[strikelaserclaw]

Once you show people a taste of freedom, there is no going back voluntarily. I went back to work in the office for a couple of weeks and it was dreadful, while i enjoyed the interactions with my coworkers, the commute and lack of personal freedom while in office was dreadful. I want to sit on my couch and watch tv for an hour or exercise in the middle of the day if i feel unproductive without being judged or trying to keep up appearances. I work for an extremely forward thinking company but it is instinctive that you feel the need to somewhat keep up appearances.

[yabones]

I agree completely. After having the freedom to tailor my environment precisely to how I do my best work, going to an office feels entirely performative. It feels like doing a show and dance to make other people feel important rather than increase anybody's actual outputs.

[bko]

I'm in my mid-30s and by now most of my friends are people I had worked with. A lot of people used to meet their future spouse at work. The friends from work have been a lot stickier than those I had made in college due to similar interest and experience and overall level of maturity. After college I was socialized at work. I got a lot of hard won lessons about how to interact with people and maintain professionalism. I couldn't imagine leaving college to just spend 8 hours a day at home in front of my computer.

I fear a generation of young people growing up with wfh won't be socialized. At many jobs you have to interact with a wide variety of people. You learn about power dynamics, office politics and effective/poor leadership. You could think this stuff is BS, and maybe it is, but its important to understand. Work is also great moderator. Many young people live in a bubble and surround themselves with people exactly like them, with their same politics and beliefs. It's easier to be an activist on slack, and without the awkward looks from your colleagues, you won't realize its not being well received.

At this point in my life wfh is convenient. I have dishes to do, kids to pick up, a relationship with my wife to maintain, but I still miss work from home. I'm just glad I had the chance to experience in person work when I was younger

[j245]

On the point of meeting people and socialising..

Have you considered that it might be a self correcting problem ?

The 2 hours you save by not commuting can be used to join a local running club. Suddenly you’re meeting a lot of new people you would have never met before.

[jraph]

My biggest social network is indeed a choir. By far. Most of my friends are from there and many couples are forming there. It's also way bigger than any team I could be working in.

Also, in my current company (many people WFH, at least partly), actually several couples formed because people meet at the seminars, at a time there is no stress related to work, in a relaxed setting. So remote work can be suitable for this too with the right ingredients. The company was not as remote as today before covid, but has been spread across two countries (mostly) for years so this is similar in this respect since the couples are mostly people from the two countries.

I've also built friendships from by previous work, when I was at the office, so this is also true.

I'm sure with time I'll make long lasting relationships at my current company too. We are already happy to see each others when it happens.

[j245]

I’m the same as you, I’ve made good relationships in office and remote.

I think the social contact aspect is only an issue if you don’t understand or avail the new opportunities you have.

We’ve been WFO for so long, some folks are struggling to adjust to this new reality. That’s understandable !

[bko]

I don't know if that's realistic for most people. Sports is a good one and meeting people during intramural leagues is a good idea, but its not like these leagues conflict with work hours anyway. And its harder since working bleeds into after hours. So it's harder to step away at 5 to play a softball game when you're wfh, or at least I feel like it would be tougher since you're basically always on call.

Overall the people who do these extra-curricular activities will probably continue to do so, but other people may not be any more inclined.

[j245]

> since you’re basically always on call.

It sounds like this is the actual problem you need to address.

> extra-curricular activities

There is no curriculum at work. Socialising isn’t exclusive to the work place. There are ample opportunities to meet people outside of the office.

It requires a small shift in our thinking because WFO is soo ingrained in us, we get confused once it’s not mandated. That doesn’t mean social contact is not easily within reach.

[atwood22]

I hate running but I like my job so that’s not a good trade off for me.

[j245]

Hopefully it’s clear that running is just an example that can be replaced with any other social activities you enjoy.

My point is you’re not stripped of every opportunity to socialise if you choose to go remote, and it’s entirely feasible to replace the loss of office based social interaction with some other social interaction.

[atwood22]

Your underlying assumption is that there is some other hobby that I enjoy, have time to pursue, and have opportunities near me to engage in. As someone with kids, free time is both in short supply and sporadically available.

This is separate from my belief that friendships form via shared context not shared activities: https://billmei.net/blog/friendship

[j245]

No that’s not my underlying assumption

> have time to persue

The scenario is commute takes time, you save 2 hours commuting. All other things being equal that is your time to peruse hobbies.

> have opportunities near me

Not my assumption, many people socialise over video games over the internet. There are many other internet social communities. Geographical proximity is not a strict requirement.

> As someone with kids, free time..

Not relevant - see comment above about more free time from not commuting.

My actual assumptions are you commute to work and you can’t use that time to socialise. Approximate round trip commute time is 2 hours not including prep time.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere - If your only possible hobby is socialising at work then it sounds like WFO is for you.

That doesn’t automatically mean many other people are socially worse off from WFH. Many people have other social hobbies they can do or don’t mind picking up.

[j245]

Your underlying assumption is I am saying WFH is better for socialising. I’m not.

I’m challenging the narrative that you are strictly socially worse off by working remote.

I think for a lot of people, that social fix is easily within reach in some other form.

[kiawe_fire]

Not everyone has other social activities they enjoy.

Or the social activities they might enjoy, involve some skill prerequisite they don’t have, or time commitments they can’t keep.

Essentially, if someone was already a social person and had existing social groups for those hobbies that the office commute interfered with, then wfh was a gift.

But for those who enjoy their job, and enjoyed in-office collaboration, there is going to be a lot of effort and several prerequisites required to attempt to replace that outside the office.

[j245]

I’m not arguing that everyone must be WFH.

I’m saying if you choose to WFH or remote you can still enjoy social activities.

The “you’ll always be worse off socially if you WFH” argument isn’t valid.

If your personal situation dictates that it’s impossible for you to social outside a work/office environment and that would hurt your quality of life, you should absolutely WFO.

Just understand that it doesn’t apply universally and WFH and having plenty of social interaction is entirely plausible and within reach for many many people.

My problem was lack of time and energy. The commute and the effort of commuting just killed any desire to seek out social activities after work. Work was not getting in the way of any specific hobby I already had.

Once that constraint was removed, I could actually start figuring out what stuff I was interested in and perusing it.

I was surprised how much stuff is out there once I started looking for things to do.

[lamontcg]

I think as a society we'd do vastly better to learn how to socialize outside of work. People need to have hobbies and stuff (and they need to have enough free time outside of work to have hobbies instead of coming home and being too burned out to do anything).

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Sorry, a lot of my close friends here in Canada were met at a previous company I work at, which was full remote.

Yeah, with kids now I don't make many friends and it's definitely a byproduct of my new life: for friendship to form I need a family with similar ideas regarding educating kids, similar interest in hobbies, close by and with kids of similar age.

It was hard with requirements when it was only me, now it's basically impossible

[strikelaserclaw]

"I fear a generation of young people growing up with wfh won't be socialized. " - i mean that is a problem they will likely encounter way before even starting a career but they are adults and i'm sure there will be some companies which will mandate offices, so if they choose, they can work for those companies.

[tallanvor]

The problem is that your idea of freedom is somebody else's idea of torture. I don't mind working from home once or twice a week, but being forced to work from home 5 days a week was awful and both my mental and physical health suffered significantly.

For me being able to go to the office is freedom - unless I need to have my laptop for an evening meeting, I can leave it in the office and not have to think about work problems when I'm not there. The 25 minute walk in the morning starts to get me into the office mindset, and the walk home helps me leave the work problems behind.

Economically it's also better for me to go to the office. Lunches are subsidized, so I'd be very hard pressed to eat cheaper at home without having to eat the same thing every day, and in the office I don't have to pay for my beverages. Utilities are also something that I save money on by going to the office.

I saw many colleagues start during the WFH period that are still way behind in terms of where they would have been if they had been in the office, surrounded by others who can help them easily. --No matter how much we tell them to ping us, or how much we try to be proactive and reach out to them, it's simply much harder to learn remotely.

I'm not saying that everyone needs to be in the office 5 days a week, but pretending that there are no benefits to going to the office is just as disingenuous as pretending that there are no benefits to letting people work from home.

[strikelaserclaw]

Remote work is all about choice and personal freedom, if you want to go into the office, you should do that but the problem arises where you are in the office and you feel lonely (due to your choice) and you start a crusade to get everyone back in the office.

[tallanvor]

Personal freedom is great, but you're still a member of society, which means you have to compromise. That may very well mean accepting that you do need to go into the office sometimes in order to help ensure that your coworkers' needs are also being met.

[danaris]

If you're talking about needs for work, then that's reasonable to ask, once in a while. As long as it's genuine needs and not just preferences.

But if you're asking your coworkers to regularly come in to work to meet your social needs? No. That's your responsibility. If you can't meet those needs at work, then you need to find other avenues outside of work to meet them, or find a different job where more of the people have the same expectations as you regarding the social nature of work.

You are also a member of society, and need to help ensure that your coworkers' needs are being met. You don't get to demand that they all sacrifice time, money, greenhouse gases, and mental energy just to help you feel like it's still 2019.

[Volundr]

> But if you're asking your coworkers to regularly come in to work to meet your social needs? No. That's your responsibility.

This. Your coworkers are not your friends. If your coworkers are all that's filling your social needs that should be a red flag for you and something you should work on.

[kiawe_fire]

That sounds very one sided.

The compromise (as the poster to whom you replied mentioned) should be “as members of society, we should occasionally compromise our needs to help meet the needs of people who prefer a more social office atmosphere, perhaps once or twice a week”, should it not?

Why should one type of member of society always be inconvenienced so that the other side never is?

[ghaff]

There are lots of perfectly legitimate things that people do which inconvenience me in various ways. But I don't think I'm within my rights to demand that airlines don't allow young children or obese people in planes for example. If management doesn't feel I have a need to come into the office a couple days a week, I'm not coming in just because some people want the buzz of a busy 2019 office.

And if that makes me selfish, so be it.

[danaris]

Well, for one thing, that means that even if you're working remotely, you still need to be physically located in close proximity to the office. It takes full-remote, with all the fairly obvious benefits it offers, off the table.

For another, it's one person asking many people to sacrifice their own needs to meet his.

For a third, he's presenting it as if having all his coworkers, or at least most of them, in the office is the only reasonable way to meet his social needs, when there are certainly other options.

Overall, what it sounds very much like is "Everything was going just fine for me before the pandemic, and then when other people started finding ways to meet their needs better, and the "default" changed, suddenly I was no longer automatically getting my needs met. The obvious solution to this is that we just need to go back to everyone else giving up what they've gained so I don't have to change my lifestyle in any way!"

If that's not what tallanvor means, then I apologize for misconstruing them; however, I have definitely seen many, many people who clearly feel that way advocating for full return-to-office policies specifically for their own comfort and convenience.

[ryandrake]

I would be totally OK with doing this if those people who want a more social office atmosphere would be willing to pool together and pay for the gasoline I would have to use to commute 2-3 hours each way to the office. If it cost them real money, would they be willing to pay for those "magical hallway conversations" and "office buzz"?

[ghaff]

If those needs are professional, possibly. As someone who has been largely remote for a long time, I'll fly in or do a long drive for an occasional multi-day team get-together.

But, if it's just a case of wanting me in the office semi-regularly so you have people around, I won't be meeting those needs. (But I'm sure there are plenty of other companies where offices are more back to pre-pandemic ways. And someone who cares deeply about that should probably seek out such companies.)