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Comment by ck425 | Hacker News Reader

There has to be a balance though. I'm desperately missing the office and have experience moderate depression for the first time in my life working from home. Atm everything I read is 'WFH is the new normal' or 'we'll never have an office again'. If the balance goes too far to home working then folk like me will need to start clamouring for offices. There needs to be a balance and acknowledgment of each others preferences else this will become a crazy unhealthy culture war.

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Something that might bear considering, is what is the office providing you that can't be served some other way? Socializing can be served outside of work (friends, hobbies), Work structure or a dedicated work space can be created without requiring a company office (pay consideration for co-working space or re-allocate commute costs/proximity premiums to a larger living space with a dedicated room for work). For most companies, if they are paying for an office, they are going to require people to come to them. Remote folks lose the main thing they want, the ability to work remote. For the office preference folks, the reasons are varied and can often be solved for sans office.

Americans have increasingly depended on work for connection and meaning as various non-work social institutions have withered. It is probably a bad thing that work is a core social network for a lot of us, and we should all attempt to diversify our networks.

It's tough to have lots of non-work social networks, especially when you work full time and have children/a family.

It's completely understandable that work has taken such a central place in many people's lives. It's probably not ideal, but it is completely understandable.

I actually have a large social life outside of work, far more than the majority of folk I work with. Unfortunately that's all gone atm and unlikely to return until covid is completely over.

As to space, co working isn't the same as an office and having an home office requires moving and spending a lot of money. Many of us don't have expensive commutes that offset that cost

I expect full remote will be quite rare. On the other hand, I also expect that at many companies I do expect a new normal where many/most people are not in the office on a given day so the office may be there but the prior office experience will not.

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