It's not (just) about social outlet, it's about growing and learning professionally. Unless your job is to blindly implement features someone else adds to a spec sheet it's always worthwhile to get professional input from people from different fields. Often they'll have unique ideas and insights that comes from having a different background and different experiences.

But that's more than possible when working remotely.

Emphasizing public-first communication methods is a big one. Don't just send a slack message to Bob asking about that thing, tag Bob in the #thing channel so others can see and weigh in if needed. Don't just do a code review over a call and leave, write up a quick summary and post it somewhere. Have meetings where people who might not technically be related to the project are involved somewhat.

Sure, it's work, but it's not more work in my opinion, just different. There are absolutely downsides to remote work, but I really truly believe in and have experienced the benefits too.

To add to this, in no circumstance have I ever seen developers spending 100% or even close to 90% of their time actively writing code or thinking about code and working. Heck, for most of the ones I’ve worked with, it’s probably closer to 60% productive time during office hours, with the most productive being somewhere between 80-100% busy.

Just because you (the person before you, actually) are a reclusive jerk, doesn’t mean everyone else also hates people and chitchat.

Yeah but the difference is when you work remote, you can use that other 40% of your time to:

- run errands

- do the laundry

- hit the gym for a while

- cook a tasty lunch or even dinner for later.

Whereas in the office, you just use that time for chitchat, HN/reddit, wondering around etc.

And I'm not a reclusive jerk, I like my coworkers and I do enjoy it when we meet up in person, but I don't need to see them every day. We have a short voice call most days, and we catch up irl possibly 6-12 times a year which is already more than I see some of my friends who live further away.

Honestly there's just so much more time in the day for my personal hobbies and activities that I don't think I could ever go back to on site, or even full-time/more than 4 days/week for that matter.

I also do a lot of "watercooler chit chat" over slack and, to a lesser extent, voice chat. I don't need to be in the same physical space as my coworkers to do that. I mean, before starting my career, most of my tech chit chat was online, since my offline friends at the time were typically not too interested in tech.

What I do find problematic is when the majority of a company is in the same physical space and only a few are remote, as then the remote people tend to lose out.

> Just because you (the person before you, actually) are a reclusive jerk, doesn’t mean everyone else also hates people and chitchat.

Downvoted for tone. You do not need to name call here on HN.

Software engineering is only part writing code. A lot of time is thinking, understanding, collaborating and designing. Also a lot of testing.