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Comment by ketzo | Hacker News Reader

At the start of the pandemic, I knew I would miss working with people in person, but thought I would be totally great with WFH.

Now, I know that I badly need some amount of in-person time with my coworkers on a weekly basis, or I go crazy.

It's a motivational thing for me. I thrive on solving problems for and with other people, and there's an "out of sight, out of mind" effect for me over zoom. It's just harder for me to get my brain going.

I wish I were better at WFH - maybe with the right type of work I would be. I love everything else about it! My home office setup is awesome, I always hated commuting, I love the flexibility of doing chores during the day or getting some work done at 11pm because I don't feel like sleeping.

But man, I miss people.

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I think the biggest issue is that people are lonely due to the pandemic, and are conflating that with working from home. You can have a strong social life and working from home. For others, unfortunately the only socialization they can get is forced interaction with coworkers at the office.

Conflating those concepts may be appropriate here, for many people. I don't think it's only a matter of how strong your social life is outside of work, or a matter of people leaning on forced socialization at work. That's an overly reductive look at it.

I would like to talk about it but I'm kind of sick of seeing the discussion framed in term of people who only socialize at the office.

The fact is, in the office we have many in-person interactions spread throughout the day. Socialization isn't fungible, we can't simply replace interactions in one context with interactions in another context and assume people will be happy with it.

I can see what you're getting at, and I thought it was the issue for me, but I've come to realize that it's not a loneliness/lack of socialization thing. It's just that I really treasure in-person interactions with the people I am working on something with.

I got into software engineering because I like solving problems, but also because I love solving problems with really smart people. Turns out that it feels really good to do that in person!

Coffee breaks, lunch outings, being able to stop by someone's desk and shoot the shit or see what they're working on -- I've realized that these things are not only enjoyable for me, but critical for both the actual quality of my work and my motivation to do it. Not to mention any kind of whiteboarding / collaborative discussion, which I think is pretty obviously nicer in person.

So far, nothing I have tried remotely gives me the same kind of satisfaction that just physically being with my work partners does. I do think there's something very deeply ingrained in me that's responsible for that, and I know it's definitely not something everyone wants or needs.

> being able to stop by someone's desk and shoot the shit or see what they're working on

So long as the other person feels the same way. One of the reasons I enjoy working from home is people can no longer wonder by and shatter my concentration because they're on a break. They can ping me in chat and I'll get to it in my break.

sure, obnoxious coworkers suck, but the 'oh noes, my concentration/flow' argument has been done to death imo.

thanks to hybrid work, ppl can hide at home all they want.

ps: pls also consider parents that get interrupted far more frequently when working from home.

> sure, obnoxious coworkers suck, but the 'oh noes, my concentration/flow' argument has been done to death imo.

But why do such people say such silly things if it's not true?

Do I think it's 100% true?

No, but it feels that way for them.

I f*king hate useless meetings where my time is wasted. I had a coleague express the same thing about a topic.

Business replied "well, we only had 4 meetings and at least 2 were really required so it was not excessive".

So who was right?

Everybody was right, business did not feel it was excessivez the developers felt it was excessive.

WFH works, 2 years of pandemic proved it does. Some people like it and some people don't, it's not about arguments but about preferences.

But it just so happens that one preference is highly correlated with doing useful work, and the other to chatting, butt-in-seat mentality, and having others do your job (asking for "help").

Interesting. I've never ask myself this question, but reading your post I have realized that I really don't like solving problem together in person with whiteboard etc. Realizing that this cannot be considered as a good trait from professional perspective I still cannot resist the bitter feeling of hours wasted that way. My memory definitely deceives me - it couldn't always be that bad, but I can't help the impression is still strong.

> but reading your post I have realized that I really don't like solving problem together in person with whiteboard etc

I used to really hate it, now I just hate it -- like letting someone else sample my food.

I really hated it because of all of the pollitics and egos and because I was really passionate and brought a lot of insight to the table while 90% the time the others just brought their egos to the table.

Now I'm just jaded and I hate it because 90% of the time the solution really doesen't matter and people just waste eachothers times in endless meetings about details that really don't matter.

> like letting someone else sample my food

Just let them do it before you taste it, and then pretend you're royalty and thank them for testing it for poison.

À friend of mine struggles with what sounds similar and I implore you to ask if that is really what is going on? The lightbulb moment for them was realizing they didn't like putting in the effort of asynchronous communication because they struggled with organisation and not having a routine that allowed them to be productive in moving their side forward. It was a lot easier for them in the office because they were able to get away with these habits by just showing up and using the actual time to start.

What worked for them was therapy, creating a morning routine of moving their work forward and demoing their progression with short <2 minute Loom/Slack video clips. They also invested into one of those drawing tablets for $80.

For me, the two aren't conflated, and I still find that I prefer some office time. I have the ability to work from home or work remote, so I often do that. But I live in China, so social life is rather normal these days (modulo the occasional restrictions).

Like another commenter said, I find it easier to care about the concerns of people around me, so if that's a bunch of people at my company then I'll care more about them and what they need. It makes a difference for me if physical presence and work presence are aligned.

Probably for a similar reason, I've found that I can't reach 100% productivity consistently (over weeks) unless I'm in an environment where people around me are working. So that means finding a coworking space wherever I go.

Also, in-person conversation is so much higher bandwidth than anything else. Those couple hundred ms of latency do matter. Being able to party on the same physical whiteboard is really nice.

I've seen this argument several times and while it's probably true for some segment of the population, it's definitely not for everyone (who feels this way).

I have this sentiment, yet I hang out with one or two friends once or twice a week, occasionally some family every couple weeks or so, and constantly on a daily basis get to socialize with the parents of my dog's friends while on walks.

None of that makes up for working alongside people. And I don't just mean work specifically but forming connections with my coworkers. I'm a huge proponent of making real social connections with coworkers so that it's easier to be collaborative with them. There will be times when your work is not siloed and you either need context about something that your coworker has contributed to before but you haven't, vice versa, etc. and it helps if you both have some kind of connection and stake in the work relationship. If there's no stake in it, then other than the bare minimum (such as not wanting someone to totally screw up something owned by the team), nothing will be contributed. It can make gathering context brutal, work more competitive (resource starvation where one coworker can let their coworker have more trouble which results in them getting a better pick of things to work on, etc.).

I think forming connections is very important... but it should be encouraged independently from working at the office or remotely.

I work remotely for a U.S. company with coworkers from Ethiopia and other countries.

Pre-pandemic, they flew me to the U.S. and I met the U.S. and Indian coworkers, and we went to a conference together. It was a HUGE help - but I think it's something that can be done a few times a year or even once a year, doesn't need to be an everyday thing.

If I'm not occasionally in the same room as someone else, I find that in very small ways you lose an abstract, almost ethereal sense of being in connection with another human.

Going to the pub or a cafe with a friend is completely different from the interactions you have in your work. Most (all?) humans need both - we need to work together, and we need to relax together.

I love the lockdown, I get to WFH and not have to deal with small talk every day, mandatory company dinners, commuting through rush hour traffic smelling exhaust, getting up early and going home late, staying late because the boss is staying late, slamming coffee in the afternoon to stay awake instead of taking a nap, not getting any sunlight because I'm in the office during all the daylight hours, having to cram my errands into the same time as everyone else when the markets and stores are the busiest, eating whatever food you can get close to the office instead of eating healthy, dressing up for work, having to shop for work clothes, not feeling free to go on a non-work website because someone could see your monitor from over your shoulder, dealing with chatty coworkers who go on and on about nothing, dealing with coworkers who have loud phone conversations, not being able to listen to the music you want, breathing recycled indoor air constantly, not being able to adjust the temperature to what you like, not being able to inject comments into a conversation over someone who is dominating a room, not being able to yawn or close my eyes or pick my nose during a meeting... I should probably stop.

I agree on everything you said and let me add: I get to pick my chair, desk, displays and overall computer peripherals in my home. I control the temperature, freshness of air, lighting, noise level, internet speed. And having your own toilet is cool too.

Personally just being lifted from a 1h + 1h car commute has dramatically increased the quality of my day to day life, so much that friends and relatives noticed an uplift in my mood.

At face value, just commute time savings is HUGE and easily calculable. I also spent a significant amount of time figuring out what to wear, ironing, accounting for weather, packing my bag. It was 40 mins of "commute" but also like 40 mins of "getting ready". I'm saving 1:20 per day now which is almost a whole day per week.

Yes. Not to mention the hidden time cost of owning a fully functioning car. Light broke, or it won't start? I have to fix it in my own spare time, bring it to the mechanic and so on.

Yeah I've been WFH since 2018, and I'm not a people person, but dang... I miss people.

On the flip side, being able to drop everything and go to the DMV without feeling the social pressure to skip lunch or work late is nice. I feel like I only have a finite number of super productive hours a day, and it's not eight, and they're not always squished together back to back.

Maybe it depends on how the team is structured. For the team I belonged to, most of our long-term planning was done informally, we were small enough that we could often spontaneously discuss future goals, present problems, and potential solutions. But with the advent of WFH, those discussions no longer happen, and nobody seems to have time or interest in regularly scheduled meetings.

But I don't know, I only learned recently that my own team members had been working around a broken feature that I maintain for over a year without telling me. I kind of feel like I've been abandoned.

> But I don't know, I only learned recently that my own team members had been working around a broken feature that I maintain for over a year without telling me.

I keep getting this happen. Someone wants an improvement/fix to something and just doesn't communicate that, probably because it has to be very intentional now, whereas it used to be something you'd mention over coffee when you saw the right person.

I'm sorry to hear that. My team is actually excellent about communication for ongoing work, and I still feel the way I do - I'd be waaaay worse off if I felt like people were forgetting about me.

If I could offer some unsolicited advice - tell them that you feel that way! I am quite confident that no one wants you to feel abandoned, and they would be unhappy to know they're making you feel that way. They might not be able to fix the situation all at once, but I hope you're able to get a better situation soon, one way or the other.

> Now, I know that I badly need some amount of in-person time with my coworkers on a weekly basis, or I go crazy.

That's the problem with people that doesn't want WFH: they also want their coworkers to work at the office so they don't "go crazy".

Yes, this is indeed the problem. I like the social aspects of work (work discussions, but also small talk) more than the work itself. Some people argue that that should not be their problem, and that as long as they get their work done, it's fine, which is probably true.

What I do know is that I did work from home for four months and I was miserable. Any job where the norm is at least three weeks at the office would be a huge plus for me, and if choosing between jobs that are mostly remote and jobs that are mostly in the office, I would take a paycut for the job that is mostly in the office. I realize it may be the other way around for other people and am really curious what the norm will be in the end.

    But man, I miss people.

For me, working from home gives me more time to spend with family and friends, so that's been the tradeoff and it has mostly worked. I also get more exercise/sunlight. Even if it's just a walk with the dogs during lunch, or mowing the lawn.

Although, it's doubly tough when things aren't good at home. Because during those times, the office provided some solace. But overall it's been positive.

Have you gotten at least some kind of positive tradeoff in terms of more friends+family time, exercise, etc?

Yeah, my work-life balance has been great as a result, and I've been able to spend a lot of time with friends and my partner. So that's something I'm actually very grateful for.

But at some point I realized that I really missed work people! I got into software engineering because I love talking about engineering with other really smart engineers. Took me a while to realize that was what was missing.

I've worked at a few companies remotely.

One company was absolutely abysmal. No video chat ever. None. Never saw my coworkers' faces. Who can work like that? Obviously they can, but man that sucked.

Second company was a bit better, but not great. Avoided collaboration and/or video chat pretty strongly but not entirely. Which was weird because when we did do it, everybody was very chatty and they were also good working sessions.

Current company has been great. Strong collaborative culture but they also respect if somebody just needs to focus solo.

I would say that overall this company scratches like, maybe, 80% of my itch as far as being immersed with other engineers (in terms of actual collaborative work, and random tech talk bullshit) is concerned.

I think this is the key aspect. For people with families at home, WFH is a godsend. I have two small children and am an avid runner on my local trails. WFH has meant I can get up around 7am and go running with my dog through the countryside, to then return, have a shower and walk with my young son to his school to drop him off. I can do all that and be showered and ready to start work in my home office by 9am.

Any companies not offering remote now that instead want me to commute to an office and lose all of that personal time, are an immediate rejection.

On the other hand, young professionals who have moved into a city and our just developing their career, they want to be among peers, socializing , learning and building a network.

I'm in exactly the same boat. Working from home has a lot of advantages (as a longer sleeper, I can get up later, I can eat at home, I don't need to travel, I have a really nice setup etc) but I really miss having a coffee break with coworkers. We regularly do some Zoom coffee meetings or are even having a drink, but it's not a perfect replacement.

On the other hand, the pandemic really took the fun from meeting people all day, so I don't think I'd be happy in an office either, at least under the current circumstances.

WFH has become so monotonous. It drags on far longer than working from the office. I can't focus. It's more exhausting. There's nobody to talk to.

My employers are getting half the efficiency they used to get. Anything I used to find enjoyable about the work is now gone.

I'm probably going to go on a looong sabbatical soon.

> It's a motivational thing for me.

I've always loved working from home (and was doing it for almost a year before the pandemic started), I'm quite self-driven, but I do recognize that it can be difficult to get back into the groove once you've been out of it for a while - meeting colleagues in person would help with that aspect.

Ideally, if my colleagues weren't some 3000 km away, I wouldn't mind going to the office once a week or something.

It's hard to find places that have anything in the middle. It's either fully remote, they may or may not even have an office anymore, and they act like you're crazy if you suggest having some sort of standing office space available without special reservations or advance notice. Or on the flip side, they want you in the office 3, 4 days a week, 8-5 or whatever, basically pre-COVID requirements.

I agree I think the best of both worlds would be some sort of schedule, maybe ~1-ish day a week on average. Personally I'd love something like Monday-Tuesday in the office every other week. But everybody is different, which in turn makes it really hard to coordinate and make everyone happy.

> I agree I think the best of both worlds would be some sort of schedule, maybe ~1-ish day a week on average.

Yeah this would be fine/nice as well.

If nothing else there's at least been a strong step towards the potential of WFH with all of this, even though it hasn't lead to ideal outcomes.

Our company is heading exactly in this direction. As we have people who don't want to or are not able to regularly work from home we provide office space. And as we have people who are either too far away from the main project team or want to work from home our leadership (more or less successfully) tries to create a working hybrid model.

But that is not without difficulties.

That's my situation, we have a very globally diverse workforce from the UK, France, North America. I can only see this happening more and more over time now. Companies no longer need to restrict hiring to the small pool who are able to physically travel to a single location everyday.

Got the following insights from my younger team members, who are single, new to workforce, new to the city (edit - not in 'home' city).

I miss the office for..

- Free and convenient food.

- Social chatter & engagement.

- Making friends with employees who I don't know and connecting with new employees.

- Work life separation (balance).

- Proper workstation, climate controlled environment.

- Sense of belonging - team outing, after hours beers..

- Intra and inter company sports and games.

- Meeting potential dates.

Engagement is a good word for what I'm missing. Talking with work people - even if we're not actually talking about work - makes me feel more engaged with my day-to-day tasks.

I found that for the first few years, but eventually got used to it. 13 years later it doesn't bother me. Having a young family at home with me definitely helps defeat the loneliness though.

I miss people. I don't miss my coworkers. I get plenty of interaction with my coworkers via the web. I miss socializing with normal folks who aren't obsessed with status, salary and career trajectory.

I get to see my wife and 2 kids way more during the day, and my extended family lives just down the street. I'm not missing out on socialization. I imagine if I was still single and lived out of state, this might be a problem for me though.

I don't miss the office-loud-laugher, or the drive-by-tell-you-a-dumb-joke guy when "I'm just trying to get my work done please". My manager wisely scheduled a daily team meeting so I get to see my team every day via Teams.

I have felt some of this. I setup zoom meetings occasionally with coworkers that I used to chat in the hallway with. It is a nice way to keep the connections, and despite the purpose of just shooting the breeze, usually some productive discussion comes out of it.

We're still working from home, but I get together with a few people from the office once a week for lunch. I'll admit that we might be lucky in that we all live in the same city so it's easy for us to meet for a weekly lunch.

This was my opinion back in 2020, moved to another house with other neighbors, now it's the other way around.

Now I almost long to get off work and do some choirs outside instead.

Consider yourself lucky to be working at a company where you would even want to be around the other staff I guess.

What if you WFH and others work from your home too and vice versa?

We actually did this a few times and it was really nice! Current living situations make it a little impractical, but we should try doing it again some time soon, that's a great idea.

It’ll be a big LAN party.

You miss strangers more than your family?

This is just my experience, not a right/wrong thing.

I’m the opposite. Part is that I irrationally hate lifestyle change. Part is that I work with so many teams.

I hated switching. I liked my busy workspace and being able to jump in and help people around me, get info, etc. I had the benefit of also having a private office I could retreat to when I needed long focus time.

I also love routine. I like predictability of my schedule.

But so much of the teams I primarily work with had been spread across the country. 3 cities at the time. They missed out on the hallway chatter and always felt behind.

After a couple months, I got into my groove. I was collaborating with the folks outside my city (and building) much better. But I was overwhelmed by notifications, and was working too many hours.

I disabled all chat notifications on my phone. I started enforcing a beginning of the day and my kids pop in to remind me it’s over (I lose track of time when I’m focused).

Those teams are now in 6 cities. I’ve learned to schedule collab time, offer myself up to teach new folks when I have time and jump in on things I don’t know the same way.

I also schedule 1 hour meetings with close coworkers for 10 minutes of decision just so the conversation can wander. We have an open biweekly call to just joke and wander into something brilliant.

Folks got super aggressive with meetings. So I block off focus time on my calendar and reject meetings that should be emails. I reject emails for things that should be public. I ignore “good morning” chat messages from people I don’t know. When I’m focusing, I disable notifications and turn my speakers off.

I’m more productive and collaborative now. I have more control with people not able to just walk up to my desk. I’m not distracted by others’ more appealing problems except when I plan to be. Folks in other cities have equal access as local.

I also switched to waking up early for my quiet time at home, before the kids wake up, and not staying up late. I stopped eating lunch out, but always take an hour away. Sometimes I just eat a snack and take a power nap. I quit drinking soda. I stopped caffeine after noon. COVID got me doing outdoor activities that I love regularly out of necessity.

I’m 60lbs lighter than when COVID hit, and just feel a lot healthier. It wasn’t an arching intentional goal, just a change here and there to feel better.

Also, I’m naturally an introvert. At work people don’t see that because I am jovial, kinda loud, and opinionated. But when I clock out, I’m done. I just want to chill with my family.

I’ve dabbled in hobbies. Outdoors stuff like fishing and hiking. Picked up sewing bags and masks. Small home improvements. Goofing around with guitars and drums. Making my own guitar pedals. I just don’t force myself to finish anything, it’s just entertainment.

We’re starting back “hybrid” soon, with “team days.” For some that’ll mean 2-3 days per week in office.

But my teams aren’t local, so I really only see that happening when we can get folks traveling again for planning events. I’m not going to the office to Zoom, when I can do it at home without shoes. Maybe the occasional whiteboarding session. I haven’t found an adequate digital replacement for that.

I'm the same.

This kind of makes you a bad coworker. I would be annoyed if someone actually needed to pester me in person regularly to function. I work from home to avoid people like that now. If I was in the office I would not want to talk to anybody unless we had some prearranged meeting on a specific topic.

Not bad, just different. Many humans enjoy socializing with other humans in a workplace setting. It's ok that you don't like it, but that doesn't make this person a bad coworker.

> If I was in the office I would not want to talk to anybody unless we had some prearranged meeting on a specific topic.

This is the sort of honesty I’d love to hear when interviewing candidates.

And if a candidate said that, how would that influence your hiring decision?

Personally - I'd not hire that person. Sounds like they're completely inflexible and unable to adapt to constantly changing environments. Maybe really good for maintenance work or something but if you do startups, work on growing products, do major feature work that has a lot of back and forth, etc. Very likely to not do well at any of the jobs I've had.

Yeah I've never done any kind of software engineering work that wasn't highly collaborative.

    Maybe really good for maintenance work

Even maintenance work is highly collaborative in my experience. Maybe even moreso than developing new features in some ways. As a maintainer you often need to work to understand the intentions of the people who originally wrote the code.

Would probably depend on the role and team culture right?

There are good and bad fits for that attitude

When is not wanting to have conversations with colleagues unless there's a prearranged meeting a good fit?

I guess if everyone else feels the same way? It does sound like kind of an all-or-nothing situation, but for the right person, "coworker who is guaranteed to never ever ever bother you" might be kind of nice?

This is how my workplace operates now. If you have to discuss something you throw it in slack and anything real-time requires a meeting set up at a specific time. It works very well and no one just barges in and interrupts my work whenever they feel like it.

I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader — a hiring Rorschach if you will.

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