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Currently in crisis because I simply can't handle communication in remote work. For something I do for the majority of my working day, I feel devoid of human in

Currently in crisis because I simply can't handle communication in remote work. For something I do for the majority of my working day, I feel devoid of human interaction to such an extent that it's massively affecting my mental health. I regularly find myself clock-watching until the next time I can talk to someone because everyone is always busy - there are no water coolers or coffee breaks to stitch in between. Even if you create the virtual coffee break and have a chat with people, often we're pushed to abandon it - presumably because it's flipped from an opportunistic (oh, we're all of the phone, let's go grab a coffee) to a scheduled event which a) gets dropped and b) doesn't naturally recur.

rcarmo 3y ago
Do more 1:1s. You'll have to chase some things piecemeal across two to three people, but you'll soon figure out who actually owns a topic and be able to have more in-depth conversations.
freeone3000 3y ago
Take your own breaks. Hang out with friends. Take a lunch. Your officemates do not have to be your end-all of social interaction :)
dpz 3y ago
find the social outside of work? Work has always been work for me and nothing more, not really looking for socialising. In fairness I've been fully remote for 10 years but I see friends during the day for coffees, lunch, exercise. And then multiple sports clubs in the evenings
- DiggyJohnson 3y ago
  I have a great social life outside of work and still felt the same as GP during the remote work day. And I'm pretty reserved at work, not known for bothering people incessantly.
- whateverman23 3y ago
  > Work has always been work for me and nothing more, not really looking for socialising. But work is 40-50 hours of my week. That's a HUGE portion of my life. Almost half my waking hours are at work. (7x16=112 waking hours a week. 35-45% of it at work). Not taking time to socialize during that period is draining as hell for me. I guess what I'm trying to say is you're way overestimating the percentage of people who can go to work and just... work. Most people need the socialization.
  - hahn-kev 3y ago
    Sounds like WFH isn't for you then.
    - whateverman23 3y ago
      That's... my point. WFH isn't for a lot of people. And there are factions who say stuff like "Just get a hobby dude!" as if that fixes anything.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    Outside of just cutting WFH, alternatives are to work in places where there's people: libraries, co-working spaces, co-working coffees etc. You'll have no commitment to come everyday, have people to talk to, and still hopefully be close enough to home to get back anytime you need pure calm or a full dedicated environment. To note, for many people WFH means their family is around one door away, which makes it a widely different experience from people living alone.
sublinear 3y ago
Send your DMs when people are on "busy" status anyway. They can respond later. That's the huge advantage of remote work. Async communication is so much more efficient. If you're watching the clock, there's something wrong.
- hext 3y ago
  Async communication is not even remotely close to socializing, and hardly feels like genuine human interaction.
  - dinvlad 3y ago
    Work != socializing. Quality work requires deep concentration over long stretches of time, not tapping on a shoulder at random intervals. Both IRL and virtually.
    - tenacious_tuna 3y ago
      I keep seeing people say this, but I always sympathize with others who lament the lack of socialization that comes with remote work. I have several engineering friends, and myself, who all have gone full remote and are starting to go a little insane from feeling lonely all the time. "Just socialize outside of work!" seems to be everyone's go-to response, totally missing how much time is taken up by the 8+ hours of the workday, and how much ambient socialization has been lost with that time now spent remote. Sure, remote is more convenient for "deep work", but I honestly never had issues with that in-office: If I had my headphones on, people didn't bother me. If I had questions, I'd take them off and look around to see if anyone else was "surfaced" to talk to, or ping someone on slack. In the meantime I could kill time chatting with my team or going for a walk around the building--when I would inevitably find someone else from another team who was taking a break, and I could either ask them or just chat. Now it's just me, in my apartment, all day, except for maybe standup. The only reliable face-to-face human interaction I have is my partner when they come home from work--and they're usually exhausted and ready to go to bed in an hour. Work absolutely used to be a significant portion of socialization--just like going to classes used to be, in college or secondary school. We've absolutely lost that.
DiggyJohnson 3y ago
I had this issue and the only way I could solve it was moving to a primarily in-office company. This was the best thing I ever did for my mental health. Not trying to start a big debate over the whole issue, but just sharing that I felt very similarly to you ("massively affecting my mental health") and that it was solved by doing the obvious: going back to the office. No amount of socializing outside of work or hobbies or 1:1s during the workday sufficed for me.
- charlie0 3y ago
  It would be interesting to see what happens when all the extroverts self select for in office work and introverts self select for wfh.
  - nvarsj 3y ago
    I did the same as DiggyJohnson. And I'm introverted. Even introverts need human connection and interaction. And in my experience, being in an office is easier for an introvert. Being 100% remote for several years was terrible for my mental health. As to why... well, a lot of it was precisely because I'm introverted. As an introvert, it's a lot more draining to do the explicit communication required to work remote effectively. Maybe 10% of people can work effectively over written comms. As a lead, I had to schedule zoom calls and make explicit face to face time to make any of it work. In an office setting, this happens more naturally and is a lot easier. On top of that, I found at a 100% remote company it seems more common for people issues to happen. When you are only interacting over text most of the time, misunderstandings seem to happen more often. I found it very draining to fix these issues. It was much harder than if we had been in an office together, where we could just have a quick chat and fix sensitive topics. It's also more obvious in an office setting when this stuff happens and so you can sort it faster.
    - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
      Well said, I appreciate you sharing this. I consider myself almost completely neutral on the extrovert / introvert scale, but when it comes to this topic, there’s a lot of spurious assumptions made about the type of person that prefers to be in office. It strikes me as caricature.
swozey 3y ago
My team is incredibly quiet on slack and I find it pretty frustrating. We're under 10 people so I don't expect constant chat but it's not uncommon for our guild channel to have a day go by with no messages. I try to keep it alive by posting interesting articles, updates and tools and things like that and that sometimes drums up some conversation but it's rare that my teammates do the same thing. I'm not sure if I'm more passionate about tech, more extroverted, more obsessed with improving processes or just less busy than them. It's been like this at multiple companies I've been at so it's not unique to my current team. And I'm clearly the outlier. I just try to not take it personally and keep going. I feel like I post really cool things, especially new tools/repos/projects that benefit everyone to the void sometimes.
- nickstinemates 3y ago
  > I'm not sure if I'm more passionate about tech, more extroverted, more obsessed with improving processes or just less busy than them. It's been like this at multiple companies I've been at so it's not unique to my current team. It's none of these things. I am the same way but we are the minority.
- bluefishinit 3y ago
  > I try to keep it alive by posting interesting articles, updates and tools and things like that and that sometimes drums up some conversation but it's rare that my teammates do the same thing. It's a lot of work to read articles when people post them or evaluate a tool. It's even more work to form an interesting opinion about it and discuss it. I enjoy researching things on my own time, but I find it stressful to add to my workload at work, especially when it's not related to the other work I'm already doing.
- charlie0 3y ago
  I sympathize. You're the person who does this because they love it and sees room for improvement everywhere. Unfortunately, most people are not like that. I know because I've been in a few teams and it's rare to find the person who is seeking constant improvement. Most get to just good enough and stop there. It's fine. It is what it is.
hypeit 3y ago
I have to admit as someone who enjoys WFH and would never work in an office again, that having co-workers like you is one of the main reasons. You should work on not relying so much on others. You may be benefiting from all that social "charging up", but you're taking that from the person on the other side of the conversation. I work to make money, not to fill someone's social void. You'll be happier if you explore the root cause of your issue and get a little more comfortable with yourself.
- jensensbutton 3y ago
  I mean, they can just as easily tell you to deal with in-person. This isn't a particularly useful contribution imo.
- DiggyJohnson 3y ago
  They're not referring to socializing with you, per se. I see this mistake made all the time in these discussions. Many just prefer to be around other people, myself included. They're not necessarily the caricature of the "overly social office mate that needs to find friends outside of work" that you are implying. I really think you're overassuming your knowledge of the person you're responding to.
  - paulcole 3y ago
    It’s not a mistake. People who are pro-WFH are so dogmatic about it (and so protective of their “right” to WFH) that they intentionally reduce anyone who prefers working in an office to somebody with no social life.
    - spookthesunset 3y ago
      Many of them bought homes way out in the boondocks assuming this covid remote crap would never end…
      - paulcole 3y ago
        Yeah, and? That gives them the right to put down anyone who likes working in an office by calling them an anti-social loser? Every decision has consequences. Anybody who thought “covid remote crap would never end” is either way more optimistic or way more pessimistic than I am.
avg_dev 3y ago
i had the same problem. i solved it by becoming much more social in my non-work parts of life.
JohnMakin 3y ago
This is why I went back to the office, but it took me a very long time to realize it. Try to exercise a lot during the day, it helps.
theduder99 3y ago
If its affecting your mental health so much, perhaps you should change jobs.
j-bos 3y ago
I have a friend who often works alone for extended periods of time in isolated locations and loves being with people. Similar to your situation, but more outdoorsy. His solution is having an open phone line, just have a call going and occasionally saying things, chatting, joking, etc, or not. Sometimes it's real quiet for long stretches, but it's less lonely. I'm a quiet guy, and even I enjoy being on those calls.
spookthesunset 3y ago
Welcome to my world. You aren’t alone. Remote work absolutely ruined my career… I really hope what shakes out is some places are all in on the office and some are all in on remote. None of this dithering crap that came post 2020
liveoneggs 3y ago
What did you want to talk about?

rcarmo 3y ago

Do more 1:1s. You'll have to chase some things piecemeal across two to three people, but you'll soon figure out who actually owns a topic and be able to have more in-depth conversations.

freeone3000 3y ago

Take your own breaks. Hang out with friends. Take a lunch. Your officemates do not have to be your end-all of social interaction :)

dpz 3y ago

find the social outside of work? Work has always been work for me and nothing more, not really looking for socialising. In fairness I've been fully remote for 10 years but I see friends during the day for coffees, lunch, exercise. And then multiple sports clubs in the evenings

DiggyJohnson 3y ago
I have a great social life outside of work and still felt the same as GP during the remote work day. And I'm pretty reserved at work, not known for bothering people incessantly.
whateverman23 3y ago
> Work has always been work for me and nothing more, not really looking for socialising. But work is 40-50 hours of my week. That's a HUGE portion of my life. Almost half my waking hours are at work. (7x16=112 waking hours a week. 35-45% of it at work). Not taking time to socialize during that period is draining as hell for me. I guess what I'm trying to say is you're way overestimating the percentage of people who can go to work and just... work. Most people need the socialization.
- hahn-kev 3y ago
  Sounds like WFH isn't for you then.
  - whateverman23 3y ago
    That's... my point. WFH isn't for a lot of people. And there are factions who say stuff like "Just get a hobby dude!" as if that fixes anything.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  Outside of just cutting WFH, alternatives are to work in places where there's people: libraries, co-working spaces, co-working coffees etc. You'll have no commitment to come everyday, have people to talk to, and still hopefully be close enough to home to get back anytime you need pure calm or a full dedicated environment. To note, for many people WFH means their family is around one door away, which makes it a widely different experience from people living alone.

sublinear 3y ago

Send your DMs when people are on "busy" status anyway. They can respond later. That's the huge advantage of remote work. Async communication is so much more efficient. If you're watching the clock, there's something wrong.

hext 3y ago
Async communication is not even remotely close to socializing, and hardly feels like genuine human interaction.
- dinvlad 3y ago
  Work != socializing. Quality work requires deep concentration over long stretches of time, not tapping on a shoulder at random intervals. Both IRL and virtually.
  - tenacious_tuna 3y ago
    I keep seeing people say this, but I always sympathize with others who lament the lack of socialization that comes with remote work. I have several engineering friends, and myself, who all have gone full remote and are starting to go a little insane from feeling lonely all the time. "Just socialize outside of work!" seems to be everyone's go-to response, totally missing how much time is taken up by the 8+ hours of the workday, and how much ambient socialization has been lost with that time now spent remote. Sure, remote is more convenient for "deep work", but I honestly never had issues with that in-office: If I had my headphones on, people didn't bother me. If I had questions, I'd take them off and look around to see if anyone else was "surfaced" to talk to, or ping someone on slack. In the meantime I could kill time chatting with my team or going for a walk around the building--when I would inevitably find someone else from another team who was taking a break, and I could either ask them or just chat. Now it's just me, in my apartment, all day, except for maybe standup. The only reliable face-to-face human interaction I have is my partner when they come home from work--and they're usually exhausted and ready to go to bed in an hour. Work absolutely used to be a significant portion of socialization--just like going to classes used to be, in college or secondary school. We've absolutely lost that.

DiggyJohnson 3y ago

I had this issue and the only way I could solve it was moving to a primarily in-office company. This was the best thing I ever did for my mental health. Not trying to start a big debate over the whole issue, but just sharing that I felt very similarly to you ("massively affecting my mental health") and that it was solved by doing the obvious: going back to the office. No amount of socializing outside of work or hobbies or 1:1s during the workday sufficed for me.

charlie0 3y ago
It would be interesting to see what happens when all the extroverts self select for in office work and introverts self select for wfh.
- nvarsj 3y ago
  I did the same as DiggyJohnson. And I'm introverted. Even introverts need human connection and interaction. And in my experience, being in an office is easier for an introvert. Being 100% remote for several years was terrible for my mental health. As to why... well, a lot of it was precisely because I'm introverted. As an introvert, it's a lot more draining to do the explicit communication required to work remote effectively. Maybe 10% of people can work effectively over written comms. As a lead, I had to schedule zoom calls and make explicit face to face time to make any of it work. In an office setting, this happens more naturally and is a lot easier. On top of that, I found at a 100% remote company it seems more common for people issues to happen. When you are only interacting over text most of the time, misunderstandings seem to happen more often. I found it very draining to fix these issues. It was much harder than if we had been in an office together, where we could just have a quick chat and fix sensitive topics. It's also more obvious in an office setting when this stuff happens and so you can sort it faster.
  - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
    Well said, I appreciate you sharing this. I consider myself almost completely neutral on the extrovert / introvert scale, but when it comes to this topic, there’s a lot of spurious assumptions made about the type of person that prefers to be in office. It strikes me as caricature.

swozey 3y ago

My team is incredibly quiet on slack and I find it pretty frustrating. We're under 10 people so I don't expect constant chat but it's not uncommon for our guild channel to have a day go by with no messages. I try to keep it alive by posting interesting articles, updates and tools and things like that and that sometimes drums up some conversation but it's rare that my teammates do the same thing. I'm not sure if I'm more passionate about tech, more extroverted, more obsessed with improving processes or just less busy than them. It's been like this at multiple companies I've been at so it's not unique to my current team. And I'm clearly the outlier. I just try to not take it personally and keep going. I feel like I post really cool things, especially new tools/repos/projects that benefit everyone to the void sometimes.

nickstinemates 3y ago
> I'm not sure if I'm more passionate about tech, more extroverted, more obsessed with improving processes or just less busy than them. It's been like this at multiple companies I've been at so it's not unique to my current team. It's none of these things. I am the same way but we are the minority.
bluefishinit 3y ago
> I try to keep it alive by posting interesting articles, updates and tools and things like that and that sometimes drums up some conversation but it's rare that my teammates do the same thing. It's a lot of work to read articles when people post them or evaluate a tool. It's even more work to form an interesting opinion about it and discuss it. I enjoy researching things on my own time, but I find it stressful to add to my workload at work, especially when it's not related to the other work I'm already doing.
charlie0 3y ago
I sympathize. You're the person who does this because they love it and sees room for improvement everywhere. Unfortunately, most people are not like that. I know because I've been in a few teams and it's rare to find the person who is seeking constant improvement. Most get to just good enough and stop there. It's fine. It is what it is.

hypeit 3y ago

I have to admit as someone who enjoys WFH and would never work in an office again, that having co-workers like you is one of the main reasons. You should work on not relying so much on others. You may be benefiting from all that social "charging up", but you're taking that from the person on the other side of the conversation. I work to make money, not to fill someone's social void. You'll be happier if you explore the root cause of your issue and get a little more comfortable with yourself.

jensensbutton 3y ago
I mean, they can just as easily tell you to deal with in-person. This isn't a particularly useful contribution imo.
DiggyJohnson 3y ago
They're not referring to socializing with you, per se. I see this mistake made all the time in these discussions. Many just prefer to be around other people, myself included. They're not necessarily the caricature of the "overly social office mate that needs to find friends outside of work" that you are implying. I really think you're overassuming your knowledge of the person you're responding to.
- paulcole 3y ago
  It’s not a mistake. People who are pro-WFH are so dogmatic about it (and so protective of their “right” to WFH) that they intentionally reduce anyone who prefers working in an office to somebody with no social life.
  - spookthesunset 3y ago
    Many of them bought homes way out in the boondocks assuming this covid remote crap would never end…
    - paulcole 3y ago
      Yeah, and? That gives them the right to put down anyone who likes working in an office by calling them an anti-social loser? Every decision has consequences. Anybody who thought “covid remote crap would never end” is either way more optimistic or way more pessimistic than I am.

avg_dev 3y ago

i had the same problem. i solved it by becoming much more social in my non-work parts of life.

JohnMakin 3y ago

This is why I went back to the office, but it took me a very long time to realize it. Try to exercise a lot during the day, it helps.

theduder99 3y ago

If its affecting your mental health so much, perhaps you should change jobs.

j-bos 3y ago

I have a friend who often works alone for extended periods of time in isolated locations and loves being with people. Similar to your situation, but more outdoorsy. His solution is having an open phone line, just have a call going and occasionally saying things, chatting, joking, etc, or not. Sometimes it's real quiet for long stretches, but it's less lonely. I'm a quiet guy, and even I enjoy being on those calls.

spookthesunset 3y ago

Welcome to my world. You aren’t alone. Remote work absolutely ruined my career… I really hope what shakes out is some places are all in on the office and some are all in on remote. None of this dithering crap that came post 2020

liveoneggs 3y ago

What did you want to talk about?