But...work friends aren't friends. It's very rare to stay in touch if you change jobs. In fact, that normalized relationship is a tie keeping you at a job that may otherwise be bad.
As a reason for why to be in the office, I feel like it's a coping mechanism, rather than real fulfillment of the need. I can't say "better to rip the bandaid off" or similar, but I can say that the 'right' solution is to find connection outside of work. Even if you're in the office, you have to do that for the friendship to persist should you ever leave.
I'm going to disagree here. I have plently of friends who I met through work. Some including former direct reports.
The same goes for many people I know. I don't keep in contact with everyone I worked with - but there are a key few who I'm happy to hang out with.
I've shifted cities, but when I return these are people I go out of my way to meet with.
But regardless of whether you keep them even with an active non work social life I want also want a work social life. I have your solution but that still doesn't remove my desire to have work friends too. I spend 40ish hours a week on work. I don't want that to be with people that I can't call several of them good friends.
The exact same holds for other situational friendships. Stop drinking, stop going to church, get injured and stop playing sport, and see how long those friendships last. That doesn't make them any less real.
The connections you have with work friends from previous jobs persist; you can catch up about old faces, industry and workplace goings on, and career progression among people who understand the situation intimately.
Work actually makes it -harder- to really connect with people. The norm is to keep personal stuff personal; you don't bring up the difficulties you're having with your SO, and they don't give you advice or commiserate.
> what you have to understand is that you're taking away something work used to provide, and asking the employee to provide it for themselves. There is a group of people for whom "work friends" are really important. Whether work friends are their only friends or just a subset of friends, the low-pressure friendship of only socializing with somebody because you have to is a different relationship to clearly indicated socializing with somebody because you want to.
The thing is that "work relationships" aren't like material objects. Work doesn't actually provide them, not in the sense that work provides you a desk, a chair and probably a computer.
Those relationships are actually provided by other people. And while some of those people may actually enjoy being there, maybe others would much rather not be there and not endure this forced socialization. On the face of it, it doesn't seem fair to me to force me to come to the office, so you can have a social life, if I don't enjoy it. Why would your preference override mine?
I actually like my colleagues and have enjoyed the occasional after work drink and chat with them until the bar closed, but I don't consider them my friends and, most importantly, I absolutely hate having to waste more than an hour of my life every day commuting. I can see how working 100% from home would have prevented me from building some relationships I have built, but like everything, it's a trade-off. Who knows what relationships I could have built had I been free to live further away from my office.
As someone higher in the thread said, not all people have the same preferences, and I realize that it may be hard for the company to organize work such that everyone is happy. But maybe in the end, people should choose where they work based on those preferences. Like working alone? Join a remote-only company. Love open-spaces and chatting with random colleagues walking by? Join an on-site-only company. We shouldn't expect there to be a single way to work.
These people are generally very disruptive and a huge burden on people not looking to mix their social and professional lives. The reason they’ve been encouraged to build personal relationships at work despite the disruptions is that their goals aligned with those of sociopathic middle and upper management that puts their personal desire to see their “resources” churning away IRL ahead of actual productivity. The move to WFH is going to expose the whole “office culture” mindset for what it is.
> And so for those people who really value the "work friendship", that is essentially part of their compensation.
Will those of us who are forced to play the role of emotional caretaker of our co-workers also be compensated for our labor? For having to navigate office romances and nepotism? Time asked to drink after work?
I actually think the Gervais Principle is a great way to look at this:
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
In short, the sociopaths have the clueless building their entire lives out of the office. The losers until now have just had to suffer, but WFH is the first chance in a long time for them to score a win.
This is fair, but what you have to understand is that you're taking away something work used to provide, and asking the employee to provide it for themselves. There is a group of people for whom "work friends" are really important. Whether work friends are their only friends or just a subset of friends, the low-pressure friendship of only socializing with somebody because you have to is a different relationship to clearly indicated socializing with somebody because you want to.
And so for those people who really value the "work friendship", that is essentially part of their compensation. Companies need to understand that for some demographics (especially the young nerds that make up so much of the workforce in tech) if they aren't providing low-pressure socialization opportunities, they need to consider what alternative strategies they can use to retain staff.