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I think if you work with a brilliant group of coworkers that you love to hangout out with, then you are lucky and I can see how you miss being in the office. Bu

I think if you work with a brilliant group of coworkers that you love to hangout out with, then you are lucky and I can see how you miss being in the office. But, thats not the case for many of us. The crux of work relationships is that they are not voluntary. You might get lucky and have ones you love, or you might get some that are distracting, or at worse, you dislike. Either way though you are stuck with them. I think people get stuck in the mental construct of "office = socializing" therefore "no office = antisocial". But thats not the case. If you could eliminate the 1 hour of wasted time daily on small talk and office distractions, as well as the 1 hour daily on commuting, that leaves you two extra hours a day of your life to focus on whatever you chose. You can join a club, pick a new hobby, learn a new language, volunteer or even start a revolution. Be as social or not social as you want, but the beauty of it is that thats time you have complete freedom over. I choose that over contrived interactions with a random set of people who happened to do enough Leetcode problems to get in the same room as you.

paulie_a 6y ago
The office distractions and chitchat are never going to go away regardless of format
- wtetzner 6y ago
  They're easier to ignore in async forms of digital communication.
  - satysin 6y ago
    Exactly this. It is much easier to mute a thread when some colleagues are having a slow day than it is to move desk in an office when those same people are having an all day conversation as you're trying to work. Of course you could tell them to STFU (perhaps in a more professional vernacular) but that can be difficult to do if you're not an assertive or confident person.
- pmlnr 6y ago
  It sort of did for us since we went remote. In case of that 2 or 3 colleagues I actually like to speak with, it's a shame, other than that, it would be ideal if I wasn't cut off from my other friends and groups.
danjac 6y ago
Let me introduce you to Slack...
- aantix 6y ago
  looking forward to the next iteration of remote communication. Async audio/video tools like Yac, Loom; those are the next wave. VR will follow after that.
101404 6y ago
Socializing is just as easily possible when working from home. Just meet for a coffee in Zoom or Skype or Whereby and "video chat" for an hour or so. Those are usually my most productive meetings.
- pmlnr 6y ago
  Why would I "socialize" with colleagues? I'd rather do that with communities I actually share an interest with. (If a colleague happens to be part of it, ok, but it's rare.) For many of us, a workplace is a very small piece of our consciousness, and thus, the amount of shared interest with colleagues is bleak.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    It is good for your work to have a rough idea what your colleagues are working on and what they're thinking about. This eventually builds "gut feeling" about who might be able to help you with your current problems if you're stuck. Just chit-chatting with them seems to be an effective way of sharing this information.
    - vlunkr 6y ago
      This is what I worry about losing with remote work. I'm functioning just fine now because I already knew all my co-workers well before we started WFH. But if I were to go to a new company and start remote, I would feel completely lost. All the chit-chat can feel like a waste of time, but IMO a lot of useful information about the company is transferred that way. And there's no way I would jump on a video call with someone I don't personally know to just talk for an hour. I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
  - dwoot 6y ago
    I think having a choice of being on-prem and/or completely remote is fine But I'd like to mention that it seems like a few people are forgetting about how they met their friends in the first place -- for a vast majority of us, the answer is school, something we sort of had no choice over and were sort of forced into. I participate in quite a few forums and sub-Reddits, but how many of them turn into actual real connections beyond the digital ones is slim. Secondly, in response to those that want to only choose who they want to hang out with -- the flip-side of that is group-think and echo-chamber-ism by not subjecting oneself to orthogonal perspectives... Lastly, as people in technology, we have choices about where to work -- find a place that works on something that you like with people that you like. I have a hard time empathizing with those that say, "we don't have a choice". Yes, getting a job, as a dev can be a grind, but imagine being a musician or an artist or an architect. Honestly, people in tech have it best -- in all other fields you're absolutely stuck and we're here bitching about WFH policies...
jedberg 6y ago
The "chit chat" is a basic part of human interaction. Even for remote companies it still happens.
- acid__ 6y ago
  Agreed, I'm always surprised to see comments like the one you're replying to, and how often they're upvoted. I suppose HN tends to attract a slice of humanity that tends to appreciate casual social interaction a little less, even when compared to the tech sector as a whole. But in my experience transitioning from a very awkward asocial teenager (who would have shared such a view) to a slightly less awkward adult, I've come to really appreciate the trust and camaraderie you can develop even in the workplace setting. After all, humans have evolved to be social creatures and it's not random happenstance. There's tremendous value in being able to really know your teammates, to be able to rely on them, and to have them also be able to trust and rely on you in return. And a lot of that flows from basic social interactions that could be described as "chit chat."
  - jedberg 6y ago
    Some of my best friends are former coworkers. Given that we work at the same place on the same problems, there's a really good chance that at least some of us share the same interests outside of work. My family likes to joke that they can tell who my former coworkers are or online friends because they call me jedberg instead of Jeremy.
  - gregkerzhner 6y ago
    Curious, do you have meaningful hobbies and activities outside of work? I often find that people who are so keen on social interaction at work don't have other things they are passionate about. I am not saying I hate social interaction. If I had to chose between being locked in my basement and not seeing anyone and going to the office, I would chose the office. However, if the choice is between more time and freedom outside of work vs more in office interactions, then I chose the former. Again though, if you are the type of person that highly values that in-office camaraderie, you are free to join a coworking space and get that. You can still commute and ask your deskmate how your day went. Im not like that though - I like to wake up early, get my work done, and spend my afternoons rock climbing with a different group of people who are my close friends. The value I get out of this is way higher than building (often) superficial relationships with my coworkers. Thats the nice thing about working remotley - you can pick what you do with your time. Forcing everyone to indulge in office socialization just because some people enjoy it is a disservice to those who don't.
jedberg 6y ago
> I think people get stuck in the mental construct of "office = socializing" therefore "no office = antisocial" Not all cultures are like this. I had a German coworker who would always complain about how much time we spend socializing at work (while socializing with us). He would tell us, "In Germany, we come to work, we put our heads down for seven hours and work, then we all go out and spend two hours drinking beer together before we go home to our families".
- vsareto 6y ago
  I really wish I had taken a job in Germany when I had the chance. That seems way better than figuring out small talk.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    There's still time. Germany will be around for a bit.
    - bdamm 6y ago
      Many countries restrict work visas for people over 30. Is Germany one of them?
      - dukeme09 6y ago
        No, there's no age cutoff for Germany. The Blue Card (4 year work visa) requires either earning more than the national average for non-technical roles (currently more than €72k per year pre-tax) and for technical roles more than €33k. There is no requirement to show that the company was unable to find an EU Citizen, if the salary numbers are met.
      - sarabande 6y ago
        Not if you're a programmer or in what is called a "Mangelberuf" (a job that the country needs and makes lax visa regulations for).
      - blocked_again 6y ago
_bxg1 6y ago
The flipside is that it takes a lot more intentional effort, which many of us may struggle to put forth. The vast majority of friendships are made in incidental contexts: people you just happen to be around and interact with through the normal course of life. Many adults struggle to make and maintain friendships when they no longer have school forcing them to be around peers, and become very isolated. I think your interpretation is quite overly-optimistic.
- SaltyBackendGuy 6y ago
  > people you just happen to be around and interact with through the normal course of life My experience in the military supports this argument. I have a few life long friends through this experience. Some of which I disliked initially. Although, I do agree with the spirit of GP 's argument. You don't have to be in the office to be social and you get so much of your time back it's hard to justify the time cost if the value proposition is small talk.
  - amiga_500 6y ago
    Strong friendships are forged through shared adversity. Military probably ticks that box.
- nprateem 6y ago
  We're basically wired to become friends with people we're physically close to or have intense experiences with. You can imagine the evolutionary benefit to that.
- wlll 6y ago
  It is easier than ever before to go out and meet people with similar interests to you. In many places, even relatively small ones, clubs exist for climbing, sailing, all sorts of tech, chess, reading, photography etc. I don't buy the idea that people are so feeble that they can't make friends outside work.
- psweber 6y ago
  You're describing the status quo before the crisis. We weren't suffering from excess happiness and satisfaction. It's time for something new. The new things are yet to be determined.
hintymad 6y ago
Working in office is not equal to socializing, but face-to-face communication has great values, at least to some people. I'm just not sure it's a universal truth that working from home is a greater benefit to every employee, as so many comments passionately argued here. Case in point, I'm an introvert in every way: hate going to loud places like bars to socialize, prefer chatting with small number of friends in a quiet setting, prefer staying home reading , think Americans' obsession with sports is insane (not that I don't like sports. I myself was reasonably athletic and was in school's track and field team for years), can't understand why students in school were so obsessed with being popular... You get the idea. Yet I'm still more productive in office, still prefer 1-on-1s in person, and still miss the days when I worked with my co-workers on a whiteboard.
- bdamm 6y ago
  Absolutely. If I could have one day a week in the office and four days from home, it would be ideal. That 1 on 1 connection ends up being so important, useful, and facilitates much easier communication using remote tools after the fact.
toohotatopic 6y ago
According to The Paradox of Choice[1], more freedom doesn't necessarily lead to more happiness. Without choice, people can grow on each other. With friends, we move on if it becomes difficult. With coworkers we have an opportunity for personal growth. In a way, coworkers are more like family than friends. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice
- linuxftw 6y ago
  > With coworkers we have an opportunity for personal growth I read this as an opportunity to act like someone you're not, aka, conformity. With friends, I can be myself, and surround myself with people I actually like, vs trying to convince myself to like people that I'm around.
  - toohotatopic 6y ago
    To me, this is the other way round. Since coworkers cannot leave, there is no benefit in being somebody else. The only conformity is towards the boss because it is a non-equal power relation. The personal growth comes from accepting somebody else the way he is. Friends on the other hand, also choose. So if I want to spend time with them I have to conform to joined values. It's a non-issue most of the times because friends are chosen among people with similar values. Still, when it comes to conformity, it's the friendship that depends on it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - nindalf 6y ago
    > With friends, I surround myself with people I actually like There's a very strong correlation between how much we like someone and how similar they are to us. We like people with shared values and hobbies and opinions on important topics. Our friend group has a tendency towards homogeneity unless we actively try to avoid it. If we assume that diversity of thought is a good thing, being forced into situations where you can't choose the people who will surround you (school, college, workplace) is probably a good thing. Seeing things from the perspective of folks different from us is the personal growth GP was talking about.
jMyles 6y ago
I have found that I'm more social (and more socially available) with my colleagues in an all-remote company. I chat with them day and night, regardless of time zone. Our kids video chat with each other. We listen to each other's music. Rather than feeling like statues that live in an office and turn to stone at 5PM, only to reawaken the next morning, my colleagues actually feel more like human beings in this config.
meerita 6y ago
I miss my mixed office/work from home life. It was the best.
- atarian 6y ago
  This. I don't know why people think we should go with one or the other. Why not just let people decide for themselves?
- satysin 6y ago
  The "best" solution is a mixture of working from home and going to a central office as needed from time to time. How often will differ from employee to employee obviously. My hope is that once this settle down companies that are able to have employees work from home without a negative impact to performance allow them to do so freely.
_the_inflator 6y ago
I wholeheartedly agree. > If you could eliminate the 1 hour of wasted time daily This is it. Without self-driving cars this is the most important present you can give to a worker. What would you pay for an additional hour a day?
- mertd 6y ago
  $56 per minute saved https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/new-yorkers-will-pay-56-a-month-to-trim-a-minute-off-their-commute/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/new-yorkers-will-pay-56...
  - jonfw 6y ago
    $56 per month, not per minute
  - gruez 6y ago
    more like $56 per 20 minutes
intopieces 6y ago
> you could eliminate the 1 hour of wasted time daily on small talk and office distractions, as well as the 1 hour daily on commuting, that leaves you two extra hours a day of your life to focus on whatever you chose. This assumes that work expectations won’t expand to fill the space. I’ve kept pretty strict 9am to 6pm work from home with a 1 hour offline break to eat and clean and I still find the expectations creeping in, especially since some coworkers have migrated to other time zones to be with family. Overall, given the history of labor in the US, I am sceptical that we will see an opening up of free time because of this shift.
kungato 6y ago
Yeah but you still work at least 8 hours with those people. Every time you need someone to review a pull request, split work or bugs, collaborate, all those minutes you mingled or not matter
- mulmen 6y ago
  Why do those interactions matter? Surely the time you work together matter but why do I need to know where you took your vacation to provide useful code review comments? How is that relevant?
rdslw 6y ago
The current psychological consensus is that critical thing (one of three IIRC) to build friendships are repeated regular meetings/gatherings with (group of) people, forced by some external factor (school, gym, military, office, etc). WFH will strip 'friendship creation factor' from work. Definitely not to zero, but it will in effect reduce fun from work because 'working with friends' will be less often (unless you start work with people you're already friend).
- topkai22 6y ago
  I've been doing WFH for years. Some of my collegues I've never met in person. I still consider many of them "work-friends" and I feel satisfied with my work/social factor. We are still in repeated regular meetings, even if they are tele/video conference. In fact, thinking back to the last 3 in person teams I've worked with, I enjoy my job and team more with all of us WFH than in office. The issue is not that you can't or won't develop work-friends on a distributed team, its that those work-friends have difficulty translating to "not work friends" because they may be in a different state/country than you and can't come over for a pizza and beer afterwards.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > I've been doing WFH for years. Some of my collegues I've never met in person. I still consider many of them "work-friends" and I feel satisfied with my work/social factor. We are still in repeated regular meetings, even if they are tele/video conference. IMHO, the difference between a "work friend" and a "friendly relationship with a colleague" is "do you frequently disengage from work to socialize together." For instance: taking breaks together to chit-chat. I can't see how someone you're in "repeated regular meetings" with could quality as a work friend, unless those meetings are not work related.
    - topkai22 6y ago
      I’m the team lead and I’m on the phone with my team members at least half a day every day. We definitely chit chat and talk socially as a matter of course throughout the day.
TigeriusKirk 6y ago
Building real life social clubs is a clear startup opportunity with this trend. Massive growth potential and you can see it coming.
muro 6y ago
We are family, because we spend weekends and Thanksgiving together. [I think it's from From Better off Ted]
klintcho 6y ago
I completely get the sentiment of this; you can't pick your coworkers, commuting is insanely time consuming and you can most likely do most of your work from home. I've probably been brainwashed by "popular culture" and the "corporate narrative" that they prob wanna push on us. I'm in my early 30s and my hobby is to build things, I've always loved that, now mostly software, but also hardware electronics etc. My biggest dream is to have something like General Magic or early Apple or some other startup building something crazy with a small group of people that are brilliant and driven. Again this is probably just because I've been brainwashed, but I really don't see that scenario playing out over a Zoom call for instance: a brainstorming session on a whiteboard where everyone is excited and trying to solve a huge challenge together, building on each others ideas etc; It's right now just not how our zoom calls usually plays out. I'm all for anyone being able to work remotely, and picking talents from wherever they might be, but I just don't hope this is 100% of what the future will look like.
distdev89 6y ago
Working from home has many advantages, but to paint this as an advantage is a disservice. First, that's a nice way to respect your coworkers that they are a random set of people who work with you because of their Leetcode skills. Having work relationships is much more than get a PR reviewed, or asking for feedback on documents. Working together, involves interactions that humanizes your fellow co-workers. Since, I've worked with people before, now that we have to remote collaborate I understand the social cues, people can come stand-offish or rude, in remote meetings, because video and voice calls can rarely bring out emotions. We went from cracking a jokes at the beginning of a meeting and chit-chat while walking to meeting and walking back from meeting rooms to more formal remote meetings, since people are concerned that they won't be interpreted correctly over a call (the fear is rightly so given video calls are inherently bad at this) There's no reason to detest your colleagues, they're people with priorities and one of them is work. There's going to be weeks where you'll be spending way longer than 8 hrs a day together and nights where you will need to call them in the because of an ongoing issue in production. To dehumanize these relationships would be a great loss. If you want to build long lasting friendships, you can definitely do that at work. I know people who have made friends on same and different teams, through work related happy hours and hangout casually now (meeting people outside your team is severely crippled with the current remote work culture), heck people get married to people they meet at work.
autokad 6y ago
sleep takes 1/3 of our day, work takes 1/3 of our day. by your logic we have to fit all of our socializing plus everything else about our lives in that additional 1/3.
ardy42 6y ago
> I think people get stuck in the mental construct of "office = socializing" therefore "no office = antisocial". But thats not the case. If you could eliminate the 1 hour of wasted time daily on small talk and office distractions, as well as the 1 hour daily on commuting, that leaves you two extra hours a day of your life to focus on whatever you chose. There's practical reasons for that. Socialization centered at school transitions easily to socialization centered at work. Also, probably for the worse, many people have few connections to communities independent of work/school. Creating those connections can be difficult, and many of the modern solutions to this problem are aren't very good (e.g. various relationship-shopping apps like "online dating").
- smithza 6y ago
  This is a very important comment. The comment made too many assumptions about the "nuclear family" ideal for many people. Sometimes work relationships are the ONLY relationship for some people.
- skwb 6y ago
  Forgive me if I get the citation wrong, but I believe I remember listening to Ezra Klein talking how for much of the 40s/50s/60s, communities were organized by churches and community institutions. I would easily add military service to this as well. If you were a doctor, you would still know your community fairly well; whether they be a farmer or another blue collar worker. As we've replaced the prominence of community based institutions such as churches with elite institutions (primarily colleges and workplaces), we've isolated lots of people who aren't able to participate in these communities (due to many inequalities). Obviously these previous community institutions had major flaws (racism/sexism), but they still provided a shared experience that makes a diverse and broad social group easier.
  - chockablock 6y ago
    This observation has been around for a while and seems important to me. Robert Putnam’s book 2000 Bowling Alone is a famous example.
Consultant32452 6y ago
I think the great group of work friends is largely an illusion, revealed by what happens when you leave the company. Very rarely do those relationships remain intact beyond basic career building/reference things. Some do, for sure, but the vast majority don't. This is a strong indicator to me that these are just "friends" of convenience, and are really just acquaintances and not the kind of meaningful relationships in our life where someone will have your back through tough times.
harikb 6y ago
Completely unrelated, but Comcast and other cable internet CEOs are probably LMAO-big they way to classify their company as “too big to fail” :)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nindalf 6y ago
> If you could eliminate the 1 hour of wasted time daily on small talk and office distractions, as well as the 1 hour daily on commuting, that leaves you two extra hours a day of your life to focus on whatever you chose. In practice we might just end up working longer hours.
artsyca 6y ago
I'm reading 'The Culture Code' and from what it says all elite teams qualify themselves as family That most corporations fail at it doesn't mean it's not the ideal
godot 6y ago
I think there is merit to the point that the "forced" social interaction (of the office) is what makes (a lot of) people even have social interactions at all. For example, it was easier to make friends in school and college because of forced interaction; similarly, anecdotally I see a lot of friendships made among coworkers of mine, some of them became groomsmen/bridesmaids for each other at their weddings. Having said that, I'm not one of those folks, and I actually agree with your points and I am 100% for remote. I am at a remote role right now and could not be happier.
roenxi 6y ago
Speaking cynically, you've just outlined the case against a work from home policy. You intend to use it to reduce your integration in the workplace by cutting out an hour of smalltalk with people in the office. Even the fact that business relationships are fairly shallow - all the more reason for the businesses themselves to encourage them.
longtom 6y ago
Life is complex, hence most things have advantages and disadvantages.

paulie_a 6y ago

The office distractions and chitchat are never going to go away regardless of format

wtetzner 6y ago
They're easier to ignore in async forms of digital communication.
- satysin 6y ago
  Exactly this. It is much easier to mute a thread when some colleagues are having a slow day than it is to move desk in an office when those same people are having an all day conversation as you're trying to work. Of course you could tell them to STFU (perhaps in a more professional vernacular) but that can be difficult to do if you're not an assertive or confident person.
pmlnr 6y ago
It sort of did for us since we went remote. In case of that 2 or 3 colleagues I actually like to speak with, it's a shame, other than that, it would be ideal if I wasn't cut off from my other friends and groups.

danjac 6y ago

Let me introduce you to Slack...

aantix 6y ago
looking forward to the next iteration of remote communication. Async audio/video tools like Yac, Loom; those are the next wave. VR will follow after that.

101404 6y ago

Socializing is just as easily possible when working from home. Just meet for a coffee in Zoom or Skype or Whereby and "video chat" for an hour or so. Those are usually my most productive meetings.

pmlnr 6y ago
Why would I "socialize" with colleagues? I'd rather do that with communities I actually share an interest with. (If a colleague happens to be part of it, ok, but it's rare.) For many of us, a workplace is a very small piece of our consciousness, and thus, the amount of shared interest with colleagues is bleak.
- adrianN 6y ago
  It is good for your work to have a rough idea what your colleagues are working on and what they're thinking about. This eventually builds "gut feeling" about who might be able to help you with your current problems if you're stuck. Just chit-chatting with them seems to be an effective way of sharing this information.
  - vlunkr 6y ago
    This is what I worry about losing with remote work. I'm functioning just fine now because I already knew all my co-workers well before we started WFH. But if I were to go to a new company and start remote, I would feel completely lost. All the chit-chat can feel like a waste of time, but IMO a lot of useful information about the company is transferred that way. And there's no way I would jump on a video call with someone I don't personally know to just talk for an hour. I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
- dwoot 6y ago
  I think having a choice of being on-prem and/or completely remote is fine But I'd like to mention that it seems like a few people are forgetting about how they met their friends in the first place -- for a vast majority of us, the answer is school, something we sort of had no choice over and were sort of forced into. I participate in quite a few forums and sub-Reddits, but how many of them turn into actual real connections beyond the digital ones is slim. Secondly, in response to those that want to only choose who they want to hang out with -- the flip-side of that is group-think and echo-chamber-ism by not subjecting oneself to orthogonal perspectives... Lastly, as people in technology, we have choices about where to work -- find a place that works on something that you like with people that you like. I have a hard time empathizing with those that say, "we don't have a choice". Yes, getting a job, as a dev can be a grind, but imagine being a musician or an artist or an architect. Honestly, people in tech have it best -- in all other fields you're absolutely stuck and we're here bitching about WFH policies...

jedberg 6y ago

The "chit chat" is a basic part of human interaction. Even for remote companies it still happens.

acid__ 6y ago
Agreed, I'm always surprised to see comments like the one you're replying to, and how often they're upvoted. I suppose HN tends to attract a slice of humanity that tends to appreciate casual social interaction a little less, even when compared to the tech sector as a whole. But in my experience transitioning from a very awkward asocial teenager (who would have shared such a view) to a slightly less awkward adult, I've come to really appreciate the trust and camaraderie you can develop even in the workplace setting. After all, humans have evolved to be social creatures and it's not random happenstance. There's tremendous value in being able to really know your teammates, to be able to rely on them, and to have them also be able to trust and rely on you in return. And a lot of that flows from basic social interactions that could be described as "chit chat."
- jedberg 6y ago
  Some of my best friends are former coworkers. Given that we work at the same place on the same problems, there's a really good chance that at least some of us share the same interests outside of work. My family likes to joke that they can tell who my former coworkers are or online friends because they call me jedberg instead of Jeremy.
- gregkerzhner 6y ago
  Curious, do you have meaningful hobbies and activities outside of work? I often find that people who are so keen on social interaction at work don't have other things they are passionate about. I am not saying I hate social interaction. If I had to chose between being locked in my basement and not seeing anyone and going to the office, I would chose the office. However, if the choice is between more time and freedom outside of work vs more in office interactions, then I chose the former. Again though, if you are the type of person that highly values that in-office camaraderie, you are free to join a coworking space and get that. You can still commute and ask your deskmate how your day went. Im not like that though - I like to wake up early, get my work done, and spend my afternoons rock climbing with a different group of people who are my close friends. The value I get out of this is way higher than building (often) superficial relationships with my coworkers. Thats the nice thing about working remotley - you can pick what you do with your time. Forcing everyone to indulge in office socialization just because some people enjoy it is a disservice to those who don't.

jedberg 6y ago

> I think people get stuck in the mental construct of "office = socializing" therefore "no office = antisocial" Not all cultures are like this. I had a German coworker who would always complain about how much time we spend socializing at work (while socializing with us). He would tell us, "In Germany, we come to work, we put our heads down for seven hours and work, then we all go out and spend two hours drinking beer together before we go home to our families".

vsareto 6y ago
I really wish I had taken a job in Germany when I had the chance. That seems way better than figuring out small talk.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  There's still time. Germany will be around for a bit.
  - bdamm 6y ago
    Many countries restrict work visas for people over 30. Is Germany one of them?
    - dukeme09 6y ago
      No, there's no age cutoff for Germany. The Blue Card (4 year work visa) requires either earning more than the national average for non-technical roles (currently more than €72k per year pre-tax) and for technical roles more than €33k. There is no requirement to show that the company was unable to find an EU Citizen, if the salary numbers are met.
    - sarabande 6y ago
      Not if you're a programmer or in what is called a "Mangelberuf" (a job that the country needs and makes lax visa regulations for).
    - blocked_again 6y ago

_bxg1 6y ago

The flipside is that it takes a lot more intentional effort, which many of us may struggle to put forth. The vast majority of friendships are made in incidental contexts: people you just happen to be around and interact with through the normal course of life. Many adults struggle to make and maintain friendships when they no longer have school forcing them to be around peers, and become very isolated. I think your interpretation is quite overly-optimistic.

SaltyBackendGuy 6y ago
> people you just happen to be around and interact with through the normal course of life My experience in the military supports this argument. I have a few life long friends through this experience. Some of which I disliked initially. Although, I do agree with the spirit of GP 's argument. You don't have to be in the office to be social and you get so much of your time back it's hard to justify the time cost if the value proposition is small talk.
- amiga_500 6y ago
  Strong friendships are forged through shared adversity. Military probably ticks that box.
nprateem 6y ago
We're basically wired to become friends with people we're physically close to or have intense experiences with. You can imagine the evolutionary benefit to that.
wlll 6y ago
It is easier than ever before to go out and meet people with similar interests to you. In many places, even relatively small ones, clubs exist for climbing, sailing, all sorts of tech, chess, reading, photography etc. I don't buy the idea that people are so feeble that they can't make friends outside work.
psweber 6y ago
You're describing the status quo before the crisis. We weren't suffering from excess happiness and satisfaction. It's time for something new. The new things are yet to be determined.

hintymad 6y ago

Working in office is not equal to socializing, but face-to-face communication has great values, at least to some people. I'm just not sure it's a universal truth that working from home is a greater benefit to every employee, as so many comments passionately argued here. Case in point, I'm an introvert in every way: hate going to loud places like bars to socialize, prefer chatting with small number of friends in a quiet setting, prefer staying home reading , think Americans' obsession with sports is insane (not that I don't like sports. I myself was reasonably athletic and was in school's track and field team for years), can't understand why students in school were so obsessed with being popular... You get the idea. Yet I'm still more productive in office, still prefer 1-on-1s in person, and still miss the days when I worked with my co-workers on a whiteboard.

bdamm 6y ago
Absolutely. If I could have one day a week in the office and four days from home, it would be ideal. That 1 on 1 connection ends up being so important, useful, and facilitates much easier communication using remote tools after the fact.

toohotatopic 6y ago

According to The Paradox of Choice[1], more freedom doesn't necessarily lead to more happiness. Without choice, people can grow on each other. With friends, we move on if it becomes difficult. With coworkers we have an opportunity for personal growth. In a way, coworkers are more like family than friends. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

linuxftw 6y ago
> With coworkers we have an opportunity for personal growth I read this as an opportunity to act like someone you're not, aka, conformity. With friends, I can be myself, and surround myself with people I actually like, vs trying to convince myself to like people that I'm around.
- toohotatopic 6y ago
  To me, this is the other way round. Since coworkers cannot leave, there is no benefit in being somebody else. The only conformity is towards the boss because it is a non-equal power relation. The personal growth comes from accepting somebody else the way he is. Friends on the other hand, also choose. So if I want to spend time with them I have to conform to joined values. It's a non-issue most of the times because friends are chosen among people with similar values. Still, when it comes to conformity, it's the friendship that depends on it.
- deleted 6y ago
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- nindalf 6y ago
  > With friends, I surround myself with people I actually like There's a very strong correlation between how much we like someone and how similar they are to us. We like people with shared values and hobbies and opinions on important topics. Our friend group has a tendency towards homogeneity unless we actively try to avoid it. If we assume that diversity of thought is a good thing, being forced into situations where you can't choose the people who will surround you (school, college, workplace) is probably a good thing. Seeing things from the perspective of folks different from us is the personal growth GP was talking about.

jMyles 6y ago

I have found that I'm more social (and more socially available) with my colleagues in an all-remote company. I chat with them day and night, regardless of time zone. Our kids video chat with each other. We listen to each other's music. Rather than feeling like statues that live in an office and turn to stone at 5PM, only to reawaken the next morning, my colleagues actually feel more like human beings in this config.

meerita 6y ago

I miss my mixed office/work from home life. It was the best.

atarian 6y ago
This. I don't know why people think we should go with one or the other. Why not just let people decide for themselves?
satysin 6y ago
The "best" solution is a mixture of working from home and going to a central office as needed from time to time. How often will differ from employee to employee obviously. My hope is that once this settle down companies that are able to have employees work from home without a negative impact to performance allow them to do so freely.

_the_inflator 6y ago

I wholeheartedly agree. > If you could eliminate the 1 hour of wasted time daily This is it. Without self-driving cars this is the most important present you can give to a worker. What would you pay for an additional hour a day?

mertd 6y ago
$56 per minute saved https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/new-yorkers-will-pay-56-a-month-to-trim-a-minute-off-their-commute/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/new-yorkers-will-pay-56...
- jonfw 6y ago
  $56 per month, not per minute
- gruez 6y ago
  more like $56 per 20 minutes

intopieces 6y ago

> you could eliminate the 1 hour of wasted time daily on small talk and office distractions, as well as the 1 hour daily on commuting, that leaves you two extra hours a day of your life to focus on whatever you chose. This assumes that work expectations won’t expand to fill the space. I’ve kept pretty strict 9am to 6pm work from home with a 1 hour offline break to eat and clean and I still find the expectations creeping in, especially since some coworkers have migrated to other time zones to be with family. Overall, given the history of labor in the US, I am sceptical that we will see an opening up of free time because of this shift.

kungato 6y ago

Yeah but you still work at least 8 hours with those people. Every time you need someone to review a pull request, split work or bugs, collaborate, all those minutes you mingled or not matter

mulmen 6y ago
Why do those interactions matter? Surely the time you work together matter but why do I need to know where you took your vacation to provide useful code review comments? How is that relevant?

rdslw 6y ago

The current psychological consensus is that critical thing (one of three IIRC) to build friendships are repeated regular meetings/gatherings with (group of) people, forced by some external factor (school, gym, military, office, etc). WFH will strip 'friendship creation factor' from work. Definitely not to zero, but it will in effect reduce fun from work because 'working with friends' will be less often (unless you start work with people you're already friend).

topkai22 6y ago
I've been doing WFH for years. Some of my collegues I've never met in person. I still consider many of them "work-friends" and I feel satisfied with my work/social factor. We are still in repeated regular meetings, even if they are tele/video conference. In fact, thinking back to the last 3 in person teams I've worked with, I enjoy my job and team more with all of us WFH than in office. The issue is not that you can't or won't develop work-friends on a distributed team, its that those work-friends have difficulty translating to "not work friends" because they may be in a different state/country than you and can't come over for a pizza and beer afterwards.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > I've been doing WFH for years. Some of my collegues I've never met in person. I still consider many of them "work-friends" and I feel satisfied with my work/social factor. We are still in repeated regular meetings, even if they are tele/video conference. IMHO, the difference between a "work friend" and a "friendly relationship with a colleague" is "do you frequently disengage from work to socialize together." For instance: taking breaks together to chit-chat. I can't see how someone you're in "repeated regular meetings" with could quality as a work friend, unless those meetings are not work related.
  - topkai22 6y ago
    I’m the team lead and I’m on the phone with my team members at least half a day every day. We definitely chit chat and talk socially as a matter of course throughout the day.

TigeriusKirk 6y ago

Building real life social clubs is a clear startup opportunity with this trend. Massive growth potential and you can see it coming.

muro 6y ago

We are family, because we spend weekends and Thanksgiving together. [I think it's from From Better off Ted]

klintcho 6y ago

I completely get the sentiment of this; you can't pick your coworkers, commuting is insanely time consuming and you can most likely do most of your work from home. I've probably been brainwashed by "popular culture" and the "corporate narrative" that they prob wanna push on us. I'm in my early 30s and my hobby is to build things, I've always loved that, now mostly software, but also hardware electronics etc. My biggest dream is to have something like General Magic or early Apple or some other startup building something crazy with a small group of people that are brilliant and driven. Again this is probably just because I've been brainwashed, but I really don't see that scenario playing out over a Zoom call for instance: a brainstorming session on a whiteboard where everyone is excited and trying to solve a huge challenge together, building on each others ideas etc; It's right now just not how our zoom calls usually plays out. I'm all for anyone being able to work remotely, and picking talents from wherever they might be, but I just don't hope this is 100% of what the future will look like.

distdev89 6y ago

Working from home has many advantages, but to paint this as an advantage is a disservice. First, that's a nice way to respect your coworkers that they are a random set of people who work with you because of their Leetcode skills. Having work relationships is much more than get a PR reviewed, or asking for feedback on documents. Working together, involves interactions that humanizes your fellow co-workers. Since, I've worked with people before, now that we have to remote collaborate I understand the social cues, people can come stand-offish or rude, in remote meetings, because video and voice calls can rarely bring out emotions. We went from cracking a jokes at the beginning of a meeting and chit-chat while walking to meeting and walking back from meeting rooms to more formal remote meetings, since people are concerned that they won't be interpreted correctly over a call (the fear is rightly so given video calls are inherently bad at this) There's no reason to detest your colleagues, they're people with priorities and one of them is work. There's going to be weeks where you'll be spending way longer than 8 hrs a day together and nights where you will need to call them in the because of an ongoing issue in production. To dehumanize these relationships would be a great loss. If you want to build long lasting friendships, you can definitely do that at work. I know people who have made friends on same and different teams, through work related happy hours and hangout casually now (meeting people outside your team is severely crippled with the current remote work culture), heck people get married to people they meet at work.

autokad 6y ago

sleep takes 1/3 of our day, work takes 1/3 of our day. by your logic we have to fit all of our socializing plus everything else about our lives in that additional 1/3.

ardy42 6y ago

> I think people get stuck in the mental construct of "office = socializing" therefore "no office = antisocial". But thats not the case. If you could eliminate the 1 hour of wasted time daily on small talk and office distractions, as well as the 1 hour daily on commuting, that leaves you two extra hours a day of your life to focus on whatever you chose. There's practical reasons for that. Socialization centered at school transitions easily to socialization centered at work. Also, probably for the worse, many people have few connections to communities independent of work/school. Creating those connections can be difficult, and many of the modern solutions to this problem are aren't very good (e.g. various relationship-shopping apps like "online dating").

smithza 6y ago
This is a very important comment. The comment made too many assumptions about the "nuclear family" ideal for many people. Sometimes work relationships are the ONLY relationship for some people.
skwb 6y ago
Forgive me if I get the citation wrong, but I believe I remember listening to Ezra Klein talking how for much of the 40s/50s/60s, communities were organized by churches and community institutions. I would easily add military service to this as well. If you were a doctor, you would still know your community fairly well; whether they be a farmer or another blue collar worker. As we've replaced the prominence of community based institutions such as churches with elite institutions (primarily colleges and workplaces), we've isolated lots of people who aren't able to participate in these communities (due to many inequalities). Obviously these previous community institutions had major flaws (racism/sexism), but they still provided a shared experience that makes a diverse and broad social group easier.
- chockablock 6y ago
  This observation has been around for a while and seems important to me. Robert Putnam’s book 2000 Bowling Alone is a famous example.

Consultant32452 6y ago

I think the great group of work friends is largely an illusion, revealed by what happens when you leave the company. Very rarely do those relationships remain intact beyond basic career building/reference things. Some do, for sure, but the vast majority don't. This is a strong indicator to me that these are just "friends" of convenience, and are really just acquaintances and not the kind of meaningful relationships in our life where someone will have your back through tough times.

harikb 6y ago

Completely unrelated, but Comcast and other cable internet CEOs are probably LMAO-big they way to classify their company as “too big to fail” :)

deleted 6y ago

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nindalf 6y ago

> If you could eliminate the 1 hour of wasted time daily on small talk and office distractions, as well as the 1 hour daily on commuting, that leaves you two extra hours a day of your life to focus on whatever you chose. In practice we might just end up working longer hours.

artsyca 6y ago

I'm reading 'The Culture Code' and from what it says all elite teams qualify themselves as family That most corporations fail at it doesn't mean it's not the ideal

godot 6y ago

I think there is merit to the point that the "forced" social interaction (of the office) is what makes (a lot of) people even have social interactions at all. For example, it was easier to make friends in school and college because of forced interaction; similarly, anecdotally I see a lot of friendships made among coworkers of mine, some of them became groomsmen/bridesmaids for each other at their weddings. Having said that, I'm not one of those folks, and I actually agree with your points and I am 100% for remote. I am at a remote role right now and could not be happier.

roenxi 6y ago

Speaking cynically, you've just outlined the case against a work from home policy. You intend to use it to reduce your integration in the workplace by cutting out an hour of smalltalk with people in the office. Even the fact that business relationships are fairly shallow - all the more reason for the businesses themselves to encourage them.

longtom 6y ago

Life is complex, hence most things have advantages and disadvantages.