People keep saying that.

Humans don't work like that. Almost all meaningful relations are based on prolonged proximity.

even if that were the case, the only place you're getting prolonged proximity to a (relatively) fixed group of people is your workplace? that sounds super not good.

You must hang out with some poor quality humans.

My meaningful relationships are based on how much I like the people.

Sitting within X meters of someone doesn't make me like them particularly.

Liking someone is based on how similar we are in aesthetics, politics, philosophy, and world view, not whether we worked on unrelated things in the same neck of the woods.

I've been in the work world for almost 40 years now and I have just one friend I met at work. Most of my friends are people I met through purest chance who happen to have similar world-views.

I like (and appear to be liked by) many people where our politics are quite different, including my spouse. I value “how interesting are you to interact with?” far more than “how perfect a mirror are you?”

> Liking someone is based on how similar we are in aesthetics, politics, philosophy, and world view

I’m a pretty social person, and have great relationships both at work and outside of work: this list you’ve provided made me recoil in disagreement. The first two items are aesthetics and politics!? Even philosophy and world view I cannot strongly agree with.

Not saying that this isn’t true for you, and that’s genuinely fine. But I wouldn’t agree that you can generalize your preferences in relationships to others if the quoted sentence is genuinely true.

Mutual respect, friendliness, interest, shared experiences come to mind for me, though I admittedly typed that up in a few seconds without thinking very much about it.

>Sitting within X meters of someone doesn't make me like them particularly

I'm not goint to like nor even remember every neightbor, but it gives me OPPORTUNITY. You need some luck to make friends post college, and luck is simply opportunity + preoaration.

Especially post COVID, opportunities are sparse. All I want is a chance. If we don't click, cool. The kind of people that I probably click with aren't going to random meetups I guess.

I would argue that proximity matters, but there are many different ways of slicing proximity.

Certainly moving away from friends so that I no longer can interact with them routinely would affect the relationship.

But you can also view proximity as how often people show up in your routine. There are many people I knew and had solid friendships with just because we put in the effort to call or message in the evenings a few times a week.

Very few (but not zero!) of my meaningful relations have been through work.

This is so sad to hear and it's insane how many people on HN are against the idea of forming friendships at work.

Ya'll really are socially inept.

Nobody is against it. People are just reflecting their lived experience.

What’s sad and socially inept is that you’re demonstrating no ability to empathise with that.

I think you misunderstand. It's the opposite; it's that our non-work relationships are more meaningful, not that we are unable to form friendships at work.

Way too many people (mostly when young) fall into this trap of making their work their life. Don't be one of those people!

meanwhile all my post college relations have been through work and I've struggled to try and make friends outside of work. Unironic advice seems to be to make friends with co-workers. And meetups, which I have yet to form a signifigant bond at (when most people flake after 1-2 sessions and sessions are monthly, I can't blame them).

I am not sure why you would say that. I mean it is true, but I am not sure how it is relevant here. If one avenue is not there, ones that crave it badly enough will venture forth. If I don't go to work and WANT to engage with others so badly, I will. And besides, meaningful relations is a meaningless term.

Example. My parent has neighbors. They have lived closely to one another. So closely and long, in fact, they had to sue to resolve some outstanding issues. In other words, neither prolonged proximity or meaningful relationship is a useful metric. I will trade those for a new neighbor every year.

Humans work like they always worked. Their predilections move them. If those are not satisfied, they are channeled.

If your health limits your active hours to barely more than you can work, you won’t. In that case, you get very lonely, from my experience.

You have a point and I actually understand that rationale. I have no real argument against it beyond general question of whether individual loneliness should be solved with my forced presence.

The big problem these days is age. My neighhbors seem fine but are in different stages in life. I more or less inherited this house but it's a house built for families to be raised. So all my neighbors are 40's+ taking care of at best very young teenage kids, and I'm a 20's tech dude. Not much clicks.

>If one avenue is not there, ones that crave it badly enough will venture forth

I guess all my 20's demograpic in town don't crave socialiation. Or I guess literally all of them are in bars. Not my scene.

This is what I have seen so far. The younger cousins in my extended family consciously opted to live in Chicago-Chicago specifically due to night life. I will admit that I never understood it ( and I moved to suburbs as soon as it became an option for me ). Naturally, all anecdotal, but I doubt people changed that much over 20 or so years.

My dad retired from his factory job last year. Outside of company Xmas events, he met his colleagues exactly 0 times in a social context while he worked there.

Yes, and the point is that if you or your coworker is laid off or take a new job, that proximity is immediately nullified and the relationship typically withers and dies.

Spend less time socializing at work, and more time creating that prolonged proximity outside of work, so that relationships of your choosing can be formed that are less subject to the whims of your bosses and the economy.

>so that relationships of your choosing can be formed

and then you realize no one wants to choose you back and maybe your niche geeky tech company is the best place to find fellow introverts.

that's why I show up to my olympic weightlifting club, and music shows, and acroyoga jams regularly.

I do like my co-workers. A lot. But if seeing them in the office was my only social life I'd die. I can't speak for everyone, but personally the time/effort invested into forming meaningful relations by regularly showing up to places where I can engage with others who have similar interests (oly lifting, music, acroyoga) has probably been the best thing I've done for myself.

And being able to work remotely greatly facilitates that.

>But if seeing them in the office was my only social life I'd die.

great. Now imagine if you didn't have that nor any clubs where you felt welcome. That's the situation for many people who do make friends at work.