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As someone who is part of this generation of young professionals, I don't think it's so clear cut. I've got a pretty active social life, my own circle of close
by thebradbain 6y ago
As someone who is part of this generation of young professionals, I don't think it's so clear cut. I've got a pretty active social life, my own circle of close friends, a robust professional network, and I live in an urban, walkable neighborhood in a large city. Yet I, and most of my friends, acquaintances, and classmates fresh out of college (< 5 years) have no interest in centering our lives around the workplace, and many (me included) have taken or been searching for fully/part-remote jobs (and not just in tech) even pre-covid.
I enjoy my colleagues and work environment (and wouldn't trade it for the world now that I'm mostly remote!), love to chat with them and keep in touch, but at the end of the day I already have my own friends with whom I have stronger bonds than the workplace, and I'd rather spend my free time with them rather than endless happy hours with work colleagues who are, in the grand scheme of things, really only present in my life for the duration of a job. Coincidentally, some of my favorite coworkers have this same outlook.
I concede this is all anecdotal, yes, but so is your generalization. I personally believe much of this youngest generation of professionals, of which I am part, already has relatively established social networks due to social media that someone even 10 years ago entering a new job in a new city would not have, hence the less need to rely on the workplace for a social life.
If you ask me, the future of the workplace isn't fully-remote or fully in-person, it's an office where everyone comes in 2-3 days a week, as necessary, and working remote or at-home the rest of the time.
- fao_ 6y agoI mean, I'm early in my career and I feel the same way.
- fastasucan 6y agoThis hit the nail on the head for me. I belong to the same generation and have felt pretty alienated by the expectancy to let my life revolve around work to the point where my company expect that I am going to hang out at work a couple of nights a month and hang out with co-workers inbetween that. The world is so social, I have large circles of friends/aquaintences from my hobbies, from university, and from back home. I have my apetite of kind of, but not too close, friends more than satisfied, and would rather have alone time or time with the most important people of my life. Everyone is different, but before I could work from home I stopped going to lunch because I just needed that time alone as the rest of the day was full of people. I'm not bragging, because I'm not sure if this really is better than "just" having your work and your few work-pals in life than the endless social circles and the hundreds of people you are strangely intimate with through FB, IG, snap updates. But it is what is and I hope I never have to go back to office life, in that case I have to cut out some social media, some friends and/or a hobby from my life to survive.
- rainyMammoth 6y ago> If you ask me, the future of the workplace isn't fully-remote or fully in-person, it's an office where everyone comes in 2-3 days a week, as necessary, and working remote or at-home the rest of the time. I'm in the same boat as you, also early career but Please, NO. Being asked to go twice a week to the office is the worst trade-off. It means I still need to live in commuting distance of the office but I also need to rent an extra room to be my office where I'm expected to work for 3 days/week. I favor a model in which once a quarter the whole team spends a week together as a "retreat". This gives you flexibility to really live where you want without that need to still go to the office. It also means the company doesn't even need to keep an office to start with.
- thebradbain 6y agoI totally agree this is also a valid option, and one I’d personally love to explore more. To me, though, that’s still essentially near the extreme fully-remote, and I could understand if it’s not for everyone. I definitely hope and do think it will become more common in the future though, too. EDIT: GitHub actually balances this beautifully, imo. They have offices in SF, NY, Austin, and Tokyo for those who want to go into an office every day or semi-regularly, though they also do a yearly company-wide retreat and quarterly team gatherings if you want to work fully remote.
- doopy-loopy2 6y agoI'm sure a small minority of people are in the same boat as you. I think the vast majority want to go back once it is safe to do so.