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Someone in my extended family used to do remote tech support/call center type stuff for Apple around 10 years ago, before WFH was popular. WFH was a huge draw f

Someone in my extended family used to do remote tech support/call center type stuff for Apple around 10 years ago, before WFH was popular. WFH was a huge draw for her because it allowed her to stay in a small rural town (75 min from a medium sized city, 30m from a small city) with her extended family, and easily balance her job around caring for her household. I agree with your sentiment in general, that there are benefits to in-person work that we lose with WFH. But at least for her, WFH represented a no-compromise way of working. Her other options were don't work, work a local job that would likely pay at or barely above minimum wage, have a long commute to the medium sized city, or move away from her very close-knit family. Social support from coworkers was not a consideration compared to these things. Culturally I think the idea of having a loose social network from your job is actually a pretty recent thing for most of society. Of course there have been professional organizations for millenia, but until the industrial/agricultural revolutions work for most people was done within the family. People can adjust back to spending more time with their family and local community, and less with extra-familiar coworkers. Long term, I don't think people will become more lonely from WFH - a lot of the loneliness issues were likely due to the abrupt transition to WFH due to COVID coupled with COVID-related social restrictions.

azinman2 4y ago
The ability for remote people to either work at all or get something higher paid I counted as obvious benefits in my original comment. The concept of a company maybe relatively recent in humanity, but that doesn’t mean the social bonds with it are something worth throwing away, and given modern society is organized around it, with it will come a lot of loneliness. We don’t have a culture in the US that values community for the most part, with exceptions obviously. Hell, one of two parties does nothing but call half of the US the biggest threat and enemy to the country. This isn’t an environment to grow ties in.
- lumost 4y ago
  > Hell, one of two parties does nothing but call half of the US the biggest threat and enemy to the country. This isn’t an environment to grow ties in. I honestly couldn’t tell which party you were referring to. Which likely speaks to the extreme nature of the current divide. Fortunately most local community groups are not tightly aligned with political groups - however there are obvious exceptions to this along with regional biases.
lolinder 4y ago
> Long term, I don't think people will become more lonely from WFH - a lot of the loneliness issues were likely due to the abrupt transition to WFH due to COVID coupled with COVID-related social restrictions. Agreed. It's not just COVID—the other reason for the loneliness is because so many people have adopted a historically unprecedented way of living. We've severed ties with our families and with the people we live near in favor of forming our critical relationships around our careers. I hope we'll see over the coming years a return to an older, family- and neighborhood-centric way of life. This would require restoring or reinventing institutions that are currently dying or dead, but the result would be healthier than tying our social lives to corporations.

azinman2 4y ago

The ability for remote people to either work at all or get something higher paid I counted as obvious benefits in my original comment. The concept of a company maybe relatively recent in humanity, but that doesn’t mean the social bonds with it are something worth throwing away, and given modern society is organized around it, with it will come a lot of loneliness. We don’t have a culture in the US that values community for the most part, with exceptions obviously. Hell, one of two parties does nothing but call half of the US the biggest threat and enemy to the country. This isn’t an environment to grow ties in.

lumost 4y ago
> Hell, one of two parties does nothing but call half of the US the biggest threat and enemy to the country. This isn’t an environment to grow ties in. I honestly couldn’t tell which party you were referring to. Which likely speaks to the extreme nature of the current divide. Fortunately most local community groups are not tightly aligned with political groups - however there are obvious exceptions to this along with regional biases.

lolinder 4y ago

> Long term, I don't think people will become more lonely from WFH - a lot of the loneliness issues were likely due to the abrupt transition to WFH due to COVID coupled with COVID-related social restrictions. Agreed. It's not just COVID—the other reason for the loneliness is because so many people have adopted a historically unprecedented way of living. We've severed ties with our families and with the people we live near in favor of forming our critical relationships around our careers. I hope we'll see over the coming years a return to an older, family- and neighborhood-centric way of life. This would require restoring or reinventing institutions that are currently dying or dead, but the result would be healthier than tying our social lives to corporations.