And also anecdotally, every professional office worker under ~30 I know has been absolutely miserable during this remote work experience, and is yearning to get back to the office - most for a full 5 days a week.
Even some of the people who thought they wanted remote work are realizing it’s not always as fun as it sounds.
We read a lot of headlines about how the future is remote work and the HN bubble is full of people claiming they’re never going back from remote work, but I’m not seeing a huge shift toward remote work in actual job listings.
I worked remote pre-COVID. It anything, it feels harder to even land interviews for the few remote job opportunities because so many people are competing for a similar small number of remote jobs now.
2. Those peers and their companies usually have had remote work forced upon them. See what it's like in a less traumatic time when people can work out of cafes and public spaces, maskless.
Mainly: my co-workers who have been at the company longer than I weren't very helpful with onboarding me! We're a little company, so documentation of a bunch of our software is non-existent and the specialized hardware setup we have has a lot of quirks I had to slowly teach myself the last year. I'd hit lots of problems that'd take 5 seconds of their time to diagnose and fix and I'd end up stuck for over an hour while waiting for them to answer a Slack message - or they'd randomly drop offline.
So there I am, working in my bedroom in a new job wondering if I'm a needy little snowflake not digging hard enough or whether the people I work with are just unhelpful because... reasons (still haven't met them in-person since my pre-pandemic interview). After a year I think it really is the latter, but it made me grumpy my early months here.
That could be a possible source of resentment from newer, younger employees. Set us up for success!
I still prefer working from home, but I did commute to the office for a happy hour recently. It was nice to randomly get coffee with the CTO in the morning and hang out with new friends in the evening - none of the "unhelpful" people showed up! :P
My office is in Manhattan. It's been my observation that few people that work in Manhattan actually live in Manhattan. Nearly everyone I know of dreads having to go back to the office, and one of the primary reasons is because of the nightmare commute into the island of Manhattan via the various clogged up chokepoints.
I mean, we've been through major lockdowns/curfews/personal freedom restrictions, lots of people got sick, lots of people died, most non digital entertainment ceased to exist, most sports couldn't be practiced...
imho you can't pin point "remote work" as the main cause of why people felt miserable in the last few months
As psychologists worry that the coronavirus pandemic is triggering a loneliness epidemic, new Harvard research suggests feelings of social isolation are on the rise and that those hardest hit are older teens and young adults.
In the recently released results of a study conducted last October by researchers at Making Caring Common, 36 percent of respondents to a national survey of approximately 950 Americans reported feeling lonely “frequently” or “almost all the time or all the time” in the prior four weeks, compared with 25 percent who recalled experiencing serious issues in the two months prior to the pandemic. Perhaps most striking is that 61 percent of those aged 18 to 25 reported high levels.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/02/young-adults-...
I'm excited to go back to work in-person. Working with my colleagues gives me a great deal of joy throughout the day.
1) If you don’t have kids (socializing with other parents).
2) Don’t go to church/synagogue/etc (church attendance in decline)
3) Do not live where you grew up. (People chase opportunities in other cities.)
4) Aren’t in school any more.
Neighbor friends are also possible, but it can take many years for people to become comfortable enough to be friends, and due to #3, there’s often not enough time for that to happen before people move.
Half my friends are from work and half are parents. They’re not super shallow friendships but also not soul-level deep, either. Deep friendships were left behind from college days.
Changed jobs to negotiate a permanent remote situation and am not going back.
I think it’s fine for some people to want to be on office, but think that a lot of work in the tech area should have the option of remote - and frankly would be better remote first with in-office allowances instead of vice versa.
1) Look at your hobbies 2) Find people who share those hobbies
Plenty of opportunities exist whether through meetup, BumbleBFF, local postings in cafes/on lamp posts, etc. (this is true of cities, remote destinations may be more difficult but thats the tradeoff of living around less people I suppose)
If you can't find groups for your hobbies, try starting them! Doesn't have to be a permanent leadership role, but if you get the ball rolling others will likely come and BOOM you've found potential friends.
If you don't have hobbies, look into volunteer groups. Rewarding and often extremely kind people who will value what you bring to the table.
Hope this helps!
Now I also happen to not like alcohol or smoking which really reduces my chances of meeting someone my age to 0, because I don't go out to parties and such. Not that it was even possible during COVID-19.
I'm happy that I at least have supportive parents, siblings and family. But I think there are a lot of young people in my situation and many of them only have parasocial relationships, for example with Twitch streamers and YouTubers.
Homeoffice has been hard with all the distractions home has to offer and I really do miss eating lunch with coworkers. I'm going to start studying at university this fall so I'm optimistic that I might make some friends there.
They probably are feeling a lot like you.
Some of us have been stuck in single rooms with no family or social contact for over a year.
Exercise groups - Illegal meeting up with other people - Illegal dating - Illegal going outside without a valid reason - Illegal
Former friends with established families and large properties with gardens berate you for complaining, as its selfish, "people are dying!", but they travel for holidays, take their kids to stay with their parents so they can have a weekend getting drunk in their garden, etc that sort of thing. Not friends anymore.
Also most people who I considered friends before, it turns out are just acquaintances. People I've known for 10-15 years who it turns out don't care about my wellbeing, just see me as a guy they did activity X with, went to events with, etc. A whole lot of that. Also lots of people do not like the fact that I questioned the rationale for the lockdown measures, questioned the data ( as in wanted to know what the actual data was), etc. They did not like it AT ALL.
Now restrictions might be lifting in the future, I am faced with the situation of being without a social circle. A social life of nothing. The only people I speak to are my colleagues, and that's how it's been for quite some time. Again I emphasize that it has been illegal to even try to change that, and socially taboo enough to question this and say that this is making me miserable as fuck that any existing friends have abandoned me, lots of blocked contacts on whatsapp (there's this impression amongst many that questioning the lockdowns, asking for data, saying this is not good you personally makes me a republican conspiracy theorist nutcase, etc).
How do I rebuild a new life when my ability to trust other people is lower than I ever thought it could be?
I have no family to lean on for support.
As far as I am concerned I might as well be a secret Jew in 1944 Berlin for the level of trust I have for other people now.
>As far as I am concerned I might as well be a secret Jew in 1944 Berlin for the level of trust I have for other people now.
Holy persecution complex, batman!
Millions were dying and being asked to wear a mask, social distance and wash your hands was too much of a sacrifice for you? You may want to take a hard look at yourself.
Still have the kids though :) so cant really go grab coffee that early. I am sure most of the problem is me not figuring it out but I am pretty much at a loss, I work remotely, have younger kids that I have to take to school and pickup, feed etc. Finish work at like 6 then kids until 9. So weekdays are out. Then weekends seems like there is always something to do or I am just exhausted and feel bad abandoning my wife and kids to go do something.
I know I am the cause of my own issues, just not sure of the solution.
No pointless work "morale events"; no wasting hours a day on commute; ability to do something useful while a build is building, like putting in a load of laundry instead of just reading HN while waiting; and spending a lot more time with my GF as she is also WFHing.
I suspect you are speaking only about people who are unable/unwilling to put effort into the "life" part of "work-life balance" and thus depend on the "work" part to give them what "life" gives to all others: companionship/friendship/fun/purpose