Keep your friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent. — Robert Greene

Keep your friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent.

Author: Robert Greene

Insight: Most of us blur these two worlds together. We hire our friends, bring our buddies into business partnerships, and then feel betrayed when the work falls apart. The friendship survives, technically, but something fractures—resentment creeps in, awkwardness follows. What Greene is really saying is that these are different transactions with different rules, and pretending otherwise hurts both. The insight isn't cold or cynical. It's actually protective of friendship. When you need someone to deliver results—to build something, solve a problem, make money—you need someone selected for competence, not warmth. Your friend might be wonderful and still be wrong for the job. And the moment you've hired them, the dynamic changes. They're now accountable to you as a boss, not just as a buddy. That power imbalance can poison even strong friendships. This doesn't mean you can't work alongside people you genuinely like. But it means being honest about why you're choosing them. Are they actually the most skilled person for this role, or are you choosing them because you trust them? Those are different reasons with different outcomes. The friends who stay friends are often the ones we keep separate from our ambitions—the people we see because we want to, not because we have to deliver something through them.

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

Don't mix friendship with hiring

Most of us blur these two worlds together. We hire our friends, bring our buddies into business partnerships, and then feel betrayed when the work falls apart. The friendship survives, technically, but something fractures—resentment creeps in, awkwardness follows. What Greene is really saying is that these are different transactions with different rules, and pretending otherwise hurts both.

The insight isn't cold or cynical. It's actually protective of friendship. When you need someone to deliver results—to build something, solve a problem, make money—you need someone selected for competence, not warmth. Your friend might be wonderful and still be wrong for the job. And the moment you've hired them, the dynamic changes. They're now accountable to you as a boss, not just as a buddy. That power imbalance can poison even strong friendships.

This doesn't mean you can't work alongside people you genuinely like. But it means being honest about why you're choosing them. Are they actually the most skilled person for this role, or are you choosing them because you trust them? Those are different reasons with different outcomes. The friends who stay friends are often the ones we keep separate from our ambitions—the people we see because we want to, not because we have to deliver something through them.

Keep your friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent. — Robert Greene

Don't mix friendship with hiring

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