[amatxn]

I've been working remotely for 18 months, married with a toddler and 10 year old daughter. I classify myself as an introvert, but vary widely from needing to be outgoing to extremely isolating myself. The previous job I left required me to be at the peak of personal extroversion professionally as a director of engineering. I worked with my team, business dev, and IT. I was also involved with sales calls and on-boarding customers. It pushed my boundaries but it forced me to grow. I started to enjoy being more extroverted.

I went from that position to working remotely for a start-up that had only 3 remote team members. At first I enjoyed the break from interactions with others but still had lots of communication with at least one other remote team member. About a year ago, I was moved to a different team, one with 2 local team members and myself. It has been a real struggle as I have gone days without interacting with team members or anyone besides my wife and son. I do leave the house daily to take my son to day care, but that is the extent of daily interaction outside the home with the exception of the grocery store on the weekends.

Limited social interactions has been and is becoming more of a problem for me working remote. Working in the office I developed friendships existed outside of the office as well. Those relationships are hard to maintain, and the same level of social life no longer exists when working remotely. We've instituted daily standup video calls and it helps a little.

I didn't have a huge social life before but it is now two extremes - either I crave the need to chit chat and interact with others or I withdraw completely from social situations. For example, I try to go to the coffee at least once a week just to be around other people. However, when I travel to the office quarterly, I cannot make it through the week of dinners and other events without leaving early to be alone.

Going days without meaningful technical and social interactions has caused me to be depressed and I've already considered leaving my current employer for a remote team that has more deliberate communication. Overall I'm glad with going 100% remote, but I have to work hard to not completely isolate myself.