The growing epidemic of loneliness is probably
in part due to the rise of teleworking. No
longer do people grab a drink after work.
Now that I'm a teleworker, I've got about 10 extra hours of time each week that I don't have to spend commuting. So that actually has benefits for my social life, since I never really hung out with my coworkers anyway!
Of course, I'm a best-case scenario. I have a wife. I have pets. I've lived in this area my whole life and have friends here. I don't need workplace friends. If you don't have those things then you might depend on your workplace for your social connections a little bit more.
To be honest I think workplace friends can really suck anyway. I have made great friends at various jobs, but these days I sort of like to keep "work" and "friends" separate. Having workplace friends can be healthy, but depending on your workplace for friends seems extremely unhealthy. I mean, what happens when you're no longer with the company? It's like you've left a cult and now all your connections have been severed.
When I was in my early 20's, my social life was all about where I worked but now that I'm an adult, I've started to build a solid social network within my town and its various groups. I would hate to socialise with people purely from my office now.
That's something I experienced. I was laid off after 15 years and really I was laid off from my friends too. The company even monitored social media accounts which at the time seemed bizarre but now it's common. I was told by someone still working there HR declared unfriending a fellow employee was considered bullying.
I'm trying my best not to put all my eggs in one basket. I'm trying to make friends outside of work. Everyone knows you shouldn't date a coworker but really we should also not base our entire social life around coworkers either.
But as mentioned above you are in that bubble. Apple even went so far as to encircle everyone with their new building.
This culture of being friends with your coworkers is odd to me. My coworkers suck as friends, the vast majority of the time. And heaven forbid you don't want to be friends anymore, because now you're stuck with them. I have much better luck making friends by joining and participating in clubs dedicated to my hobbies.
It's even more the case I assume to people at Google or other big multinational s. People there are much more likely not to be locals, and a lot of their colleagues are going to be in the same situation. That's the perfect context for friendships.
From personal experience, clubs can be difficult if it is a tightly knit community and you're an outsider; especially so if you don't speak the language. It's not that they are not nice, it's just that you need 2 people to form a friendship.
That said, I'm friendly at work, I've made many friends at work. Some jobs have been a lot friendlier than others. But the idea that you need a job to make friends or you'll lose your friends when you lose a job is alien to me. If they don't want to spend time with you outside of work, they're not your friend.
Would not go into detail but in my past I've encountered some peculiar things that HR was trying to impose on employees. I just told them to sod off and keep me away from their kindergarten. The HR person I talked to was sort of shocked but they did leave me alone. No actions were taken. They just asked me not to promote my view among other employees which I was not interested with anyways.
Teleworking is a major benefactor to breaking that imbalance. Typical IT workers out of every 24 hours you spend about 9 working, 8 sleeping, 2 on commuting and 3 on grooming, meals and chores. That leaves just 2 hours of uncommitted time in which to fit me-time, sports, hobbies and friends. So some things will have to give.
Teleworking doubles the amount of time you have uncommitted. That is not just a 100% quantitative increase. 4 hours can fit things that 2 hours just can not, as any outhouse activity (gym/evening class/pub/cinema/theater/...) has setup/travel/wind-down time as well.
Teleworking, or more general, the absence of the typical commute is what enables you to have a social life.
I spent 7 years teleworking and had no problem grabbing a drink after work. Now that I have to physically co-locate with cow orkers I can't do that because (a) I'm driving and (2) they want to join me.
Drinking alone is the best kind of drinking.
Drinking alone? I dunno about that.
I've never worked for Google so I have no basis for comparison but it's very common across white collar jobs for employees social circles to very closely if not entirely overlap with work.
Unless you participated in extracurricular activities that weren't school sponsored, you probably never learned to make friends outside of school. Work, like school, is how you develop your social circle.
The growing epidemic of loneliness is probably in part due to the rise of teleworking. No longer do people grab a drink after work.