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As someone who has worked from home for a decade, I predict a mental health apocalypse in the near future. Working from home permanently requires support infras

As someone who has worked from home for a decade, I predict a mental health apocalypse in the near future. Working from home permanently requires support infrastructure not everyone has access to. It also requires a different approach to work altogether which, again, not everyone is capable of adopting. If you have family, work from home is great. But if you're single, staying cooped up alone at home can be a disaster.

thrownaway954 6y ago
not trying to sound like a dick... everyone has to get out of the house and making actual friends in life. co-workers aren't friends, bosses aren't friends, clients aren't friends, work relationships aren't friends. we all need human interaction... join a club, a gym, yoga, bike club, whatever, just interact with people that doesn't involve talking about work. and sitting home and playing video games while good, isn't getting outside.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  > co-workers aren't friends, bosses aren't friends, clients aren't friends, work relationships aren't friends. I consider my coworkers to be my friends and it's one of the reasons I like working at my current company. I agree that having lots of different outlets for connection is great, and I also acknowledge that there are a variety of ways in which work can complicate friendships. But, if I'm going to spend 40+ hours per week on work, I'd like to do it alongside people I genuinely like and care about.
  - thrownaway954 6y ago
    to be honest... i did that for almost 20 years where i previously worked. i thought of my co-workers as family and friends and it got me no where and caused lots of stress (its hard to say no to someone when they are friends). i don't know, maybe it had more todo with co-dependency than anything else. now i've been working at a place for almost 3 years and i'm not friends with a single person here. i don't let these people know my business and have a complete separation of personal and work relationship. i honestly have less stress cause i can say no without giving a crap if my co-worker gets mad at me or doesn't want to talk to me (which i prefer). i do my job and go home to be with my friends and family. also, if another opportunity comes my way, i have no problem giving my 2 weeks notice and packing my bags. life is a lot better now.
- tidepod12 6y ago
  >co-workers aren't friends, bosses aren't friends, clients aren't friends, work relationships aren't friends. It really saddens me whenever I see this (apparently common) sentiment on HN. Through every job I've had, I've met some of my very best life-long friends. My wedding party is over half people that I met at work. A couple of my former bosses are people I see every couple of months (pre-covid) and are invited to my wedding. Even one of my past clients is someone that I keep in touch with regularly (for nothing related to work). Not everyone at work is going to become your best friend, but if you're automatically assuming that anyone you meet through your job is completely "off limits" for friendship, you're really hurting yourself. I can't imagine working at a place like that.
  - remus 6y ago
    I think it's important to make the distinction that while you can be friends with your colleagues it's very important to also have friends outside of work. Having friends from work is great, but if you only have friends from work then you have nothing outside of work which isn't healthy (for example, if things start going poorly at work then it can feel like you are trapped).
    - tidepod12 6y ago
      I disagree. At any of my previous jobs when work started going poorly, my friendships were, if anything, a boon to me because I had a support system that immediately understood my work situation and challenges. They were immediately in a position to help because of their close proximity both to me and the challenges at work I was facing. After leaving one job, the relationships with my "work friends" were invaluable to me in helping me find another job since they were in the same field and had connections I could leverage. Outside of work, my "work friends" and I go out to eat, go play sports together, hang out at each other's houses, etc. We talk about work sometimes because it's obviously a common interest, but our friendship doesn't revolve around it, and if someone severs their relationship with the employer that we have in common, it does not mean our friendship also severs.
  - toolz 6y ago
    I would look at this from a different angle. Work friends have extreme pressure to be around you. They get paid to be around and collaborate with you. You can't easily determine the extent of a relationship standing on its own merit if someone is literally being paid to collaborate with you. With that said some of my best friends came from former jobs as well, but if we're talking about emotionally vulnerable people they especially need relationships outside of work. Imagine all of your relationships being tied to work and inevitably you get fired (as most people will experience in their life). That would be devastating without support outside of work. What if it turns out your friendships only lasted because of the financial incentives to be around each other and common in-office conversations? tl;dr; relationships outside of work are important and that's not sad to me because it doesn't prevent anyone from also having friends inside of work.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- NewEntryHN 6y ago
  > everyone has to get out of the house and making actual friends in life. According to what "law"? Introverted lonely people having most of their social interactions at work is a fact of life mate.
- rconti 6y ago
  I have friends in my running club, cycling friends, Peloton (half virtual, half local) friends, friends from cities I used to live in, friends who have moved away. Former coworkers who are also lifelong friends. Current coworkers I enjoy being friendly with. It's not either/or.
jedberg 6y ago
I don’t think it’s family vs not family. It’s all about personality. To wit: If you’re single, work from anywhere you want is great. But if you have a family, not having a place to escape the distractions of home life can be a disaster. It’s all just how you manage it. :)
Ensorceled 6y ago
I think we are already seeing it. I think the increased polarization I am seeing this US election cycle and here in Canada is partly due to this effect.
- redisman 6y ago
  There’s a whole industry pushing for polarization - I don’t think you can blame wfh for that
  - Ensorceled 6y ago
    That's why I said "partly due to this effect". I think it makes us more susceptible to these efforts because we are not leaving our echo chambers.
beardbound 6y ago
I completely agree. I'm single and have worked from home for years, minus a brief contracting gig in an office a few years ago. I made sure to make time for seeing people though. I have friends in my neighborhood and we would meet up for lunch or tea during the week and I would always go out on the weekends. With social distancing it's been really challenging. I'm fortunate that I have friends that are also careful that live close to me that I can still see. It's not as safe as completely isolating, but I also weighed the risk of completely isolating myself from everyone and I decided that I had to be okay with a certain amount of risk of infection. People don't really talk about the death toll of mental health problems, but it's substantive in certain demographics. I keep telling my friends that you can't eliminate risk, just mitigate it to an amount that you're comfortable with, and that amount is different for everyone. Complete isolation is not a sustainable plan. I've been looking at what my lifestyle is going to be like until we start getting this under control, which doesn't look like it's coming in the short to medium term.
- monsieurbanana 6y ago
  I'm not telling you to completely isolate, but this is wrong: > I keep telling my friends that you can't eliminate risk, just mitigate it to an amount that you're comfortable with, and that amount is different for everyone This is a pandemic, any risks you consciously take are risks you're forcing the people around you to take too. No single person can set the amount of risks he wants to take, it has to be decided globally.
  - tipsysquid 6y ago
    >No single person can set the amount of risks he wants to take, it has to be decided globally. This is preposterous. Each individual must evaluate their own risk tolerance. If you're waiting on the world to decide something for you, you're playing life as a waiting game. Please don't shame people for having a different risk tolerance than you.
    - nevinera 6y ago
      The reason he's confused is that he's thinking of isolation in terms of its impact on community transmission rate. That should definitely be part of your personal calculations (evaluating your personal risk without concern for any risk you create for others is sociopathic, if common). But the truth is that even the most basic measures of isolation would suffice to properly mitigate the community risk if the community would broadly take them, and the most severe personal isolation on my part will not protect the community in any meaningful way if they don't. Wearing a mask when it's appropriate and avoiding crowded/unsafe spaces is really all we owe our community. Anything further you do should be based on your personal evaluation of risks - I'm more isolated because we have high-risk relatives that we see regularly. Edit: It's worth noting that this position is specific to the pandemic in question - it's totally plausible that we will get another pandemic later that requires us all to take more stringent isolation measures. And the evidence suggests that we will probably all die.
fatnoah 6y ago
>If you have family, work from home is great. Hah, I feel the opposite. Having my family at home is what makes WFH unbearable. I'm constantly exposed to the stress of getting a child through the hybrid learning school schedule. I get absolutely no quiet time or alone time during the day, whereas my office has many quiet places for me to clear my mind for a few minutes.
- mattsofatso 6y ago
  For some, WFH means Wait For Help.
johnward 6y ago
> But if you're single, staying cooped up alone at home can be a disaster. During COVID I would say this is more of a problem but in my 8 years of remote work I don't really miss the office at all. In normal times you can get out if you want to head to a coffee shop or something. We do video calls which seems to help some of the team members feel better about the situation. Having a commute was absolutely the most stressful thing for me. I do most of my socializing outside of working hours. Being alone and remote doesn't seem to effect me but I'm also super introverted. I understand this may effect extroverts differently.
golergka 6y ago
I'm single, and transition to WFH has made a great improvement to my social health. Sure, all people need social interactions. But these interactions don't need to be defined by work. I work in caffe 10 meters from my apartment. Sit with laptop in the park. Meet with friends. I don't drive, don't use public transport, but walk an awful lot. And thanks with great, mostly asynchronous communication at my workplace, I sleep as much as I want to, and work exactly when I feel like it, and never ever hear or see my colleagues — only text, mostly comments as opposed to instance messaging. Sometimes I just slack off for three days straight. Sometimes I go into work binge for a non-interrupted 20 hour refactoring session. Not even because there's some deadline, feeling of responsibility or any other kind of negative motivation like that — just because I enjoy it and don't want to stop! I feel like I've been on vacation for the last three months, and yet repository stats show me that I'm more productive as I've ever been. Oh, and the best thing about all of that? I live in a country with much lower cost of living than US, but thanks to headlines like this, I feel that I'll soon be competing for exactly the same jobs and salaries that SF engineers.
- Smithalicious 6y ago
  This describes my feelings entirely!
aranelsurion 6y ago
I find this expectation really strange. It's like 'violence in games', if you refer to it everyone will nod, but how it became such a widely accepted fact is at best unclear. I'm sure some cases of it happened somewhere, there are some papers, and some appeal to authority is a given, but do we really know if WFH equals mental health issues en masse? For example, I wonder if: long commute, all the preparation before/after a work day, and resulting overall diminished free time causes more mental issues or not. What about constant interruptions, loud neighbours and that white light above you, even though you'd rather have it yellow? All the inconveniences of sharing a place with other people, wouldn't any of this take a toll? Seems to me when "office" is heard everyone thinks of that one nice summer evening after work and had a few beers yada yada, nobody seems to remember that cold-ass winter day where you would rather stay in 5 levels of blankets yet had to go to office, then slipped on ice and landed on your ass. Maybe it's true and WFH will turn most people to madness. I'm just saying it's not an established fact of life, and opposite is also very much possible.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  The thing mostly talked about is social isolation and it seems pretty straight forward that going from time in the office to the same time at home reduces social contact.
  - vngzs 6y ago
    Yeah, for me it's less "working was my only social interaction" and more "with covid, we can't work in person and we also can't go do our own things with friends." Losing in-person work relationships at the same time as social relationships is rough. Luckily I get along well with the person I live with, but the lack of ad-hoc social interaction is unsettling.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Or, it’s good that people will be forced to build social networks outside of their work, as it was a bad development that citizens began to depend heavily on work for meaning and connection. Once the pandemic is over, of course.
baron_harkonnen 6y ago
What's also becoming very apparent is how many people use work as a means to escape an unhappy home life. Things like an unhappy marriage can be dealt with by being at the office a lot, or working at home in a big enough home that you can remain isolated. The current situation forces a lot of these issues to come to a boil. Even if you're just unhappy with who you are and what 'home' means for you, being forced to deal with it can be rough. Work is to many workaholics the same way a bar is to alcoholics. It's a place where a coping mechanism becomes not just a way to deal, but a sign of success.
- toomanybeersies 6y ago
  Home can equally be a place to escape an unhappy work life. I've always tried to keep my work, domestic, and social life separate. I work in an office and I live with flatmates/roommates who aren't close friends. My work problems stay in the office, my domestic problems stay at home, and my social/relationship problems don't follow me home. It's less about one or the other being a coping mechanism, but my (lack of) capacity to deal with multiple problems simultaneously.
IncRnd 6y ago
> If you have family, work from home is great. But if you're single, staying cooped up alone at home can be a disaster. Why should an employer be responsible for teaching people how to socialize with others?
MarcScott 6y ago
Adopt a pet, if you can. My dog is my work buddy. He's always around, gives me an excuse to take a lunchtime walk, always available for cuddles when I need it. I have a family, that are with me in the evenings, but a pet during the day is a great companion.
jjice 6y ago
I can only speak from my experience, but being a single man living alone in a one bedroom after moving to a new city in January was absolutely awful. After spending two months in a new city, everything was immediately shut down and I was stuck working at home in my 13x13 room I rented. The room I slept in was my office and my dining room as well, not to mention my entertainment room. Instead of seeing all my coworkers (who I was fond of) every day in the office, I now saw my small team during our 15 minute stand ups, which would only occur about 2 or 3 times a week. I saw the gas station clerks more. I hated it, and I didn't really have a support system. I'm in my final year of university now (that work experience was an internship), and I will definitely look primarily for places that will have an actual office environment.
loco5niner 6y ago
The better solution is to not have empty lives outside of work. I realize that's a hard problem to solve, but it's worth solving, and maybe WFH will help spark that change.
- somekyle 6y ago
  It's a harder problem to solve when you've moved across the country (or world) to work for years at companies that actively cultivated a world of "work and play at work"/"hang out after hours" with legitimate professional incentive to participate. There's a real sense in which Bay area tech companies invested in social infrastructure to make living in a place where you have no real personal connections sustainable, so if they stop providing that benefit, it can be a real problem to those with less social resources.
rossdavidh 6y ago
If you have family, work from home is great...sometimes. It depends on the people. Sometimes small children, or even adults, are better able to cope with you being occasionally gone, than with you being there, but don't bother them. You could end up either being continually interrupted, or else having to say some variant of "stay away from me" to a loved family member. Neither is a good situation. Not to mention that some people, for financial reasons, must live in places far too small to spend their waking lives in along with their sleeping lives.
gnicholas 6y ago
When companies say they're allowing permanent WFH, we have to consider this in the context of a non-covid world. After lockdowns are over, people who work from home will not be isolated to the same extent. They can go to a restaurant or park and eat lunch. They can see neighbors in-person. It will not be nearly as isolating as covid-induced WFH is.
nullsense 6y ago
>If you have family, work from home is great. But if you're single, staying cooped up alone at home can be a disaster. I like the break from my family. I didn't get it during WFH. Enjoying being back in the office now. It's all just different strokes. Having some companies that choose to go all in on remote gives those people who it suits them some options and for those of us who prefer WFO we know to avoid those companies. It's polarizing, so I think it's good if companies kinda just go one way or the other.
ck425 6y ago
Anecdotal but this is exactly what has happened to me. I live alone and have been WFH since March. It's gotten harder and harder and since September I've had outright moderate depression. It's directly linked to WFH and living alone.
sylens 6y ago
I'm not so sure about that. "This" WFH situation we are now in is very different from what a normal remote-only situation would be like after COVID times are over. People are at their wit's ends right now because they cannot do many of the things outside of work that they used to do. If you have a small child, you used to be able to take them with you on errands and impromptu meetups with other parents and families to break up the day and entertain them. Now, many people carefully plan out these occasions to make sure they're not bringing anything back home to their own family members. The same can be applied to childcare and even senior care. In normal times, you wouldn't have your kids home all day to interrupt you and require help with schoolwork (or even logging into Zoom). Additionally, I've found the hardest part of this year is that there just isn't much to look forward to on the weekends - no big group dinners to celebrate birthdays, no vacations to other cities, no bar nights with old friends.
confidantlake 6y ago
There is already a disaster in being forced to go into the office for some of us. For those of with social anxiety issues, being forced to come into the office every day is incredibly stressful. I haven't had a single panic attack since we went remote for Covid. My mental outlook changed from struggling to get through the day to enjoying life.

thrownaway954 6y ago

not trying to sound like a dick... everyone has to get out of the house and making actual friends in life. co-workers aren't friends, bosses aren't friends, clients aren't friends, work relationships aren't friends. we all need human interaction... join a club, a gym, yoga, bike club, whatever, just interact with people that doesn't involve talking about work. and sitting home and playing video games while good, isn't getting outside.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> co-workers aren't friends, bosses aren't friends, clients aren't friends, work relationships aren't friends. I consider my coworkers to be my friends and it's one of the reasons I like working at my current company. I agree that having lots of different outlets for connection is great, and I also acknowledge that there are a variety of ways in which work can complicate friendships. But, if I'm going to spend 40+ hours per week on work, I'd like to do it alongside people I genuinely like and care about.
- thrownaway954 6y ago
  to be honest... i did that for almost 20 years where i previously worked. i thought of my co-workers as family and friends and it got me no where and caused lots of stress (its hard to say no to someone when they are friends). i don't know, maybe it had more todo with co-dependency than anything else. now i've been working at a place for almost 3 years and i'm not friends with a single person here. i don't let these people know my business and have a complete separation of personal and work relationship. i honestly have less stress cause i can say no without giving a crap if my co-worker gets mad at me or doesn't want to talk to me (which i prefer). i do my job and go home to be with my friends and family. also, if another opportunity comes my way, i have no problem giving my 2 weeks notice and packing my bags. life is a lot better now.
tidepod12 6y ago
>co-workers aren't friends, bosses aren't friends, clients aren't friends, work relationships aren't friends. It really saddens me whenever I see this (apparently common) sentiment on HN. Through every job I've had, I've met some of my very best life-long friends. My wedding party is over half people that I met at work. A couple of my former bosses are people I see every couple of months (pre-covid) and are invited to my wedding. Even one of my past clients is someone that I keep in touch with regularly (for nothing related to work). Not everyone at work is going to become your best friend, but if you're automatically assuming that anyone you meet through your job is completely "off limits" for friendship, you're really hurting yourself. I can't imagine working at a place like that.
- remus 6y ago
  I think it's important to make the distinction that while you can be friends with your colleagues it's very important to also have friends outside of work. Having friends from work is great, but if you only have friends from work then you have nothing outside of work which isn't healthy (for example, if things start going poorly at work then it can feel like you are trapped).
  - tidepod12 6y ago
    I disagree. At any of my previous jobs when work started going poorly, my friendships were, if anything, a boon to me because I had a support system that immediately understood my work situation and challenges. They were immediately in a position to help because of their close proximity both to me and the challenges at work I was facing. After leaving one job, the relationships with my "work friends" were invaluable to me in helping me find another job since they were in the same field and had connections I could leverage. Outside of work, my "work friends" and I go out to eat, go play sports together, hang out at each other's houses, etc. We talk about work sometimes because it's obviously a common interest, but our friendship doesn't revolve around it, and if someone severs their relationship with the employer that we have in common, it does not mean our friendship also severs.
- toolz 6y ago
  I would look at this from a different angle. Work friends have extreme pressure to be around you. They get paid to be around and collaborate with you. You can't easily determine the extent of a relationship standing on its own merit if someone is literally being paid to collaborate with you. With that said some of my best friends came from former jobs as well, but if we're talking about emotionally vulnerable people they especially need relationships outside of work. Imagine all of your relationships being tied to work and inevitably you get fired (as most people will experience in their life). That would be devastating without support outside of work. What if it turns out your friendships only lasted because of the financial incentives to be around each other and common in-office conversations? tl;dr; relationships outside of work are important and that's not sad to me because it doesn't prevent anyone from also having friends inside of work.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
NewEntryHN 6y ago
> everyone has to get out of the house and making actual friends in life. According to what "law"? Introverted lonely people having most of their social interactions at work is a fact of life mate.
rconti 6y ago
I have friends in my running club, cycling friends, Peloton (half virtual, half local) friends, friends from cities I used to live in, friends who have moved away. Former coworkers who are also lifelong friends. Current coworkers I enjoy being friendly with. It's not either/or.

jedberg 6y ago

I don’t think it’s family vs not family. It’s all about personality. To wit: If you’re single, work from anywhere you want is great. But if you have a family, not having a place to escape the distractions of home life can be a disaster. It’s all just how you manage it. :)

Ensorceled 6y ago

I think we are already seeing it. I think the increased polarization I am seeing this US election cycle and here in Canada is partly due to this effect.

redisman 6y ago
There’s a whole industry pushing for polarization - I don’t think you can blame wfh for that
- Ensorceled 6y ago
  That's why I said "partly due to this effect". I think it makes us more susceptible to these efforts because we are not leaving our echo chambers.

beardbound 6y ago

I completely agree. I'm single and have worked from home for years, minus a brief contracting gig in an office a few years ago. I made sure to make time for seeing people though. I have friends in my neighborhood and we would meet up for lunch or tea during the week and I would always go out on the weekends. With social distancing it's been really challenging. I'm fortunate that I have friends that are also careful that live close to me that I can still see. It's not as safe as completely isolating, but I also weighed the risk of completely isolating myself from everyone and I decided that I had to be okay with a certain amount of risk of infection. People don't really talk about the death toll of mental health problems, but it's substantive in certain demographics. I keep telling my friends that you can't eliminate risk, just mitigate it to an amount that you're comfortable with, and that amount is different for everyone. Complete isolation is not a sustainable plan. I've been looking at what my lifestyle is going to be like until we start getting this under control, which doesn't look like it's coming in the short to medium term.

monsieurbanana 6y ago
I'm not telling you to completely isolate, but this is wrong: > I keep telling my friends that you can't eliminate risk, just mitigate it to an amount that you're comfortable with, and that amount is different for everyone This is a pandemic, any risks you consciously take are risks you're forcing the people around you to take too. No single person can set the amount of risks he wants to take, it has to be decided globally.
- tipsysquid 6y ago
  >No single person can set the amount of risks he wants to take, it has to be decided globally. This is preposterous. Each individual must evaluate their own risk tolerance. If you're waiting on the world to decide something for you, you're playing life as a waiting game. Please don't shame people for having a different risk tolerance than you.
  - nevinera 6y ago
    The reason he's confused is that he's thinking of isolation in terms of its impact on community transmission rate. That should definitely be part of your personal calculations (evaluating your personal risk without concern for any risk you create for others is sociopathic, if common). But the truth is that even the most basic measures of isolation would suffice to properly mitigate the community risk if the community would broadly take them, and the most severe personal isolation on my part will not protect the community in any meaningful way if they don't. Wearing a mask when it's appropriate and avoiding crowded/unsafe spaces is really all we owe our community. Anything further you do should be based on your personal evaluation of risks - I'm more isolated because we have high-risk relatives that we see regularly. Edit: It's worth noting that this position is specific to the pandemic in question - it's totally plausible that we will get another pandemic later that requires us all to take more stringent isolation measures. And the evidence suggests that we will probably all die.

fatnoah 6y ago

>If you have family, work from home is great. Hah, I feel the opposite. Having my family at home is what makes WFH unbearable. I'm constantly exposed to the stress of getting a child through the hybrid learning school schedule. I get absolutely no quiet time or alone time during the day, whereas my office has many quiet places for me to clear my mind for a few minutes.

mattsofatso 6y ago
For some, WFH means Wait For Help.

johnward 6y ago

> But if you're single, staying cooped up alone at home can be a disaster. During COVID I would say this is more of a problem but in my 8 years of remote work I don't really miss the office at all. In normal times you can get out if you want to head to a coffee shop or something. We do video calls which seems to help some of the team members feel better about the situation. Having a commute was absolutely the most stressful thing for me. I do most of my socializing outside of working hours. Being alone and remote doesn't seem to effect me but I'm also super introverted. I understand this may effect extroverts differently.

golergka 6y ago

I'm single, and transition to WFH has made a great improvement to my social health. Sure, all people need social interactions. But these interactions don't need to be defined by work. I work in caffe 10 meters from my apartment. Sit with laptop in the park. Meet with friends. I don't drive, don't use public transport, but walk an awful lot. And thanks with great, mostly asynchronous communication at my workplace, I sleep as much as I want to, and work exactly when I feel like it, and never ever hear or see my colleagues — only text, mostly comments as opposed to instance messaging. Sometimes I just slack off for three days straight. Sometimes I go into work binge for a non-interrupted 20 hour refactoring session. Not even because there's some deadline, feeling of responsibility or any other kind of negative motivation like that — just because I enjoy it and don't want to stop! I feel like I've been on vacation for the last three months, and yet repository stats show me that I'm more productive as I've ever been. Oh, and the best thing about all of that? I live in a country with much lower cost of living than US, but thanks to headlines like this, I feel that I'll soon be competing for exactly the same jobs and salaries that SF engineers.

Smithalicious 6y ago
This describes my feelings entirely!

aranelsurion 6y ago

I find this expectation really strange. It's like 'violence in games', if you refer to it everyone will nod, but how it became such a widely accepted fact is at best unclear. I'm sure some cases of it happened somewhere, there are some papers, and some appeal to authority is a given, but do we really know if WFH equals mental health issues en masse? For example, I wonder if: long commute, all the preparation before/after a work day, and resulting overall diminished free time causes more mental issues or not. What about constant interruptions, loud neighbours and that white light above you, even though you'd rather have it yellow? All the inconveniences of sharing a place with other people, wouldn't any of this take a toll? Seems to me when "office" is heard everyone thinks of that one nice summer evening after work and had a few beers yada yada, nobody seems to remember that cold-ass winter day where you would rather stay in 5 levels of blankets yet had to go to office, then slipped on ice and landed on your ass. Maybe it's true and WFH will turn most people to madness. I'm just saying it's not an established fact of life, and opposite is also very much possible.

rtkwe 6y ago
The thing mostly talked about is social isolation and it seems pretty straight forward that going from time in the office to the same time at home reduces social contact.
- vngzs 6y ago
  Yeah, for me it's less "working was my only social interaction" and more "with covid, we can't work in person and we also can't go do our own things with friends." Losing in-person work relationships at the same time as social relationships is rough. Luckily I get along well with the person I live with, but the lack of ad-hoc social interaction is unsettling.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Or, it’s good that people will be forced to build social networks outside of their work, as it was a bad development that citizens began to depend heavily on work for meaning and connection. Once the pandemic is over, of course.

baron_harkonnen 6y ago

What's also becoming very apparent is how many people use work as a means to escape an unhappy home life. Things like an unhappy marriage can be dealt with by being at the office a lot, or working at home in a big enough home that you can remain isolated. The current situation forces a lot of these issues to come to a boil. Even if you're just unhappy with who you are and what 'home' means for you, being forced to deal with it can be rough. Work is to many workaholics the same way a bar is to alcoholics. It's a place where a coping mechanism becomes not just a way to deal, but a sign of success.

toomanybeersies 6y ago
Home can equally be a place to escape an unhappy work life. I've always tried to keep my work, domestic, and social life separate. I work in an office and I live with flatmates/roommates who aren't close friends. My work problems stay in the office, my domestic problems stay at home, and my social/relationship problems don't follow me home. It's less about one or the other being a coping mechanism, but my (lack of) capacity to deal with multiple problems simultaneously.

IncRnd 6y ago

> If you have family, work from home is great. But if you're single, staying cooped up alone at home can be a disaster. Why should an employer be responsible for teaching people how to socialize with others?

MarcScott 6y ago

Adopt a pet, if you can. My dog is my work buddy. He's always around, gives me an excuse to take a lunchtime walk, always available for cuddles when I need it. I have a family, that are with me in the evenings, but a pet during the day is a great companion.

jjice 6y ago

I can only speak from my experience, but being a single man living alone in a one bedroom after moving to a new city in January was absolutely awful. After spending two months in a new city, everything was immediately shut down and I was stuck working at home in my 13x13 room I rented. The room I slept in was my office and my dining room as well, not to mention my entertainment room. Instead of seeing all my coworkers (who I was fond of) every day in the office, I now saw my small team during our 15 minute stand ups, which would only occur about 2 or 3 times a week. I saw the gas station clerks more. I hated it, and I didn't really have a support system. I'm in my final year of university now (that work experience was an internship), and I will definitely look primarily for places that will have an actual office environment.

loco5niner 6y ago

The better solution is to not have empty lives outside of work. I realize that's a hard problem to solve, but it's worth solving, and maybe WFH will help spark that change.

somekyle 6y ago
It's a harder problem to solve when you've moved across the country (or world) to work for years at companies that actively cultivated a world of "work and play at work"/"hang out after hours" with legitimate professional incentive to participate. There's a real sense in which Bay area tech companies invested in social infrastructure to make living in a place where you have no real personal connections sustainable, so if they stop providing that benefit, it can be a real problem to those with less social resources.

rossdavidh 6y ago

If you have family, work from home is great...sometimes. It depends on the people. Sometimes small children, or even adults, are better able to cope with you being occasionally gone, than with you being there, but don't bother them. You could end up either being continually interrupted, or else having to say some variant of "stay away from me" to a loved family member. Neither is a good situation. Not to mention that some people, for financial reasons, must live in places far too small to spend their waking lives in along with their sleeping lives.

gnicholas 6y ago

When companies say they're allowing permanent WFH, we have to consider this in the context of a non-covid world. After lockdowns are over, people who work from home will not be isolated to the same extent. They can go to a restaurant or park and eat lunch. They can see neighbors in-person. It will not be nearly as isolating as covid-induced WFH is.

nullsense 6y ago

>If you have family, work from home is great. But if you're single, staying cooped up alone at home can be a disaster. I like the break from my family. I didn't get it during WFH. Enjoying being back in the office now. It's all just different strokes. Having some companies that choose to go all in on remote gives those people who it suits them some options and for those of us who prefer WFO we know to avoid those companies. It's polarizing, so I think it's good if companies kinda just go one way or the other.

ck425 6y ago

Anecdotal but this is exactly what has happened to me. I live alone and have been WFH since March. It's gotten harder and harder and since September I've had outright moderate depression. It's directly linked to WFH and living alone.

sylens 6y ago

I'm not so sure about that. "This" WFH situation we are now in is very different from what a normal remote-only situation would be like after COVID times are over. People are at their wit's ends right now because they cannot do many of the things outside of work that they used to do. If you have a small child, you used to be able to take them with you on errands and impromptu meetups with other parents and families to break up the day and entertain them. Now, many people carefully plan out these occasions to make sure they're not bringing anything back home to their own family members. The same can be applied to childcare and even senior care. In normal times, you wouldn't have your kids home all day to interrupt you and require help with schoolwork (or even logging into Zoom). Additionally, I've found the hardest part of this year is that there just isn't much to look forward to on the weekends - no big group dinners to celebrate birthdays, no vacations to other cities, no bar nights with old friends.

confidantlake 6y ago

There is already a disaster in being forced to go into the office for some of us. For those of with social anxiety issues, being forced to come into the office every day is incredibly stressful. I haven't had a single panic attack since we went remote for Covid. My mental outlook changed from struggling to get through the day to enjoying life.