Working remote is a skill. It's not something you automatically know how to do, it's something you learn how to do.

It takes time and effort as an individual, and more time and effort as an organization.

If you don't put in that time and effort, you won't be good at it, like any other skill.

What a lot of people don't realize is offices are largely a by product of industrialization. Prior to that, most operations were either family ran and ran out of a home, or even when a company employed non-family members, they often paid piece work. So the employee would work from home, and then deliver their work to their employer and get paid per piece they produced.

What's old will be new again.

I do think a lot of it is driven by personality types, but I would attribute that more to personal need for close contact and socialization. I will never thrive in a remote environment- not because I can't manage focus or work asynchronously or anything, but because it makes me extremely depressed. It's impossible to keep my productivity up as my mental state degrades.

Yeah it's very rough. Even having family in the house with me, I need outside socializing.

Even when we were able to shift back to hybrid in-person, I'd drive in the 45 minutes get to the office and find basically nobody there. It was just as isolating, but totally pointless.

I know this can be a real challenge for some. Do you think it would help to have a nearby a co-op work space type setting, where you would have others around and you could come and go as desired?