| I've got a wife but no kids, and have been working entirely remote for 9 months. The 3 biggest changes I've noticed: - I have to remind myself to slow down when talking to people. I think this is a result of having to think/talk through issues on my own during the day. Pairing with team members has helped this a bit. - I had to make a real effort to see my friends more often, loneliness set in heavily despite having a spouse. Picking up a social hobby, rock climbing in my case, has also helped. - If living in an area without a strong software community, exchanging ideas and "talking shop" goes away. Learning and professional growth is now done entirely remote as well. Try and stay in an area with regular meetups or some sort of interaction with other engineers if you growing as a technical contributor is important to you. I do get back to the office 3 times a year, but it's definitely changed my normal social patterns. I still strongly prefer full time remote to having to commute even once or twice a week, but I now use that commute time for socializing and hobbies instead. Good trade off for the added bit of loneliness in my opinion, although I'm not sure my answer would be the same if I didn't have my spouse to keep me company. * I also moved from Chicago to a town of 15k in Upstate NY |
This is my personal biggest issue. As a freelancer I think I particularly suffer from the lack of connections as well. I'm probably going to sign up for a coworking space soon in order to combat it.