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Comment by jonheller | Hacker News Reader

I consider myself, without doubt, to be an introvert. I hate parties with a passion, and am perfectly happy in my own head compared to even hanging out with a good friend.

But I hated working at home. The isolation was terrible, not to mention the challenges of working on project teams (even with Slack etc). I felt lonely and less motivated.

It is funny though, because my wife is the opposite of me on the social scale. She loves groups of people and social interaction. And yet she's fine working at home. Part of this I think is because she very much goes into her own world when working with how focused she becomes, so she doesn't even notice the isolation.

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There may be an interesting dichotomy here:

Your wife might be very social. Perhaps working at home gives her a respite from all of that social interaction, helping her to focus more. Some people struggle to focus and deal with interruptions in office settings.

You being an introvert may struggle to commute and form bonds remotely. You may feel like you read people better and connect better in person.

Now imagine there was something here that applied to more people. What it would mean is that smart managers should look to give workers environments that maximize their work and personality styles.

I'm with you in regards to how my mind responds to working from home (not well).

Humans evolved as social animals. Everything we've always done has been in groups. When you are growing up, you spend most of your waking time in the company of other people (school). The ones who don't, who are homeschooled alone, turn out "weird". Until the modern advent of telecommunications, working has meant being physically collocated with other people. Spending most of your waking hours alone at home is an unusual thing to do; we're not adapted for it, and it's tough.

100% telecommuting doesn't work for a lot of people, maybe even the majority of people. It definitely doesn't work for me. Coworking spaces are one solution, but I only have a short commute anyway, so I'm just going to go into the real office.

You talk about how your mind works, but then make generalizations based on that, even saying "it doesn't work for a lot of people". You're generalizing and stereotyping based on your own feelings and thoughts about how humans work. I especially take issue with your assertion that people turn out "weird" in relation to homeschooling.

I'm an introvert. I wasn't home schooled. But extroverts think I'm weird because like the OP, I don't enjoy social events with people who aren;'t my friends, I don't enjoy large groups, and after a long day of work I just want to be home with my family or alone in silence to recharge. There are lots of people like me. The "weird" you see? Probably just different than what you're used to.

The approach should be that if you want to work remotely, you should. And if it doesn't work for you, then you should go to an office. We shouldn't force whole groups of humans to do things they are uncomfortable doing. You shouldn't be forced to isolate yourself if that doesn't work, but you shouldn't force me into sitting in an office when I could do the exact same job remotely and be more secure and comfortable.

And neither one of us should call the other "weird" for feeling that way.

Humans being social animals isn't just some generalization based on "how my mind works", it's a basic fact of our species. Yes, there are some outliers (i.e. hermits and recluses), but the vast majority of people benefit from daily social contact. This is how we evolved as a species and it's how we are to this day. There are plenty of scientific studies showing what happens to socially isolated people: They get more stressed out, anxious, and have lower life expectancies.

> the vast majority of people benefit from daily social contact.

This I can buy. However, you can have daily social contact. Significant others, friends, family, church, meetups, social outings, etc.

Homeschooled kids have social contact daily. So do people who work remote. Don't conflate hermits with remote workers.

The reason I personally can't stand to be in an office? The people who think that the office is where you get your social fix for the day.

Upvoted because I agree with your overall point:

> 100% telecommuting doesn't work for a lot of people, maybe even the majority of people.

You're probably getting downvoted (I had the urge myself) by the minority of people who find it to be an excellent fit. Maybe in previous generations we would have been sheepherders, cowboys, or explorers. Or maybe monks. I work remotely and I like social interaction, just much less than most people. If working in an office gives you 10/10 in social interaction, my preferred number is probably a 2. I'd be unhappy with a 1 but much more unhappy with a 10.

Maybe others feel like me. Or maybe given the presence of always on google hangouts and facebook messenger and slack and irc, they feel plenty social.

I consider lack of being face-to-face to be a legitimate drawback of my job, but it's waaay less of a drawback than being forced to live in a "tech hub" or have a commute. The power of being able to hire people who live more than 30 minutes away from your office is incredible.

>The ones who don't, who are homeschooled alone, turn out "weird".

And those in the public school system are juuuuusssst fine...

I think CydeWays quoted the word "weird" so as to make it clear that they did not think that those people were weird (but that society at large does).

> Everything we've always done has been in groups

erm no, there are numerous accounts of people living ar ermits or away from the groups in History. why do you assume everyone has to live with the herd ?

And they have always been considered weird, even when respected by their local culture, and to number very few. We have a word for such people. We do not actually have a word for people who are not hermits, because that's how normal it is. We have words for being excessively group focused, like "gregarious", but not for "not a hermit".

Slightly less extreme, many cultures have had some sort of monk experience, where the monks do not live alone but often have some sort of highly restrictive vow of silence or something. It is certainly a thing in humanity that is popular enough to at times create social institutions for those who wish the rather different lifestyle, but it has also been a radical minority of people who choose it.

What's my point? Is there anything wrong with those choices? No. The point is that trying to arrange a social order that tries to push the majority of people in that direction isn't going to succeed.

I consider "everything is going to become telecommuting in the future" to be up there with "mobile games are going to completely destroy PC and console gaming". If it was going to happen, we should not still be speculating about it... it should be happening right now, visibly obviously, not something we have to go parse through trends and sort of squint at to see.

Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there.

Do you have any sense of how many people who are forced to head to an office each day would rather not? Probably not. I know I don't. But that's because the majority controls how these people work.

Working remotely doesn't mean you're a hermit. If you are, your organization has a communication problem. I work remote and am able to get social interaction instantly with anyone in the organization.

"Working remotely doesn't mean you're a hermit."

Yes, I'd call it much closer to monk-like existence.

It still isn't what the vast majority of humanity is going to prefer.

The proof is that if there was some sort of massive preference for working from home, we should be seeing it now. The tech is here. The Internet is here. The computing power is here. All the preconditions would seem to be here. If what is missing isn't that humans don't generally prefer to be physically together in a group structure, what exactly is it? If the revolution is so inevitable, what's stopping it?

If the answer is "Well we need more VR that makes it feel like they are there", that's a goal post move. May be true, but still a goal post move. If the answer is "because $MANAGEMENT", what's going to change about that in the future, and why aren't the managers also eager to work from home if it's so inevitable? If the answer is "Well Americans (who are uniquely terrible in all the world) have this irrational desire to spend time in their car in gridlock because they love it so much" then I guess that's more inevitable than the move to telecommuting then, huh? I haven't got an alternate explanation for why this isn't already happening that makes any sense, other than, we are not generally psychologically suited to work that way.

> The tech is here.

While I WFH quite a bit, I have to disagree with this statement. For a lot of interaction modes, being remote still lacks a lot of the bandwidth (for lack of a better term) than in person. If you're working out a problem/presentation/etc. with a group, it's still hard to beat a conference room with a whiteboard.

Things are better than they used to be. Something like Google Docs can certainly help. But working with a group F2F, serendipitous encounters, informal interactions, etc. can be hard to replicate. And, again, I say this as someone who works remotely much of the time and doesn't go out of my way to commute, even though it's not a bad commute.

Thanks to Google Docs and video Hangouts it's gotten a lot better than it used to be when I first joined the industry a decade ago. You're right though, it's still not as good as being physically co-present in a conference room, or sitting side-by-side at a computer. I suspect it will get better with VR. For now, though, I definitely enjoy working in an office with my coworkers the most, with perhaps a very occasional work-from-home day (only 5% of all work days) thrown in as a sort of quasi-vacation.

I love my vive and all, but having to deal with it for every meeting just sounds like a hassle.

That's actually a good point. I hated remote meetings back in the day when you had to call up a number and then enter a meeting ID, and having to put on a VR headset seems like a similar amount of hassle. I also have eye issues readjusting for some time after using one -- that doesn't seem like fun to deal with repeatedly throughout the day.

Maybe we'll have to wait until mind-integration VR becomes a thing.

I'm perplexed that to this day there still aren't physical whiteboards with a screen underneath where you can write on them and see others writing. This, along with seeing the face of whoever is talking would be basically as good as being in person.

I find the exact opposite. My WFH days are far more productive. I feel no need to go to the office at all, most of the people I work with are remote, anyhow.

And for technical communication, I'd MUCH rather have everything in writing via email. No, I don't want to call someone on the phone and have them read logs at me. I want a copy of the damned log file so I can look up what's happening with each message and figure something out, not to listen to someone ramble on the phone.

Yeah. IM, email occasional phone works really well. What do you think of the web cam thing where people can see if you're at your desk? I've never tried it but the idea is a bit...uncomfortable... for me for some reason.

I think I can answer that by pointing out that my camera has electrical tape over it. I've never seen any reason whatsoever to have video on my calls. I only care about what's on their computer screen.

After working from home alone for about a week I start to feel less and less motivated too. For the couple past weeks I was working on my own project and to keep my energy levels up I rented a desk in a almost next door coworking space. It is definitely boosting my productivity and is great for networking too.

I feel exactly the opposite. Working an entire week at the office will have me so demoralized and burnt out by Friday that I have to go get away from everyone in the woods for the weekend.

The most effective mix for me is going into the office on Monday, and getting all of the meetings and planning and face-to-face busywork out of the way, and then working from home the rest of the week. It's easily 2-3X as productive, and I'm just so much happier.

I'm fine with a few friends (who I also interact with solely remotely as they live a few hundred miles from me), working remotely and just seeing my wife daily. I love it and have never been happier with a job or my living situation.

As with anything. YMMV. I've never been an ambitious person though, and my job to me is just a 'do what is needed, and no more' type of thing. I'm never out there trying to network or dig up leads on new opportunities either though, so if I wanted to do those things or were more ambitious I guess I could see the appeal of going into the office.

We (my wife and I) do get out quite a bit though, although we're eachother's best friend so we're not out socializing with out couples in our off time (thankfully).

Agreed! That's an ideal kind of setup.

Total conjecture but the people who I have seen struggle with WFH are the same people who don't have a social group outside of work, so WFH ends up meaning no social life and they become very lonely and isolated as a result.

For people who do have that social group, they tend to want to get the work done as quickly and efficiently as possible so that they can then spend time with their family and friends, ie the people they want to be around, not the people they have to be around to make money for their employer => themselves.

With family and friends you can talk about life and have fun. With coworkers, often you talk about work or things indirectly connected to work...

Amen. Silence is the ultimate nootropic.

Sounds about right to me. Introverts don't necessary hate being around people, just being not being very good at actively seeking interaction can be enough. For people who tend to not make much contact unless necessary, an office environment can be very valuable.

I found a great balance by working at home 1-2 days a week. I get shitloads of work done on the work at home days, and I get the socialize with coworkers on the at work days. For me, it's a good balance.

I'm relatively extroverted, and I can relate to your experience really well after working from home for the last year. The isolation and lack of human interaction can be downright depressing, and I've been led productive than ever.

I'm curious to know if people with families have a different experience with it than single people. I'm a single guy in my mid 20's, and I suspect that if I was married and had kids at home the experience would be more positive.

I work from home a couple days a week, to avoid the fairly long commute to the office.

I definitely think seeing my family around during the day is a big plus. I mostly start really early (around the same time I would normally go to take my bus), so I have a nice 10-15 minutes break with my kids, before they go to the daycare. My wife also just started a bakery and works from home mostly, so I have the opportunity to take small breaks during the day and spend some time with her.

Last but not least, I am more productive and on average create more value when I work from home, just because I start my day doing what I like the most and commuting.

Obviously, this is just an anecdote and everyone's case is different, but I think if you work from home and you're not alone, it shouldn't be as depressing and/or demotivating.

In my experience, it can be hard. For some people, it's easy to emotionally accept that you have to be gone at work all day but very hard to process the fact that you're right there and can't always instantly turn off and interact with them. Your family/SO needs to feel like you care about them, and you need to be able to settle comfortably into work without feeling like you're going to be interrupted constantly. It's a really knotty problem.

> I suspect that if I was married and had kids at home the experience would be more positive.

Positive, yes. But it's hard to be productive with young kids in the house.

I don't know if I'll ever work remotely again for a company that is out of town. I'm currently in an office regularly, so I can appreciate working from home, but I'll only do so if the office is in town. I don't mind getting in my car and going in when needed, but I don't like having to hop on a plane.

That's the situation I'm in now on my current contract. The down side is that, unlike the others who work remotely from other states; it's easy for them to ask me to work a problem that requires me to come on site. So that's sort of a down side. The people are nice though.

>I consider myself, without doubt, to be an introvert. I hate parties with a passion

Those aren't necessarily connected in the way that many people like to assert with such conviction. Many introverts (like me!) love parties and hanging out with friends.

You are right that they aren't causally connected. The OP is using the colloquial understanding of introversion. A more accurate description would be "asocial".

Psychological terms like these get confused in common-speak all the time. I am always a little thrown off when someone describes an asocial person as "antisocial", without realizing that the latter means something very different and disturbing [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGN8bP5uJvM

The term "introvert" is too ambiguous to make any statement about self-described introverts with conviction.

serious question: what means to be an introvert then?

One definition I've heard is that introverts become fatigued when they have too much social interaction.

Extraverts on the other hand get energized by social interaction.

(Social interaction requires a lot of processing.)

Why ? It may be related to an organism's baseline of arousal.

The idea is that extraverts may have a lower baseline arousal rate, that they enjoy raising by interacting socially.

Introverts have a high baseline level of arousal, which gets raised too far by too much social interaction.

It is thought that extraverts are the majority making up 85% of the population, and introverts 15%.

This would explain why open office plans are the norm.

Ironically introverts often self select for work that requires deep focus, and end up having to do it in open plan offices designed by extraverts who see nothing wrong with that.

This is a good book on the topic: https://www.amazon.ca/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/d...

Careful with the connection between extroverts and open offices. Not saying it's certainly wrong, but I'd say follow the money (they're usually cheaper) http://fortune.com/2015/03/18/pros-and-cons-open-office-floo...

A common plain-language definition of "introvert" used by professionals is that introverts "are more often energized from their quiet time than their social time"[1]. Extroverts are the opposite. Note that introversion and extroversion are on a continuum with most people in the general population (maybe not a specific population) being towards the middle.

Three comments to address your question specifically:

1. Note the "more often" in the definition. It isn't "always". As such, sometimes introverts are energized by their social time.

2. Given the spectrum of extroversion and introversion, some folks may be less extreme and therefore exhibit less stereotypical behavior for their archetype.

3. Extreme introversion (or extroversion) is not perceived as being pathological until it "causes impairment in functioning and/or causes significant distress for the individual" [ibid]. This might be in the form of detachment that has some surface level similarities to being an extreme introvert, but is actually quite different.

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/self-promotion-introver...

Social situations introduce randomness, unpredictability. This is discomforting and sometimes disconcerting to me.

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