One thing I would take issue with is conflating an app with societal change, though. The latter is much much harder. I think that in developed countries we have lost our way a bit.
Work-life balance, to me, would mean that I work hard, and play hard, but that fundamentally work would fit around life. At the moment, life fits around work, for me, and for everyone I know, including those that are really quite well off. And I don't think we are individually choosing this state. Some higher power is, Moloch, I guess.
You always have the choice to ignore incentives; that's why they are incentives and not compulsion. But ignoring an incentive means that you accept not getting the benefits that are offered by that incentive. A lot of people forget that they can do this. You don't have to optimize your life to pick up every little goody that comes your way; you always have the option to say "Yes, that's nice, but I care about other stuff more."
A little while back, I moved with my family from the city to the countryside (the foothills of central Portugal), where there is a growing community of migrants from western cities, living around and alongside the local villagers, who are mostly small-scale subsistence farmers. People call us the Neo Rurals.
Land and living costs are way less than where we came from, which means I can afford to work three days a week, rather than the 5 out of 7 days I was working before. I am fortunate to be able to work remotely (I'm a freelance JavaScript programmer) and to have come from an existing network (the wonderful Brighton, UK). Somehow projects arrive when I just need them (get in touch if you're looking for someone). But people here to do all sorts of work, and often grow food and generate their electricity to lower the base costs.
The door is open. Neighbours' children come by because they want to play. Many people home-educate / unschool. And we do pretty well as a community amusing ourselves, learning from and helping each other.
Uprooting is difficult, but I have never looked back. And it does come with some "hardships", but most of those are really joys.
Very rough numbers here:
Generic person might be able to earn $50K working 40 hour weeks in their most optimal career (one that uses their skills).
Same person might also be able to earn $25K working 20 hour weeks doing a similar thing.
They could also earn minimum wage with a rota that isn't really under their control much.
But the real 'work-life balance' option, the one in which the tables are turned and someone decides to 'schedule' work for 8pm on a Saturday or whatever because it's free in the diary?
As far as I can tell this just sort of doesn't exist. I mean you could do piecemeal bits and bobs for neighbours, maybe. But a sustainable source of money sufficient to eat and heat, pay for a roof?
An example would be a 24 hour supermarket. The employees could bid to fill slots and the rate they'd charge to cover periods. But it's not set up that way because the capital owners hold all the cards and it'd be less optimal for them. What you get instead, is 'come to work 6pm thursday or you are fired, kthx'.
I try to live in that way, and I try to encourage those around me to live in that way (refusing imbalanced employment conditions). I think if enough people did, we could start to help each other, rather than relying on capital and private property so much.
Basic income is one sort of stepping stone towards that. Ultimately I think the ideal is people actually having real choices, not the huge bias we have towards salaried employment at the moment.
If life were an MMO, then salaried employment would be the cookie cutter build, hourly work would be the odd hybrid, and otherwise you've decided to not bother with your talent tree, and you're just gimping yourself. Can we tweak the rules of the game a bit, or are they just emergent?
That is a necessary but not sufficient condition.
I have plenty of time to make friends, but wouldn't be able to make any. Especially as you get older, it gets nearly impossible to approach people. At this point I'm down to a single nearby friend.
I now work online remotely in Asia and visit different cities to swing dance. Within 2 two weeks trips, I made some good freshman friends in Shanghai and Hong Kong. We still talk online from time to time about the next time we'll meet up.
I am also looking to temper my expectations, as the article suggests. I tried out a couple other styles of dancing and met freshman friends in those scenes. I remember wanting to fit in so much with each new group, and I still feel it with swing dancing friends sometimes. Over time, opportunities to deepen friendships arise. There's a lot that's out of my control.
I've tried going to meetups, but it doesn't seem like anyone is interested in being social. Everyone seems to be looking to network or advance professionally somehow.
I never get the vibe that anyone would want to hang out with me. Maybe I'm just not friendly.
I mean, it is likely that if you are a programmer you'll end up talking about work in a programming or startup meetup.
It will be much harder if it's about boardgames or ultimate frisbee.
I remember going home from some meetups feeling the night was a bust. In retrospect, I would have been less disappointed if I thought of it like dating or job hunting. My goal isn't a 100% match rate. My goal is to find matches that leave me happy.
For an entire year, I probably went to a meetup every other week. In that whole time I didn't make a single new friend.
There's no shame in trying that meet up out for a year. I think that's the crux of "don't expect too much too soon." Sounds like it's time to try out another tech meet up, another hobby meet up, or anything else that has potential.
That group of my high-school friends who are now largely janitors, retail clerks, and dropouts? They get together pretty much every weekend, usually with spur-of-the-moment plans made on Thursday night or Friday morning. My wife often just invites a friend over for Saturday brunch; occasionally I'll wake up and they're chatting downstairs. I remember one time when I was still at Google, I'd gone over to a friend's to play Starcraft, but his roommate was trying out different cellos and he had played the cello in high school, so we ended up with an impromptu cello trio in the living room. Another friend dropped by unannounced, we got the fireplace going, and when the third roommate arrived home, he was like "This is like a scene out of the 19th century."
The thing is, this is largely incompatible with spending long hours at work or doing things in your off hours (applying for jobs, going back to school, learning new programming languages) for career advancement. I haven't had a moment like that (other than ones my wife initiates) since leaving Google for a startup - I suspect my friends (or some subset of them) still do, but I'm often too busy to be worth inviting.
I think that the number of comments here suggesting a technological solution - an app, societal change, whatever - is pretty amusing. Technology is not going to matter. What does matter is making a decision that friendships and relationships are important to you, and seeking out other people who have also made that decision. And accepting the trade-offs that go with that. There are plenty of people who do live like that, but they are largely not the folks on Hacker News.