The overlap between friends, faculty and postdoc

Recently, I received an email from a friend who has been asked by a "casual friend" to do a post-doc with her. "Casual friendships" arise because of the overlap between academic stage and real age. In our line of work, people may be at different stages of their career like grad student or postdoc but be within the same age range. Add to that that people get to different stages of the academic career at different paces. So you may start out as grad students together, but one of you fast tracks through a post-doc and becomes a junior faculty, while the other takes a year off or ends up in a post-doc for a much longer period of time. Another scenario that could arise is that as a senior grad student you became friends with the post-doc in the lab or adjacent lab group largely because you were similar in age. Now this person has gone on to become a faculty member. So I think the confound of age makes this even more challenging.

Here is his email:

I'm also writing to ask for your thoughts on something. When I finish my PhD I'll be looking for a post-doc in (insertCityName). Yesterday, I got a surprise offer from (insertFriend's Name), whom you know. We're decent friends and I'm enjoying getting to know her. She wanted to bend my ear yesterday about a project she's planning, and at the end she informally suggested I do a post-doc with her. My response was that the thought had crossed my mind previously (she does really cool stuff), but that I was wary about doing a post-doc with a friend as a boss. It still seems to be an open offer.

Here are my thoughts on whether I would recommend this type of post-doc:

1. A starting faculty or junior faculty has one thing on their mind - tenure. Faculty get tenure by writing and getting grants. They get grants by pumping out papers. Papers are produced by grad students and post-docs. If a grad student and post-doc start at the same time, the post-doc is expected to produce at least two papers per year, one of which should be from their current work even if this work is completely different from their PhD. The pressure that this places on a friendship can strain that relationship. It's not really fair to place all the blame on the junior faculty but at the same time, many junior faculty choose tenure over a friendship with a transient post-doc. They're doing what you're doing - trying to survive and thrive.
2. Friendship is compromised by the unfair hierarchy that is academia. The inherent structure in academia changes the power dynamic between friends from one of equals to an asymmetric one. This person will evaluate your work and write you letters of reference.
3. I believe that as a post-doc, it is really important to work with someone who is older than you. It becomes confusing for both parties when the age of the two individuals are so similar. That's because there is an expectation of friendship causing the lines of friend and mentor to become blurred. If you are much younger than the person there is no reason to expect friendship. It becomes even more difficult when two people enter this relationship as friends - the expectation is already present. When two people are friends and supervisor-postdoc, actions and words become interpreted in ways that make people feel bad about themselves or the other person.
4. I think that for both post-docs and grad students the most important thing is how you get along with the supervisor. Personality conflicts can tank a career and make you miserable for years. Despite the cutting edge research and the productivity of a lab, it is really important to make sure that your personality is one that meshes with the supervisory style. Supervisory style is a different beast than how that person relates to you as a friend.
5. A second factor to consider is the lab atmosphere. In the end, you are likely to spend more time with your labmates than the faculty member. This is not to say that you won't develop friendships with other faculty in the department but because your friend, the supervisor needs to cultivate ties in the department (think tenure), s/he probably won't have time to just hang out that much. This can cause resentment.
6. The post-doc is a place where you do a lot of work - if you're lucky it's innovative and sometimes exciting - but don't expect to get any credit for the work. The glory will come later when you have your own lab. This lack of recognition can sour a friendship, which is based on mutual respect.

Lastly, I know three people now, who have done post-docs with people they knew as "casual friends." All of them claimed to get along well prior to being a post-doc, but the friendship was soured by the end of the postdoc. Frankly, I think it takes two really awesome people who value and respect each enough other to rise above all the politics. Sadly, I don't know of any examples.

My answer is that I would not do it. Even if science was exciting and you knew that you had a really good relationship with the person, my response would be no - don't do it.

Well that's all I can think of - does anyone have any other reasons for or against doing a post-doc with a friend? Or any cases where two people are friends and remain friends - I'm sure that there must be, I just haven't heard. It would be great to pass along the advice to my friend!