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Comment by softwaredoug | Hacker News Reader

I’m a bit sad how remote work is likely to hurt my social life

I have many close friends that grew out of the intimacy of solving problems together. We could casually hangout IRL after work. Our partners and kids would get to know each other. In turn, that growing trust would feedback into a more positive workplace.

It’s not the only way to make friends, but it was an easy way. Now my relationships with coworkers can feel more transactional.

It’s further worrying considering the general trend of society to increased isolation and loneliness.

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Conversely, imagine living in a lovely small town that has an active social life and a commercial scene, fuelled by the scores of people moving out there with nothing better to do in the evenings, who want to get out of the house.

People who don't spend all their energy commuting into and out of a city each day, people who are free from the crowded lonelinesses of the subway, and the hyper-busy trendy weekend coffee-shop.

Imagine a world where you might once again say hello to your neighbours, might know the folks around town. New friends we don't work with -- perhaps, a community!

If we play it right, we might possibly swing a revitalization of our social soul here, rather than sadly slouch ever further toward its final demise. At least, I hope.

I still remember getting my first Manhattan job. I was excited about experiencing the culture and nightlife of the city after work.

Little did I know that the toll of the commute would quickly kill off any such interest.

I feel this is especially because of the peculiarities of the Manhattan commute (and potentially other cities with similar commute patterns).

I was nowhere near as beaten up when I commuted in NJ. But all the hot jobs (and culture!) are in Manhattan. Ironically I had more energy to head out into the city after work from NJ.

I live in a smallish town. One positive side effect of pandemic and WFH is more socializing with neighbors. Kinda a different form of socializing, but it is a positive upside.

At the risk of sounding picky, I am statistically much more interested in socializing with a randomly chosen person from this website than a randomly chosen person from my town (excluding my household).

Even my kids’ friends’ parents are often tedious to hang out with. “Can you believe <insert thing from popular TV>?” Or some town gossip that is interesting only to the other half of the conversation.

I have non-work friends, most of which I met locally, but there’s a common interest beyond “you happen to get your mail delivered by the same person”.

Work socializing has some advantages for introverts. You don’t generally have a lack of topics to discuss; if one gets boring, you can switch to another.

You are sounding picky and you are projecting the problems specific to your life on the rest of us.

We don't all want to be your friend, we want to avoid the rat race.

Not to be unfriendly, but perhaps _you're_ projecting your desire to avoid your coworkers on to others. I think both you and the person you responded to make interesting points, both of which I can see myself relating to at different parts of my life, depending on how much I liked my work vs my local community.

> Even my kids’ friends’ parents are often tedious to hang out with.

I consider myself very lucky to live in the Bay Area, where most of my kids' friend's parents also work in tech. So hanging out at a random birthday party ends up being an unintentional networking event, where I get to meet new people working on cool tech.

I wonder as remote work continues to be popular, if that will continue.

Some people find what you describe as undesirable, but I think I'd love it. Possibly a grass is greener on the other side situation though, I admit.

In NYC, I'd say there is a lot more diversity in terms of industries people work in, but tech is noticeably a tiny minority. Finance is obviously huge - and is probably the industry closest to being in the situation you describe.

Case in point - I am, and have been part of, various social organizations, and AFAIK I'm the only SWE I've encountered. Tons of finance people, tons of medical professionals (though interestingly enough, many many dentists and nurses but M.D.s are rare), tons of people in marketing and education. But no SWEs. A tiny handful of tech professionals from the helpdesk/sysadmin/networkadmin side of things.

It also has some major disadvantages. Folks can get fired or laid off if the business goes south. You are competing with those same friends for promotions. And the HR department gets the final word on what is considered appropriate behavior.

Much better to just connect with people that share your same interests outside of work. Join a club, go to a meetup, etc... And quite frankly, when it comes to more technical matters, I find online conversation to be much more fulfilling than IRL. And there are no shortage of outlets for that, including HN.

> Imagine a world where you might once again say hello to your neighbours

When people complain about social isolation, that still doesn’t necessarily mean that they want to interact with their neighbours. It could just mean that they want to be able to interact with people who, they know for sure, share the same hobbies and interests and (in polarized countries) the same political and social views.

One of the supposed upsides of urban modernity is the ability to choose one’s acquaintances at will, which is potentially liberating from the gossip and judgement of small-town and neighbourly communities, especially for sexual or other minorities.

> Imagine a world where you might once again say hello to your neighbours

That world never went away. It's just a couple tax brackets below the typical HN user.

No, that world definitely went away in some places, even for the urban poor. For instance, residents of apartment blocks in the large Finnish cities today typically don't know their neighbors. (In fact, some would even consider it a faux pas to leave the flat without first checking through the peephole to see if someone else is in the corridor. This is because it could make both you and your neighbor uncomfortable if you passed by one another.) The literature of a century ago with its tales of frequent neighborly interaction now strikes people as a completely different world regardless of their tax bracket.

You're right, it did go away for the poor who are thoroughly under the thumb of the wealthy. Many of the less well off residents of (for example) Boston or DC would relate to that sort of "trying to keep your existence on the down low lest you draw the ire of someone who will make your life harder" pattern of action.

Places like Cleveland, Buffalo, or anywhere that the local culture if free of thinking highly of the local culture people are much more open and friendly than major metros and their high class suburbs.

Very interesting comment.

Actually Michael Maccoby a sociologist discovered in his studies (1960 and 1970s) of what happens when a large factory comes to a rural town. People would no longer mix with each other to the same extent. Instead, after work, they would go home and watch TV. Work had totally altered their social lives. It will be interesting what dynamic will play out in the long-term with remote work.

I'd offer an alternative perspective. While I have made a small number of great friends from working together in an office, I've also made a lot of kind-of-friends who are maybe not actually great matches for me in terms of compatibility. Yet we spend time together outside of work nonetheless, usually in work-adjacent activities like happy hours.

Nothing against these relationships, but a year later I don't exactly miss them. I've found myself spending more time with a small group of people during the pandemic that are much more on my wavelength, and I much prefer this to having a chunk of my social life dedicated to people I am "friends" with due only to proximity.

I share your general concern. I worked remotely for most of my career before finding an office job that would pay enough for me to move to SF. I'll admit that housing in SF was a tough fit for me and my family, but outside of the housing problem we absolutely loved it. There was a great social network of people living and working in the same industry and neighborhood, and the sense of camaraderie was great.

That employer went all remote during COVID with no intent to go back, and in the end I decided the time had come for me to leave as well and I'm now working on my own startup. And of course, we're remote, because we have to be right now.

I wish we would be able to move into an office together when the pandemic is over, because I'd love to have the social life of the physical office back, but I don't think that will be practical, so we'll probably be either all or mostly all remote forever (assuming we survive :)).

It's complicated, because there are also many advantages to remote, but I honestly feel kind of disappointed that I would prefer to work in that dynamic office environment and despite preferring it I've only been able to actually have that for a few years of my career.

I wonder how much attitudes towards preferring office vs. WFH is dependent on the actual physical office environment.

I am in the prefer WFH camp. However if my office was something more akin to what I see in many Silicon Valley style tech companies, I could theoretically imagine myself enjoying the office more.

As it is, my current office (for that matter, for my entire career) is more akin to what you see in The Office TV show, or Dilbert, or other stereotypically dystopian, dull, boring, traditional offices where everyone is mandated to wear at least business casual - dress shirt, dress pants, dress shoes.

> Now my relationships with coworkers can feel more transactional.

That is not just about personal relationships, that applies to work effectiveness as well.

There were hundreds of conversations over a month I had, which came from someone noticing me waiting for a coffee, come up and ask me something somewhat arbitrary - knowing that I'm free right now without any actual broadcast.

The same sort of serendipity used to happen during lunch, with people mentioning their new idea which ends up being something that boils down "oversampling all the signals to 1MHz, but then store it in a columnar db as a wide table".

The interaction process was entirely additive, with no commitments to start a conversation.

Right now, every meeting is scheduled or preceded by "are you free?", which immediately triggers a priority conversation or scheduling conflict one.

Making things which weren't transactional, into a "I have set time aside for you and only you" which is where everything starts becoming prioritized around who to talk to rather than what they have to talk about in particular.

> I’m a bit sad how remote work is likely to hurt my social life

Interestingly I see it the other way around, I can now focus on having a social life and seeing people outside of my work. No more 3h commute!

I don't think it has to be this way. The move to hybrid and remote working can be a huge advantage for everyone, from parents who get to spend more time with their children instead of spending it fighting for seat on a train, to young adults who are less likely to find themselves priced out of the housing market by nessesity of living relatively close to work.

At the moment we are living the worst type of remote working. We can't have a once a month get together or pub session. We can't work from our parents house or even a co-working space because it happens to suit us that week. Lots of us have children and other family at home (or have had for some of this period) who wouldn't normally be around.

>I have many close friends that grew out of the intimacy of solving problems together

About 20% of them have already drifted off the map for me over the past year. A lot of people seem to have just eventually drifted into introversion once the things to do in the outside world disappeared for long enough. First lockdown didn't matter too much but this second one changed a lot of people.

Lots more people I know casually mentioning suicidal thoughts too, and this is coming from people I'd never expect to hear that from.

Then use the commuting time you're saving now to go and make friends at the gym, at the local reading club, coffee shop, church or social centre.

I'm totally in about making friends and getting along with all coworkers, being nice to each other, etc is very important. But work is work. Despite what the "People" department says, it's not your family, not are you a "Examplecompanying".

I rant about this because I know more of one case where people missing their friend coworkers made everyone in the team have to go back so we "all work together" when people are more productive and get more job done with less distractions and more free time doing it from home.

TL;DR, look for social life out of work. Work is work.

I fear the pandemic has crushed hang out culture for the foreseeable future. Out here in the Midwest, I grew up hanging out on the back porch is talking late into the night. People don’t do that anymore it seems.

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