren't built as they should, IMHO, they are just different kinds of relationships.
By default work relationships work as you advertised. It needs conscious effort on your (and everyone's) part to reframe these relationships as something that's between you and your friends, on your own terms. Consciously hanging out together, talking to each other, doing projects together outside the context of work. Social relationships need to be built up with effort. The company will do this for you, because they enjoy the benefits of a crew that works well together, but if they put in the effort, the relationship will belong to them. You will think that 'I could get slightly more at this other place, but I like my colleagues here', realizing you'd lose the social net if you changed jobs.
I think a huge problem with nerds (like me and probably you), is that we don't understand the fundamental power dynamics that shape society, because we lack the inherent cunning and weren't forced to face down enough hardship to have our illusions shattered until later in life.
Truth is, if there are rules, somebody needs to enforce them. If something nice happens, it does because somebody makes it happen. These things are mental abstractions designed to make your life predictable, but like every abstractions, sometimes things happen that were supposed to be impossible, because the system doesn't work the way you think it does.
I think this is very true, and with college buddies it's very different from workmates. Because in college, you are with them at classes, but then you hang out with them between classes, then you meet them in cafeteria, then you meet them at a party or in the student club, then you meet them at dormitory etc. All these contexts are different and that helps to build more diverse relationship, which is not focused on a single place.
At work, in my experience I'll meet them in the office and then maybe wave a hand on the way out of the parking lot, if ever.
This is the big thing, work opportunities tend to get people to move whole cities away, and long distance relationships like this tend to not survive.
So the 40 hour work week gives rather little time to properly socialize, even less if you have family obligations esp. kids, especially when people move around as much as they do now.
There's a reason the "employee retention" behavior of companies like Google and Facebook during the web 2.0 craze was often compared to actual cults.
Very true, but also very unfortunate. The best people (a teeny almost non-existent minority) are not like that.
>weakly social with everyone except our direct family and significant others.
For a large number of people, (say 50 %) I suspect this is not true. Especially when people move from rural to urban areas.
Just being far away makes maintaining relationships really hard. Introverted people rely on being dragged into socialising, which goes poof not being in the same place.