I don't see how WFH makes this worse, in fact it probably makes it better (less time spent commuting, more ability to end the day early with a flexible employer, etc)

Maybe it was pandemic, maybe it was all that free time, but suddenly we all noticed each other. I had never even spoken to some of these people before.

Suddenly we were all spending time in the same place instead of waving as we drove by on our way to work and taking kids to activities.

Now I have friends. I don’t go to work then come home and stay inside.

Plus working from home I have time to get involved in some of the kid’s activities and made more friends.

That overwhelming majority of people I know that have been doing WFH on and off for a decade work regular hours and spend the remainder (time otherwise commuting) socialising (outside the house), sports, gardening, building projects, etc.

IRL AFK at least - the 24/7 gamers and shutin's likely have a different world view, but they appear to be in a minoity albeit one perhaps growing.

You probably wont get to know a lot of people who don't go outside their house, so pretty biased sample there.

Which is pretty much the subtext of my comment.

For some WFH will be a big win. But for others a big loss.

How big the big losse are will depend on the individual and their willingness to take action(s) to mitigate the loss.

I believe the Japanese have a near analogous term for this: Hikikomori.

So what’s your point?

Hikikomori is a level or two beyond what most westerners would think of when imagining an extremely introverted or reclusive person. The condition is more akin to PTSD stemming from severe mental/social trauma.

For further context, the etymology of hikikomori is to "hiku" (literally "pull", contextually in this case to "pull back" from daily life) and "komoru" (to "shelter up", in this case most likely sheltering in your bedroom or mancave or similar safe space).

What makes the news and what makes it to the Western media are the most extreme cases.

The actual development to the extreme (or not) can be quite gradual.

Right on all points, I think.

But next year resolution is that I will be renting a desk in a coworking space.

While I don’t have problem as I have enough fiends and family to hang out with.

I believe that I leave business opportunities lying somewhere there on the table and if current contract ends I will be on much worse bargaining position than when I will having more business connections hopefully created by sharing co work space.

I really liked being in the office and have the ability to talk to people which share your interests (which is just my work currently)

That’s the part I’d work on fixing. Friendships generally start based on shared interests, and you definitely need something in your life other than work.

That's not to say that I've never had coworkers whose only interest was work. I just didn't become friends with them, because what is there to talk about? I greeted them and made basic small talk with them while we worked together, but that's not friendship.

And that's not to say that my friends' interests have nothing to do with the work they do. But their interests in those areas go above and beyond what they are paid to do.

The great thing about it is you get to choose the space so it can fit what you're looking for (quiet, programmer heavy, artsy, walking distance, with a cafeteria, next to the gym, etc), you also don't have the pressure of them being colleagues so your relationship can be about other things (sports, games, music, pottery, going out)

I think it's the opposite. The standard where people commute to the office, spend all day in the workplace, and commute home with barely enough time to tend to their needs is the failed social experiment, creating unprecedented levels of isolation and entire generations of people who can't form relations outside of work.

I also don't think it's all that healthy for people's primary avenue for building friendships being in a venue where layoffs and transfers could disrupt that process suddenly and without any real recourse.

One thing the marketing of industrialization (I want to say propaganda, but I know how people are...) was quite successful at was in erasing memory of the period just before, when piece-work at home (and farming, lots of farming) was the primary form productive labor took. There is quite a lot of documentation of industrial bosses complaining about such set-ups because they allowed workers to set their own hours and modulate their output to their needs (excuse me, "be lazy").

Which isn't to say you can't but...it's work. It is first and foremost the lifeline holding up your entire financial existence. It is non-optional.

You can choose to work from a co-working space, coffeeshops, libraries, or just stay at home. But instead of getting home exhausted at 6-7pm needing to cook, clean, chores, etc, you can get that stuff done during your lunch break and then pop around to a friend's house by 5:05pm.

It's so much better I can't imagine going back to an office where I'm sitting alone and sad in a cube all day trying to focus while people yammer on the phone right next to me.

Closer to work, would be great, if I could afford the shinny prices of the rentals on the district the office is located on.

Which would be the complete opposite from districts where other family members work on.

Then when you have kids you need to think about where they go to school and you might want to live close enough to grandparents that they can help out. These constraints make living close to work impossible for a huge chunk of people.

Humans and associated social institutions evolved out of a WFH culture for hundreds of years, and perhaps those time-proven institutions would work better in 2024 if we returned to a WFH culture. Commuting culture may have been the “massive risky social experiment” of the last Century.

I wonder if this would vary by country and culture?

I wonder if there is a statistically noticeable difference in experience between places like the US and Northern Europe that seem to be more more work-focused compared to Southern European countries like Spain and Italy which have a reputation for having a better work/life balance.

Where is this reputation coming from? Every single engineer from Greece and Italy and some from France I met complained about long working hours being the norm and a cultural issue there. If he left the office before 4PM the boss would ask him "are you only having a half day today?" with the expectation being workday is at least till 6pm.

I feel like this is some overly romanticized picture coming from Americans or rich northern europeans who think people in southern Europe are lazy and chilling all day instead of working their butts off, because that's what they saw in movies or on their holidays there.

It's actually the opposite. Workers in work focused but rich countries with strong economies have better WLB than workers in laid back countries but with struggling/stagnating economies.

Spain is not a struggling economy. Source: an article on the Economist this week about Spain growing at a similar pace as the US this year.

Also, GDP growth is a shit measurements of WLB and general welfare of the working population.

For example, if a lot of rich foreigners, tourists and retirees are buying properties and spending money on Airbnbs in your sunny country lifting up the GDP that has no impact on the welfare and WLB of white collar workers working in software or hardware engineering for example.

Which is how Spain still has one of the highest youth unemployment rares in the EU.

But yeah, Spain is a bit better, but Italy WLB is definitely nothing to write him about according to Italians who emigrated.

I really recommend the economist article I mentioned. Spain has much to improve but some of those prejudices are becoming unfounded.

The original claim was

> laid back countries but with struggling/stagnating economies.

And it has been proven Spain s economy is not stagnating. That is false.

This doesn't refute my point on poor WLB in Italy. China is the world's second economy and its WLB is pretty Terrible.

GDP!=WLB

>some of those prejudices are becoming unfounded

It's just what the people who emigrate out are saying. It's not prejudice.

> Workers in work focused but rich countries with strong economies have better WLB than workers in laid back countries but with struggling/stagnating economies.

There is no official definition of "laid back country", but I assume Germany would fit your "rich countries with strong economies". I am also assuming that Spain (the south of EU) fits your "laid back countries but with struggling/stagnating economies".

The problem with that mental model is that right now Germany's economy is struggling and Spain's economy is getting stronger.

My point is this dichotomy does not match reality. The prejudice is thinking that Spain and Italy are "laid back" and that their economy is struggling, while Germany is somehow "not laid back" and their economy is strong. At the moment, this model (at least in Europe) is more based on ideas of 2010 or so that in reality.

There is also the assumption that WLB is better in Germany, which is very debatable. If that is the case, what does it mean to be a "laid back country"? Does it mean good WLB, or does it mean lazy? To me, in addition to the countries not being in the assumed situation, the mental model contradicts itself there (bad WLB+laid back vs good WLB+ not laid back).

> It's just what the people who emigrate out are saying. It's not prejudice.

I am one of those people myself. I do not mean bad by it, and I am not implying you are a bad person or anything like that. It just does not match the current reality of these countries IMO. It fits more a stereotype of 2010-2020.

I understand what you mean, but didn't mean to come at it from that angle necessarily. Less work isn't the only way to have a different work/life balance.

I was thinking more about things to do outside of work that are more part of the culture, things like tapas and spending time at cafes and town squares, i.e. people typically socializing more outside of work.

For example, I assume someone who enjoys the third place feel of an iconic UK pub would have an easier time fending off work from home cabin fever than someone who lives in a suburb bereft of such places. I wondered if, statistically, people in some cultures had an easier time working from home due to reasons like this.

You still need jobs and money for those. They aren't free. And tapas can be had all over the world. You don't need to live in Spain to enjoy Spanish food.

People in Spain wouldn't be leaving the sun, beaches and tapas to go work in depressing Germany, UK, NL or Sweden for no reason.

It seems to me like there are no good options.

I feel similarly, but I don't understand how working at the office solves this problem. Are you saying that you mostly socialize by spontaneously going out after work with coworkers? Or that your you and your friends work in the same general vicinity, so you can text them near the end of the workday, and spontaneously go do something together?

I find trying to socialize and make friends in an office situation to be incredibly stressful. Everyone in an office is there to primarily make money, and the politics implied make it hard for me to let my guard down and meaningfully connect with anyone.

I greatly prefer socializing with people over hobbies -- everyone is at the gathering willingly to enjoy a hobby, which means I have something in common with everyone participating.

Far superior, but then... I like having a groove and knowing when my next social gathering will be. I like routines. It sounds like you don't, which I can sympathize with, and I'm glad you have friends to spontaneously hang out with and hope you get to expand your circle and enjoy your life.

This cannot be understated. When you consider the number of singles and young couples out there, it's pretty astounding how difficult it is to meet them in an organic manner. I totally agree with the person you were replying to, in the sense that people can get out there and just start meeting others, but it's still a tremendous investment of time and effort when the vast majority of other friendship-seeking individuals out there aren't investing anything close to that level of effort. I know because I've pretty much figured out how to just talk to people I meet in public, but it's still exhausting when your desire is to meet people who can be longer term friends or even romantic partners.

What makes things even more difficult is the limited number of venues where it's feasible or appropriate for people to meet each other. I recently considered joining a church in order to expand my social circle (and yes, as well as open myself up to spiritual experiences) but, frankly, church crowds today resemble senior groups. I love talking to elderly folks, but it can be difficult to relate to them on a close friendship level. I find this to also be true of other ways to form social circles, to a somewhat lesser extent. Many meetup groups are full of the 50+ crowd, and surprisingly devoid of the 20s through 40s crowd. I think the older generations are just better at getting out there regularly; young people tend to show up to a single event (and even paid classes!) and never return. I can't entirely blame them, but it's also a chicken-or-the-egg problem. Everyone complains about being lonely, but then they don't get out there and return to the same venues so they can see the same people repeatedly.

There's a lot of busy people, but I've met enough people who really aren't that busy that I think business is too often used as an excuse to not leave one's comfort zone. It's so easy to stay in the comfort of one's home that I think that's what many people resort to doing. Netflix, Reddit, Doordash, Amazon, Hinge, and Pornhub in combination are much too immediately satiating.

The are many options such as:

- Going to pubs and striking up conversations at the bar

- Meetup groups

- Volunteering

- Going to places like museums and striking up conversations

- Singles mixers

- Bar trivia nights

- Taking classes

And far too few people do them consistently, if at all.

They don't want to make friends, they want someone else to want to be their friend so they know they are liked in the real world. That is what is missing, not the actual experience of friendship. Even if someone asked them to be their friend, many would say no because it would take time away from what is really important to them. Netflix, Reddit, Doordash, Amazon, Hinge, and Pornhub.

How do I know this? Because it exactly describes myself.