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Comment by izacus | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how many people's opinions will change after a longer time. I wrote the exact same type of posts five years ago when I started my first fully remote job. After two years or so I had to look for an office because the isolation is just murderous and it takes a long amount of time to actually start showing its teeth.

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I can highly recommend renting a co-working space once that's a viable option wherever you are in the world. These can be surprisingly inexpensive and often come with internet, electricity, etc. included.

Gives both the "short commute" benefit of work-from-home, as well as the "maintaining a clear separation between home and work" benefit of on-location-work.

And for me personally (as an introvert), it was fantastic to have people around that I could talk to socially, but who weren't directly involved in my work and who weren't going to make demands of me. Totally removed the feelings of isolation, and formed a bunch of new friendships that didn't rest on obligations to my employer.

Yep, this was my solution as well, it worked great (especially since I shared the space with people I mostly knew).

Although now that I'm working for a company with 15min commute, that became less of an issue.

So in the end the solution is to go to a fake office.

Didn't work for me.

The fact that we work on the same thing gives me more reasons to talk. I can't ask random people at a co-working space to help me debug an issue or to brainstorm a solution. They aren't familiar with my project the way co-workers would be. They also are not NDAed to look at what I'm working on

I don't understand. I work remotely and regularly debug issues and brainstorm solutions with my teammates. Their physical proximity is not relevant. Clearly I am missing something.

You're missing that the point of being around people for some of us is to "interact" with them. I can easily interact with co-workers. I can not easily interact with strangers at a co-working space.

Also I work on console games. I can't hand the person on the chat the controller and say "how does this feel?"

It's nice to work on a problem with someone and then go to lunch and shoot the shit afterwards. Or just hanging out drinking some coffee. The key is you have to have some coworkers you like though, which I'll allow that not everybody has.

For me, I've worked in full remote and full in office jobs. I favor a mix personally. Maybe 2-3 days in office and the rest remote.

I recognize that situations and preferences can change, yes. But it would have to be a pretty significant change for me to outweigh 80 minutes on a crowded Tokyo subway, particularly in summer.

FWIW, before the pandemic started, I was not enthusiastic at all about WFH, for various reasons but mostly because I live in a small one room apartment (quite usual here in the inner city in Tokyo). Now, after addressing basic issues to improve the ergonomics of my home office, most of the downsides are gone, and those that remain are outweighed by the prospect of commuting again. Of course, this could easily change if I moved closer to the office (or switched jobs to be physically closer), but considering rent close to the typical business hubs here, that's unattractive financially.

As for isolation: personally, I do a lot of pair programming (whether in the office or remotely), so I don't actually feel isolated at all. If would describe myself as mildly introvert, so YMMV, but I feel like I need to disconnect from people after a day of remote work no more or less than after a regular day at the office.

> isolation is just murderous and it takes a long amount of time to actually start showing its teeth.

i wonder if people who feel this way aren't getting socializing done outside of work, and is using work as a form of socialization?

Nothing wrong with socialising at work. If you’re spending a third of your day working, it may as well be enjoyable.

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