> I don’t totally believe that remote work is going to go completely away . I think that personally for me never going into the office wasn’t really a great experience. It made me much more sedimentary (which in tech is almost a work hazard) but that was my fault . I do like being hybrid (but also the team I was a part of basically stopped existing) so while I think it could be a combination of working from home and the team imploding made me lonely.

I think a lot of people ran into these problems, but there are solutions. Work doesn't have to be your only source of community, and in fact, it can be problematic when it is, because then your community only lasts as long as your job. On the one hand you might lose your job, and on the other hand you might not quit when you should. Having connections outside work is pretty key to having work/life balance IMO.

love when commenters are just immediately dismissive of other people's preferences.

I feel the same as OP. I have a very healthy social life outside of work but full time remote work at home feels isolating and repetitive. My mind does not like the lack of separation between home and work and I've tried every trick in the book. This is also true for most other activities in my life (e.g. I don't like exercising at home vs. a gym).

I don't want to force people to the office, but it gets tiring hearing other people assuming I haven't tried their "solutions"

Don’t worry it’s not the worst one. That one was where I said I liked the Apple Keyboard on the 12 inch model and that I didn’t experience many keyboards but I have used an IBM model M, Corsair k70 and various other ones. So you can get keyboard shamed…

I wasn't dismissing their preference.

> I have a very healthy social life outside of work but full time remote work at home feels isolating and repetitive. My mind does not like the lack of separation between home and work and I've tried every trick in the book.

If OP had said any of that, I wouldn't have responded in the way I did.

I have other senses of community but that doesn’t mean that working from home for long periods of time makes me feel that way.

One big problem with these preferences is that they carry an incredibly high long-term cost for society.

One can't easily switch from a skyscraper to a park or apartment building. Office work culture affects how entire cities are designed.

sure - I agree with this, but I think this goes both ways. I will give a parallel situation that I think about quite a bit: cars. Cars have quite a bit of the same benefits as remote work. You can live further from work, you have independence, and quite a bit of the concrete negatives (e.g. no more crowded public transit) generally go away. But we now know that designing society around cars was a mistake. It ends up being bad for everyone and is more isolating by default. I'm similarly concerned about doing something that will make Americans more isolated by default.

>I'm similarly concerned about doing something that will make Americans more isolated by default.

You're right to be concerned about this, but I think it stems from a combination of "false dichotomy" and "learned helplessness":

The socializing we do at work is ultimately a side effect of the work environment, not part of the primary goal. We can learn from how non-car-oriented societies structure their settlements. Returning to the previous (and terrible) iteration of the American status quo is not the only alternative.

We don't have to settle for terrible choices simply because they have mildly beneficial side effects.

I'd also like to start taking steps toward a society with less work. There will come a time when human work simply isn't needed: when robots can do the physical labor and AIs can do the mental labor--perhaps not in our lifetimes, but it will happen. And even now, we don't need to be working as much as we do.

Economists have been predicting that for one hundred years now. Hopefully AI will work out to do this.

“Economists have been predicting that...”, in a tone of “...and it ain't happened yet, so they're probably wrong”. Actually, they've been right all along, only it's been masked by the twin phenomena of hugely skewed distribution of wealth and creation of ever more bullshit jobs.

> Work doesn't have to be your only source of community, and in fact, it can be problematic when it is, because then your community only lasts as long as your job.

Literally all of my adult friends are former coworkers, with some of them not even becoming friends until after we quit jobs.

You spend majority of your waking hours at work, where else do you make friends? Please don't say the gym.

> Literally all of my adult friends are former coworkers, with some of them not even becoming friends until after we quit jobs.

Ehh, some of my friends are that way too, but a lot of my work friendships have withered when there wasn't work keeping us in contact on a regular basis.

> You spend majority of your waking hours at work, where else do you make friends? Please don't say the gym.

It doesn't have to be the gym either. I personally have met a lot of my friends out rock climbing, but that's going to vary from person to person because you have to find things you enjoy doing. Going to the gym to meet people if you don't enjoy working out at the gym doesn't make sense.

Are there other things you enjoy doing besides work?

(Incidentally, I don't spend the majority of my waking hours at work).

> Ehh, some of my friends are that way too, but a lot of my work friendships have withered when there wasn't work keeping us in contact on a regular basis.

Can you really say they were your friends tho? do you think your rock climbing buddies will be your buddies after you stop?

I think going to the gym is not a social activity and I am very tired of bro's giving me "feedback" on my deadlifts.

Let's examine your I don't spend majority of hours claim, So there are 24 hours in the day, you work for 8, 2 hours for commuting, 1 hour for showering, taking a shits, getting dressed and all that, 1 hour for various chores, like buying groceries, laundry, cooking, etc, 1 hour for exercise, 7 hours for sleep. You have about 6 hours a day left for "fun". Last time I checked 6<8

> Let's examine your I don't spend majority of hours claim, So there are 24 hours in the day, you work for 8, 2 hours for commuting, 1 hour for showering, taking a shits, getting dressed and all that, 1 hour for various chores, like buying groceries, laundry, cooking, etc, 1 hour for exercise, 7 hours for sleep. You have about 6 hours a day left for "fun". Last time I checked 6<8

Let's examine what you know about my life: last time I checked, nothing. It certainly does not look like what you describe (hint: I don't work 8 hours a day, even on most weekdays).

Given the claim was "Incidentally, I don't spend the majority of my waking hours at work", it's a bit strange that you've included "1 hour for showering, taking a shits, getting dressed and all that, 1 hour for various chores, like buying groceries, laundry, cooking, etc, 1 hour for exercise" in there. And I agree that you should include commute in calculating your hourly pay, which is why I would not take a job which required 2 hours of commuting per day.

And do you work weekends, or are you ignoring a solid (24 x 2) - (7 x 2) = 34 hours of the week here?

I'd respond to the part of your post before that, but this math is too absurd.

Are you assuming I include various things you have to do during the day that are not exactly social into hours you spend at work? No, these are just hours that you end up spending on such activities, every day, because that’s what you have to do to be able to live

And i’m not here to argue with you how many hours you work or do not work, that’s absurd. I’m arguing from a general point of what schedule is roughly true for majority of employed people. Of course you as an individual can work 3 hours a day or 17, that’s besides the point.

The 34 hours of the weekend is only true for people that have absolutely 0 other obligations, such as children, parents, chores, etc.

I’m not here to say that people absolutely must make friends at work, but implying that it’s somehow unhealthy or bad is just incredibly out of touch with how majority of adults live

Remember where I said, "(Incidentally, I don't spend the majority of my waking hours at work)." Yeah, I was talking about myself, as indicated by the word "I". So I'm not sure why you decided to "examine" my claim from the perspective of what most people do when that wasn't what I said, and then decided to include a bunch of things that aren't work as work.

> I’m not here to say that people absolutely must make friends at work, but implying that it’s somehow unhealthy or bad is just incredibly out of touch with how majority of adults live

And I'm not here to say it's somehow unhealthy or bad. That's a hallucination that you had.

> Are you assuming I include various things you have to do during the day that are not exactly social into hours you spend at work? No, these are just hours that you end up spending on such activities, every day, because that’s what you have to do to be able to live

Still irrelevant and you were rightly called out on it. It doesn't matter if you spend an hour taking a dump and a shower, climbing rocks, or doing housework (just a single hour? You're a guy, right, with a wife?). It's still not an hour spent at your job.

The week has 168 hours. Normal people spend about 40 of them at work and 56 sleeping. That leaves 72 waking hours not at work; almost twice as many as at work.

You would have looked so much better if you'd just manned up and admitted you were wrong.

Try meetup.com or something similar to hang out with people who share similar interests or are in a similar age range and just want t to socialize

Why do ya’ll think I am socially inept or something?

what about my comment makes you think that, friend?

I mean I said all of my friends are from past employment. I am pretty content with that. I'm not sure why I need to try meetup.

Also I didn't mean to come off as rude, it was more of a joke answer, not trying to come at you for suggesting it

your question was, "where else do you make friends? Please don't say the gym."

my comment answered that question (and did not mention the gym)

neither the question nor the answer were about you specifically

It isn’t my only source of community. I participate in my local python software group and also I help out with a research software package porting algorithms to it so I do have alternate places where I have communities.

> Work doesn't have to be your only source of community

Sorry if this sounds blunt, I’m moments away from sleep, but this comment of yours really frustrated me. You are assuming that someone who enjoys the social aspects of working in person does so because they lack social outlets outside the workplace. That is just your assumption, and a distortion of the discussion. I see this all the time. What gives?

> I rather have the option to going to work and I think companies should still offer a solution for that if they are able to.

I love being in the office. I hate the hour commute. And I hate doubling or tripling my housing price. I prefer showering at 745 and connecting and being productive at 8 over showering at 645 and driving into work to be productive at 8 (while being in zoom meetings all day anyway).

I like records too. They are so cool with nice artwork. And I like record stores. But I listen to music 99% of the time digitally.

The office is the same way. It’s not that it isn’t nice. It’s that the cost of using it over better alternatives is madness, especially at scale.

Imagine all the pollution saved from people driving to work.

This is very dependent on personal circumstances. Some of us live in circumstances where we're close to the office or have transit alternatives which makes the commutes fine places to get work done or nap or veg out on other things. Some of us bike to work.

As another comment said, a lot of the consternation about whether or not to go to the office is based on personal circumstances.

Yes, certainly. But most don’t. So in the discussion of whether to return to the office, there’s not much good in discussing those rare options other than noting that those people are fortunate and not representative and can certainly go into the office if they like.

My office had a funny interaction where when we were discussing remote work, one person remarked that they liked coming into the office on their bike and it was so pleasant. This was one of the highest paid people who lived in a $1.5M house 5 minutes away from the office. And they said this to a zoom of 100 people of which maybe half commuted from $200k houses and made $75k.

Yes, that’s nice, but not useful for productive decision making.

Of course the consternation is based on personal circumstances. I don’t think workers have ideological stances on remote vs office work. I think it’s based on cost and productivity and quality of life.

I feel like much of the hate towards offices comes from people with long commutes. Personally, I've resolved to never be more than a 15 minute drive or 30 minute public transportation/walk away from work and it's been wonderful. Pop into the office, say hello, have lunch with good friends, talk to the people I see, leave the office around 4:45 and I'm home before 5. I recognize that's not feasible for many people due to the cost of living in their area, but there are many places where you can work at a big FAANG company and still have a house within 20 minutes for a not great but not terrible price.

> Personally, I've resolved to never be more than a 15 minute drive or 30 minute public transportation/walk away from work and it's been wonderful.

That’s nice you’ve resolved that, but it’s not useful to many people. It’s like saying “personally, I’ve resolved to wake up at 4am and run 14 miles. The health benefits are amazing. Yadda yadda yadda.”

Or even better “personally, I’ve resolved to inherit family wealth and not work.”

This advice is not very applicable to the return to work discussion.

Most people have families and community ties that limit them from living close to work and from moving every time they change jobs.

For me, the schools are very bad near my work and private schools cost $30k/year. So I’m not going to move close to work as my income doesn’t allow it.

If wishes were fishes, I would definitely like to live close to work and walk and be able to pop home for lunch and whatnot.

But even if schools were great and house was cheap near my work, I’ve changed work locations in the same metro area 7 times in the past 20 years so I’m not going to uproot my family each time I change positions.

So I, and I think many others, chose commute to give family opportunities. And now I choose remote to save that expense while still giving family opportunity.

Company I work at has taken to running most large meetings in person, booking out a large meeting room for half the day, and then often structuring social events around the day as well, often with paid for drinks and food.

I feel like these in person get togethers are far more interactive and productive than a day of calls where most people go camera off and fall asleep 30 mins in. Actually doing work remote works mostly fine, but god I hate group calls, the latency, the bad audio, etc.

I get that not everyone is like me but I just cannot stand those pre/post meeting socials with food and drinks. I'm just sitting there fidgiting thinking about what a completely nonproductive imposition this is on my time.

If I want social time with food and drinks I want to be with family and friends. If I'm at the office I want to be working. Otherwise I don't want to be there.

And Zoom anything can suck it. Full Stop.

They aren’t mandatory, if you want, you have the option to sit by yourself worrying about productivity while the rest of us go enjoy a drink and free pub meal.

> It made me much more sedimentary

You probably mean sedentary. Sedimentary would be quite extreme. :)