Workplace envy is a very common phenomenon at work. Previous studies focused on the “dark side” of workplace envy, but failed to pay enough attention to the positive effects of workplace envy. Based on the self-consistency theory and combined with Arnold’s action sequence as a whole logic, the paper discusses the internal mechanism of workplace envy and job performance. The results show that : workplace envy has a significant positive impact on job performance; intrinsic motivation and observational learning respectively play a part of mediating role in the influence of workplace envy on job performance; there is a chain of mediating effect between intrinsic motivation and observational learning, between workplace envy and job performance; workplace friendship plays a moderating role in the chain mediation path of “workplace envy-intrinsic motivation-observational learning-job performance”, that is, the higher the workplace friendship is, the stronger the positive effect of workplace envy on intrinsic motivation, and the stronger the chain mediation effect between intrinsic motivation and observational learning and job performance.