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Americans are returning to cities after remote-work exodus, data shows
- rockzom 4y agoCapitulation
- voisin 4y agoTurns out we didn’t all change at our core humanity. By and large, we like to be with other people.
- analognoise 4y agoExactly. Going remote, I spend way more time with people that actually matter.
- betaby 4y agoCan it be explained by simple population growth? Asking from Canada - we are growing at the rate +1M/year.
- xkqd 4y agoThe article does go on to say it’s probably immigration related.
- Gigachad 4y agoI got to the end of last year and decided I can’t take remote work anymore. I hate video calls. I hate MS Teams. I hate sitting at home alone every day. I missed going out after work on a Friday with coworkers. I missed shit talking with people at lunch. Decided to pack up my stuff and move to the city. I now come in to the office every day and it’s improved my mood so much. There is so much joy from getting on the train every morning and hearing the chatter. Then walking in to the office and getting to work with real people instead of feeling like an automation in a box churning through jira tickets. In a few weeks I got to know the people I work with better than the 2 years I had been interacting with them on Teams. Remote work is convenient for odd cases like having an appointment mid day, but for the vast majority of the time, I want to work with and talk to people in person. Almost every day I see comments here ridiculing the idea that someone might enjoy the presence of their coworkers. This is just not the reality everyone lives in.
- prepend 4y agoFor me the choice was teams meetings all day from the office or the same from home, saving myself the commute. I interact with people outside of work so remote work doesn’t have a sense of isolation for me. I have lunch with people almost every day, just they aren’t coworkers. And I save lots of money on the commute, not to mention environmental impact. I’m glad you like the change, but not everyone does.
- Gigachad 4y agoSitting in the office on calls all day is pointless, I agree. Personally I'm at the point where unless you are particularly important, I will not get on a call with you. If you want my help, come walk to my desk and talk to me. Otherwise I might reply to an email when I feel like it.
- redandblack 4y agoFor me best thing to happen is the remote working - team mates are in UK and India, and I am in NY. Works well. I catch up with others monthly which works well
- xkqd 4y ago> I interact with people outside of work Ding ding ding. I think this right here is the key. It was eye opening to learn how few of my coworkers had anyone outside of work. It’s heartbreaking but clearly a burning epidemic. I also learned how many of my coworkers prioritized being in the office every day of the week over working at home with their spouses and/or children. I can’t get over that in particular. It’s none of my business, but nonetheless it angers me.
- yt-sdb 4y agoWell, I have lots of friends and interactions outside of work, but I still prefer going into the office. Personally, I think what makes people happy is a multidimensional surface with lots of peaks and valleys. Univariate explanations are reductive.
- Barrin92 4y agoevery time there's some temporary exogenous shock there's always the same wave of "certainly this is the end of XY" predictions. The entire globe is urbanizing, regardless of country or culture. It's such a strong secular trend and the economic and cultural gravitational pull of urban areas is so strong that people en masse moving to the countryside is a very obvious fantasy. and saying it right now for the future, the Bay Area is going to continue to be the overwhelming center of tech in the US and nope, everyone's not going to move to Austin.
- randomdata 4y agoWhile you are right about increasing urbanization, prior to the pandemic there was clear movement away from large cities into small urban areas. That is what seemed to accelerate during the pandemic. I’m not sure that some kind of push to truly rural living was ever really on the docket. Leaving the city doesn’t have to mean living in the wilderness. There is quite a bit in between. A town with 2,000 people is deemed urban.
- geodel 4y agoYeah and Detroit is going to continue to be the hub of Auto industry and Pittsburgh is going to continue to be the hub of Steel industry.
- imbusy111 4y agoOk, so the pendulum is swinging in the other direction, balance is being restored. Young people need to be with other young people in dense cities, where they can meet each other. As a 33 year-old with a family, going back to the city would be dreadful for me.
- ajdude 4y agoAs a 33-year-old with no family, I'm happy to finally have a chance to go back in the office again.
- xkqd 4y agoRight, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine you would be happier to have a family outside the concrete jungle. At that point, you would do everything in your power to flip this. I get it’s a bit over the line for me to make that assumption, but I think it’s probably a safe one.
- goatlover 4y agoWhy do you make those assumptions? Lots of people prefer big city life, and some people prefer not having a family. Marriage and children aren't for everyone. That's never been a universal thing. And people have always flocked to the cities, not just for job opportunities, but because cities offer a lot of other activities and services, in addition to all the networking opportunities.
- Nursie 4y agoLots of people without kids are happy with remote work as well though. It’s not some family/childfree divide.
- re-thc 4y agoNor does it have to do with age. The mantra that young people prefer the office or juniors can't learn being remote is just sad. Perhaps it is companies that lack documentation, training material or proper onboarding. Office feels like a lazy excuse to skip a bunch of things.
- cglan 4y agoKind of a rant, but if you hang out on places like Reddit, sometimes it feels like the whole world has crippling social anxiety and hates people. In real life, everyone seems to be craving human interaction. It’s sad sometimes. Being afraid to have small talk with people isn’t introversion, it’s a mental problem. Places like NYC have completely popped off again and I think we’ll see more and more demand for walkable social areas
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago> Being afraid to have small talk with people isn’t introversion, it’s a mental problem. It's a societal problem. Too many people invade our attention constantly to try and sell us something, whether that be a product or service, a fad, or political bullshit. We have necessarily become defensive about people invading our attention uninvited.
- DangitBobby 4y agoI doubt people not liking small talk is a recent development. It's probably not fair to call it a mental problem, but the crippling anxiety some people experience around phone calls and simple conversations are absolutely mental problems and have nothing to do with advertisments.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y agoI used to be afraid of phone calls. I think I'm pretty much over it now. Not entirely sure what got me over it, probably joining a large company and being bombarded with 100s of people and meetings non stop. Eventually you stop worrying.
- re-thc 4y agoAgree with the other commenter that "small talk" has always been a problem. Just as a courtesy and trying to keep up with work appearances do many keep it up. Way before remote but outside of work in-person and in forums there have been lots of rants on "small talk". It's also very robotic. Small talk never want real responses. Oh like when you begin the conversation with "How was your day?" and the expectation is to say "fine thanks" or similar? What's the point? Are you sure everyone hates people or just those requesting things like "small talk" are the problem?
- xkqd 4y agoThe article doesn’t take an ounce of oxygen to mention it, but how many people are being forced back to the office or city for risk of losing their jobs? I’m not giving an ounce of fucking credit when people are having their livelihoods threatened because the incestious controlling boards want their CMBS values to go back up and pump the value of their other investments in the city.
- RestlessMind 4y agoHow many people left urban areas for rural in the first place? I guess very little. Most of the migration was towards suburbs or cheaper cities.
- acchow 4y agoSeems to me everyone is craving human interaction, but they have gotten so comfortable being at home all the time, they forgot how to muster the energy to get out of the home
- bilbo0s 4y agoMight be more the case that they have no one to get out of the home with? I think what this data actually shows is that there are many people out there who strongly desire to know and hang out with people who are neither family nor co-workers. It's hard to get the opportunities to do that if you aren't in a city. If they could do that in the rural areas or the butbs, they probably would. But rural areas have far fewer people. And the burbs are not set up for chance encounters. The burbs are more setup for planned encounters. Which brings you back to the original problem of finding someone to plan an encounter with. :(
- re-thc 4y agoThis might be a problem with the US? In lots of other places e.g. in Asian cities you don't need anyone. There are so many events, attractions, opportunities etc happening just by strolling the streets. It's lively. Everything is walkable and accessible. Public transport is easy.
- DangitBobby 4y agoI agree, but I don't think my friends would be any more likely to have enough energy to hang out if they were forced to return to the office.
- geodel 4y agoGood. It did create a panic in heart and mind of folks for a moment who proclaim there will only be two kind of people in the world 1) Those who already live in the city and 2) Those who will move to city soon.
- stn_za 4y agoSome of the comments here...wow. If you crave human interaction, here's a thought: "Go outside". You don't need to go to work to meet other humans.
- rmk 4y agoNot practical, if you spend the majority of your waking hours working, as most Americans do. But having interactions outside of work is also important, and this is where 'go outside' would be helpful.
- stn_za 4y agoGo work from a coffee shop or something then.
- tiedieconderoga 4y agoThat's what I thought when I was 20, but social interactions don't happen by osmosis. Walking up to a stranger in a coffee shop and talking to them is actually quite strange, especially if everyone there is working. You're better off with shared interest groups: exercise clubs, hobbies, that sort of thing. It's like the social parts of work, but you don't get paid for it and you don't have to leave when you move to a new job. You can even go out as a group in the evenings after the activity ends if you want to, just like work!
- re-thc 4y ago> but social interactions don't happen by osmosis Nor do they happen by going to the office (except for fake forced 1s out of courtesy or to try and fit in). If it happens it happens office or not.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoDifferent strokes for different folks. Most of my friends are people I met at work, and I have 10x as much fun in person. My preference is for office work with like minded individuals, so I am fine with the current push to fire remote workers. They can find a different company with a culture they prefer. Live and let live.
- mkolodny 4y agoI moved back to SF in 2021 after living outside Yosemite (in Mariposa) for a year. There've been ups and downs.
- porcoda 4y agoSeems odd to me to group places like NY and SF together solely based on the second derivative of their population. If one has bounced back and restarted growth, while the other continues to shrink, just less rapidly, you can’t say they’re comparable. Regrowth vs slowed shrinkage are different things, even if they look similar by calculus.
- voicedYoda 4y agoI live in a big city in the USA, and i truly hate being forced into an office. I have tons of outside activities, hobbies, community involvements, and commuting is a waste of time to be in someone else's environment, getting constantly interrupted, not having the ergonomics I've spent decades learning to have, and enabling my context switching when necessary. I'm fine with the occasional on site collaboration and camaraderie are fine, but every week? No. I'm productive because I'm a professional.
- xchip 4y agoSure, and they are returning to the offices.... Yet another sponsored article trying to set a trend.
- waselighis 4y agoThe amount of projection in these remote vs in-office discussions is staggering. Just because you have a preference doesn't mean you should expect everyone else to have the same preference. Some people like going into the office everyday, others like working from home everyday, and everything else in-between. There may be other factors at play as well. Maybe a person would like to go into the office more often, but they don't want to live in the city or make a long commute everyday. Maybe their particular office is very boring and quiet, or maybe it's loud and distracting and overstimulating. Maybe you get along great with your coworkers, or maybe your coworkers are intolerable and you can't stand being around them. Some people have crafted the perfect home office for themselves, and others may not have space for a home office. It's very much a matter of personal taste, but there could also be many other factors at play. Point is, what works for one person doesn't work for everyone.
- genman 4y agoCorrection: are forced to return to cities.