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Comment by Ancalagon | Hacker News Reader

I’m gonna go against the HN grain here and, despite having been fully for remote work for the first year or so of the pandemic, come out and say that life has really gotten a lot more repetitive and frankly disappointing since covid and the death of the office. I kind of miss meeting people in the office.

I was in the unfortunate position of having moved to a new city for a new tech job where I knew nobody just seven months before the pandemic began and everything was shut down. I was making many friends both inside and outside the office before that time, but during and since the lockdowns I just feel like socializing has become so much harder and my days are just blurred together computer screens. I guess at this point I’m an extroverted introvert, whereas most of HN is very introverted or has pre-existing families/friends to socialize with.

My company is hybrid at the moment and I’m actually writing this from the very empty office. Things just aren’t the same.

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I think you're correct, but one thing that is really missing nowadays, especially with phones and the internet, is active communities that exist in real life outside of work. Stuff like the elks lodge, rotary, bowling leagues, etc are just not as common anymore as I believe they used to be. Certainly there are many things that exist, but in a way societally it seems like they don't have very much cache, even as far as for people to opine "only very lonely people go to those".

I tend to think its a good thing for people to have a bit more distance from work, but if we don't figure out ways to fill in that social need, societally, people will find themselves feeling even more isolated than they have been.

This is the other point I wanted to make (but frankly I was too scared that maybe it’s just because I suck at meeting people now that I haven’t socialized like a normal person in a year). It just seems harder to meet people _in general_ than it did even two years ago. Like where is everybody? Does everyone stay home literally all the time now?

Well, yes. If not "everyone," certainly lots and lots of folks are just staying home whenever possible. Because we are in the middle of a global pandemic.

I think this has much more to do with "we are in a global pandemic" than "you can't meet people doing remote work." Certainly, there were a number of larger groups that I used to hang out with consistently pre-pandemic, but now have totally abandoned. I'm not interested in maintaining an online relationship with those groups; their value to me was in the face-to-face moments.

But that's just not a thing right now.

I'm certainly not going to go out of my way to expose my family to people who may or may not even believe in vaccinating themselves.

I think it is, on average, incorrect to say that people are staying home for fear of the pandemic which is what I think you are suggesting. I think the average hn reader probably skews much more cautious about coronavirus, much better able to remain indoors, and much more, for want of a better phrase, socially responsible than the average person. And even among hn readers plenty will not be staying at home much.

That said, I think there are pandemic-adjacent reasons people might be doing less socialising. Maybe people you might socialise with have moved away and not been replaced in the last two years. Maybe the people who would organise events you would go to skew more towards the cautious end. Maybe people are less interested in social things due to other upheavals in their lives. Maybe people have forgotten how to socialise. Maybe they are focusing on the relationships they had before more than anything new. Maybe we just forget how hard things were before and look at the past with rose-tinted spectacles.

Bars and restaurants being closed or having significant restrictions, recreational sports leagues being cancelled, other (often outdoor) events and meetups being cancelled are reasons why lots of people would do less socializing because [other] people are fearful of the pandemic even if they aren't themselves substantially fearful.

In my case, most of my outside socializing was through gaming meetings, and:

- the local Gaming Society closed for 2 years (meeting for the first time after 2 years in November),

- the local game stores stopped doing in-person events for 2 years (still no news on Magic: the Gathering in-person pre-releases, not authorized for Latin America despite my country being basically covid-free),

- I started playing D&D (with coworkers, so the OP has a point), had one in-person session and then we moved to Roll20 (slowly coming back to in-person).

I do think people were socializing outside more before the pandemic.

> Because we are in the middle of a global pandemic.

Really? Maybe I forgot because here in France it feels like we've kinda gone back to business as usual, as long as one can show proof of vaccination (necessary if you want to go to the restaurants, cinemas and museums).

France, Germany and Italy have really disappointed with their heavyhanded approach against those that are not vaccinated.

With that said, i think many are still a bit cautious after being bombarded with warnings of the Coronavirus for 12 months straight.

To me though I'm back to normality and slowly but surely everyone else.

> France has really disappointed with their heavyhanded approach against those that are not vaccinated.

well, the only reason I got vaccinated was to be able to go to the restaurant without having to do a covid test beforehand; so maybe the heavyhandeness was warranted?

> France, Germany and Italy have really disappointed with their heavyhanded approach against those that are not vaccinated.

Disappointed who? The anti-vaxxer community? Good.

Point of clarification, because you're spreading misinformation: being opposed to one specific vaccine type is NOT the same as being an "anti-vaxxer." It will behoove you to be clear on that point.

That is exactly what everyone means by anti-vaxxer right now. If you are opposed to the covid vaccine, you are an anti-vaxxer.

And if you're blindly supporting what your government muppets are throwing at you in a simulation of competence you are a believer.

Everytime I hear or read what anti-vaxxers have to say, it feels like the person on the other end is a teenager who has watched The Matrix for the first time while having smoked a tad bit too much weed.

"THEY control us and manipulate everything, bruh! You're just a sheeple."

Dude. Chill! I just like to be the black sheep. Besides that I took the red and the blue pill, seeing the one universal truth, which is is Lila spotted with Lalall.

Baa, baa, baa! (Blowing rings of purple haze at you)

edit: btw. (·) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer

"Everyone is doing it" has always been - and will always be - a terrible reason to do anything.

"anti-vaxxer" is too broad of a term. That's like saying anyone who doesn't want to buy a Ford is "anti-car." They're not anti-car, they just don't want a Ford.

Almost all the people you call "anti-vaxxers", in fact very much believe vaccines are modern miracles that have reduced or eradicated serious illnesses. Many of them get a flu shot every single year. That's not the behavior of an "anti-vaxxer." "anti-vaxxer" is inaccurate at best, and intentionally derogatory at worst.

> misinformation

The overlap between the two groups is so large and the justifications so similar that they may as well be the same. It is not useful for clarity, brevity or comprehension to distinguish the two.

This type of generalization is what allows people to bulldoze details and nuance in favor of bright tribal lines. It’s the same psychological shortcut that folks use when they call any social program ‘socialism’. It’s lazy and destructive.

If everybody got the damn vaccine the thing would be over much faster. Not getting vaccinated or wearing a mask is an active effort to prolong the existence of a virus that doesn't give a damn about how people rationalize their bad decisions. And I stopped giving a damn about people who defend the metaphorical licking of rats during a plague. I have yet to hear a good rational reason for not getting a vaccine, that isn't vague or hand wavy E.g. quoting some medical reason that turns out to be bullshit when you ask a medical professional. When you point that out to them instead of "great! And I thought I couldn't get the vaccine!" they find the next bullshit reason why they cannot get it, with the final frontier being some defiant stubbornness where "they cannot make me" as if it was the last act of personal freedom they have left to defend: zero practical value, all inside the symbolic domain. Viruses don't care about the symbolic domain.

In a fire be the person who gets a bucket of water not the person who keeps explaining why they cannot (or worse: the person who tries to convince others they cannot). Don't be the person who has to be forced by the rest of the village to help putting out the fire (or help preventing it's spread). If you have a valid reason (e.g. no hands to carry buckets) everybody will understand, but "I can't be bothered to do something for the collective, because I am a free individual" is not a valid reason IMO. Not during an emergency. "Oh but it is my gasoline tank on my property so I got to decide what happens with it" — not during a fire. A fire doesn't care about property.

well, considering how the pandemic went, a fire in a village is way more likely to directly impact you, compared to the covid directly impacting you. And it's not as if getting vaccinated prevented you from catching and transmitting the virus

At the height of it I could not kick a rock without hitting someone that had a family member die of COVID. I live in a country with reasonably good healthcare and I would say perfectly acceptable capacity (and I don't interact with a lot of pray-the-sick-away types), so I'm quite curious where you are located that you make such claims.

In France. I can count on one hand the people I know who caught covid and none of them had any serious after effects.

I know several people, in France, who died or nearly died from it. The numbers speak for themselves any way (more than a 100k).

> If everybody got the damn vaccine

There are many people like me who have high level of antibodies, don't really need a vaccine this way (AFAIK there already is enough evidence supporting this) and don't want to get vaccinated with the fastest-baked (least tested) vaccine in history despite being passionately pro-vac when it's about other diseases and better-tested vaccines.

I don't want the damn vaccine. I want the damn immunity which I have (and test for every ~3 months) and the damn government to recognize it.

I also doubt there are many unvaccinated people who still have no antibodies. How could they possibly be so successful in avoiding the virus for so long?

No, you just don’t want to get vaccinated. Everything else is window dressing around that.

The virus will mutate and continue to do so. Eventually your immunity will weaken - will you get the vaccine then? Doubt it. You’ll make up another excuse then instead.

And let’s not pretend you are any more informed about this vaccine than you are any other “highly tested” one. You have no scientific or educated reasoning here and you’re just letting your ego get in the way of things. It’s ok. I do that too. But the quicker you realize you’re caught up in FUD mostly planted by morons and Russian and Chinese state-sponsored democracy dividers the better your life will be.

> No, you just don’t want to get vaccinated. Everything else is window dressing around that.

And I have no rational reason to, except artificial reasons created by most of governments.

> The virus will mutate and continue to do so. Eventually your immunity will weaken - will you get the vaccine then?

My immune system seems doing great job defending me from all the mutations which already took place. So I don't want to interfere, teaching it how to do the job it seems doing so great and targeting it against specific mutations the vaccine is supposed to help with.

I trust my immune system more than I trust whatever the vaccine does. I'm afraid the latter may actually weaken my immunity against the mutations to come. This, together with being pushed to vaccinate, are why I don't want to.

I never ever resisted any vaccine before and was always willing to get vaccinated against everything.

> You have no scientific or educated reasoning here and you’re just letting your ego get in the way of things. It’s ok. I do that too.

I always reasoned the naturally acquired immunity is better than that given by the vaccine and AFAIK this has been scientifically proven already.

> But the quicker you realize you’re caught up in FUD mostly planted by morons and Russian and Chinese state-sponsored democracy dividers

But I've never been interested in what do they say. Only in what humble amount of science I know + my own experience + logical reasoning/speculation. Plus the natural instinct to resist whenever pushed.

> I trust my immune system more than I trust whatever the vaccine does

Uhh…this is what a vaccine does. It shows your immune system what a disease looks like, lets it do it’s thing to discover a solution…so that it has a hashmap to a solution ready to go rather than than needing to iterate over the entire database and apply iterative mutations to the best solutions in order to find a successful match.

What in the world do you think a vaccine is? It’s letting your immune system do it’s thing. It’s trusting your immune system to know what to do!

What in the world do you think a vaccine is? Vaccine-based immunity is natural immunity.

> It shows your immune system what a disease looks like

But it knows! Why should I now train it on a picture if there are live viruses of all the mutations all over around which I have already encountered countless times and keep encountering every day?

I would certainly vaccinate if I were going to an infected place from a place where there is no such virus. Or if the disease was widespread somewhere else and coming to my place while there already was a vaccine.

But I have been living emerged deep in the infection intensively for over 2 years already! I have never even decreased (even increased actually, meeting many new people every day, and nobody wears masks in business) my social interactions, just tested regularly and wore a mask in public transport. I even drank from the same cup with an sick and positive girl once, then self-isolated for some days, tested regularly (incl. in-lab PCR) - all negative, no sickness. And even lab tests objectively show I have been maintaining high level of antibodies for already a year (which suggests they are renewing given regular contact). How can we possibly suspect my immune system still has not enough clue and an instruction can be better than what it already knows?

> apply iterative mutations to the best solutions in order to find a successful match.

But I apparently applied very successful matches to every mutation!

> What in the world do you think a vaccine is? Vaccine-based immunity is natural immunity.

To something specific, more precisely - a specific model (not even a real object) isn't it?

> But it knows! Why should I now train it on a picture if there are live viruses of all the mutations all over around which I have already encountered countless times and keep encountering every day?

Ok so when are you going to get a booster shot or your first COVID shot? Or are you planning on getting the disease again and letting it run its course?

Any why would you treat this vaccine any different than the flu vaccine or w/e? It makes absolutely no sense. If you don't understand the science, how are you making informed decisions?

> nobody wears masks in business

False? Who cares? I'm in business and wear a mask all the time when meeting with clients if we even meet on-site.

> which suggests they are renewing given regular contact

Which also suggests you are getting the virus again and giving it to people you interact with who may now be getting COVID-19 for the first time. You're literally perpetuating the disease! But hey screw everybody else right? Those who might not be able to get the vaccine, like, oh idk, my nephew? Or maybe kids who BTW aren't immune from getting sick.

Your mentality around this is selfish and bizarre.

> How can we possibly suspect my immune system still has not enough clue and an instruction can be better than what it already knows?

The person you are replying to was discussing your complete misunderstanding of how vaccines work. Not commenting on naturally acquired immunity, which BTW doesn't mean you're 100% immune because that's now how things work.

> Ok so when are you going to get a booster shot or your first COVID shot?

I consider every interaction with the virus a booster shot. So I guess every day.

> False? Who cares? I'm in business and wear a mask

Perhaps the right question would be where. I personally insist on masks every time I feel even slightly imperfect (which mostly is because I didn't sleep enough) even if the other people feel too confident. In fact I believe masks make the most sense out of all the measures deployed and allowing people use public transport and supermarkets without masks once most of them are vaccinated is going to be a huge mistake.

> Which also suggests you are getting the virus again

How is this getting it with natural immunity proven by a lab antibody test worse than getting it being vaccinated?

> But hey screw everybody else right?

Nobody experienced any symptoms after contacting me. Everybody I talked to still feels fine. I test. I wear FFP2. I use hand sanitizers. I avoid meeting anyone without a necessity (as I always did). And by the way I have also heard a rumor (though I don't rely on it as I never cared to check) getting an infection from a light/asymptomatic-symptomatic person means higher chances to overcome it without light symptoms too.

> Your mentality around this is selfish and bizarre.

No, I just the question above. I do everything I see logical reason in but I don't understand how is a vaccine better than immunity I have already developed naturally. Why is it supposed to protect the people around me better than the antibodies I already have?

> The person you are replying to was discussing your complete misunderstanding of how vaccines work. Not commenting on naturally acquired immunity, which BTW doesn't mean you're 100% immune because that's now how things work.

Ok. Would you be so kind to tell me how is a vaccine supposed to be better than contacting all the mutations of the actual live virus besides the fact the latter gives you less chances to survive unharmed and enjoy the immunity?

Right. Anything to avoid getting a vaccine. Any excuse imaginable. Got it.

> Nobody experienced any symptoms after contacting me.

Sure except you know people can transmit diseases without showing signs of symptoms. It's called being asymptomatic.

> Ok. Would you be so kind to tell me how is a vaccine supposed to be better than contacting all the mutations of the actual live virus besides the fact the latter gives you less chances to survive unharmed and enjoy the immunity?

You're familiar with the concept of a straw man right?

Nobody is arguing this point. What we are arguing is your misunderstanding of "whatever is in a vaccine" from your original post.

Here's what you said:

> I trust my immune system more than I trust whatever the vaccine does

It's clear from the start that you don't even know what a vaccine does. The vaccine does the exact same thing as obtaining the virus "naturally". It's a living virus, put into you, to train your immune system. It's the same thing. Trying to separate that out into a "natural" immunity versus an "artificial" immunity is not only incorrect scientifically but pretty comparable to believing the earth is flat or something.

Here's another thing you said:

> I never ever resisted any vaccine before and was always willing to get vaccinated against everything.

So again, why is COVID-19 different? Explain the exact scientific and logical reasoning for resisting this vaccine and not others.

> Why is it supposed to protect the people around me better than the antibodies I already have?

So your plan is to just get COVID-19 + variants every year instead of getting a vaccine? Why? Why get yourself sick when a vaccine will do the exact same job? Doesn't seem very logical to me. Do you not get flu shots either? Do you realize that even if you didn't get extremely sick from your first interaction with COVID that it doesn't mean the next time you get a variant you won't be in a coffin? I don't understand at all the point of taking an unnecessary risk here.

> Right. Anything to avoid getting a vaccine. Any excuse imaginable. Got it.

No. Just only get vaccinated if I understand why I should (I mean why I should, not why everybody should). Avoid everything if I don't understand why it is going to help me or anyone around me in my particular case. "Let's just apply the measure to everyone to get a better total result" approach doesn't convince me, I'm a strong proponent of individual approach in everything.

> The vaccine does the exact same thing as obtaining the virus "naturally". It's a living virus, put into you, to train your immune system. It's the same thing.

It's not THE virus. And not even a virus, it's an mRNA which tells the cells to produce something modeled by something they caught in a lab somewhere far away more than a year ago. I actually prefer the real viruses in the circulation given I've been lucky enough to resist any harm they could do. I know "natural" and "artificial" immunity work the same way, but the former is against the real viruses and the latter is against a model.

>> I never ever resisted any vaccine before and was always willing to get vaccinated against everything.

> So again, why is COVID-19 different? Explain the exact scientific and logical reasoning for resisting this vaccine and not others.

Okay, not everything, only the diseases I'm not already immune to. I have chickenpox antibodies (because I had chickenpox when I was a child) so I don't feel like vaccinating against it. I have covid antibodies (because I had light covid obviously, how else could I get them? but the government doesn't believe I had it despite the antibody test, they only accept positive PCR tests taken during the sickness, to me this seems absurd) so I don't feel like vaccinating against covid. The moment when I probably caught it the vaccines were just invented and not available in my country. But I wouldn't hurry even if they were because not tested enough. I really want a vaccine against Lime's disease but am not going to hurry with it as soon as it gets approved, I'll wait some years anyway. Perhaps my logic is imperfect but can you really see no logic in this?

> So your plan is to just get COVID-19 + variants every year instead of getting a vaccine?

So again you believe a vaccine developed against some of the first variants is better than whatever immunity I already have (after surviving waves of all the known strains and having antibodies on a level higher than people I know got after serious sicknesses and vaccines)? I still don't understand why.

> Why get yourself sick when a vaccine will do the exact same job?

I don't get sick. Just slightly sick once long ago and still reliably high level of the antibodies.

> Do you not get flu shots either?

Flu isn't around me all year round. I never tried but I probably wouldn't find particularly high level of flu antibodies if I tested in summer. I don't think I would get the shot if I actually tested and found a reasonable amount of the antibodies. Or maybe I would because flu is more sophisticated AFAIK - there are more diverse varieties. Covid is always around and I think contacting it regularly works like booster shots.

> it doesn't mean the next time ... you won't be in a coffin

Nothing does.

> I don't understand at all the point of taking an unnecessary risk here.

I agree my understanding of the immune system and the vaccines is futile but again I'm not sure tuning it against an old strain can decrease my risk as compared to leaving it as it is after it has successfully tuned it against all the live strains in circulation.

Omg lol. How do you know you didn’t get the “old strain” of the virus when you contracted COVID?

If you’re worried about mRNA for absolutely no scientific or educated reason whatsoever then why not get JnJ?

Even if you somehow know that you got a “newer” strain eventually there will be even more new strains. Are you just planning on getting yourself sick forever? What about when we are able to predict the strains that will become prevalent and we can just send out boosters shots for those? Are you going to sit it out and try and get sick instead?

By that logic you should go get Lyme Disease and not the vaccine before it. Build up your immunity.

> But I wouldn't hurry even if they were because not tested enough.

Describe exactly the scientific reasoning that explains what is “tested enough” and your educated and scientific basis for this. Every physician and scientist says that if there are troubles with a vaccine they appear shortly after (a month or maybe slightly longer) the vaccine goes into the population. Please explain the exact scientific details explaining why the mRNA vaccines or the Johnson & Johnson vaccine would not follow this pattern.

> How do you know you didn’t get the “old strain” of the virus when you contracted COVID?

Because the immunity still works. Both empirically and according to the antibody tests. Despite (or thanks to, if this actually works like booster shots) regular contact with many new people and all strain waves declared. If by some miracle all my immunity comes from the first contact and has nothing to do with anything newer then Ok, cool, but this doesn't mean the vaccine based on the same or older strain is better. Given the antibodies level I don't think need to boost it or have higher chances of infecting anybody than vaccinated people do.

> What about when

Perhaps I will get a shot once an updated vaccine gets released and about a year passes.

> By that logic you should go get Lyme Disease and not the vaccine before it. Build up your immunity.

AFAIK with the Lyme disease the chances it will work out this way - without harm and with reliable immunity as the result are very low if any. With coronaviruses the chance is well above 50% when you are young and fit. Nevertheless I still recommend everyone who doesn't have much antibodies yet go and get the shot already.

> Describe exactly the scientific reasoning that explains what is “tested enough”

Not exactly scientific, just intuitive: it has been deployed to large diverse population in diverse set of places, some reasonable time passed, it helped a lot, no bugs found.

You write a lot (for what I want thank you, and I would feel very grateful if you managed to change my mind, I really value input which can correct or expand my understanding), mostly reasonable, but seemingly ignore (or excuse me if I missed a clear answer) the key question of mine: what's the reason (strictly scientific or speculative, I don't insist) to believe the vaccines will get me better antibodies than those I already have? As for my worry it can actually weaken my immunity I'm perfectly aware it's just a superstition based on nothing else but lack of knowledge + "don't mess with what works" mentality so I don't ask for any counterarguments to this.

And by the way, vaccines are not just a virus/mRNA, there also are adjuvants (a word even the spell checker doesn't know) which contribute a lot to both the intended effect and adverse reactions AFAIK. AFAIK this is why many people (including many of those I know personally) still feel terribly sick the day after a the shot even if they were already immune.

Fun fact: there are places in Europe where you can get vaccinated (legally, with ab approved vaccine) but won't be given the certificate so all the places requiring vaccination will still demand you to get vaccinated again. No matter the antibodies you've gotten in response to the vaccine.

I have two issues. The first one is the suggestion that there is anything “unnatural” or harmful about the vaccines or that they are “new” and therefore dangerous. There is 0 reason to believe this. None whatsoever.

The second is this:

> … to believe the vaccines will get me better antibodies than those I already have

My point isn’t that you need to rush out and get the vaccine right this second - it’s that your immune response is equivalent to having got the vaccine except that in the future, just like those who received the vaccine you will need some sort of re-exposure via contracting the virus from another person or via a vaccine in order to maintain your immune response.

You’re suggesting you won’t get a vaccine as this occurs - instead of obtaining a booster shot equivalent which would train your immune system without risking severe illness you’d prefer to contract COVID again and roll the dice. No clue when you obtained it, maybe even walking around spreading it asymptotically…

Your strategy works for the short term, but fails in the medium to long term.

I see. No, I don't think anything is "unnatural" in any esoteric sense. I only use the "natural" word to define the case of getting the immunity through contact with the virus in the wild because no better word comes to my mind. I imply no positive/negative meaning.

> in the future, just like those who received the vaccine you will need some sort of re-exposure via contracting the virus from another person or via a vaccine in order to maintain your immune response.

I just believe I contact it every day (or every week - I don't really know what the percent of infected people around is) and maintain my immune response this way. I use crowded public transport several times a day (wearing a mask of course), also meet many people and they mostly don't wear masks outside public transport and groceries (and even there many people leave their noses uncovered).

And I don't even have to speculate about this as long as I watch the level of the antibodies.

I don't say I am going to avoid the vaccine forever and rather go get infected when my immunity wears off. I just believe I only should go and get the shot once I see the level of the antibodies decreased. E.g. the Austrian government thinks the same.

Am I wrong?

> Plus the natural instinct to resist whenever pushed.

And there it is..you are still an adolescent who never fully matured emotionally. Glad we could get to the root of it.

This saved me from loosing money and possibly from getting into trouble so many times already.

>>and don't want to get vaccinated with the fastest-baked (least tested) vaccine

But....why. Every single study shows that it's safe. Hundreds of millions of people have been vaccinated so far without issues. And reading up on the method of delivery makes me very confident in having it.

Just because it's the fastest developed vaccine in history(which is not true btw, but whatever, let's roll with that argument if you wish)? Why would that be an argument against it rather than the actual data that shows whether its safe or not?

Because why should I inject something I don't really need (because I'm immune already)? Everybody around pushing me to makes me feel exactly like I shouldn't.

But that's two different arguments. Either you are arguing that you don't want to get vaccinated because the vaccine has been developed quickly(in which case I'm going back to my original question - why?), or you just don't think you need it. For the latter - indeed there are countries where proof of having been through Covid recently( <6 months) is just as good as having been vaccinated, you can participate in all activities.

> But that's two different arguments.

Sure, there is a number of arguments.

> indeed there are countries where proof of having been through Covid recently( <6 months) is just as good as having been vaccinated, you can participate in all activities.

And this is what makes me angry as I can see even less logic in this. Why should I prove I had covid, let alone in any specific moment of time? I obviously had it because I have the antibodies. I test for the antibodies every some months and they don't decrease (for a year already). Of course I have no other proof - I just had some slightly running nose (which was even supposed to be an anti-symptom) a day a year ago, tested for antibodies about 2 month after and found out I have them. And I still have them and have been feeling great all the time except one day in spring when I had high temperature but tested negative a number of times that days and next days.

E.g. Austria doesn't require you to prove you have been sick - they just look at the actual antibodies and this seems the only logical objective measure to me.

>>And this is what makes me angry. Why should I prove I had covid, let alone in any specific moment of time?

Well, or a vaccine. As to why a specific moment in time - because the immunity wanes in time. I fully expect that the vaccine proof won't be accepted any more if it's older than X months either, but we simply haven't reached that step yet.

>>tested for antibodies 2 month after and found out I have them. And I still have them.

Cool, and maybe that should be proof enough that you're safe to be out in a public space or private businesses. It's sad that in some countries that's meaningless, but the vaccine is the next best thing - it's easy enough to prove that you've had it, the systems built around it are straightforward and robust.

>>E.g. Austria doesn't require you to prove you have been sick - they just look at the actual antibodies and this seems the only logical objective measure to me.

Sounds like a great plan, I can support that.

As to why should you.....well, that's a harder one to answer in a simple fashion. I think it's similar to how in order to get a visa to certain places you have to be vaccinated against yellow fever - it's not a matter of personal choice whether you want to or not, it's a hard requirement to keep everyone safe. If we lived in a reasonable society where you could expect everyone to be reasonable and safe things like covid passports wouldn't be necessary, but because we live surrounded by selfish idiots who don't care about anything past their own nose we have to have documents which prove things like vaccination status. Kids don't get admitted to preschool without all their vaccinations for a reason too. Sorry if the comparisons are a little bit on the nose, but I do think that at least right now this is a necessary step. Maybe in a year or two this will change and we'll treat it like the flu vaccine - if you want it then have it.

> as long as one can show proof of vaccination (necessary if you want to go to the restaurants, cinemas and museums).

This is the key point. If we had widespread implementation of similar restrictions we'd be around the same. Unfortunately here we have not just a lot of people but a lot of lawmakers, mayors, and governors who think not being able to spread a virus is an attack on their personal freedoms.

Or they recognize that Vaccination means you are protected from getting infected, and if you did get infected as a vaccinated person you have a 1:160,000 chance of hospitalization, and even lower chance of death making having a "vaccine mandate" simply a power grab with no basis in science or public health

I know plenty of people who are staying home not because they're worried about COVID, but more because they've come to enjoy the seclusion and convenience of ordering delivery all the time.

As someone who 'enjoyed the convenience of delivery' long before the coronavirus pandemic, it's quite weird to realise that wasn't as normal (then) as it seemed. City bubble I suppose. Or not-having-a-car (hardly unusual for London) bubble.

(I don't mean takeaway food - though it's certainly 'normal' among certain demographics.. - just groceries, Amazon, etc.)

> Or not-having-a-car (hardly unusual for London) bubble.

In large sections of the US, I am guessing like 90% of the country it is almost impossible to survive without a car, like you literally will end up homeless without an automobile and I am not exaggerating.

Sure, but no section of the US large or otherwise is in London.

I live in Tokyo and prefer to go out and eat, despite delivery being easy. Food tastes better when it’s fresh, not served in a plastic container, in a nice environment, and it’s not even hard to do - hundreds of options within a 10 minute walk of my apartment.

Like I said I'm not talking about takeaway food - which I pretty much never order, agree I'd rather eat in a restaurant. I mean about getting groceries (with which I can prepare the meal) delivered.

But I suppose same would stand to compare picking up a takeaway in person vs. having it delivered. (i.e. if that's what I ate, I would almost certainly have it delivered.)

People are definitely staying home more. I live in what was once a bustling night life district. It is far less bustling now.

I also feel people are sticking more to their core friends and family groups, and venturing out to meet new people less. But that’s more of a personal feeling than something I have quantitatively observed.

Are there still restrictions where you live?

I didn't go anywhere while masks were still required. It's annoying and, sure, I'm sorry for your small business (a nearby business wrote a sign "come and eat here or we'll starve") but I won't bother covering my face just to buy something I can order online, helping my friend Jeff Bezos in the process.

Same with holidays, I'm not coming to your country to relax if I have to wear a mask.

Now that masks are not required in my country I go out as much as I did before.

Yeah masks are still technically required, but if they’re anything like indoor dining, people are lax about wearing them once inside (I haven’t been to any since the pandemic, so I could be wrong).

Depends. I live in north Dallas. Masks were always just a guideline here, no matter how many "required" signs there were, anywhere from 25% to 50% of the clientele on any given day would just ignore them.

We now are going the other direction, state buildings are prohibited from requiring masks and private businesses do so at their peril because people are generally against them.

At least where I live you can’t do much without wearing a mask, including being outdoors within 6 feet of people. This likely has A LOT to do with it.

Yes. Another reason is, Covid had polarized people. Not only health-wise about “the vax”, but also politically. Spending many more lonely hours during lockdowns, rehearsing thoughts, drip-fed by social media and news outlets, witnessing all the extreme behavior of “the other camp” (whichever camp you are in) did wonders in being disgusted of meddling again. With polarization, it’s difficult to meddle.

There’s a reason why social isolation is used as punishment, even in carceral locations. We’re just getting out of it at a societal level.

People don't want to get covid. Getting close to large groups or new groups feels unsafe. Going out unnecessary feels socially unacceptable.

Going out unnecessary feels socially unacceptable.

This is silly if you're vaccinated and not in an unusually high risk group.

I think it’s not a question of what is rational but of how one feels and how one’s social circle feels.

Very true. We're at a bizarre point where for large segments of the population, the actual and self-perceived risks are exactly reversed.

Personally, I'm vaccinated and I feel pretty safe. I'd like to resume a more normal way of life. It's just that there's nothing happening. There's no office, no happy hour or hanging out after work. Very few dinner or coffee invitations. No meetups. No going out dancing. Just way less events in general.

> Going out unnecessary feels socially unacceptable.

Human beings are social creatures and it's normal that we have a need to see people and connect. The directive to self-isolate has been very detrimental for a lot of people's mental health. I'm privileged enough to have access to a therapist, but I feel like I'm kind of on the edge of depression, very apathetic about life.

I don't want to make this a political discussion, it's hard to balance self-sacrifice vs the greater good, but we've all sacrificed a lot considering this disease has killed about 6.2 people per ten thousand over the last 18 months, whereas about 200 people per ten thousand would have died otherwise. Are we going to keep this up for several more years? What's the impact on our society going to be?

Or retreated to already known communities. I’ve spent far more time chatting with acquaintances this year than ever before.

We've been staying home for well over a year now. Virtually all shopping is delivered and have eaten at a restaraunt once I think. Our work as had one outdoor happy hour that I would have gone to, except for non-pandemic issues. I've been blown away at the recent movie box office ticket sales. Maybe the covid blasé people are going out 50% more often than they did pre-pandemic.

If you’re in the US, I think your attitude is basically just extremely unrepresentative of the general population.

Yes, we're vaccinated in a red state. Just three weeks ago the infection and death rate neared the all time high. We don't feel like hypochondriacs. It's just easy to play it safe for the time being without feeling like we've lost anything substantial.

You’d be an extreme outlier in almost any city or town in America for this attitude, at this point in the pandemic

Are you vaccinated? Everyone who I know got vaccinated and basically started living their lives normally again as much as possible, wearing masks indoors in crowds and maskless outdoors. Several have now gone overseas to Europe

> It just seems harder to meet people _in general_ than it did even two years ago. Like where is everybody? Does everyone stay home literally all the time now?

The pandemic is probably a bigger deal to others than it is to you.

From what I'm seeing it's kind of a chicken and egg problem. A lot of people are happy/eager to return to normal, but there aren't a lot of events, there are still restrictions in place, and people are no longer used to seeing people as much. I include myself in that. I'd like to go to events, but I don't really spend much time looking for them, because I assume said events aren't happening.

No. People are more eager than ever to meet. I have made more friends than ever before.

However, I definitely give new people who are übermaskers a bit of a wide berth mostly out of respect for them.

Can I ask which country you live in and what type of place you go to meet people these days?

I live in San Francisco, CA in the USA.

I have expanded through the friends I made at my first job and through my uni friends and I have a few through my hobbies: ceramics, weightlifting, bicycling, soccer.

This basically pushed me into a depressive spiral last year. Spent months wondering if I was just broken or not meant to be social. Even started picking up incredibly unhealthy habits to compensate.

I think my issue isn't WFH, or virtual socialisation (which I was already doing 2-3 times per week to keep in touch with high school friends). The problem is both. 16 hours a day in front of a computer just didn't feel human.

Given the choice, I will never work from home again. Even at work I have a rule of no more than 4-5 hours in front of a screen.

I find the trick was (and is, really) to meet people online and to make appointments to meet them IRL.

I have a bunch of friends on IRC, we generally hang out in a single channel (it spun out of a topic specific channel but we sorta moved to been adjacent years ago).

That acts as my digital water cooler since I'm remote forever.

IRC is becoming the HAM radio of our generation. Pretty soon there will just be a bunch of crusty old men who do it as a hobby but insist how vital and relevant it is.

I'm old, my online friends moved from IRC to Discord around 2017.

Relatedly, I think this is part of what fuels more extreme social groups. If you don't have rotary/bowling/church/golf whatever group that you hang out with in real life, and you've got nothing else, then when you finally find a group they will be more likely to be a group that by its very nature has a stronger set of convictions; enough so that it overcomes the social norms and inertia and gathers in-person.

Aren't lodges, churches, and golf clubs kind of the stereotypical examples of race- and class-exclusionary groups?

I suppose it's not exactly a strong set of convictions if you're passively going along with broader social pressures to segregate on race and class, but if we're talking about the health of society (which I think we're implicitly doing), I think segregating on worldview is actually a whole lot healthier.

I don’t know much about lodges and golf clubs, but most churches are overwhelmingly of one race or another. Finding a church that reflects the broader community is quite rare, most of the community tends to self-segregate on Sunday mornings.

That said, growing up churches seemed fairly class-integrated (I’m atheist now, maybe this has changed?). But growing up we had everyone from an American Football quarterback on a multi-million dollar contract to working class folks in the same room.

Most of the larger lodges (Loyal Order of Moose, Modern Woodmen of America, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks) were explicitly sexist (male only) and racist (white only). Although some operated female-open auxiliary organizations.

Freemasonry is interesting, in that it actually had a schism in part over exclusionary membership clauses around 1877 (Regular vs Continental). Although apparently, masonry itself forbids discussion of religion or politics during its meetings.

But much of the early lodge structure and exclusion has since been rewritten and broadened, as the majority of them were founded in the 1870s - 1910s, when prevailing social attitudes were themselves much more sexist and racist.

(Interesting, a majority were operated for the purpose of effectively providing their membership a social safety net and insurance, both of which were lacking in government terms at the time!)

There are good reasons for male-only organizations as well, mainly to do with having something private of their own that men can bring back to their marriages and homes. It provides a social support network for men (literal fraternity), and by extension, their families, where men are not left dependent on their wives for managing their social lives, as is common in many marriages. The lodges still provide a fabric for civil society that persists across party lines and through periods of strife. To dismiss the lodges as merely sexist is more trivializing than anything else, as we're equal, not indifferent or interchangeable, etc.

Racism doesn't really figure into regular Freemasonry either, as it was founded as a universalist enlightenment society. When you look at who has historically made a point of suppressing them, it's worth asking who the good guys really were. They're a reliable canary for civil liberty. Prince Hall masonry, founded by and for African American men is still going strong in the US, and it is in concordance with most north american grand lodges. The main thing is you can't be an atheist in regular masonry, which is analogous to having a policy against racism in that atheism is traditionally also viewed as an obtuse and unnecessarily irreconcilable belief that can call someones moral judgment into question. The continental/european stuff is different, and much of it isn't connected to the mainstream anglosphere masonic culture.

> There are good reasons for male-only organizations as well, mainly to do with having something private of their own that men can bring back to their marriages and homes.

Why must this be male only to be private?

That something is single sex makes it private, yet also less directly exclusive or discriminatory. It's not public, it's a fraternity with membership, which makes it a privilege one earns. So there's a bar. Privacy provides some relief from impertinent people. If one is ideologically opposed to such gatherings, there isn't much to persuade them otherwise, but I suspect having somewhere to go that is free of them is its own reward.

I see your point, but I think it goes the other way.

Churches et al are microcosms of a geographic community, resulting in greater localized diversity of thought. And these groups can either lead or hold back a community along the lines of race- and class-exclusion. The church I grew up with was the very first institution in my life that had an openly homosexual person in a position of power (the rector, in charge of the local church).

Point being, the exclusionary aspect of these institutions is often a reflection of the communities they exist within. Certainly clubs are self-grouping communities, with their own sets of exclusionary rules...and some clubs were and are quite explicit in their exclusions: anything that is pay-to-play is largely going to have an element of class-exclusion, whether you pay at the door or whether you pay with something you can "show" (eg being able to read Latin, being a great classical musician, etc). Certainly many clubs have been race- exclusionary, at times intentionally ("keep those people out!") and other times unintentionally ("wait you don't know about X??").

But just because these groups exhibited these exclusions, I don't think it necessarily follows that segregating by worldview is healthier than segregating by geographic region.

My childhood Southern Baptist church (irregularly attented, around holidays visiting family) had a female pastor.

Eventually, the Southern Baptist Convention got around to noticing, and told them that wasn't allowed. They could either fire the pastor, or they'd lose SBC funding.

... to which the church replied that they were founded in 1804, liked their pastor just fine, and that the SBC could go have a talk with the devil, and take their money with them.

:) So yes, it depends on the church.

I am not a church goer myself but I love how your church handled it. Kudos!

There are certainly exceptions but the vast majority of the largest churches in the US are very homogeneous, more so than the communities they are a part of. There are some groups, for example the Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's witnesses that seem to buck this trend but your average Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Jewish, Mormon, etc congregations tend to be very homogeneous.

If you live in a big city this isn't true for big tent religions. Catholic churches have a variety of different people from South American, East Asian, Italian, French, Irish.

Keen golfer here, I don't blame you, your vision of golf is very wide spread and it is a stereotype based on how golf works in some places. Like all stereotypes, it is based on a partial truth, but there is more to golf than that.

There are several countries, (including Scotland where golf was born), where golf clubs are on average very affordable and most golf courses, including some of the best and most famous ones, are public courses (you can go and walk your dog or do whatever, there is no fence)[1] Scotland is not the only country where public courses are popular[2], but it's the most talked about example, due to golf being born there.

Even in countries where golf is usually associated with "social status", like the USA, things are slowly changing, there are golf courses that aim to integrate with the local communities [3][8] and golfers that promote a more inclusive way of practicing the sport[4][5][6].

On a separate note, there are also efforts to make golf courses more environmentally sustainable. Again, Scotland leads the way with their courses that are not irrigated, and intentionally left to brown-out during summer[1][7], but there are also similar efforts in other countries including the USA[9].

[1] Scotland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icSVHHG8vnE&list=PL5vefWGHKL...

[2] In Australia many golf courses have no full time staff, and you pay using the "honesty box", those courses also usually have unlimited public access (non golfers can walk in any time) https://australianseniorgolfer.com.au/26181/honesty-box-golf...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-JIYgZrnrc

[4] https://randomgolfclub.com/

[5] https://thefriedegg.com/

[6] https://good-good.fireside.fm/

[7] https://sustainable.golf/

[8] https://www.golfcoursearchitecture.net/content/what-the-futu...

[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyMdFbmBbTk

I thought thats what Meetup was about, for both tech and non-tech communities. I haven't been involved for a while due to life changes (kids + relo), so not sure if its as vibrant in some cities as it used to be.

I literally never saw a Meetup group last for more than a year.

The closest thing to an exception was a group that existed a decade then happened to get a Meetup for convenience, and they closed within a year of getting on (for unrelated reasons)

We kept one going for five years in the local region. Had about 50-ish people to certain events at its peak, probably a few hundred active members (including inactive it was over 1300). But paying $180/year didn't feel worth it as soon as the pandemic hit. I was the main one paying it also.

Kind of shitty too because you can't really kill a Meetup group as long as someone is willing to pay for it. I stepped down as admin and some speed dating thing swooped in and started paying for it, so now the page is still up but there's only speed dating events on it now.

I think Meetup has almost doubled in price in the past 5 years, and it's gotten some major competition from Facebook's groups and events, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's on the decline. I don't think I'd bother to create a Meetup group nowadays, just create a Facebook group.

I do still use it to find some online events to attend periodically, though. Still haven't done any events with random people in person yet, just friends I know are vaccinated.

I think it depends on the group. I’ve been in several that have lasted multiple years. They tend to be focused on one specific hobby or demographic niche and then offer a wide variety of activities within that niche. Additionally, have multiple organizers and a large enough funnel of new joiners that it always feels big and welcome and established. I have no idea how they got to the stable position they’re in now, but these meetups are more like self-directed communities than they are going-somewhere-for-one-thing interest groups.

Most of the meetups I'm in have been going on for several years, at least.

My backpacking group is on meetup. I joined in 2016. Not sure when it was started, but it was a few years before that. Admittedly, the group existed in some form before Meetup did, but it has grown to over 2000 members on Meetup. There's a core group of about 50 or so who are very regularly active.

There's also a local hiking group, a python user group, a biking club, and a climbing club. Quite a few of these existed before meetup and will probably exist after meetup.

There is a book on this topic called "bowling alone" if you are interested. These observations are ones people were making pre-covid.

I was going to recommend that as well. Am in the process of reading it, after a previous recommendation on HN. Or as the previous commenter quipped to a similar question 'Yes, Robert Putnam identified all these trends by the 80s and 90s, but nobody liked how gloomy he was about it.'

Link: https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Commu...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam

Does Bowling Alone have any suggestions on how to create a "third space" for ourselves? Or is it more just identifying the phenomena?

i am also very interested to know this as well.

the absence of “irl” community is something i have thought a lot about over the years.

seems nowadays most people hang out with either: 1. existing friends/family 2. coworkers 3. go online

with wfh, you lose #2. if you are a transplant, or never had #1, that doesn’t leave you with any options.

it seems inevitable that the future of socialization will be online and niche. and there will be a small minority that reject that trend and go “off the grid” to connect with nature.

i’m interested to research these topics/themes more thoroughly, if anyone can recommend further reading.

Before the pandemic, I made a conscious effort to meet people by regularly attending a bunch of local meetups, over the course of two years. I made a ton of new acquaintances that way, and about 15 of those people ended up being part of my two main friend circles now.

I always thought of myself as an introvert before, but I just kept attending these things, and being present a bunch, not being too irritating of a person (I don't claim to be full of social graces, but overly irritating people did tend to be filtered out over time), and having activities to focus on instead of just talking at a lot of these (board games, scavenger hunts, movies, etc) helped me make those friendships over time.

Since the pandemic I've regressed quite a bit and haven't maintained a lot of the weaker friendships, but I still do things with those two main friend circles, mostly board game nights at their houses. Helps that everyone that attends is vaccinated, otherwise I'd feel less comfortable about it.

Anyway, it's possible if you make an effort, or at least it was before the pandemic (it probably still is possible, I'm just personally more cautious now).

Can you give me an example of the type of meetup you're attending? Will look for some in my area. Ty!

Sure. I'm only attending things online right now though. Here's a few of my past ones:

- Writing Meetup (talk about what you're writing right now, or share a passage and get feedback)

- Virtual Tour Meetup (a tour guide gives a presentation about a travel destination, past presentations are still up on their website): https://www.girltraveltours.com/

- Improv meetup - practice Improv with others online (now in person so online stopped and I don't live close enough to go to it)

- Game meetups - the local library and another group have regular Jackbox, Among Us, Gartic Phone, and BoardGameArena online game nights

- Book Club meetups - attended one discussing 'How to Avoid a Climate Disaster' by Bill Gates recently, but I've been to others as well

- History meetups - attended a few lectures about past events in history, like Shackleton's disaster of an exploration attempt in Antarctica (pretty crazy story), one on the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior, one on HH Holmes, etc.

- Virtual hack night or coding presentation events - Talking about something related to code, sometimes getting online to talk about and work on our own projects and keep each other accountable, etc.

Thanks! Those sound cool.

They exist. They're just not your almost stereotypical, mostly working class, traditional organizations.

Depending upon age and interests, at least larger cities have options and, as you get involved, more options get opened up.

It seems that to participate in group activities you have to bring friends you have nowadays instead of going out and making friends. My view might be wrong.

truth. went to a gyms happy hour and me and a girl were there alone otherwise everyone else went off in their groups of 3 or 4 they knew already lol.

Yep. This has been studied in MBA networking events too where the only person who ended up meeting everyone was the bartender.

>The few new meetings that did take place tended to be with others who were like themselves: the consultants talked to consultants, and the bankers talked to bankers. In terms of both new conversations and diverse connections, the most successful networker at the event turned out to be the bartender. https://hbr.org/2018/05/go-ahead-skip-that-networking-event

Could it be that there's a bit of bias in the study?

Similar to the biases related to the fact that the majority of psychological studies were run on predominantly rich, predominantly white students at well-funded universities?

Can you demystify what an elks lodge is? I’ve never really understood the concept of these lodges and they seem like some kind of closed off private club or something cult like. I’m guessing I have the wrong perception.

It sort of is/was a private club - they would have a lodge, functionally sometimes like a tavern, they might have a liquor license, and membership was fairly controlled/via word of mouth and voting by the existing members. Often members would do business deals, help each other if someone say lost a job, or helped out with things in the community.

Its not a great example for a model that would work now as a huge part was how exclusionary it was - white/male/believe in god/not a commie etc. - society has moved on somewhat from that era.

Still there’s a sort of sense of place that you get when actually involved in a community that is in a local area - I hope we can start to figure out how to do things more locally again.

I have seen a few new cool club ideas that might help fill this void.

In Kansas City there is a dog club (your dog is the member), but it features a bar, workspace, food, events: barkdogbar.com. You drop off your dog to play with the others and can socialize with others, work, etc.

In Chicago - there is guild row (guild row.co) (disclosure: my cousin is a cofounder). This social club is centered around making things.

Also wanted to add in developed countries (and by corollary, big cities) it is very hard to make friends once you are an adult. When I lived in Vietnam it is 10x easier to date/make friends/get involved in the local community (vs NYC,LA or SF)

Did you ever figure out a way to do so as an adult? Maybe meetup.com / local interest groups like cycling, tennis or board games?

Church, and charities, can help finding social outlets outside of work (or be that themselves).

Your perspective is actually very common: Working from home isn't for everyone and we should stop pretending like it's the only way to work. A lot of people dislike remote work. Many people like remote work but can't handle it for various reasons.

Internet forums like HN will always overrepresent preferences for remote work because they're biased toward people who enjoy socializing over the internet. Most people don't go online and engage in random discussions. They do it in person, and they like it that way. A random sampling of active HN commenters is going to be much more enthusiastic about remote work than, say, your average junior who relies heavily on organic interactions to grow in an organization.

I don’t think there is any need to defend in person work. Until very recently it was the only socially accepted form of work.

As the default, we all have a little experience in it.

> I don’t think there is any need to defend in person work.

There is a need to defend it though. I've already seen several businesses claim that remote work is "the future". Personally, I feel that remote work has been very detrimental to my mental health and I hate it. I don't want that future. It feels very unhealthy.

There are probably quite a few organizations that support in-person work. You probably should seek them out (and vice-versa). You just shouldn't assume they're the default any longer.

For me, the isolation of the pandemic was detrimental to mental health but the remote work has been incredibly positive.

Is it possible that these two circumstances are overlapping in your case?

Do you miss the commute and sitting in an office (on-location work) or do you miss speaking with people (socialization)?

I miss speaking with people about work in the easy way of leaning over and asking a question (hey, do you remember the name of that function to does ___?) etc. Sure I can ask on slack but it's not the same.

I mis-conversations being unscheduled

And I miss socialize "with coworkers". We're working on the same project. That socializing helps know what's going one, what each other is doing, what problems we are running into. It gives up empathy for each other tasks etc. Reading about it in various forms of online databases doesn't come close.

I had structured my life so that I could walk to work every day, so the short commute was actually some very welcome exercise.

I miss having lunch with coworkers the most. There's some natural bonding and trust building that happened over lunch, talking about random things, both work and not work related. This is very hard and possibly impossible to replicate with remote work.

With remote work, meetings are scheduled for a reason. Meeting just to "hang out" feels weird. Multi-user meetings with more than a few people also feel off because everyone is interrupting each other, you can't have multiple threads of conversation. Talking on slack, you usually can't tell how the person is feeling. The tone is lost. I've found communication is generally much poorer.

After 1.5 years, I tried working in office yesterday. The experience was horrible. Work conditions were inferior when compared to my home. Going to office and back home feels very inefficient and harmful to the environment.

No thanks for offices.

I think there is a difference between defending in person work, and defending going back to exactly how it was before.

I'm back to the office most days of the week although I don't have to. Big difference being that there are no longer implicit or explicit expectations what hours of the day one is there, I can just stay at home to work on something or wait for a delivery, due to only a part of staff being there any given day it is more spacious and pretty much as quiet as at home, etc.

I actually have a separate room in my apartment I could convert into an office, but I don't want to, since I would have zero use for it outside work hours and prefer to use it for things I actually want to do at home. Sure I could move out of the big, expensive city into a more spacious home, but then I wouldn't live where I want to live.

I don't think there needs or should be a default, and I don't want to go back. Companies should just choose whatever model of working they prefer and see what talent they can attract. Maybe in person work becomes niche. That's fine for me. But i'm honestly getting a bit tired of the "why would you want to socialize with co-workers, don't you have real friends?", you now often get if you mention you personally favor a hybrid model.

it's easy to blame the mode of working to be an obstacle to employees' growth, including juniors, but it's also very likely that managers and the person themselves have not learnt or guided to optimize for this new way of work.

Collectively we should work on this first before jumping the conclusion "all juniors lose out on remote" or smt. Remote gives you a lot more freedom and telling juniors that it isnt for them is kind of gatekeeping.

Or, would a clear majority choose remote work if presence at the office was completely optional and there was no career favoritism in the benefit of people choosing to come into the office.

Coworking is a really great solution to this.

You can have all the human contact and "it's 6pm - want to go for a beer?" easy socializing that you get from being in a busy office, but simultaneously keep almost all the flexibility and the lack-of-constraints of working from home (...almost - there's usually an expectation that you wear clothes).

In many ways it's even better than office social contact: it decouples that socializing from your job. Want to change company, but keep hanging out with the same people every day? Want to switch offices and meet a whole new social circle without changing jobs? Want to go out from the office for a drink after work with your 'colleagues' with no need to avoid personal topics or keep things professional with your boss?

It does require leaving the house, but for almost everybody there is a coworking space that's significantly quicker to get to you than your current office would be. If you're in a major urban center, you probably have 10s or 100s to choose from. For me, it's a dramatic improvement on both the alternatives.

Agreed 100%. My job is 1000 miles away but I have a cohort of folks at the coworking space that keep me sane. This is probably more like the "future of work" especially in my small mountain town.

> Coworking

It's not cheap but I do love it. Nicest offices I've ever worked in, never obliged to talk to anyone.

I have tried this but struggled to find people in coworking spaces that I wanted to socialise with.

The one time it has worked was when friends who worked in the same niche sector would sometimes all cowork at a cafe for a day. Maybe once a month. That was incredible. We were expected to be in our offices most of the time though.

Fair enough, but there's no guarantee you'll want to socialise the people who inhabit your office either. I highly respect and value my colleagues but I don't have a huge amount of interest in socialising with them either.

It’s way too expensive for most people though.

Well, I think one shouldn’t compare the sudden curfew/lockdown situation determined by COVID with the mores of a finely tuned social machine such as the office.

Given enough time, people would start developing routines and habits around diffused WFH, invest and fine-tune in facilities and services to cater for such a customer base.

Right now we have a lot of stakeholders that just held their breath hoping for a quick return to “normality”.

Indeed, a different organization of our urban spaces would drastic reduce CO2 emissions and land consumption. We should think of it in terms of a sudden opportunity to overcome a local minimum we were stuck in, and search for a new optimum.

I think people like you need a new app, something like Tinder for lunch. I personally have no will to move to a high cost of life area and spend 1+ hour on commune just because my coworkers can’t find friends.

Isn't meetup.com a thing worldwide?

Also, the dating app Bumble has an option for friendships, and in a pinch tinder itself works if you're super clear about your goals

I fully understand this perspective and agree remote work should be the de facto norm. Remote works benefits on a productivity and environmental level do seem to outweigh the social benefits. I guess I was just commenting how much I miss organic interaction with like-minded smart people in the office, and how much duller my days have gotten without that.

Coworking is pretty good for this, and going to be amazing post-pandemic.

I’ve been thinking about exactly this!

I really miss the ‘low effort’ social interactions that in-office work provides. “Want to get lunch?” is one of those.

Question: does this app already exist? Can I facilitate this in my life without building the app (easy part) and building a significant user base (hard part)?

Yeah I think bumble has a feature like that. Just for finding friends and such.

I don't want an app - I like my coworkers and enjoy having lunch with them. It's the other, pleasant part of work : social interactions with people I know. They are also sometimes necessary, ie you will sometimes solve problems more efficiently over lunch/coffee than by email / Skype.

Furthermore, not everyone has a 1h+ commute to the office and lives in an expensive area - I know plenty of people with short commutes.

In the end, it's not 'all remote' or 'all office', we're different people in different conditions. There has to be room for everyone.

The point of the person you are replying to is why do you need this social interaction with people you barely know (because be honest, you don’t really know these people) versus social interaction with your friends?

Because if I'm honest, I do know them. I've been working for several years at the same place, have made friends, had lunch/dinner/beers/coffees, been to weddings, etc. Some of them are not friends, but I am happy to see them, just like I enjoy talking to my butcher or fruit seller.

Maybe it's an age/cultural thing, but I'm going to spend quite a bit of time working, so I'd rather do it with people I like. Inevitably, because we like each other, we're happy to see each other, hence the office is a good place to go to. And if I don't know them yet, there's no reason why I shouldn't meet anyone interesting at the office.

I also enjoy talking about my work with like minded people : not my friends, but co-workers. The best conversations happen over beers, coffees, meals, etc which require physical interactions.

Fair enough, I guess it’s just different for everybody. I personally prefer to get my job done as quickly as possible (which is easier without all those interactions) so that I can have the time to go spent it with the people of my choosing and not people that just happens to be next to me.

Agreed - it's personal.

I'll add that I enjoy moving people from 'sitting next to me' to 'known', and given that there are not that many people sitting next to me, and I have a fixed office plan (always the same people next to me), it works for me. I would not enjoy going to the office if I wasn't around the same people/there wasn't at least a bit of stability. We didn't mention this : if your company has a flexible floor plan, indeed, then you won't know your co-workers!

It probably depends on the kind of job you do as well : a significant portion of my job is spent talking to people anyway, and I'd rather make it as pleasant as possible. If it means getting to know people, then I'm quite happy to do so.

The problem you'll find, I think, is that many people will try to use "Tinder for lunch" as if it were just tinder.

Bumble BFF exists and works fine in my experience

Yes, lets make finding casual acquaintances as awful as online dating, that's the ticket!

Be sure you don’t mix work from home and COVID.

I see many people try and combine these, saying that the current state sucks, therefore WFH sucks.

I’m not saying WFH wouldn’t otherwise suck for you/others, but it’s really hard to separate these two to figure out how different WFH would be without COVID, unless in your particular area, they’ve gone back to business as usual (which I don’t think anywhere truly has, yet).

But in a world where more companies are WFH, and COVID has much less of an impact on everyday life, I think WFH will look a lot different.

Again, my point isn’t that WFH is the greatest thing for everyone and every company, just saying that people that are just now WFH due to COVID should wait until COVID is mostly uneventful before declaring WFH a failure.

I've said this before on Hacker News, and now I wish to repeat, if you live in New York City, I host a once-a-month party, mostly for tech people. Very informal. You can get the vibe from the photos here:

http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/everyone-was-amazing-...

It's simply meant to give people a chance to meet other like minded people. Especially in this era of working-from-home it is too easy to end up feeling isolated, so hosting a regular party like this is, I think, a non-stressful way for people to connect.

I mentioned this 78 days ago and 6 people from Hacker News have been attending the most recent 3 parties:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27952414

You can text me at 434 825 7694

Just out of concern for your mobile, you should put a challenge for your phone number at least. There's a ton of scrapers out there that pick up phone numbers and automatically add you to spam call lists and the like.

As for the invitation, unfortunately not in New York (or the States), but if I'm ever around I'd probably love to join.

My cell phone number hasn't changed since March of 2001 and I've had it listed on my personal weblog since April of 2001. I also list it in my Twitter bio:

https://twitter.com/krubner

In 20 years I've never had a problem.

If you ever visit NYC, please reach out.

Very cool, would have loved for this to happen around LA/San Diego. Thanks for setting this up!

I am in socal for now but I very much appreciate the invitation :)

This is great on so many levels. That’s a great model that would work well in almost any town. I’d definitely go if I was in New York. Well done!

> I’m gonna go against the HN grain here and, despite having been fully for remote work for the first year or so of the pandemic, come out and say that life has really gotten a lot more repetitive and frankly disappointing since covid and the death of the office. I kind of miss meeting people in the office.

There's a big difference between 'remote work' and 'forced to work from home due to a global pandemic'.

I went to the office to work the other day for the first time since February 20th, 2020.

It was great. So quiet, open, well lit, great and comfortable desk and chair, ..

Obviously, I could improve my home office, but in reality my home office is taking space that I otherwise was using before 2/20 and now there's a whole space in my home that is allocated to being a work station instead of what it was before.

A few other people came in, and it was great to talk in person in front of a giant whiteboard.

I can't think of a single job I've had where the lighting, desk and chair were remotely as good as I have at home.

That’s fair, but I think you have to acknowledge that the total opposite will be true for many, probably most, people.

There’s a reason that “stop working at the kitchen counter” is, like, its own cottage industry of online writing. People mostly have really bad wfh setups, even people in tech.

Not sure... It seems likely to me that people who've been forced to work from home during the Covid pandemic tend to have crap office-space because it's only temporary. In contrast, people who have made a conscious decision/choice to work from home (as I've done for over 25 years, now) proceed by setting up a proper work space. (Along with developing good work-hygiene like keeping office hours sharply separate from personal time, keeping work in the office and not letting it spill over into the lounge, kitchen, etc.)

Main point: there's a marked (mental, emotional) difference between "this is a temporary emergency" and "this is the way I work (forever)".

I used to flat share in London with some other people in tech. Pandemic WFH setup was the taking turns on the one couch (and floor) for a long time.

As others have noted, we're in a pandemic, so everything is off. Even in places that don't have lockdowns or mandates, people are going to be cautious about socializing.

I'm convinced, though, that when the pandemic fades away, we'll see a bifurcation of working styles. The office offers in-person relationships, high-bandwidth communication, and a well-understood management paradigm, at the cost of forcing everybody to live near the office and spend a lot of time commuting. Full-remote offers the ability to live anywhere and no commutes, but shallower relationships and not-very-well understood modes of communication and collaboration. Hybrid offers... not much, as far as I can tell. It's the downsides of in-office and remote. The best you can say about it is that you get to see people in person sometimes and can avoid commuting sometimes. :-/

So we'll see a grand sorting where people that want to be remote find the companies that will let them do that, and the people that want things to go back to normal find the companies that also want that. Then the remote companies spend the next 50 years learning how to really do distributed work, rather than just "like an office, but on Slack and Zoom".

Working from home during the pandemic is different than working from home during normal times

I had the same feelings working from home full time prior to the pandemic.

The all-company meet ups were the best part about the job(other than the pay I guess).

I actually took a job back with my prior employer with the hopes I could return to an office in some capacity, but we are all remote now. Boo!

> The all-company meet ups were the best part about the job(other than the pay I guess).

To each his own, but all-company meetups are the most god-awful type of event there is. The feigned enthusiasm about company stuff, self-promotions, office politics, elevator pitches, people patting their own backs, etc etc etc. All in all, a colosal waste of time and resources.

Right, I typically hate them. But in the context of a fully remote job it is the only opportunity I have to spend time with my colleagues in the flesh. It is also the only opportunity I have to spend time with them _outside of my home_.

I had a remote gig about a year before the pandemic. In some regards it was easier. But I always found remote work isolating and cross-team collaboration lacking. The isolation was semi-fixable with a WeWork. But there’s not really a good solution a line-level worker can do to improve collaboration if other folks don’t also want it.

EDIT: I suppose the lack of collaboration could’ve also been company culture. Be cautious when the sample size is small.

... has pre-existing families/friends to socialize with.

It's easy to believe the people you work with are friends to socialize with, but the reality is that most people cut ties with their coworkers as soon as they change job, especially early in your career when you're hopping from one job to another every few years. Those people are temporary friends at best.

I recommend doing everything you can to cultivate friendships outside of work.

> but the reality is that most people cut ties with their coworkers

I dislike this type of comment as it presumes that one person's personal experience is "reality" or a reasonable representation of what everyone else has experienced.

It assumes that something as complicated as personal relationships can be can be distilled down into some sort of "average" or "normal" protocol and that if your experience doesn't align, then you are an outlier, not-average, not-normal.

I don't think the concept of "average" or "normal" is particularly useful for something as multi-dimensional as establishing personal relationships.

Some of my longest and best friends are people I met in my first job after college.

> I dislike this type of comment as it presumes that one person's personal experience is "reality" or a reasonable representation of what everyone else has experienced.

GP is spot on, though, and there is absolutely no way around it.

Relationships with most coworkers is motivated and defined by work circumstances. The only reason you found yourselves sharing a space and a schedule and experiences is the fact that someone pays you to be there, but otherwise you would be doing something else somewhere else with someone else. More importantly, if any of you switches jobs, your time and focus and sometimes even city or country will change. Even though professional relationships can flourish into personal relationships, the vast majority and the norm is that the only reason you're even aware you exist is that you want that paycheck and consequently you have to deal with each other.

You are making the same assumptions as the original commenter:

    * assuming that the distribution of experiences is oriented towards a single "cluster" (probably a better statistical term for this)
    * assuming that your personal experience just happens to be aligned with that cluster so as to be representative

I dislike this type of comment as it presumes that one person's personal experience is "reality" or a reasonable representation of what everyone else has experienced.

It's my own experience, and the experience of literally everyone I've ever talked to about it, and something many people have written about in articles about the difficulties of making friends as an adult. No doubt there are people who maintain friendships with people they've worked with long after leaving a job but I don't believe it's very common. If your experience is different then I think you are an outlier. There's nothing wrong with that. You're better off than the rest of us.

How did your particular group of acquaintances become blessed as the standard group? Do you not understand how presumptuous it is for you assume that your experience is the standard experience and to label everyone else an outlier? Why do you even think there is some sort of dichotomy in this area between what is typical (and coincidently just like your experience) and what is a an outlier?

Here is an interesting article that discusses the misunderstanding of what "average" means in a multi-dimensional context: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...

You may actually be right, in the sense that most people don't form long lasting friendships from co-workers, but you can't conclude that just from your personal experience. It was your elevation of your personal experience to universal truth that I was pushing back on. Basically don't use anecdata as evidence of some larger truth.

> I recommend doing everything you can to cultivate friendships outside of work.

More than half of all my friends outside the office started out as coworkers in the past. And the remainder are almost exclusively people that I met as a result of social activities with these 'original' friends.

> More than half of all my friends outside the office started out as coworkers in the past.

Let's put it this way: how many current and past coworkers do you include in your current social, non-professional group?

I'm in regular contact with people from almost every job I had in the last 15 years.

Turns out, coworkers are humans and can have the same outside work interest as me. Be that music, board games, cooking, reading, hiking, etc.

Sure, most people from previous work I don't have any contact with. Same is true for most people I met outside work. Friends can come from everywhere, I don't see a reason to pre-filter.

To me this is more about work eating life and less about office vs wfh.

I just visited Europe this fall and people hang out together practically all the time. Every evening. Families with kids get together and effortlessly spend time while the kids entertain each other. This is the norm.

The sense that I don't get enough socialization via work is a serious symptom that I need to nurture real friendships and communities in life.

> The sense that I don't get enough socialization via work is a serious symptom that I need to nurture real friendships and communities in life.

This is precisely the take I get from all the comments on how WFH supposedly causes social isolation. WFH causes nothing of the sort: people simply seem to be socially isolated by default but relied on work and office life to fill in their personal socialization void.

I've noticed the same thing regarding health and sedentarism: if you rely on your commute to the office to do any form of physical exercise then you already have a major problem, and what your blaming WFH for is just a problem that was already there to begin with.

People have personal needs, and it's simply not healthy to fool ourselves into believing that office life is the solution to meeting each and all of those personal needs.

How much of this is fixable though if you could have a normal social calendar? I don't think current circumstances offer a fair comparison.

true but I mean its been a year and a half since the first lockdowns...this kind of seems like it is the new normal, right?

No. It isn't. It will take another six months or a year but things will return to much like they were before. With the exception of the office. I don't think the office will ever be the same

The Spanish Flu was about three years, but it did end. We're not going to be like this forever.

My social calendar is almost back to normal. I see friends most nights, I do all of my favorite hobbies again. The only things I don't do that I used to really are going to large events (concerts/sports events) and I travel less frequently on planes.

WFH is still incredibly isolating for me. I feel disconnected from my work and from my peers. I was remote once before the pandemic and felt exactly the same way.

I think most people would describe me as highly extroverted. I just don't get enough/diverse enough person to person contact to be happy when I'm at home working all day.

A normal social calendar provides a few hours of interaction per week. That's important and healthy, but it's still a lot less than 40 hours of ambient presence. I think only sharing a household can substitute for that.

I have a normal social calendar, but using the same desk and having to share space between work stuff and hobby stuff is getting to me. I could move to a bigger place but that's basically taking a paycut, or if it's a cheaper place it will mess up my social calendar again.

I don't dislike WFH and I think it has a place. I work on embedded devices and now I'm working at Apple on phone stuff. That place is not my job, I don't think WFH is any good for the teams I'm at and for the stuff I do. Even if I just go to the office once per week, that usually involves moving multiple devices and cables and tearing down/setting up my development setup somewhere else or having to maintain duplicate setups. Don't get me started on if I forget or don't think I'll need X measuring device or Y adapter cable or tool and then I have to hunt for a second one in the office or buy one for home.

It's clearly very hard for folks who have come to rely upon their workplace as their venue for social interaction, and their co-worker pool as their source for social relationships. But to be clear, once upon a time (back in the long long ago), it was seen as unhealthy to mix your work relationships and your personal friendships. So it's possible for all of us to learn how to develop relationships and friendships that don't rely upon the forced proximity of an office. Things like shared activities, social organizations, etc are a good starting point.

Very similar situation, relocated to the Bay for work a few months before the first shelter in place.

It’s been rough. Don’t have any real advice, but at least know you’re not alone.

Edit: I think it’s important to focus on where we go from here. And at least to me that actually means more remote. I would rather be able to work remotely from amongst my existing support network than attempt to roll back the clock to a pre-COVID style of office work.

To each their own.

You've been remote during a global pandemic. That is not normal remote working. Nobody has enjoyed it or found it easy. It sounds like it came at a bad time for you too after moving - that must have been difficult.

I find almost all arguments against remote working seem to based on bad experiences in the last year that are potentially conflating remote work with the pandemic. Sure, some people may truly hate remote work. However, I have quite a few friends who despised it and now that we're back to normal (in the UK) have actually decided they don't want to go back to the office. The commute time + cost of commute is just not worth it. It's equivalent to a sudden pay cut to have to commute again and a pretty significant one at that. Getting your regular social life back makes a huge difference to quality of life when remote working. For most places this hasn't happened yet.

As another anecdotal example there were a loud minority crying out for us to get back to the office at my company. They wanted to be allowed in before all the equipment was back they were so desperate. One person is back full time. About 2-5 others come in once a week on the day the company has started buying lunch. I think a lot of people did want to come back but as the office opened up with the rest of society they've found they don't actually need it for a social life. I bet that in 12 months the company moves to buying a hot desk in a co-working space for the 1-5 people who want to come in and I would bet that within 24 months there's a greater than 50% chance nobody is coming in anymore because the social life they wanted through the office is gone.

Sounds like the problem is that our social involvement outside of work is totally broken and we make our lives revolve around our work, and think that's entirely normal.

mic drop

This is the truth. We are asking our work life to substitute for our lack of family of social life. Younger generations are losing their social skills faster than they realize.

Isn't that more an effect of your local social scene being shut down though, and not lack of commuting to an office?

If all the local bars/clubs/libraries/whatever you like to do were open, wouldn't that solve the problem?

I always enjoyed the after-work drinking events. Lots of people there that I would never call up and ask "hey want to go to the bar?" but still enjoyed hanging out with. I guess it's not work's job to be your social life, and these after-work events exclude people with families or that don't like alcohol from valuable interactions... but ignoring the global effect, I personally enjoyed them. Now that everyone is remote, they don't happen, and you just have to put "fun" events on the team calendar. That's more fair, and almost as good, but I get why people miss that part of office culture.

I did too. But I always felt bad when we made a work decision at the bar and then the folks who didn't come out with us didn't get a say and had an uphill battle if they didn't agree.

Yup. I think that it probably falls on the side of "not good for the company", so it's not necessarily a bad thing that we can't do it anymore.

Honestly, I think we mostly spent our time shit-talking people that weren't there, which isn't super healthy.

> Honestly, I think we mostly spent our time shit-talking people that weren't there, which isn't super healthy.

Honestly, I often feel like that shit-talking helps to keep people bonded over what can be pretty awful situations. I know that in my current job (to which I've given notice), I'd have loved to have a bunch of people from the office to talk to about it, and it might have lead to me staying longer.

Hard to know for sure though.

Definitely makes sense.

A response I can offer you is this, And it’s loaded with empathy because I def get that people derived real fun from it.

A lot of people attended those after-hour drinks as the semi-mandatory things they are, either for career survival or career acceleration reasons. This was always a large background narrative, and the death of it as of now is a nice thing. I’d take quarterly team dinners and an 30 min zoom with beers any time.

7am-5pm, and the 5-7pm additions to work life on a often weekly basis demands a lot out of people went to them just to manage their career.

What frustrates a lot of people, and generates the tone on HN perhaps, is that this aspect isn’t acknowledged in exchange for “but it was my social life!” Your social life cut into my real non-work social life (or so the comment would go).

I totally understand that. I think we've made the world a little bit more fair for everyone by forcing people to schedule a 30 minute meeting during work hours to just chat or play games or whatever. No screwing up the commute, no forcing people to drink intoxicating substances, etc. Definitely net better.

But, I personally enjoyed people being forced to socialize with me ;)

Respect the candor!

You might be surprised to realize in a few years that they haven't died, you're just excluded from them.

You might not like it, but after work drinking is one of the areas where a lot of the meat of innovation and progression in the company happens.

I think a lot of people who double down on full remote are going to be surprised when they wake up in 5 years and realize they're pretty stagnant and have just become cogs to do the boring work. Which they might be fine with but I'm sure I'll be reading comments from them complaining about how their pay matches that too.

Lol, you'd be surprised to learn I'm not surprised in my expectation that these things will come back.

Referring to their death literally because the bars are closed for the last year and a half, despite the hit to innovation and progression that causes.

And I'll go to them once they're back, see "career progression reasons." The light ire my last comment contains is directed at the people that view these as lightweight friend happy hours, which these events have never been.

Golden rule - if my boss is remote, I'm still ok with remote. That said, your theory takes a hit with a full remote company at the eng and exec level, which many Series B/C/D startups are turning into.

Feel free to downvote me again and laugh but as someone who's office is back in the city. Thing ARE already back to normal, you just have no idea yet as a remote drone.

I'll stop trying to help you and stop giving you cheat codes at this point. In 5 years we'll know who was correct.

I live in a large tech city you’d know, a venture-backed place on lists you’d recognize, and at a career point where I’ve played these cheat-codes already. I stayed in the city for the same reasons you’d advocate for. The offices are 1/4 full, financial districts around it are a ghost town, and companies are shedding real estate. I can’t down vote comments that are direct replies to me. Yeesh.

The workplace is a social hub for many people, although it seems many on HN don't care to socialize at work much.

people also hire those who fit the company culture. It's important if you are to spend the rest of your life in the same room. Better to just hire for skill.

Sure, but it depends on the company. I've made friends at every place I've worked, some lifelong, and I do miss that, but on the balance, work never really dominated my social life. I always had other friends too.

Not the OP. But some of it also has to do with work life balance. If you dedicate yourself to the startup hustle there’s not really time for bars/clubs/libraries every night of the week. But for some reason staying up late, solving problems, eating with your coworkers, etc feels like a form of socialization. With COVID isolation, it just feels like a solo grind (I suspect this is part of why YC is biased against solo founders).

If you're new to an area, often coworkers will help introduce you to local bars/clubs/libraries/whatever. Not that you might like the same ones, but it does start you with a baseline you can modify, which is valuable.

I’m an introvert with a family and I still miss the office. No, it’s not about getting away from the family.

I never want to fall into a 5 times a week schedule again, but I miss the background discussions; commute; and energy that is involved in getting ready for work.

You need social hobbies on the weekend. I just wish weekends were three days so I got two days for hobbies and one day break for rest, errands and other life necessities.

Cramming most socializing into whatever bits of free time are left after hobbies seems unlikely to work for most people.

Living for the weekend is an extremely draining way to live. I fucking hate it.

As it stands - I live for 2-3 hours on Sundays if the weather is good because everything is closed and will be closed for another 6 fucking months. It's fucking horrific. I have to spend the rest of my week grinding away at meaningless drivel.

Imagine actually spending 40+ hours/week around people and enjoying a significant amount of your interactions.

Move to a place where things don't arbitrarily close for 6 months at a time if you don't like that?

I fear it's another example of "optimizing" away something that made us more human (in this case, more in-person interaction).

Yeah this is another fear I have as well. Lots of the social interactions that made life better (albeit more difficult in some ways), were kind of automated away: dating, irl friends, etc.

It is optimizing away time and resources wasted commuting. If people wanted to interact in person, they can do things in their community outside of work.

> I fear it's another example of "optimizing" away something that made us more human (in this case, more in-person interaction).

I disagree. If anything, WFH optimizes away unhealthy work/life imbalances that force people to become mindless company drones whose personal life is eaten away by a corporation.

Our life is not the long commute, the social order imposed by a company hierarchy, the petty office politics, the optional-in-name-only-but-actually-mandatory professional events which maskerade as company social get-togethers, etc etc. That's something people are forced to endure because they are imposed by the circumstances of office life.

If anything, WFH forces a healthy separation and distancing from inane and outright unhealthy aspects of office life, and it's sad to see how the amount of life and personal time and the opportunity to pursuit your own interests that it eats away is somehow being depicted as a negative tradeoff.

You are your own person, not a mindless company drone. Your life is not dictated by the context of your professional life. Mixing both is terribly unhealthy. Much like alcoholism, just because people use it as an excuse to fill in voids in their life that does not make it any healthier or even desirable.

> You are your own person, not a mindless company drone. Your life is not dictated by the context of your professional life. Mixing both is terribly unhealthy. Much like alcoholism, just because people use it as an excuse to fill in voids in their life that does not make it any healthier or even desirable.

Seems like my simple suggestion struck a nerve. The idea that while WFH can be beneficial to global society, but still represent a decrease in human socialization isn't really groundbreaking or controversial.

Right now, we have the highest rates of WFH in history and also historical levels of loneliness and depression. All three of these trends were happening pre-COVID. We don't have to make sweeping comparisons to completely unrelated illnesses (alcoholism) to see that people are generally not replacing the socialization found in the office with socialization at home.

When I was in the office socializing with my co-workers/friends, I didn't consider it being a "mindless company drone", I thought of it as being a human with historically human social interactions. You clearly don't (or didn't) like those interactions, but you aren't everyone. One size doesn't fit all.

People seem to be completely ignorant of the theory of the firm - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm

It's a bit of a straw man I'm making, but a lot of people seem to say "I do fantastic work, my company doesn't need to control me, just recognise the fantastic work I do! Let me just work from home and keep up my fantastic work!"

It's already well discussed in the "theory of the firm" in economics. Why do firms hire employees, rather than just contractors? Why do workers not want to all be freelancers?

A lot of the arguments about "presenteeism" seem to veer into acting like their company wants to essentially have all the overhead of managing freelancers, and to have employees jump through all the hoops freelancing involves, which is obviously not what (most) people want in the first place.

Very similar situation here and I absolutely agree with you. Remote has been tough. My ideal set-up is fully in office with a walkable commute but I don't think it's happening quite yet.

This is the thing for me. If your company has a fully-stocked kitchen, quality chairs, monitors, adjustable desk, and noise cancelling headphones, it might be a comparable to a good home office setup in terms of comfort. What kills me though is commuting. All told, I spend 3-4 extra hours on days I go to the office, and that time comes out of my free time, effectively turning a 40 hour job into a 60 hour job.

I think everyone agrees that being in the office, all things being equal, is better for collaborative work. It's just all the not-equal externalities (especially commuting and high real estate prices near good jobs) that make it suck.

Yeah I've been working from home for a couple of weeks after being back at work three days a week for a long while now - I've found myself missing the office and getting frustrated with phone calls or chats being poor substitutes for face to face conversations. Working from home part of the week is nice but doing it all week becomes a drag.

For me, I never really made friends in the office, but I did make friends from the office and my profession from outside of the office activities. Conferences, education, meetups, big morale events. These things have stopped, for me, since the pandemic, so I've not made any new friends this way. I'm full-time remote now, and moved away from the west coast, but I expect I'll still do conferences and the big morale events. I've not explored the meetup scene here, but I am hoping to also make some friends doing non-tech activities finally, since my new area is less tech focused.

I actually like working in my office. However.

My commute to the office is 10 minutes. We have actual offices with doors. So the whole experience is civilized and low stress.

My theory is what wrong with offices today has everything to do with managers need to exert power and feel in control. And things being run for the convenience of upper managers. They all live close to work, have offices with doors. None of this actually considers the companies bottom line. Seriously you pay an code monkey a shitload of money then have him work under the worst work environment short of running heavy machinery next to them.

> remote work for the first year or so of the pandemic, come out and say that life has really gotten a lot more repetitive and frankly disappointing since covid

I'm not surprised, because not only offices "died", but everything else did too.

Many people used to work remotely before that. But we always could jump out for a lunch with our friends in a restaurant. Or take a break and go to the gym. Or meet in board games cafe after work, go to the cinema, a swimming pool or wine tasting.

Now, corona made it all go away. It was never about the office itself but the whole life as we knew it.

Here's the thing though: you should not socialize with anyone at the office. The healthiest thing anyone can do for their career is to not mix work and friends. Once you're friends, you're sharing political opinions, life stories, and religious views. People pick up on that, and while you might be pleasing one guy, you're pissing off someone else. No matter your stance on something, you're going to be pissing off someone.

Work is for work - not a social life. Yes, it's easy to make friends at work because like in middle school, you're forced together and don't need to break the ice. Very tempting - very bad for the career.

What is good for both the career and getting friends is maintaining contact with compatible people from the office once you're out of there, and becoming friends with those people. That works.

Now, as far as missing simple human contact while you're at the office - I fully understand that. The problem is, you're forced into that human contact. That's probably healthy, but here's what I do: take a trip for groceries every other day and buy things fresh. Walk around, look for deals, take a full hour. Believe it or not, that alone is enough, as long as you keep doing it. The best part of being remote is you can do that smack in the middle of the day, take a little break from work and break that day up into two smaller parts - not when you're tired after a workday.

I do live with my wife though, so maybe don't need as much human contact. But using work for socializing in the office - ugh.

I think this made more sense in the past when people were holding onto a job for 15 years or maybe jobs in which you won't be able to find an alternative.

Nowadays, jobs in tech rarely last more than 4 years and the worst that can happen is that you get a salary increase and change job.

I wouldn't skip on work socialisation just out of fear.

It's a nice perk to have.

lol "worst that can happen from socializing with coworkers is you'll have to get a different job"

right. the worst that can happen if I take a nice fat dump into my dinner plate is I'll have to get a new dinner plate.

it's not fear. it's being at work to do work and get paid being the number one reason to even bother working. and if you're not there to work, why not be at a rock concert instead. with some friends.

To each their own, but to be honest I'm always baffled, and quite saddened, by this "don't make friends at work" "advice".

I've made many, many friends at work, and this near-paranoia level of "you might be pissing off someone else" - so what? I don't need, or want, to be friends with everyone, and I'm quite fine if some people don't like me.

Because you're at work to have a good career and get paid.

>so what so they talk behind your back, and that's not good for a work environment. so if any of them are in management, they will impede your career. so eventually when one of those guys you pissed off has a couple of beers too many at a company outing, he is going to talk office-inappropriate crap, and despite what you might think that is bad not just for him, but for you as well.

>I'm quite fine if some people don't like me they're not "some people." they are coworkers, and by adding a personal relationship, you are impeding the work you're there to do. if you're not there for work, why not be at a baseball game, and why bother negotiating for a salary? you know who is not fine if some people at the office don't like you, because of a reason You provided to them? everyone above you in your org chart.

Look, like I said, to each their own. From your posts it seems quite clear you have no problem not being friends with people at work. More power to you.

I agree with you. I get the idea that business and pleasure should be isolated, but for me... 8 of my most-awake hours are spent at work, so I'm going to do normal human things. Some people I will like more than others. Some people will learn things about me that are an information-theoretical disadvantage for me. So it goes. You can make your life miserable if you want to, but it's also OK to be normal.

I used to be the "no fun allowed" type, and I wasn't really getting a lot out of it. Now I go to all the "fun" non-work events and have a great time. To each, their own, I guess.

I think you are right if your goal is to always climb to higher positions, especially to get to the very top of management.

But some of us just want to be normal devs for most of our careers, so I don't care if I piss some % of my coworkers with some political stance, even if that means hindering my chances to get "promotions". I don't even _want_ to get any promotions.

And it's also very hard for me to make friends outside of work, which I guess it's true for almost everyone who is 30+ in the western world

This is not a failure of remote work. :)

When you work remotely you have to be very deliberate with socialization as well, since you don't get that for free when you're not in the office.

I've been remote for 10+ years and I can assure you that this side of things is harder and you have to take deliberate steps to build socialization into your schedule. I do this with tech meetups, board games and cycling specifically using Meetup to attend events.

Life is what you make of it. Also, I guess working remotely doesn't fit everyone's personality.

But I've been working remotely 4 years now and there's no way I will ever be going back into the office. As a matter of fact, I plan to buy a condo near the beach maybe end of this year or start of next year. This condo will eventually be my office, but now it will just be for holidays. It will have a nice olympic size swimming pool and a nice assortment of restaurants next to a beach road. The beach road will be nice to walk daily one or two times (at night seeing the sun go down into the sea). The swimming pool will be nice for a little break and exercise in the afternoon. For me this setup will be perfect.

My current setup is not perfect since I work from home and still have distractions from my girlfriend (e.g. cleaning the room, calling out for food and small shopping chores, etc...).

I thrive when I am in a space with zero distractions and I hope to have this space in the future in the form of my very own condo office :)

I'm sorry you're having a tough time with it. That sounds really unpleasant.

> My company is hybrid at the moment and I’m actually writing this from the very empty office. Things just aren’t the same.

Ignoring the pandemic, it sounds like the people at your company just don't agree that in-person work is necessary for them to get what they need out of their employment. The issue is either side attempting to force its preferred working conditions on the other. aka the solution isn't to make all of those people that don't want to be in an office come in again, but instead for you to find companies/circles that have people with similar interests as you. Being around people that don't want to be around you is unpleasant for both sides.

Wfh really disrupted the days cues that indicate time and serve as reminders and habit triggers.

Wfh is great for some people, but I also find it monotonous and reduces daily variety amongst a number of other not great attributes more work related. My ideal is a 2-3 day in the office. Different options work better for different people.

You moved to NYC right before the lockdowns, before the huge initial outbreak, it's safe to say that living in a tiny NYC apartment is supposed to have compensation in the lifestyle of NYC. I'd be depressed if my location's main attraction got destroyed by the pandemic.

The groundhog effect. I tried working remotely almost a decade ago and realized I hated it because of that. As soon as covid started I knew I was going to hate it. Not sure everyone else is feeling the same, and it scares me.

Have you wondered why your life on its own is repetitive and disappointing? Would you be making the same positive statement about working in an office if you didn't have the option of working remote?

Yes, I have. I have started to question whether its maybe a personality flaw of my own, or a real lack of interest in my career choice. All I do know is it feels less fulfilling now than it did before the lockdowns.

Hey! Same here! Moved teams in same company and I feel so alone it's crazy! Many engineers are introverted and/or already have relationships they've built before covid hit. No matter how hard a i try to connect through the chat window, in just don't get the same reciprocation as I get from face to face.

I've been coming to office to run into more ppl but alas, no one comes. So just as you, it's very lonely here and it's hard to get attached to work when you haven't met anyone face to face.

I must be odd because I prefer work from home despite feeling lonely at times. It's really hard to get people to focus on an issue when I talk to them because often they're making idle talk and I'm just not the kind of person for that. So in-office interactions for me are quite stressful when I'm trying to get work done.

Your office friends will forget you from the very moment either of you switch jobs.

Funny that I am a strong pro-office, but I think that maybe you miss people per se, and not particular coworkers. Also lack of environment variety, combined with inability to travel.

The answer isn't to force people to come into the fishbowl to be watched, the answer is to judge employees by output and for us to build alternative places to socialise.

I think this is gonna be a good re-evaluation of what work / office is.

commuting is horrendous for some, workplace social life can be too

but for some it's fine and needed

I think it can lead to a rebalancing effect.

> life has really gotten a lot more repetitive (…) since covid and the death of the office.

I agree, and it’s awesome.

Going to the office is a broken way of making friends. There should be better places for this.

I agree with you. I worked remotely for two years pre-pandemic. Never again.

Great, so not only does work provide you with money and healthcare, it also has to provide a social circle? Pretty soon will we look toward companies to provide us with a suitable life partner too? And housing?

The point of remote work is to make your work hours very efficient so you have more time away from work to live your actual life.

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