I worked remotely with only seeing my team a few times per year. During our last offsite, I looked around the 80+ person room and realized that I just don't enjoy working with any of these people.
+1. I too feel the same thing after 3 years of remote work. Sometimes I even feel that my colleagues are way more dumb than they appeared to look in online.
Yeah that was me after 3 years during a company over the panny-D, I just had nothing in common with any of the people working there, the company didn't seem to have much ambitions, definitely did not realize they needed 5-10 more people to do the work they wanted to be done.
I wonder if we should "enjoy" it, or whether it's just that we can't relate to the other people in the slightest when in person? I work from home and very very very rarely do I go into the office, but when I do it's quite pleasant and all but I am glad to be free of the social environment; I am there to solve things and get stuff fixed and working, not make new friends. I don't mean that nastily - I mean I go to work to work; I don't go to socialise. Some people cannot differentiate these two concepts.
Put more simply, I certainly wasn't the smartest person the in the room, but I felt close to it...
Most people were younger than me. Over time, the company laid off or pushed out many of the experienced and smart colleagues I had joined to work with, replacing them with less experienced employees.
> I wonder if we should "enjoy" it, or whether it's just that we can't relate to the other people in the slightest when in person?
You should “enjoy” making things with those other people. You should have cohesive competence with each other that enables you to crush out the work that comes your collective way.
You don’t have to “enjoy” the other person’s company, in a would-I-have-a-frosty-beverage-with-them way. You might! These are not mutually exclusive, but they are also not required to be simultaneous properties held of effective work relationships.