Living with Your Desk Mates

US increasingly sounds like another planet. Live here has been back to mostly normal (masks and distancing aside). From the article they've got an office in Paris, if I were them I'd be looking into getting a work Visa or something instead of repeating the same thing later this year.

When the pandemic first hit, we started looking at Sina Weibo tweets to try to make sense of how people in China were dealing with the quarantine.

People hated remote work with a passion. They hated not having set working hours and having to dealing with family distractions while they worked.

Most of all, they hated the social isolation.

I haven't noticed as much distress outside of China, but let's be honest, people are social animals and like being around each other.

I don't see anything wrong with what they did. Aside from how much the monthly rental cost ($2.4K per person per room!?), this was a perfectly acceptable if somewhat unusual response to a very unusual event.

I expect it to become significantly less fun the moment one of them gets fired / lags behind the others on work performance / gets into a long term relationship and wants to move out and suddenly finds out they're not one of the guys anymore

Glad it worked out for them! I left NYC recently because my lease ended - most people I knew in the city also left and are living with their parents for the time being (I'm in my early 20's for reference).

My friends and I have discussed the renting AirBnB / VRBO as well. Seems like the perfect chance to do it! Although, I'd probably pick a spot with more hiking (Utah? Colorado?)

i.e. a 'quaranteam' https://www.healthline.com/health-news/what-to-know-before-y...

I know NYC lawyers in their late 20s who are leaving their leases in the city entirely while continuing to work remotely. Rent is so absurd there, and most benefits of being in the city have been nullified by indoor isolation anyway. As office work eventually starts to spin up they plan to fly back as needed. Apparently multiple round trip flights per week is still much cheaper than living there.

I'm very interested to see how many will try to sustain this after the pandemic ends. There has historically been massive resistance to remote work at law firms.

Meanwhile I’ve just purchased a couple PAPRs and twenty-five pounds of pasta. Wish I could live on the cover of Lands’ End.

Doing this with housemate + some friends for a week. We figure its going to be unlikely we will ever be able to just go somewhere to work like this for a while (if in person comes back/covid lockdowns get worse again), so taking advantage. Why not now that we have the opportunity?

What am I supposed to take away from this story? I'm glad that these adults are having such a transformative experience living in Connecticut with roommates, but it's hard to imagine thinking a story like this should be in the NYTimes.