8 ms·

Yes. Some people on the internet were also advocating for a return to the office because people could not stand the loneliness anymore and need to interact soci

Yes. Some people on the internet were also advocating for a return to the office because people could not stand the loneliness anymore and need to interact socially. I had to point out that this was symptomatic of a poor social/family life [outside of work]. If someone is lonely working remotely and they miss humans, it is a sign the only humans they interacted with were colleagues. It's also a sign of what the person could try and improve. This situation exposed a lot of crutches.

dang 6y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25168859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25168859.
w0utert 6y ago
I don’t understand this comment, do you suggest all forms of social contacts are created equal and people should just replace the social interactions they used to have with co-workers by visiting their family more often, organizing more poker nights with friends or taking salsa classes or whatever? That makes absolutely no sense, these interactions are completely different from those you would have with your co-workers, and it’s perfectly normal even for people with an otherwise active social life to miss those. My friends and family are almost universally incomparable to my coworkers in almost every way.
- watwut 6y ago
  But the truth is, for many people colleagues are the only people they regularly interact with. Especially people who work a lot have basically non existent or purely formal other relationships. They don't even know how to relate to people outside of job setting.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    That's a sad thing for them. I wonder if the US long-hours culture contributes to this.
  - ck425 6y ago
    And that is horrible. But there are a lot of folk who feel lonely from WFH who are not like that. The comment was insulting because it implied that if you're lonely from working from home it must be because you lack a social life. You can have a thriving social life and still miss the social aspect of an office.
    - ryandrake 6y ago
      If you have a robust social / family life outside of work, and you are lonely now, it’s probably because of COVID stay-at-home and not because of WFH.
      - jlokier 6y ago
        I disagree, based on some of the other comments here and elsewhere. There are people for whom being stuck in their WFH area for 8 hours a day 5 days a week with no social interactions is very unpleasant, even if after work they have a robust social / family life. Some of them were reporting this doing WFH prior to Covid. The most amazing social life outside work won't compensate for that daily gap which occupies about half of their waking hours. Some people need more regular personal interactions throughout the day than that. On top of that, some people's work creativity or mental stimulation thrives on social interactions with colleagues in the same or related work domain. A social life with friends and family does not substitute for "work-oriented social interactions" with people who are grinding on the same kinds of problems, for example drinking buddies with whom you can discuss code. It doesn't really matter if these people are long term friends, as it's a different kind of stimulation.
- Jugurtha 6y ago
  >I don’t understand this comment, do you suggest all forms of social contacts are created equal and people should just replace the social interactions they used to have with co-workers by visiting their family more often, organizing more poker nights with friends or taking salsa classes or whatever? I don't understand this comment. Do you suggest all your family members and friends have lower value than your work colleagues and it's okay to let them suffer? Or are you saying that all unemployed people should suffer the consequences of not having coworkers? See what I did here? It's called a strawman argument. You didn't say that, but someone on the internet could easily do that to something you said and turn it into something you didn't say, write, or mean. What I am saying is that this pandemic is taking a toll on many people and has exposed crutches we relied on before COVID. What I'm also saying is that these give us hints on what we can try to improve.
  - ck425 6y ago
    And what other folk is saying is that enjoying socialising in the office isn't necessarily a crutch and that implying it is is insulting.
paul_f 6y ago
This is a bit unfair. Many people socialized with the bowling team, through their church, at school, as part of a volunteer organization, etc, that may have also all shut down because of COVID.
- joefife 6y ago
  Exactly. Before covid my life revolved around a cycling group, hiking groups, two running clubs. Now it's all be taken away.
  - learc83 6y ago
    You can’t go hiking where you live? Hiking is a very low risk activity.
    - paul_f 6y ago
      This is a discussion about socializing. A hike and a hiking group are different things. BTW, need to find a hiking group post COVID, that sounds like fun.
      - learc83 6y ago
        But a hiking group primarily socializes while hiking. A small group, social distancing outside is a very low risk activity that should allowed in most of the world outside periods of strict lockdowns. Maybe in the OP’s case it’s the kind of thing where you take a group bus to a trail, and that’s the problem.
        ghaff 6y ago
        The hiking group I normally lead for is having some trips but relatively few and nothing overnight. And, frankly, between the hassles and responsibility associated with leading right now (and following a bunch of protocols), carpooling problems, and just general concerns with being in a group of largely strangers, it's more trouble than it's worth. I have been hiking a couple of times with a few friends/friends of friends but mostly it's more comfortable to just go by myself.
xgb84j 6y ago
In my part of the world offices were the last places to shut down due to COVID and are still partially open. Losing social interactions at your workplace happened after heavy restrictions were placed on meeting friends, family and going anywhere except supermarkets. Maybe you are just lucky that the office is the only place where you lost regular social interactions.
franciscop 6y ago
Never thought of it that way and, while I strongly agree in general, 8h/day is a large chunk of our life. I can see how working alone at home vs with more people, even if you meet people after work, can be lonely for some! I normally cowork with friends around once-twice a week (I did the same before the pandemic!) but I'm lucky to live in a big city with lots of friends. Or maybe that is exactly your point? That now that people are freed from the office they can meet and work with friends?
Scarblac 6y ago
It's not so black and white. Regardless of my social life outside of work, I loved the job I have precisely because there are so many nice people I get to share fourty hours per week with. And I miss them.
- Jugurtha 6y ago
  It's far from being black and white, hence the effort to improve. What I said does in no way mean one does not love their job or miss their coworkers, it simply means there is a situation with problems that could give us pointers on what we can improve.
wdb 6y ago
Well, you can only meet your support bubble so many times. I have met my friend plenty of times but none of my other friends this year. But I am a high risk person
donatj 6y ago
I don’t follow. Why should where I spend the majority of my waking hours, the majority of my life in practical terms, not also be my primary source of socialization? I genuinely feel the opposite. Relying on your few off hours to satisfy your innate human need for socialization places an unhealthy demand on your off hours, not to mention an unfair demand on your friends and family. I am now forced to spend 8 hours a day in my home office not speaking to anyone other than Slack and the occasional Zoom and the loneliness is somehow my fault for not having an active enough social life to counteract this? What about rest and reflection? This is an infuriating argument. Humans were never intended to spend so much time alone, we’re social animals.
- singemonkey 6y ago
  > loneliness is somehow my fault I mean, yes. Who else are you going to blame for YOUR loneliness? If you're that lonely, talk to your many friends and arrange some co-working or something?
- WJW 6y ago
  > Humans were never intended Humans were never "intended" to catch deadly respiratory viruses either, but here we are. For that matter, neither were humans "intended" to work on computers. The situation is what it is and it seems naive to expect no changes to our lifestyle when the external circumstances have changed so drastically.
  - donatj 6y ago
    I’m not arguing that we should go back into the office. I’m arguing it’s ok to lament the loss of socialization while working, how you spend most of your time. There’s a pandemic, and I am lonely. I think the comment I was replying to blaming that on me not having good enough friends and family is both pointed and hurtful. I have a wonderful support system, and I am still lonely, particularly during the work day. > Humans were never "intended" to catch deadly respiratory viruses Strictly semantically speaking, I think billions of years of history disagree. I understand the point you’re trying to make, but respiratory diseases were here long before us, they’re a fact of the environment we were born into. There is no intent in that one way or the other.
shmel 6y ago
Awesome reasoning mate. I wish I could have any kind of life outside of work, but it is all shutdown now!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ck425 6y ago
I had a great social life outside of work but due to covid that's also disappeared. And even then I still miss specifically office socialising. I like knowing my colleagues and having a feeling of we're in this together. I like the random break chats throughout the day and meeting folk from other teams organically. I hate that the majority of my day now is just sitting at a desk alone talking to no one. It's perfectly valid to want socialisation from work, it's not necessarily caused by a poor social life outside of work.
ghaff 6y ago
One also has to wonder what "office life" will be like at the many companies where, even if things don't stay fully remote, a lot of people default to coming in a day or two a week. I fully expect a lot of workplaces will shift to being a place you come into in order to have meetings now and then for many. In addition, as many have noted, part of the loneliness problem that many are facing is only partly about offices. It's the fact that many other activities are foreclosed right now as well.
- tayo42 6y ago
  This is a good point, a lot of people are nostalgic for office life, but if those coworkers are never there what socializing are you going to be doing?
m_t 6y ago
> I had to point out that this was symptomatic of a poor social/family life [outside of work]. This is a symptom of being in a pandemic, where in many places you are forbidden or heavily discouraged to socialize. I've been working from home since March. This is not what normal working from home looks like, this is what working from home _during a pandemic_ looks like.

dang 6y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25168859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25168859.

w0utert 6y ago

I don’t understand this comment, do you suggest all forms of social contacts are created equal and people should just replace the social interactions they used to have with co-workers by visiting their family more often, organizing more poker nights with friends or taking salsa classes or whatever? That makes absolutely no sense, these interactions are completely different from those you would have with your co-workers, and it’s perfectly normal even for people with an otherwise active social life to miss those. My friends and family are almost universally incomparable to my coworkers in almost every way.

watwut 6y ago
But the truth is, for many people colleagues are the only people they regularly interact with. Especially people who work a lot have basically non existent or purely formal other relationships. They don't even know how to relate to people outside of job setting.
- Nursie 6y ago
  That's a sad thing for them. I wonder if the US long-hours culture contributes to this.
- ck425 6y ago
  And that is horrible. But there are a lot of folk who feel lonely from WFH who are not like that. The comment was insulting because it implied that if you're lonely from working from home it must be because you lack a social life. You can have a thriving social life and still miss the social aspect of an office.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    If you have a robust social / family life outside of work, and you are lonely now, it’s probably because of COVID stay-at-home and not because of WFH.
    - jlokier 6y ago
      I disagree, based on some of the other comments here and elsewhere. There are people for whom being stuck in their WFH area for 8 hours a day 5 days a week with no social interactions is very unpleasant, even if after work they have a robust social / family life. Some of them were reporting this doing WFH prior to Covid. The most amazing social life outside work won't compensate for that daily gap which occupies about half of their waking hours. Some people need more regular personal interactions throughout the day than that. On top of that, some people's work creativity or mental stimulation thrives on social interactions with colleagues in the same or related work domain. A social life with friends and family does not substitute for "work-oriented social interactions" with people who are grinding on the same kinds of problems, for example drinking buddies with whom you can discuss code. It doesn't really matter if these people are long term friends, as it's a different kind of stimulation.
Jugurtha 6y ago
>I don’t understand this comment, do you suggest all forms of social contacts are created equal and people should just replace the social interactions they used to have with co-workers by visiting their family more often, organizing more poker nights with friends or taking salsa classes or whatever? I don't understand this comment. Do you suggest all your family members and friends have lower value than your work colleagues and it's okay to let them suffer? Or are you saying that all unemployed people should suffer the consequences of not having coworkers? See what I did here? It's called a strawman argument. You didn't say that, but someone on the internet could easily do that to something you said and turn it into something you didn't say, write, or mean. What I am saying is that this pandemic is taking a toll on many people and has exposed crutches we relied on before COVID. What I'm also saying is that these give us hints on what we can try to improve.
- ck425 6y ago
  And what other folk is saying is that enjoying socialising in the office isn't necessarily a crutch and that implying it is is insulting.

paul_f 6y ago

This is a bit unfair. Many people socialized with the bowling team, through their church, at school, as part of a volunteer organization, etc, that may have also all shut down because of COVID.

joefife 6y ago
Exactly. Before covid my life revolved around a cycling group, hiking groups, two running clubs. Now it's all be taken away.
- learc83 6y ago
  You can’t go hiking where you live? Hiking is a very low risk activity.
  - paul_f 6y ago
    This is a discussion about socializing. A hike and a hiking group are different things. BTW, need to find a hiking group post COVID, that sounds like fun.
    - learc83 6y ago
      But a hiking group primarily socializes while hiking. A small group, social distancing outside is a very low risk activity that should allowed in most of the world outside periods of strict lockdowns. Maybe in the OP’s case it’s the kind of thing where you take a group bus to a trail, and that’s the problem.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        The hiking group I normally lead for is having some trips but relatively few and nothing overnight. And, frankly, between the hassles and responsibility associated with leading right now (and following a bunch of protocols), carpooling problems, and just general concerns with being in a group of largely strangers, it's more trouble than it's worth. I have been hiking a couple of times with a few friends/friends of friends but mostly it's more comfortable to just go by myself.

xgb84j 6y ago

In my part of the world offices were the last places to shut down due to COVID and are still partially open. Losing social interactions at your workplace happened after heavy restrictions were placed on meeting friends, family and going anywhere except supermarkets. Maybe you are just lucky that the office is the only place where you lost regular social interactions.

franciscop 6y ago

Never thought of it that way and, while I strongly agree in general, 8h/day is a large chunk of our life. I can see how working alone at home vs with more people, even if you meet people after work, can be lonely for some! I normally cowork with friends around once-twice a week (I did the same before the pandemic!) but I'm lucky to live in a big city with lots of friends. Or maybe that is exactly your point? That now that people are freed from the office they can meet and work with friends?

Scarblac 6y ago

It's not so black and white. Regardless of my social life outside of work, I loved the job I have precisely because there are so many nice people I get to share fourty hours per week with. And I miss them.

Jugurtha 6y ago
It's far from being black and white, hence the effort to improve. What I said does in no way mean one does not love their job or miss their coworkers, it simply means there is a situation with problems that could give us pointers on what we can improve.

wdb 6y ago

Well, you can only meet your support bubble so many times. I have met my friend plenty of times but none of my other friends this year. But I am a high risk person

donatj 6y ago

I don’t follow. Why should where I spend the majority of my waking hours, the majority of my life in practical terms, not also be my primary source of socialization? I genuinely feel the opposite. Relying on your few off hours to satisfy your innate human need for socialization places an unhealthy demand on your off hours, not to mention an unfair demand on your friends and family. I am now forced to spend 8 hours a day in my home office not speaking to anyone other than Slack and the occasional Zoom and the loneliness is somehow my fault for not having an active enough social life to counteract this? What about rest and reflection? This is an infuriating argument. Humans were never intended to spend so much time alone, we’re social animals.

singemonkey 6y ago
> loneliness is somehow my fault I mean, yes. Who else are you going to blame for YOUR loneliness? If you're that lonely, talk to your many friends and arrange some co-working or something?
WJW 6y ago
> Humans were never intended Humans were never "intended" to catch deadly respiratory viruses either, but here we are. For that matter, neither were humans "intended" to work on computers. The situation is what it is and it seems naive to expect no changes to our lifestyle when the external circumstances have changed so drastically.
- donatj 6y ago
  I’m not arguing that we should go back into the office. I’m arguing it’s ok to lament the loss of socialization while working, how you spend most of your time. There’s a pandemic, and I am lonely. I think the comment I was replying to blaming that on me not having good enough friends and family is both pointed and hurtful. I have a wonderful support system, and I am still lonely, particularly during the work day. > Humans were never "intended" to catch deadly respiratory viruses Strictly semantically speaking, I think billions of years of history disagree. I understand the point you’re trying to make, but respiratory diseases were here long before us, they’re a fact of the environment we were born into. There is no intent in that one way or the other.

shmel 6y ago

Awesome reasoning mate. I wish I could have any kind of life outside of work, but it is all shutdown now!

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ck425 6y ago

I had a great social life outside of work but due to covid that's also disappeared. And even then I still miss specifically office socialising. I like knowing my colleagues and having a feeling of we're in this together. I like the random break chats throughout the day and meeting folk from other teams organically. I hate that the majority of my day now is just sitting at a desk alone talking to no one. It's perfectly valid to want socialisation from work, it's not necessarily caused by a poor social life outside of work.

ghaff 6y ago

One also has to wonder what "office life" will be like at the many companies where, even if things don't stay fully remote, a lot of people default to coming in a day or two a week. I fully expect a lot of workplaces will shift to being a place you come into in order to have meetings now and then for many. In addition, as many have noted, part of the loneliness problem that many are facing is only partly about offices. It's the fact that many other activities are foreclosed right now as well.

tayo42 6y ago
This is a good point, a lot of people are nostalgic for office life, but if those coworkers are never there what socializing are you going to be doing?

m_t 6y ago

> I had to point out that this was symptomatic of a poor social/family life [outside of work]. This is a symptom of being in a pandemic, where in many places you are forbidden or heavily discouraged to socialize. I've been working from home since March. This is not what normal working from home looks like, this is what working from home _during a pandemic_ looks like.