If someone is lonely working remotely and they miss humans, it is a sign the only humans they interacted with were colleagues. It's also a sign of what the person could try and improve.
This situation exposed a lot of crutches.
I genuinely feel the opposite. Relying on your few off hours to satisfy your innate human need for socialization places an unhealthy demand on your off hours, not to mention an unfair demand on your friends and family.
I am now forced to spend 8 hours a day in my home office not speaking to anyone other than Slack and the occasional Zoom and the loneliness is somehow my fault for not having an active enough social life to counteract this? What about rest and reflection?
This is an infuriating argument. Humans were never intended to spend so much time alone, we’re social animals.
Humans were never "intended" to catch deadly respiratory viruses either, but here we are. For that matter, neither were humans "intended" to work on computers. The situation is what it is and it seems naive to expect no changes to our lifestyle when the external circumstances have changed so drastically.
I’m arguing it’s ok to lament the loss of socialization while working, how you spend most of your time.
There’s a pandemic, and I am lonely. I think the comment I was replying to blaming that on me not having good enough friends and family is both pointed and hurtful.
I have a wonderful support system, and I am still lonely, particularly during the work day.
> Humans were never "intended" to catch deadly respiratory viruses
Strictly semantically speaking, I think billions of years of history disagree. I understand the point you’re trying to make, but respiratory diseases were here long before us, they’re a fact of the environment we were born into. There is no intent in that one way or the other.
Sometimes when people use language like that, I can't tell if they really mean intent, or just use it as shorthand for evolutionary fit.
Important point on the wording: Humans were never intended to spread deadly viruses to the vulnerable population. Almost all of the people complaining about measures to prevent the spread are in low-risk groups and do not have anyone close to them in a high-risk group/relying on having a working medical system.
Humans were also never intended to be forced to somehow "produce money" with other humans.
"Being a social animal" for millennia meant finding your role in a relatively small group of people who shared your basic values about survival and mores, and that you could observe and befriend (or fight) over a literal lifetime, while carrying out tasks that were directly linked to your survival. That differs significantly from industrialized societies. People you work with don't necessary share anything with you. Socialization has become rote and fake. Your tasks are often meaningless to you.
This creates a feeling of alienation and powerlessness in a lot of people. For them, staying at home meant reconnecting with tasks that carry actual meaning (improving their home, looking after their loved ones, etc). Their socialization might have actually increased.
Obviously, if you found the pre-covid arrangement meaningful and life-fulfilling, now you're unhappy that it was taken away from you.
Finding your role in a relatively small group of people describes most of my experience working in offices. You share the time and experiences doing some thing you have to do, not something you want to do. Locating sustenance or making copies, it’s same same. It’s an activity you do because you have to, not because you chose to.
Additionally, you have things in common by socializing, not the reverse.
> Locating sustenance or making copies, it’s same same
Your belly going hungry is a direct incentive in ways that "maybe in three months I'll get a salary increase if I do this well" simply is not, imho.
> you have things in common by socializing, not the reverse.
See, that's the difference between tribe life and modern life: now you don't even know if you have anything in common unless you actively socialize. In a tribe, commonality was immediate and from birth, socialization was a given, and you had to take active steps to be alone. Now it's effectively the opposite: you are alone unless you take steps not to be. Which has its pros and cons.
I assure you a fair number of office workers have come close enough to "your belly going hungry", and its modern extension "struggling to pay the rent and bills", that they are quite motivated to keep the job they have.
Probably not HN tech workers so much. But even some of those will have struggled for basics at some time or other.
Because you'll change employer, maybe frequently, and most of your relationships with colleagues will fall away when you do, where relationships with friends are lifelong.
WFH allows me to see more of my partner and my real friends in my local area, removing wasted commuting time into the bargain.
That’s such a weird accusation. No I’m not. I get paid to work, and I do good work, but I am not there to work. My goal in life is not “to work”.
That sounds absolutely miserable.
But fundamentally, your employer - the other party in your most basic work relationship (between you and the company that employs you) - does see you as being "there to work".
And the moment you switch jobs, or get moved into another business unit, or get laid off, those social relationships with your (now-former) coworkers aren't automatically there during the work day. If you want to preserve them, guess what? You're looking at using those off hours.
I understand your argument a bit better if you're treating socialization like caffeine or something - a purely functional hit of dopamine that gets you through the day. But I think that's maybe a fundamental disagreement on the premise of social life.
If not, you are probably there to work.
If you were paid and work there, but every time you did something that looked like socialising someone would come over and tell you to stop, reminding you that you are there to solely to work, would you stay there?
If you'd leave, you are probably not there solely to work.
But there certainly are limits and if you appear to be socialising more than working many places will ask you to perhaps refocus your attentions.
Which leads to the other side of this. I want my time in the office to be about work. I don't mind socializing some, and I like my coworkers well enough, but we hired them because they were good at their jobs and didn't seem like bad people to be around. Not because I thought they'd be good friends, or have similar hobbies to me. Because of that, given the choice, I'd rather spend social time with the group of friends I have cultivated myself, instead of having my coworkers try to force a connection just because we sit near each other at the office.
I don't go to work to support someone's else's lack of a social life outside of work, and just because I was required by my job to be in the same room as you doesn't mean you can/should expect me to like you as more than someone I work with. There's plenty of coworkers I like and some I'm actually friends with, but also plenty of people who try to use the conditions of our mutual employment to fill in for friendships they didn't develop outside of work.
That seems an uncharitable way to put it. People only make friends in general by putting themselves out there and making an effort. Is the difference between those two groups merely that the 'actual friends' are the ones who you ended up liking rather than having to pretend to like?
I don't mind people trying to make friends at work, and often I don't even dislike the people who annoy me like this, I just don't like them as much as they seem to like the idea of spending time with me. There's a gap between people I like making smalltalk with before a meeting or while I'm taking a break to get coffee, and people I want to have a dedicated social time with.
If you want to make friends at work, don't use the mechanisms of my employment to coerce me into spending time with you.
I'm not sure how to respond to this.
Of course it's not, and neither mine. My goal in life is also not "to be in an office" either. But when I am in one, I'm there for work. The office is a workspace, that's literally the point of it...
But I think it's probably not healthy if it's all you have, or even relied upon as "primary" when it can change out from under you in a matter of hours.
I am not a social animal, I think you'll find the 'non social humans' to be a larger group than you imagine. Just because we have 'do' doesn't mean we all are.
No x is an island.
Besides I don't necessary trust people at work, so I don't see a much need to be socializing.
> Why should where I spend the majority of my waking hours, the majority of my life in practical terms, not also be my primary source of socialization?
I think because the primary goal is to work. Socialization is a plus, but it will never be your main focus, as mentioned above you will not build meaningful relationships (I mean, not entire impossible, just not as likely).
> Relying on your few off hours to satisfy your innate human need for socialization places an unhealthy demand on your off hours, not to mention an unfair demand on your friends and family.
I don't think it's an unfair demand to want to spend time with friends and family (that is the point of them). Anyone that is thinking that is probably not someone you want to be spending time with...
> Humans were never intended to spend so much time alone, we’re social animals.
I think this is what wife/kids are for. I can't speak for others, but it works for me! 99.9% of my time out of work is with them, and have never felt lonely. Not everyone is in that position I suppose, but then friends would have to fill that gap.
Work socialization is fine, but I'd cautious making it your primary source. What happens when you change jobs? It can also make it hard to remain professional at work.
> Humans were never intended to spend so much time alone, we’re social animals.
Maybe, but I and many others seem perfectly fine with less and/or different social interaction. Personally, I'm more of a few, but deeper friendship person than many shallow relationships person. I'm perfectly happy being home with my wife and dogs.
The bonds I form outside of work are simply because we enjoy eachother's company. Or a shared hobby. Something that doesn't require me to be at the top of my performance. As long as I don't do something ridiculously inappropriate, they will still be my friends.
Now it's all be taken away.
Maybe in the OP’s case it’s the kind of thing where you take a group bus to a trail, and that’s the problem.
In my country Corona related deaths are about 1% of all deaths, but it’s treated as if it is extremely deadly.
My point was on this particular shortcut in many articles including large publications:
A: I work at the office
B: I'm not lonely
Not A => Not B (I don't work at the office therefore I'm lonely), and then coming up with a solution that it's time to get back to the office, failing to respect the contraposition, and implying that there's equivalence with a hidden B ==> A implication that is not necessary true.
Your point does not contradict my comment, actually, because all these are outside of "work/office". Again, my point was about the equivalence between remote work and loneliness not being automatic. One way to go through that is having a social life outside of the office. Granted, many things have closed, but that's why I said it was a sign of what the person could try and improve (finding things that haven't closed, finding joy somewhere else). Not saying it's easy.
Thirty years later I still have friends from school who I swear have no other friends other than those from school days or their current job. Some don't even know their neighbors!
The difficult part is they look just like the rest of us and the cues are different for determining who is who though usually avoidance of after work get together and even lunch are clear sign. The key is to know when to back off as some are very comfortable in their personal world
That makes absolutely no sense, these interactions are completely different from those you would have with your co-workers, and it’s perfectly normal even for people with an otherwise active social life to miss those. My friends and family are almost universally incomparable to my coworkers in almost every way.
I wonder if the US long-hours culture contributes to this.
There are people for whom being stuck in their WFH area for 8 hours a day 5 days a week with no social interactions is very unpleasant, even if after work they have a robust social / family life. Some of them were reporting this doing WFH prior to Covid.
The most amazing social life outside work won't compensate for that daily gap which occupies about half of their waking hours.
Some people need more regular personal interactions throughout the day than that.
On top of that, some people's work creativity or mental stimulation thrives on social interactions with colleagues in the same or related work domain. A social life with friends and family does not substitute for "work-oriented social interactions" with people who are grinding on the same kinds of problems, for example drinking buddies with whom you can discuss code. It doesn't really matter if these people are long term friends, as it's a different kind of stimulation.
Maybe you are just lucky that the office is the only place where you lost regular social interactions.
In addition, as many have noted, part of the loneliness problem that many are facing is only partly about offices. It's the fact that many other activities are foreclosed right now as well.
I normally cowork with friends around once-twice a week (I did the same before the pandemic!) but I'm lucky to live in a big city with lots of friends. Or maybe that is exactly your point? That now that people are freed from the office they can meet and work with friends?
And even then I still miss specifically office socialising. I like knowing my colleagues and having a feeling of we're in this together. I like the random break chats throughout the day and meeting folk from other teams organically. I hate that the majority of my day now is just sitting at a desk alone talking to no one. It's perfectly valid to want socialisation from work, it's not necessarily caused by a poor social life outside of work.
This is a symptom of being in a pandemic, where in many places you are forbidden or heavily discouraged to socialize.
I've been working from home since March. This is not what normal working from home looks like, this is what working from home _during a pandemic_ looks like.