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166 comments

  • My oldest has no children and works fully remote.

    When the pandemic started, his company decided to have everyone work from home. They very quickly discovered that they were just as productive, and the owner decided it made sense to dump their office space.

    A group of employees decided to go on vacation together, while still working. Since they are all remote, they didn't actually have to work from home. They got an Airbnb with good Internet, worked during the day, and saw the sites and had fun together after work.

    If you're remote and you miss that sense of community, reach out to your coworkers and ask them if they want to hang out after work. It's possible they don't and you'll be disappointed. It's also possible that they feel the same way but didn't know they could do something about it.

    Either you'll be the hero that saved everyone from their solitary existence, or you'll have to accept that they don't want to hang out with you.

    • This is a good idea, but also working remote frees up time to meet new affinity groups.

      Not to dump on people's relaxation strategies, but even the most introverted person can't survive on video games and gooning alone.

      If you don't want or like hanging with coworkers, find a local bar to hang out at and meet some folks, go to a community board game night, join a choir, attend an anime viewing night, just do something to take initiative and meet some folks that like what you like.

  • They're not distinguishing "remote work" from "working from home" which are two entirely different things. There are whole communities of remote workers who meet and work together around the world. I guarantee you that remote working men who take advantage of these kinds of environments have a better sense of community than men who are forced to go sit in a cubicle with a group of people like the cast of The Office with less sense of humor.

  • i'm skeptical of any study that concludes anyone would rather deal with all the bullshit of working in the office rather than wfh

    no one goes to work for the "community," which can also be gotten literally anywhere other than work

    sounds like something corporate slavedriving senior executives decided they wanted a "study" on to prove people want to work in the office

  • Well then call me the outlier, cause I'm a childless man who has been happily working remote since before covid. I'd rather be jobless than go back to office work. I have a small group of non-work friends that I enjoy spending time with, and back when I did office work the majority of my friends were not work friends.

  • This childless man loves his peace, quiet, and alone time.

    But maybe I don't qualify as I have dogs, friends, and kickass neighbors.

  • In office, I'm a chatty removed. I have a habit of maybe over-socializing. For sure, my productivity goes down in the office. Oh, and people listen to me just as much WFH as they did in the office when it comes to work stuff.

    At home, I can just turn on some music and focus on what I need to get done. I can work on my 20+ jira points I have every god damn sprint. Meetings (ad-hoc or planned) already cause delays for me and I'm already working to much (the highest so far, has been a 16-hour day).

    I don't miss the 'sense of community' because there isn't one. Plus, most of my co-workers live in different states, and many in different countries. There's no in-person collaboration even if I'm in the office. It's still everything done over chat/video call.

    My company, like so many others, went back on everything they said about WFH. They used to say how great it was because they could find talent from anywhere instead of being arbitrarily constrained by location. Like, obviously, the best talent doesn't just happen to live next to you. Then it moved to hybrid, for those all important in-person, face-to-face collabs and synergy and all the other bullshit LinkedIn BS you can spew. And now, they're doing RTO full on and even shaming those who work from home or would want to. Full-on bully tactics in meetings too. Even started shaming the upper mgmt, because their excuse was "well, other companies are doing it" so I hit back with the "if other companies were committing fraud, would we?" a spin on the "well if everyone else was jumping off a bridge, would you" I grew up hearing all the time. I actually brought that up in a corporate meeting, they never responded, so I'm taking that as a yes.... yes they would and will, so long as they figure they can get away with it (or the penalties don't outweigh the profits).

    And then I find out Tim Walz (Minnesota Governor) is also for RTO... so I emailed his office, letting him know just how utterly disappointed in him I was, and to not expect my vote ever again.

    Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox. I'm just truly passionate about this. WFH, I'm far less miserable on a day-to-day basis. Working in the office, I was in multiple car accidents going to and from work (none of which I caused). I've been in exactly 0 since WFH. No longer spending 1-2 hours a day just traveling, so I can work remotely, in an office. If I ever win the lotto, I'll be rich enough I could run for president and one of my pillars would be pushing businesses to utilize WFH if the position can do that. Fewer cars on roads, means less congestion for those who have to be onsite. There should be a noticeable decrease in vehicle-related accidents and fatalities.

  • Nah there's no propaganda that will get people to think working in the office every day is in any way better to having freedom again

  • As a childless asocial workaholic with some degree of toxicity that LinkedIn bastard probably dream of, my performance heavily depended on the importance of the task. WFH let me be more passionate about some projects and papers that I used all benefits of cutting commute, was way less distracted and motivated. But bullshit paperwork, letters, chats and reports lagged even further behind than they did in the office, right up to the deadline. Sometimes because I did the work itself instead and no one looked over my shoulder.

    For me RTOing into a nearly-empty building in the off-season when most take vacations was the most dumb idea, and since it was a typical rule-for-thee, I had almost none supervison, was arriving late, leaving early and put a shit ton of hours into various MMOs. The complete opposite to what I did in a brief moments of quarantine. Look, jerks, you paid me to level my chars, that's what you wanted?

    I think like in a trust-based environment clocking in is unnecessary and various bosses over time did get it, I payed back by reporting stuff myself so they were sure I'm on it at any given time. Like we are actually a team of some sort, they do their stuff, I do mine, we pass things to each other etc. The others were completely disconnected from empoyees and to compensate their inability to trust, got high on controlling shit, were sending down teamworking events, talking about being a family or other sectarian career manager bullshit, relied on and encouraged snitching on each other. These were the positions I nailed down to me clocking out and stop giving a fuck, before eventually leaving.

    And for coworkers: they either do their work, or leave it to others, and I rarely GAF about other characteristics. The high stress environment of labor is not where I prefer to socialise, nor I'm in the mood to. I crave work-related communications that makes all objectives clear and obvious, work-related stories I can learn from, you know, the stuff I came here for, and not a social club with gossips, drama and all that. If I'm given 2hrs+ from not riding to your building, I can have two socializations and a half if I want to. The exhaustion it causes not helps but prevents me from going out with friends, and I'm double pissed that some bosses make an act like that's better for their workers while not giving them any agency and doing it solely for themselves.

    Rant: over.

166 comments