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Re:Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office? by lolinder on Sunday February 05, 2023 @03:25PM (#34668917)
What about remote work prevents "being generous and helpful to others"? Or, put differently, what about being in an office makes it easier to be generous and helpful?

And before you reply: how sure are you that whatever you come up with applies to everyone and not just to you and people like you? Keep in mind that a lot of people in tech (myself included) are literally digital natives who learned to socialize on the internet before adapting to doing it in person.

Re:Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office? by listenallyall on Sunday February 05, 2023 @03:36PM (#34669047)
Where did I say you can't be generous or helpful remotely? My comment applies to any type of work (until non-human AI replaces all of us).
Re:Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office? by lolinder on Sunday February 05, 2023 @03:41PM (#34669096)
Ah. I think you and I must have interpreted OP's statement very differently. I interpreted it to mean that being physically present in an office never directly contributed to making a connection, not that they literally never had anyone help them out later on.
Re:Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office? by RestlessMind on Sunday February 05, 2023 @11:01PM (#34673188)
> What about remote work prevents "being generous and helpful to others"?

When you spend multiple hours together with someone day after day, you develop a bond. That leads to being generous and helpful and this connection is sorely missing in a fully remote world.

> how sure are you that whatever you come up with applies to everyone and not just to you and people like you?

No setup will work for every single person. But for most of the humans, in-person interaction helps create better bonds. Here are some research papers[1][2]. Yes, there will be a few outliers who do not like meeting people IRL, but that ultra-small minority should not be dictating policies which go counter to human nature.

[1] https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1038/s41598-021-045... - "In‑person attendance was associated with greater synchronicity in autonomic nervous system activation at the group level, which resulted in more transformative experiences and contributed to stronger identity fusion."

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321... - "In both experiments, positive affect was higher after in-person support vs. texting."