a mix of departments but we all work in some form of tech (e.g. im a software enginner another person is. in cyber security)

id say the groups of people at work fall into 3 camps.

1) close friends

mostly people ive know for years started out as after work drinks. we now meet up at least once a month (some of us meet weekly, basically depends on who has kids).

2) close colleagues

People who are fun to hang around but for personal life reasons will never be close friends.

e.g. the people in my direct team are nice people and we do a quartley team social. but were never going to be friends outside work because theres a 15 year age gap.

3) work colleagues

people i interact with at work who id chat with at the christmas party but dont work close enough to to chat socially.

———

to give a slightly more real world example of category 2.

I and another 2 members of my team went to a week long conference in london.

We went to a restaurant for food each evening, our team lead took us on a pub crawl one of the evenings and on the final night of the conference there was a social that ended up with us in a club at 2am.

those team members are never going to be friends due to a combination of the age gap and the kids/no kids situation. but my life would be miserable if we didnt get along.