I will not be able to make friends at BigCo. My coworkers are all in wildly different stages of life than me, or don’t speak fluent English, and making any comment outside of a thin politically acceptable line could threaten my family’s livelihood.

On the other hand, saying nothing is safe. And if I do have the opportunity to pick between two equal candidates, and one is like me and has shared interests and one is not, I’m supposed to choose the latter to encourage diverse team building.

A job is not a place for friends. Not in corporate America anyway.