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."
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."