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by nkellenicki 1124 days ago
They're not non-existent, I work with a few myself. But generally I've found that they're single, live by themselves, and enjoy the social interactions of meeting coworkers in person. (Of course, there will be exceptions to this).
7 comments

I dont think you can generalise this way, its is also dependent on where you are living or what your commute looks like.

As an example, right now I am living and working in Amsterdam. My commute is 10 minutes by bike or 25min walk. I generally prefer to work in the office since I like the free exercise, context switch, and my office is also nice. However if my commute was longer than 60 mins, and in a car or public transport, I would want to work remotely.

Same. I’ve been working remotely for 23 years. I love working in an office when I get the opportunity to. The context switch is what I miss the most. It’s a 30 minute bike commute downtown for me. I had a chance to work in an office downtown several years ago and it was one of my favorite experiences.

And before anyone asks, yes, happily married, kids at home, excellent home office, healthy social life.

How is your partner/kids?
> How is your partner/kids?

Great, but it's a pretty isolating idea that you should spend all your time with the same few people. It's nice and healthy to context-switch and spend some time around different people.

Pointing out that this isn't OP -- took me a minute, I was confused by the tone switch from 'there's nuance here and its conditional based on current circumstances' to chiding of a position no ones advanced.

And I'm very much RTO crew! Who is calm about it because of exactly that conditionality on current circumstances.

You don't spend time with friends?
One thing I like about office environments is the spontaneity possible

Lunch? After work? 1 on 1s walking around the block and seeing this cool cafe that closes at 2pm?

That’s just not possible to do in most friend groups

I don’t even like coworkers but can acknowledge this easily

Why is it not possible? There have been countless times where co-workers have booked in time on the calendar (for observability for the team) to meet up with a friend for lunch, or to even meet up after work and support local businesses around their home.
Re: "1 on 1s walking around the block and seeing this cool cafe that closes at 2pm?"

That does sound nice. All of my in office jobs were sitting at my desk staring at a computer for 8 hours. No one was walking around the block. :-) But that was over ten years ago.

Not during office hours, no. Do you?
Haven't worked with many people I'd spend time with outside of work
They edited to make it less confusing / sarcastic, tl;dr they're lecturing people, with a family, who don't want to RTO, who think you only need to socialize with family
Married, my wife also works a demanding career, and we have 3 kids and 2 dogs.

I've been part-time remote since ~2012, full-time since 2016. I've recently taken a hybrid role. I really, really enjoy going into the office twice a week these days. The change of scenery is helping my brain. Plus, my kids preschool/daycare is equidistant from our home and the office, so it's not actually adding any measurable commuting time to my life. My daily commute is ~40 minutes in total regardless of where I sit my ass down to work.

I'm fortunate that my life is set up this way but I know from going into the office twice a week for months now that I'm not alone, most of my colleagues are in similar situations.

I'm all of those things - and /much/ prefer working from home. If I was made to RTO - even one day a week - I would find another job that was 100% remote.
From the ones I know and myself, it more about where they want to life. If I would be living in the suburbs with a long commute, I'd definitely insist on working remote only. But since we are living around 10-20 minutes from the office by bike or public transport anyway, I enjoy the social interactions with coworkers a couple times a week, working from home the rest of the time.

That said, I'd be perfectly happy to go fully remote as well. Wouldn't come to my mind to advocate that others to have to go to the office, just because I enjoy it once in a while.

That's not my experience - but then I work in quite a different line of work (investing) to the majority here. My experience is there isn't really any correlation between age, home situation, etc and desire to work in the office. Most people I work with (of all levels of seniority) seem to be happy with a hybrid setup (which probably averages out over the year at 1-2 days per week WFH, 3-4 days in office or work travel). In fact that's what we naturally did ourselves before there were any rules set from above.
Yep that’s basically me

To clarify my marital status is single but that has nothing to do with my relationship status

Also I live in nice and connected parts of town and prioritize short commutes, ideally walkable and bikeable

There are also the people who like to get away from their spouse and/or kids.