Seconded. Also, I should add that your co-workers aren't your friends. What I mean isn't that you can't make friends at work but rather in a high turnover-prone industry as IT, your friendship might not survive a layoff or a switch to a new job when a bulk of your friendship was founded on the premise of you working together. So going out for lunch or drinks after works takes no additional planning and are just matters of convenience.
You've ripped my paragraph apart and addressed each thing I said without the context of the other things I've said. For best comprehension, I do not recommend doing that.
I'd like to take the time now to point out that your personal experience is not a universal key to the truth. You have a very, very tiny view into what does and does not work, and if companies believe as I do, then they're going to hire as I would. This isn't a, "here is what I think might work", this is a "here is an explanation of why people think this way".
Besides, if you don't believe what I've written works, then how do you square the unmitigated success of companies who hire as I've outlined? Maybe the problem in your experiences, the singular constant, was you (and that's okay). Maybe you just don't work well in that environment.
If you're chilling, you're not working, are you? It's one or the other. Highly technical work requires concentration, not banter.
> Work is life, and your relationships are balanced by virtue of the fact that you're actually friends with the people you work with.
Spoken with true inexperience. You've never worked with friends before. Not people who you hang out with. Those are not friends. Friends.
You will quickly find that your personal relationship will strongly conflict with your professional one. It will become a nightmare.
> You get everything you're saying a young person needs, and you also work 60 hours a week, without even realizing it.
Are you also fucking your co-workers too? Not a good idea.
> That's the kind of environment worth fostering.
Sounds like hell. I'll pass.