is this satire? many office people are "nice to your face"

There is a lot more value in having good, supportive friends. Those you can choose.

The extroverts have been made quite aware of how the introverts prefer things to be in the past few years, and may now be aware that the extroverts had the upper hand before.

It must be feasible to strike a decent middleground.

You’re asking a portion of the population that thrives on socialization to avoid that for the majority of the day. That is just as bad as insisting on forcing that on the introverts.

But I do appreciate the point you make here, asking others to do something they don’t appreciate just because you want to have people around, is not really a viable solution either.

Then again, humans are intrinsically social animals. And communication does work better for some purposes when done in person. The point I’m trying to raise is that there should exist a decent middle ground that lets introverts and extroverts thrive in the same companies. Possibly by asking both to give a bit.

But that point is somewhat incompatible with the “full remote is the way”-stance that seems to be very popular in at least a vocal part of crowds like HN.

But it's also not nearly as simple as you suggest. My girlfriend is very extrovert, but still also prefer mostly working from home, because while she can socialise a little bit while working it forces her to socialise with a small set of people she has not chosen, while robbing her of extra time (the commute) that she can use to socialise with those she has chosen.

I.e. if you don’t like your colleagues, perhaps a new job is in the cards. (and yes, i do get the entire point about reducing the number of hours worked as a solution)

And changing jobs for the sake of changing colleagues is high risk - you don't get a chance to interview all your colleagues before taking a new one. It's not even necessarily about not liking them, but about not wanting to sacrifice extra time in order to spend more time face to face with them.

Is that some idiom? You mean like isolation sickness?

People like rock stars have something like this and then it increases the likelihood of substance abuse.

I do not get any 'magic' office knowledge in the office.

And frankly its unfair anyway.

If so, how is it any fairer to level the playing field to the point where nobody gets that? (No, it will never have the same flow virtually, over the past two years it’s become clear that virtual meetings are always formal to some degree)

I get soul death being prisoner in a fluorescent tube jail that keeps me away from the sun all winter and barely lets me see it during the rest of the year.