> I assume that some people are just very lonely and need face to face
Anecdata from Hacker News suggests this is true. A lot of lonely young men here freely admit their coworkers are the only people they regularly interact with in-person, and remote work takes that away from them.
I'd spin this around and cast it as a challenge -- regular, forced interactions with coworkers is minimally sufficient and retards some people from pursuing social activities outside the home.
There are already a number of options in even the smallest town. I expect that will increase as more people move to WFH and seek social outlets.
And at the end of the day "interacting with coworkers in the break room" is a pretty low quality bar for an alternative to surmount. Maybe your work conversations are more fascinating than mine, but I get more value elsewhere.
>I'd spin this around and cast it as a challenge -- regular, forced interactions with coworkers is minimally sufficient and retards some people from pursuing social activities outside the home.
Absolutely. Additionally, even getting to that set of regular, forced interactions necessarily consumes the limited time those people would have to pursue those social activities outside the home. That is, it's hard to have a strong social life when you commute, at best, 5 hours a week. And that's if you're lucky.
All of this benefits corporations. Especially, insidiously, the notion that your job can and should double as your social life.
What concerns me, today, is that that we're in this middle stage where things could tip either way. For this reason, I think it's important for us to bang the drum loudly that we won't spend 40-50 hours in the office. Hybrid is a sufficient compromise.
Not strictly all. You still have more time on the days you work from home, which you could use to be social.
But yeah, if everyone is "hybrid", then the pressure on the housing market is unlikely to go down enough, which means that many people may find themselves in living conditions poor for remote work, which means they're more likely to go more often to the office, which means they're back to where they started...
It just means "the employer" has to keep the office space for a lot of people who will only use it occasionally and all the costs associated with that. I doubt most employers would consider that an upside.
What is a sufficient compromise, in your view, that satisfies the need of some workers to have regular face to face interactions with coworkers and prevents corporations unprepared to manage a remote team from whipping back to full in-office?
I do not want to put words in your mouth, but since you offered so few of them, I am tempted to believe you are one of the few lucky workers who has sufficient leverage to wholesale refuse to work in an office. If that is you, or if you the reader are such a person: consider the path we must take to bring flexible work to more people.
With that goal and those prerequisites in mind, what is a sufficient compromise?
Assuming the word "hybrid" is being used to mean that an individual employee has to go into the office for at least some amount of time per week/month/whatever:
Here's the issue I have with the main argument I see against remote work, or rather the main argument I see in favor of forcing people to commute to an office ("satisfies the need of some workers to have regular face to face interactions with coworkers"):
I want to be at home, and I am fine being at home. Why should I need to go to an office because of a coworker's need for social interaction? I don't need that social interaction. To me, the argument always seems very self-centered from the point of view of pro-office people. Let the people who need that social interaction go to the office, and let everyone else stay home if they want. There's no reason that someone should be forced to go to an office because of the needs of other people, especially when those needs have nothing to do with work.
This is like arguing that I should be wearing a certain color of clothing because some people like to (or need to?) see that color. That's not my problem to solve for them.
I get plenty of social interaction outside of work hours. There should be zero expectation for me to spend more time, energy, and/or money (getting ready, preparing or buying lunch, commuting both ways, etc.) so that people who aren't my friends get to look at/talk to me in 3D.
I would be happy to socialize only with people who opt in. That’s how it is already, no one forced you to go to the lunch table or tag along for drinks.
To the extent that we collaborate on work, though, having to Zoom with you instead of having a normal free-flowing conversation forms an imposition on me. It becomes an extreme imposition when I am also prohibited from having normal free flowing conversations with other people in the office, out of a sense of “inclusivity” or “leveling the playing field” for you.
I am curious how this does not present an opposite extreme: forcing me to stop my work to have an unnecessary conversation instead of discussing in asynchronous issue tracker makes me have to remember what happened, have to write down whatever I remember, deal with not being able to get my stories done while this is happening, instead of being able to look it up and have it in writing along with other people not available at the time to discuss or leave notes and changes on.
I agree, it is very bad to do things synchronously and in formal meetings that could have been async and offline. That's another reason to resent remote work. Number of meetings, duration of meetings, size of attendee lists, and % of calendar covered in meetings are all way up since the transition to remote. There's a meme on HN that remote means written async communication, but the objective measured reality at my company is the opposite.
A sufficient compromise would be to allow the people that want regular face to face interactions with coworkers to go to the office and do just that. Not sure what the culture is in your place but at my place everyone has their video on in calls, so there's always face-to-face communication (exceptions can apply of course in some circumstances but that is the general rule) that way. People that want that do go to the office from time to time and do just that. But they do it with like minded people.
What is not a sufficient compromise is to force people that don't need face-to-face in person interaction into the office again when we have found out that remote works perfectly well.
This is the main problem I see with your compromise. The self-sorting will create or enforce existing silos. The compromise is not only between you and your employer, but also between you and your coworkers. You might derive no value from face to face interaction, but your coworkers certainly do — and that includes you.
I suspect that this self-sorting will result in a very loud cohort of in-office workers demanding everyone come back, which spoils the whole deal.
Definite +1 to my sibling about coming in and keeping the head down.
Not sure which kinds of silos you are talking about. If it's silos as in social circles, that exists with 100% in-office as well. You know, the people that always sit together at lunch, always go out together for lunch or coffee, that meet after work at the pub and the people that eat lunch at their desk or off to the side, drink office-coffee only and don't go to the pub but go home to their family instead.
If you're talking about departmental or team silos those existed with 100% in-office as well. Marketing not talking to Product or Dev? Nothing really changed here I would argue. If anything it might have gotten better because everyone thought it would get worse and very actively tried to do something about it.
Face to face communication works very well over video and I derive enormous value from it. Only using written communication or audio only would suck big time. Especially when first getting to know someone that you've never met in person. But I don't have to sit in the same room with them or be 12 floors away from them for most of the day except for the meeting at three, when we both take the elevator, them 3 floors down, me 9 floors up to talk about something.
I agree that there will probably be a loud cohort of in-office workers that demand others to come back and if they succeed it will spoil the whole deal. But that doesn't get better with a 2-day in-office hybrid compromise either. If anything they would have much more pull already when they demand we go back to 5 days a week "because obviously 3 days of remote work are bad, we only get anything done ever in the 2 forced in-office days".
Oh, on my experience person to person interaction got much easier more common, because you don't have to get up and go to a different floor, or to the other end of your floor, or to another city.
We have some processes with high interaction on our development, and when people were considering going back to the office (in the end, we didn't) we met and decided how we would do then now. The remote option worked so much better than in person that there wasn't any discussion.
But if I'm forced to come in for two days I'm going to go in, keep my head down, and get out, which is what I did 5 days a week before. The loud people have always and will always dominate those conversations.
2 million people a year are permanently injured from car accidents and 38,000 people die a year. I'm not willing any more to put myself at those kinds of risks for my employer.
And that's before we engage with the climate impacts, the waste of time, the idiotic open office plans, the interruptions, etc.
I'm not interested in compromise, I'm not buying anything about the entire concept.
We're going to split into different kinds of workplaces, and remote-only employees are going to go to remote-only/remote-first workplaces.
Large tech employers who want offices are going to have to deal with the fact that they're not going to be able to hire a group of tech workers that have those demands. Those employers would probably do well to consider spinning off remote-first divisions. That isn't my problem at all though, and "hybrid" is a hard no for me, and a lot of other people.
People are making decisions about their life. This isn't something that you compromise with them over, you don't actually have a negotiating position.
It does look like the people who want everyone else back to the office are now entering into the 3rd stage of Grief though (Bargaining).
This is really how it ought to go. Once a quarter, we all descend on one city for one week. We make big plans, we revel in each other’s company, and we see a new part of the world or see a familiar part of the world in a new way with colleagues. Then we go back.
> That is, it's hard to have a strong social life when you commute, at best, 5 hours a week. And that's if you're lucky.
"At best"? The average commute in the US is 27.6 minutes, according to the Census Bureau. My commute is a 10 minute bike ride. Luck had nothing to do with it, just a different set of priorities in life.
Something’s wrong with this stat. Almost nobody can get from chair at home to chair at work in that time.
My present office is 1.6 miles of which ~1 mile is Interstate, yet it’s at best 22 minutes house door to office door (not chair to chair) if I hit traffic lights, as low as 14 minutes if all greens. Google Maps and Apple Maps say it’s 6 - 8 minutes in off hours. Once car is on street, only greens, and before turning into parking, maybe that’s right.
This suggests two things: (a) maybe they mean time in vehicle in motion not chair-to-chair, (b) maybe they are computing address to address absent traffic.
I’m also suspicious of the word “average”. For instance, I can picture bi-modal commute times: a set that are 0 minutes (like Amazon support answering calls from ‘virtual call center’ at home), and a set that are long tail, as alluded to in this quote:
> The average American is traveling 26 minutes to their jobs — the longest commute time since the Census started tracking it in 1980, up 20 percent. Commutes longer than 45 minutes are up 12 percent in that time span, and 90-minute one-way commutes are 64 percent more common than in 1990.
With 90 minute one way commutes going on, maybe the average data is asking people who are in denial.
But the simplest explanation is also in that quote: travel time. It’s certainly not start stopwatch, get ready to commute, get to your transit, wait for your transit (e.g. warm up car or wait for bus), get in motion, travel, stop, dispense with transit (park car, lock bike), get from your transit to workplace, get situated, stop stopwatch.
// I’ve prioritized “least traffic lights” and ideally “walkability” since university. From 2017 to 2021 I paid a massive premium to be able to get chair-to-chair (including both elevator waits) in ~8 minutes on foot w/ no transit in midtown Manhattan. Commute times matter to me, I use tools to heatmap them when choosing work and residences, so just not buying average possibility of 26 mins.
------ BEGIN_EDIT ------
Yes, it was just travel time.
I found the US Census source, it’s a question Census said was asking people for ‘travel time’ and respondents probably in optimistic denial:
Question on Travel Time to Work from the American Community Survey 2019
Q.35: How many minutes did it usually take this person to get from home to work LAST WEEK?
Yes, it’s a touch bi-modal, with a valley in the 5 minute period that’s also the “average”. No, bicycle isn’t helping much, only shaves 6 mins on ‘average’. Ten percent are in the car over an hour.
Insofar as their data is travel time not total time chair-to-chair (time between being able to be doing something else at each end), and it’s self surveyed not measured, I buy it.
So for instance we selected our office to be at an Interstate off ramp and also at a commuter rail station, and I selected my residence to be two blocks up from one exit away against rush hour traffic, and another commuter rail station. Note that when there’s a train, if I don’t count waiting, the train is faster than the car. Unfortunately, trains “on average” make you wait for 1/2 the time between trains, and in the US, the train and the delay may not be predictable.
This is a great point and one I’d wish I’d considered more.
I’ve long given my just my wheels in motion time whenever asked how long my commute is. But that’s disingenuous because my if I were to have have a job I could do from home, all else being equal I would save $1000+/yr on food purchases alone. A further 2500 on gas and get at least 2 unpaid hours of quality time back in my life.
So I’d save at least $3.500 in reduced expenses. I would also be able to get of a car saving thousands more a year. Plus an extra 560 hours of free time a year at my hourly rate? I’m about to threaten my employer with my resignation over these expenses if they can’t better compensate me for my time they monopolize when I’m” off the clock “ but exclusively in their service.
I don't particularly enjoy the forced, stilted chatter but I do get a lot of value from:
a) Being obliged to put on clothes and leave the house.
b) Spending a large part of the day at a change of scenery.
c) Having other people there, around, ambiently.
Spending 23 hours a day alone in your room + 1 hour for outdoor exercise, with occasional weekend visitation, is among the worst punishments the state has at its disposal. It boggles the mind that people do this voluntarily.
You are viewing remote work through the particular circumstance of the pandemic. Remote work before covid was very different, and I expect in time we'll get back to a lot of that.
I worked remotely before the pandemic, and most days I still have ample opportunities to meet and talk to people. Most weeks I'd attend a meetup (I'm in a small city in the midwest and we still had plenty of events to cater to most any niche technical interest you'd care to name). A couple of times a month I'd meet up with other remote workers for lunch at a restaurant somewhere convenient to all of us. I regularly hosted, or attended, game nights with friends I met- mostly through the meetups.
I was never one for coworking spaces, and I don't even have a lot of non-development hobbies that had me meeting other people, and I still managed to have a pretty rich social life and meet people, make friends, and even got some of the sorts of creative boosts people claim only come from in-office working (because you talk to people about what problems they work on, or their interests, and it sparks ideas for how to apply those to your own work).
Things right now are still bleak because of the pandemic. It sucks, and it sucks worse knowing that this could have been over by now if the response hadn't been so universally mishandled, but a lot of what sucks about the pandemic will continue to suck- or suck differently but the same amount, if you go back to an office. Remote work isn't for everyone, and you really might still find that all things being equal the office just works best for you, and that's fine, but don't confuse "the pandemic sucks" for "remote work sucks".
Thanks for these comments -- this one and your reply to vkou. I started working out of college during the pandemic, and my current gig is remote-native, so I've been kind of dooming about remote work. This is some great advice for how to get past that + a good reminder that COVID is still affecting things -- I've been going with my partner to a board game group and swing classes, but the activation energy is definitely higher than before.
Curious -- have you found anything that (partially?) replaces those opportunities, either online or in-person? I joined a Discord server and gave a talk about JPEG at one of their events, which was fun, but not frequent for me to feel that it's a replacement for having in-person coworkers.
I'll admit it's pretty hard to replace the in-person events. I am in some slack and discord communities, and I've done a couple of online conferences. I really used to enjoy presenting at meetups and was very upset to have had to turn down an invitation to an in-person conference this fall because of covid. Virtual talks and meetups aren't really the same, but they are what I've made do with in the short term.
I'm not much for traditional online games, but I know some friends who have used that as a more natural way to do online socializing. I've done some online D&D and have found that is better than other kinds of online meetups for socializing, because it gives you enough space to have conversations and chat, but still gives you enough of a focus and it just feels less exhausting than other kinds of online meetups- the tools are really good these days too.
> started working out of college during the pandemic
* Caveat: remote-only, during the pandemic, right out of college would probably be the worst of all possible worlds
Most of the things that people like about WFH are contingent on being in a later stage of your career (college + 5 years?). Having a place with multiple rooms. Having something of a physical social network. Having self-confidence in your abilities, based on prior performance. Knowing how to navigate office politics.
Plus, most of the things you would be doing at that stage were interrupted: bars, clubs, etc.
Which is to say, you're absolutely right, and I agree with your perspective. But it does get better. But I'm sure that's cold comfort.
A more articulate, and less rageful version of my original post would probably have been "I believe we Americans are (and were!) doing badly at creating opportunities for adult friendships and socialization, and I would rather we aspire to improve things vs going back to the way they were."
> You are viewing remote work through the particular circumstance of the pandemic.
Those particular circumstances of the pandemic haven't been with us for almost a year, now, ever since mass vaccination started. I hated WFH in 2020, and I hated WFH in 2021, and I still hate WFH today. Despite having no pandemic restrictions on what I can do today.
And even prior to vaccination, if you wanted to go out and do stuff, most establishments/businesses/travel options/etc were open since late 2020.
As much as people want to pretend the pandemic is over, it isn't. The legal restrictions might have lifted in most places, but there's a big gap between that and things being back to how they were before- or how they'll be once we've actually hit the endemic part of covid and have a better understanding of what that looks like.
You can still go to a restaurant today, or travel, and co-working spaces might be open, but enough people are still reluctant to attend events that a lot of things aren't sustainable right now. I certainly wouldn't go meet someone at a restaurant for lunch right now, even though I can. Most of my friends feel the same way. Conferences are still happening, but a lot of conferences remain virtual, and a lot of people who might otherwise attend conferences aren't. Either because they are still concerned about covid today, or because they don't want to risk buying tickets, booking travel, and taking time off for a conference that might be canceled or rescheduled due to yet another surge. Tech meetups have almost entirely stopped. Nearly all meetups were hosted by companies, and while those companies might be talking about RTO for their employees, few of them are interested in hosting large groups of strangers after-hours right now. Even if you could find a venue- attendance would be quite low these days.
>
As much as people want to pretend the pandemic is over, it isn't.
No, it's not over, in fact we're at our worst rate of world-wide daily cases since November 2021. Believe me, I'm both a pessimist, and one of the more COVID-cautious people here.
But in my region/anywhere I'd like to go, I can, and currently feel comfortable doing just about anything I want[1] - and have been for most of the past year (Sans Omicron surge).
> You can still go to a restaurant today, or travel, and co-working spaces might be open, but enough people are still reluctant to attend events that a lot of things aren't sustainable right now. I certainly wouldn't go meet someone at a restaurant for lunch right now, even though I can.
Sure, you may feel that way - but I haven't felt that way. So, for me, there are no practical restrictions on what I, or my friends can do. Nothing that I liked doing three years ago is unavailable today.
... And yet, I vastly prefer going into work over WFH.
[1] I don't feel comfortable licking doorknobs or getting into a moshpit, but I didn't feel comfortable doing that pre-COVID, either.
> ... And yet, I vastly prefer going into work over WFH.
Could be just an imbalance between the pre-pandemic world and then two years of the pandemic world. It's quite possible if you had entered WFH when society was normal, there wouldn't be this sharp jolt.
Don't mix up pandemic restrictions with 100% remote work from home.
I put on clothes every day. I only wear a nice t-shirt though and otherwise wear my 'at home pants' that I would also put on as soon as I'd come home from the office. My nice pants last much longer now.
I really don't like the office scenery very much. I also do not like the scenery in between, i.e. a huge city that has no greenery, the commute is equally dull, boring and unappealing. Vs. my home where in summer I can actually sit outside on the deck all day and enjoy the scenery. It's lush and green and warm vs. the cold, dry AC air blowing in my face and forcing me to wear a jacket inside the office.
Depending on whether you have family and/or family that also works from home, people are even around 'ambiently' but at least they're only around ambiently without constantly distracting you. They're in a different room doing their own work most of the time.
After 8 hours of work I am free to do what I want. Go outside, take a walk, meet friends etc.
I do like my path to work. In fact, I go there once in a while, and come back just to get a long walk.
I do like my previous office. It happens that I had to improve my home when I got here, but after spending around 1/5 of my monthly salary, my home is now even a it more comfortable and I use it when not working too. If you have a minimum of space, that's quite doable, and if you don't, why don't you want to move into a cheaper place?
WFH don’t require working at home, you can work wherever you want.
Laptop + 5G means you can work outside for much of the year at a local park etc. You can do all that coworker social stuff with your friends rather than people you happen to work with.
Even if you do stay home skipping your commute and eating at home saves significant time and money every week you can use to again socialize with people you want to actually be around.
I assume you don't have any friends or family outside of work that live close to you?
My group of friends gets lunch together 3-4 days out of the workweek. We even sometimes do dinner with eachother during the week. Sometimes we do this with family instead - my wife's sister and parents live within 15 minutes of us.
In my whereabouts weekday evenings is where the fun social stuff goes (well, used to before pandemics). Group rides, group runs, orienteering events, bar trivia nights... You get most attendants on weekdays since on weekends many people are out of town (family, summerhouses, etc) and/or go to full-day events.
Theater performances or concerts are not uncommon on weekdays either. Touring artists just have to play on whatever day it turns out to be.
Also, once remote working with lax schedules become the norm, more opportunities will come up. E.g. I fondly remember times when my friends' and mine schedules would click and we could do quick morning rides.
I think the problem is, since working fully remote means spending about twice as much time in formally scheduled meetings, and those meetings are significantly more draining on Zoom than in person, both I and the people I might socialize with feel a lot more drained at the end of the work day and less interested in doing anything non-vegetative. Previously we would go for dinner or drinks after work pretty often.
Yes, it does. A bit late for the thread but here’s open source evidence from Microsoft. Our internal numbers are similar.
> “People have 250 percent more meetings every day than they did before the pandemic,” says Mary Czerwinski, the research manager of the Human Understanding and Empathy group at Microsoft.
i do all of those things while working from home. i wear my normal clothes, work from coffee shops or breweries if I need a change of scenery, and workout plenty during the day. no offense, but perhaps this is specific to how _you_ work from home?
> I'd spin this around and cast it as a challenge -- regular, forced interactions with coworkers is minimally sufficient and retards some people from pursuing social activities outside the home.
Or,it allows people with social anxiety or depression a room for social interactions with very well defined rules and in an environment where people generally interact positively with you. I like the convenience of WFH too but I do miss cooking with my colleagues and their families on Wednesdays.
This might sound weird to you but living alone and having had parents that made every meal either a screaming match or a barrage of passive aggressive comments I enjoyed those lunches with my much more reasonable colleagues a lot.
Being essentially alone most days certainly didn't help with my depression and that makes other social interactions harder.
I still won't go back though, wearing trouser being optional at work is a worthwhile tradeoff
Eh, I’m kinda implicated here but I see office interactions as some bare minimum of socialization that, yes, can lead to complacency but does not subtract from the ideal of finding meaningful relationship outside of work. If anything, face to face work helps energize me to be social, and not just with my coworkers. More like a daily practice against Cabin Fever. For some reason, for me, Cabin Fever self-perpetuates.
I still prefer WFH, but I go to a coffee shop most days of the week to work on a personal project. After a year+ my relationship with the other regulates and staff is like the best possible relationship you’d expect to have among coworkers - I’ve even grabbed a beer with the manager when then closed early one day - without the stresses of working for a common employer.
I'm approaching this from my own perspective of a fairly serious introvert, and I feel like the biggest skill I've picked up in life is pushing past the introvert wall.
Which is that thing that whispers "Going out will be a hassle. Why not just not?"
Work was one way of forcing past that, but I feel that's analogous to saying "Prison is one way of curing wanderlust." It feels more reasonable to treat the underlying issue than take a bargain that comes with serious negative consequences.
There are reasons people don't pursue activities outside of work because they only require a minimal amount of interaction with people or they don't have time for socialization outside of work. Conversations with clubmembers won't be appreciably more meaningful than conversations with coworkers.
A benefit is that your social circle exists independent of your job status but you've got to do it on your own time.
>Working remote is just what I need, and I am way more productive.
I acknowledge that you and many others derive personal satisfaction from productivity. I do too. However, I strongly believe we should move away from productivity as the measure of whether we should work from home. Primarily because it individualizes productivity and turns any deficits into a moral failing. It is incumbent on our employers to create the conditions which align productivity with our well-being as people, and balance those. Else, we are being exploited.
Put another way, and framing it opposite from what you said:
"Working remote is not what I need because I am less productive" should not be an argument against working from home. You may not need working remotely for other reasons -- social being one of them -- but it's important not to prioritize productivity to the occlusion of all other factors.
I put in forty hours a week as per my employment contract states. If I'm more or less productive is irrelevant to the amount of time I have to take care of myself or my family.
If I have a productive day, I sign off between 4-5 PM. If I have a non-productive day, I sign off between 4-5 PM.
If I happen to be more productive it does not mean I get more hours to do stuff in my personal time / get more personal time.
Because I am more productive when working from home, I can easily get the job done in half the time. This means that my manager is happy, and I sign off after lunch and have the rest of the day for myself. That's also why I always try to schedule meetings no later than 1pm.
I have all those too. But even when you are fully remote, and have a healthy outside social support system away from work, you cannot ignore the reality that is you spend the majority of your waking hours working alongside these people, often for the same goals and deadlines. It's a basic desire to connect with others we share our time with.
Unless you are one of the rare people where you truly are a solo shop (even then you have people requesting the work from you), I want to meet, converse, and get to know the people that I spend a bulk of my waking hours with, and depend on together to do a good job because I feel like that's showing those other people basic dignity.
> It's a basic desire to connect with others we share our time with.
I think you're creating a universal here where there is none. I have secure boundaries, and I can enjoy a coworker's company and work without having to be friends with them. And there's also an ugly side to this, where people don't want to have coworkers that they wouldn't want to be friends with. That's not some natural urge, that's something that people impose on a situation that is alienating to people who don't share your politics, or your tastes, or even like the way you treat people (I'm referring to the hypothetical "you" here.)
I have really enjoyed working with people who I'd never want to know outside of work, and have a huge amount of respect for those people whose work ethic and trustworthiness showed a real thoughtfulness and concern about what they were doing and for their coworkers' time and development. That's good enough for me, we don't have to share musical tastes or hobbies. On the other side, I've certainly made friends with people at work, but some of the people I made friends with I hated working with. The two things are barely connected.
Apologies if I wasn't clear, I didn't say or mean be friends with them. But being coworkers with someone is indeed a type of relationship. I wasn't meaning to conflate those two, but acknowledge the commonality between the two.
Me too, but I met my wife through work (we didn't work together, but I met her through a lady I did work with). I think a lot of young people - not just men - are hoping to interact with potential romantic partners through work.
This is true historically but the culture does seem to be moving away from the idea of it being OK to date coworkers. I know a lot of younger people (like me) would be quite nervous about the prospect of coming onto someone in the workplace. Even with good intentions there is potential for miscommunication or making someone uncomfortable.
I once thought I would like to have kids, based on the incredible diversity and splendor of the experiences and people and places the world had to offer. It seemed right, to create new lives to share in that.
Now that the texture of being a person in the world is mainly to be on Zoom calls, I think it would be cruel. Zoom school, Zoom friends, Zoom job, Zoom dates, only to produce yet another human who can attend Zoom school. What kind of life is that to being a child into?
We’ll still have books! That might be worth it on its own. And places take a while to decay. Maybe we can wander the remnants of places, from back when places were a thing. Maybe there will still be enough weirdos to sustain some kind of live performance tradition in unusual and expensive places. Maybe some especially backwards communities, after they have sold the school buildings, will retain the athletic fields. But I dunno. A world where the default condition is to sit alone on the internet from your nowhere-sprawl house, cradle to grave, is pretty fucking bleak.
This doesn't make sense. There are countless opportunities for social interaction. Join a church, a club, a sports league, a gaming discord. I get that there's a lot of friction involved in joining anything, and many 'lonely young men' don't want to put forth that effort. But it's definitely less total effort than forcing people to come to an office for the purpose of social stimulation. Just measured in terms of time and fuel spent commuting by each person, it isn't even close.
I think there are a lot of reasons that people prefer offices. Most of it is probably tradition and "that's the way we've always done things". If the reason is truly lonely people needing social interaction, then there are a lot of way better solutions.
Churches and most clubs don't have extremely intelligent people with similar interests i.e. your tribe. When I talk to my friends I am usually at maybe 20% brain "power", when I'm at work I can mention basically anything and someone will have heard of it.
One thing to consider is the tech industry is over represented by neurodivergent people that struggle with social interaction. What you're suggesting is not feasible for everyone.
It's more than that. I'm mid-life, with kids, meaning that my best opportunity for getting out of the house on a regular basis is while they're at school. Without that, days can go by without a significant change of scenery, especially in winter when spending evenings at the park isn't a great option.
I'm not lonely, per se, but, all the same, the pandemic has been very, very difficult for me. I went from being a longtime remote worker who went to a coworking space most days, to what has sometimes felt like two years of house arrest.
I agree that going in to an office - especially an open plan one where they pack desks end-to-end in giant noisy rooms - is a less-than-stellar option, too. But I also suspect that many people's newfound love of WFH is fueled in part by the novelty of the experience, and that the shine will wear off after a couple more years.
I think a lot of it is the exact circumstances of you office as well. All else equal I think I would actually prefer working in an office assuming that:
1. It felt like a "real" space (i.e. not a beige cubical farm)
2. Was not excessively loud
3. I had a comfortable chair/workspace
4. I could walk there from my house in under 20 minutes
5. There was no dress code
6. There was nobody there who I found deeply annoying and also insisted on interacting with me regularly
And I think a lot of people (especially young people who live in cities close to where they work) actually do have something approximating that situation.
Being able to walk there from my house in under 20 minutes is a big thing for me. If I am a 1-3 miles walk/bike ride, I would go to the office all of the time. Assuming its a safe comfortable commute. I hate driving in rush hour personally, any amount of distance.
Also feeling like a real place is nice. I actually don't mind a cubical, though an office would be nicer. I really hate open office though, and open office makes me never want to go in. If it felt like a cozy coffee shop, or a college campus that would be ideal.
Yeah, I don't mind a cubicle per se (especially compared to the typical open office) but I found the traditional cubicle farm offices, where everything is this bland, monochromatic beige color and lit with neon lights, very depressing.
> their coworkers are the only people they regularly interact with in-person
This sort of self-alienation seems to be a pretty widespread problem larger than the in-person/remote debate. That said, it's probably better for those experiencing it to have some in-person socialization in the office than none.
How do you know they aren't travelling the world while "working from home"? Sure, they aren't keeping up with a set group of friends, but they are making new friends every day. The world is bigger than just your tiny little apartment. You can go to Latin America, where they share largely the same timezone as us, but you can play with turtles! Or rescue dogs! Or clean up after penguins (south of argentina). It's really up to you if you think humans are the only way to not be lonely, then yeah, hit up a bar and cry yourself to sleep. But there are other ways. There is so much other there if you just work from home,and stop going into the shitty office, with terrible people. Have you ever noticed the office makes people less original? They all end up looking and acting the same as each other, and I'm the only who who's just come home from petting a penguin and they're like "we just came home from the bar.... again.... for the third time this week...." The office is dead, long live working form home.
Sure you could use remote work to do things, but in practice most people don't. Forcing everyone back into the office without a good reason isn't a good solution, but I think that the option to work in person is an ideal situation to those who like to socialize with others. Personally, I have that flexibility and have started to take advantage of it by working while traveling. But I've observed of my WFH coworkers don't seem to, which goes back to the original point- the alienation is not a function of not going into the office. It's a separate issue that giving that option to people can mitigate.
I meet people outside of work “regularly” - more weekends than not - but a coffee or a hike or a live performance here and there is very different from casually sharing a building on a random Tuesday.
The comparison isn’t a social life, it’s a family or roommates.
The interesting thing is that folks on HN who want to work from the office just say “I can see why you’re remote. Just not for me. I prefer to work in a team that’s all in-office” but folks on HN who want to work remote always go “It’s because you’re lonely that you can’t work remote. I have a loving wife and children. You are miserable and using coworkers as a substitute for social company.”
Like, dude, we get it. This is important to you. So go work where you find that. A bit tiresome to constantly come into these threads and listen to this endless repetitious nonsense.
WFHomers need a modern equivalent of the Knitting Bee. Distinct from a co-working space since it is organized by its members who make an effort to get to know each other and it shouldn't be dependent on membership with some organization, just a grassroots locally organized thing.
It isn't my responsibility to help "lonely young men" meet people. Just go to a bar/meetup/church and start talking. That's an individual's responsibility to socialize.
Not my experience. At sports activities where I live, people come to do sports, not really to socialize. Once the sport activity is over, most go home to their kids/wives/girlfriends/etc. At least in Germany where the focus is always on the activity at hand, and socializing with strangers is a distraction from the activity you came for.
I practice 3 different sports right now (bouldering, CrossFit and dancing), hoping to maybe make some friends or find a partner out of it in this WFH world and it's all the same, once the activity is over, people want to go home, not stay and have a beer or chat. :(
Maybe I was lucky in the past but the best friends I've ever made and sometimes partners were found on the same workplace or campus, but I sure as hell feel very unlucky and miserable now, however, I really don't wish for people who don't like being in the office to be forced to come to work, that's really stupid, but this hybrid model is the norm where I live and is the worst of both worlds. Some offices are really nightmare material.
I guess it may depend on the sport group. I've had good luck with the local Basic Fit (globo-gym type outfit, but the nearby branch has some nice people), and my weighlifting club, so perhaps you may find better luck in another sports group?
Back when I lived in Marseille, I actually made a few really nice friendships from hanging out at the Prado street workout park. It was on the beach too, which was really nice.
Climbing is also quite popular, and my local climbing gyms seem rather conductive to random social interactions that could lead to deeper friendships, although honestly I don't go very ofter (less than once per month), so perhaps that's just my perception.
That said, if you're more comfortable meeting people at work, perhaps you would be happier with an office job?
How do you make friends at gyms? Here everyone has noise cancelling headphones on, focusing on their sets, and only staring at their equipment or their phone. There's no socializing with strangers going on on unless you brought your own friends, as everyone is busy to do their sets and go home.
And what's the difference between a gym and a weightlifting club? Here we have gyms, where there's free weights, machines and cardio equipment where you can do everything including weightlifting. Never heard of a weightlifting club. What do you do there besides lift weight like in any other gym? Is it done in a group or something?
well, I can only answer for my specific case, but the way I made friends at the gym was basically people noticing that I was doing the Olympic lifts and commenting on that, plus occasionally giving random compliments/technique tips to people.
By weightlifting club I mean an association centered around competitive Olympic lifting. So you train individually, but can sign up for competitions, and are generally always around competitive lifters.
I've also heard CrossFit has a good community, not sure how accurate this is, however.
Maybe try a more 'team' oriented sport? I have found padel tennis to be probably one of the most 'socializing' sports I have played (too much even for my tastes). The fact you have to play in pairs forces you to interact with someone, and is rare the game where a beer after to talk about it doesn't happen. (unless it is a weird hours).
I made also good social circles playing tennis and doing bjj, even though those are more 'individual' things, they seem to include a part of a social element to it as well.
Never tried dancing, but the times I did bouldering and crossfit, unless you were going in a group with already a beer planned after, they tend to be more start-end kind of things.
Interesting how you automatically assigned a gender. My wife has worked from home for 4 years and can't wait to get back into an office. I like to think that some people just have different preferences.
We are social creatures, there is something quite unnatural only interacting with your wife/kid or worse - with no one else at all, for weeks and months.
If not the office, workers are better off using some social working space, but unfortunately WFH is so tempting and easy most will resort to that.
Psychologically it's not ideal.
Yes the office can be a pain, commute and what not, but loneliness could be worse.
We are social creatures, there is something quite unnatural only interacting with your wife/kid or worse - with no one else at all, for weeks and months.
Offices are significantly less 'natural' than spending time with a small group of people. If you go back a thousand years or so many people lived their entire life within a mile or two of where they were born - they grew up, worked, got married, lived and died in a single village. In lots of more isolated cases people would have only met a couple of hundred people in their entire lifetime.
It's definitely unusual to lead such a limited life today, but psychologically it's not that bad. People survived pretty well, and they continue to now.
That "small" group would consist of something like 100 people, not 5. If you want to appeal to nature, it's less natural for your family to be your entire social circle, than for it to include casual workplace acquaintances.
Not sure why you're being downvoted, this is the truth. We are much closer to a pack of chimps than anything else, definitely not 2-3 family members (and even 2-3 members is optimistic considering divorce rate and plummeting child bearing)
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We lived in groups of a few dozens of members for hundreds of thousands of years.
Working remotely from home is also a very different lifestyle, so I'm not sure what the argument is. Living as if it's the 1000 BC is not in the cards.
> If not the office, workers are better off using some social working space, but unfortunately WFH is so tempting and easy most will resort to that. Psychologically it's not ideal.
I would caution against the presumption that people will do things that are "bad" for them because they're convenient and you have to force them to do things that are "good" for them instead.
In these comments you can see examples of people who are going to co-working spaces. Obviously they feel they need it and I support them. Personally I have no interest in going to a co-working space. I love my WFH solitude and autonomy, and 2021 was the most productive year of my life work-wise.
Is this psychologically bad for me, regardless of my own perceptions and experience? I suppose it's possible, but I don't think some random boss with the power to fire me unless I come into the office is a better judge of that than I am.
Random boss is not enlightened by virtue of being a boss. Surely anyone who has nodded their head to a Dilbert comic knows that by now. Random boss will do what's good for himself, not what's good for me.
Paternalistic, collectivist authoritarianism has dominated human thought for most of our history. It's only recently that individual autonomy and freedom have become more influential. I think that's a very good thing and I'm not going back.
I never said you have to force them, that's a philosophical question with no clear answer, I'm just stating a problem - which is called loneliness and solitude and which affects most people.
Its very possible in your individual case 100% remote work is what's good for you, but it's not likely that its good for most people most of the time because it goes against everything we know about our nature and genes. Now if a person is 100% remote worker but he invests heavily in socializing then there shouldn't be a problem. The trouble is I don't think most people will do this, at least not enough.
Many people lack discipline and have very weak will power; so many of us find it extremely hard to do the things which we know are good for mental well being - such as exercising, eating right and socializing with friends and family. We find it extremely easy and even addictive to do things which aren't great (or even bad) for mental well being such as Netflix binging, reading Twitter and eating junk food and not leaving the house for lengthy periods.
The easy thing to do is just WFH and not bother with seeing anyone, because calling up friends is hard work. Sure, people will still see friends but not more than they did before they went WFH. It's mostly just gonna be people working from home, alone, or with a spouse if you're lucky.
This is why I'm not incredibly optimistic.
Anecdata from Hacker News suggests this is true. A lot of lonely young men here freely admit their coworkers are the only people they regularly interact with in-person, and remote work takes that away from them.