👥 Working with friends as a Software Engineer
In my experience, some of the best software engineers I've worked with are also some of my closest friends.
I've spent a good chunk of my career working alongside people I genuinely consider friends, and I think it's quietly shaped me into a better engineer. It's not something I planned, exactly. It just kept happening: the people I clicked with at standup turned into the people I'd grab lunch with, and the people I'd grab lunch with turned into the ones I trusted most when the work got hard. Looking back, I think there's a reason those relationships tended to produce the teams I'm proudest of.
Friends Make Great Teammates
When you've already built a real relationship with someone, you skip over a lot of the quiet friction that slows teams down. You know how they think, what they're good at, where they get stuck, and how they like to be nudged. Communication gets shorter and clearer because you're not spending energy decoding tone in a Slack message. Disagreements still happen, but they tend to land softer and resolve faster, because there's a baseline of trust underneath. That trust is the thing. It's what lets a team move with real momentum instead of tiptoeing around each other.
Friends Keep it Real
The other thing friends do, and this one matters more the longer you do this job, is tell you the truth. A friend won't dress up feedback to protect your ego. They'll tell you when your PR is overcomplicated, when your design doc is hand-waving the hard parts, or when you're the reason a meeting went sideways. That kind of honesty is a gift, and it's surprisingly rare. Most of the biggest jumps I've made as an engineer came from someone I trusted being willing to say the uncomfortable thing out loud.
Friends Know How to Have Fun
Working with friends is also, plainly, more fun. You laugh more. The inside jokes pile up. The long afternoons debugging something miserable feel less miserable when you're in it with someone whose company you enjoy. I don't think this is at odds with being professional, by the way. Some of the most focused, high-output teams I've been on were also the ones where people actually liked each other. Enjoying the work and taking it seriously aren't opposites; they tend to reinforce each other.
Making new friends
All of this is a long way of saying: invest in the people around you. Build real relationships with the engineers you work with and the ones you meet at meetups, conferences, and old jobs. Those connections help you find your next role, learn about tools and ideas you wouldn't have found alone, and stay plugged into how the industry is actually changing (as opposed to how Twitter says it's changing). And on any given Tuesday, it's just nicer to have friends at work.
So yeah. Work with friends when you can. Make new ones when you can't. The teammates who work well together, give you honest feedback, and make the hard days lighter will, over time, quietly make you better at your job too.