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Comment by embwbam | Hacker News Reader

I’ve worked remotely for most of the last 10 years. Don’t buy into the idea that work is your community or social life. That isolation can drive you to go places where people hang out after work (I met most of my friends at the climbing gym), get involved in clubs, etc. work sociality is a weak proxy for real community anyway.

Also, I always work from coffee shops, because I like having humans around.

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The truth is that almost half of our non-sleeping lives are spent in the workplace. We are inherently social animals (if not the most social animal on the planet). You've pointed out that there are lots of avenues for socializing outside of work, but I think it may be important for humans to socialize in the workplace too since we spend so much time there. It seems like we are wired to want to gather around the water-cooler and chat. As you mention, there's something quite natural about "wanting humans around".

One way to achieve this need to socialize is to work out of a co-working space or coffee shop.

one practical approach I actually learned from Stripe is to prioritize remote. This can be pretty superficial, like remote always goes first in our daily stand-up, to more material - they don't always get it, but I always consider them first for project assignment, team representation at inter-departmental meetings, etc. Maybe this "affirmative action" could be viewed as unfair, but it's way too easy to ignore and marginalize remote teammates if you don't continually fight the bias.

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