This is how I ended up with my best friend/adopted brother/soul friend. We worked together, shift work, security. At the end of my shift, he'd come in about 20 minutes early, and I'd leave about 20 minutes late.

Eventually this morphed to us getting there about about an hour early, the other staying sometimes 4 hours late.

Finally we were just like "so, uh, we doing this or not? We gonna be friends?" And, yeah, turns out we were.

Some of my best mates came from work. Didn't have any friends nearby after college so just started proposing hangouts. Many years later I've been best man in two of their weddings, we've followed each other to different companies, and my wife is good friends with their wives.

You do have to feel it out a little bit more than making a friend outside of work but it's not a bad way to go

Same. We've been friends for a year now and I'm going to their summerween party next month.

They've been excellent friends 10/10 would recommend.

The sheer duality in these comments...ut I guess that's how it goes. Stuff like this is very situational.

I've started working at a new place after a couple years of working under a very friendly atmosphere and am kinda nervous these days

I could never. I've had plenty of cool co-workers, but work friends are not real friends. Ever. I keep my personal life as far away as possible from my work life. I don't wanna know what they do outside the office and I sure as hell don't want them to know what I do. I do my absolute best to pretend work doesn't exist as soon as I leave for the day, interacting with co-workers beyond that makes that difficult.

Most of my after-university friends come from work. If you spend years interacting with the same people, you'll become friends with some of them at least.

But it also depends a lot on the company/team vibe.

I have workmates who desperately try and make friends with people at work, I need to socialise with different people outside work