Loneliness: The Toll of Remote Work | Hacker News Reader

Loneliness: The Toll of Remote Work

theatlantic.com

3 pointsfortran775 comments

I switched to a new company during the pandemic. I must admit that I haven't made any new friends at my new company - nobody that'd I'd "have a beer with"! Luckily I've had my wife to keep me company. I might feel differently if I spent the last year alone. I've heard of some people moving to a new city by themselves and starting a new job!

I still prefer working from home. I think after the pandemic I'll try to get more involved in the community around the place I live - going to the local gym, other festivities for example - and meet people who live around me. At my old office, the people I worked with tended to be sprawled all over the big city I live in (30+ minutes of driving away!) which put a damper on socializing. That could be a nice shift: instead of making "friends" at work that you never see outside of work, people use the hour+ that used to be commuting to socialize in their neighborhood.

Would that still be true once we're not socially distancing from one another?

You'll have lots of options for in-person socialization during working hours. Just go to a coffee shop, or out to lunch, or take a break for a yoga class.

It's not the same as developing bonds with the same people day after day around the shared experience of work, but it's not necessarily worse, just different. And you'll have more time for socialization once freed from your commute. Join a club, take a class, hang with friends -- more intense bonding experiences than the shallow ones of work cohorts.

So if people are lonely, maybe it's pandemic rather than the remote work.

I wholeheartedly disagree with this.

Socialization is not the primary point of work , I very much hope I'm able to work remote forever after the pandemic ends. I've been able to save an insane amount of money these last few months, and I don't want to give that up so I can talk smack at the water cooler.

If you want to socialize go to a concert, go to a Meetup Group. With millions of people facing eviction, seems rather childish to complain that you miss the camaraderie of the office.

Maybe socialization shouldn't be the point of work, but it serves that purpose for a lot of people. Social capital has been declining since the 60's (see Robert Putnam's work) and work is one of the few places left where people can consistently see the same people everyday and form relationships in a low-pressure manner. The options you gave for socialization aren't great for everyone. Concerts are expensive and aren't a great way to meet people if you're alone and not every place has many meetups to chose from.

The current division we have between socialization/hobbies and work is a relatively recent phenomena, for most of history people lived with the same people that they worked with. People made friends by living in communal, coworking scenarios where there wasn't so much pressure to go to social events and "meet people" in the acute, high-pressure fashion that we have today. I think It'd be nice if we could get closer to that. Modern work probably won't fulfill that purpose for a number of reasons, but I think we need to acknowledge from looking at the statistics on loneliness and isolation that meetups/bars/concerts/other acute social events aren't cutting it for a large percentage of the (US) population.

Maybe we need to develop new spaces?

With the gig economy I don't see us getting to socialize all that much at work anymore.

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