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Comment by throwaway22032 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway22032

Nothing adjacent to what most people consider "work".

I found that almost all "professional" structures immediately turned into some sort of schizophrenic "cus covid" nightmare and as far as I can tell they're still doing it.

I had no interest in that stuff so I just did my own thing. Self study, social meetup groups, travel, etc.

I was almost ten years in to my career in early 2020 so I can afford to not maximise income. I feel sorry for the new graduates that now just have yet another thing to hate the older generations for.

Even just small things. The university interview. Putting on a suit and tie and meeting _their people_ in a big hall for the first time. Life-defining.

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As a member of a "professional" structure and a relatively new grad, you're not wrong on either account. I sit on calls all day with people 2-3x my age that swoon over WFH because they get to do their kids school run and don't have to make small talk with Sue in HR or whatever, and I'm sat here thinking that I haven't had a real, none work-related conversation in months outside of my 9-5.

In my last role I was on the football 5-aside team, got to sit around during breaks chatting with other people shooting the shit, went out for pints after work, made friendships with other engineers that were all very similar to me, and travelled around meeting new people in new places. Now I barely speak with anyone socially at work, if at all.

To add to that, as someone who's not very well financially endowed, meeting people outside of work is almost harder than in. Sure I can join the local Pokémon Go club free, but I care nothing for it and likely wouldn't share anything in common with the people there. I can join my local hiking or chess group and be paired up with a load of retirees, or coding club where I go a do something that I get enough of in my 9-5. Whereas, I want to train at my local rugby club? £300 a year, not including everything that goes with that like kit. Meet people at the climbing gym? £80 a month. Go for a drink on the weekend? Maybe £60 for the night, £40 if it was a cheap pub. Half my take home goes into rent, a quarter into bills/car/food, and I'm left with a final quarter to weasel some away into savings and perhaps see my friends on a weekend once a month, or go to a gig once a quarter. God forbid I want to travel anywhere exotic.

I spend most of my days at the moment considering whether I'm suffering from sunk-cost fallacy, and I should scrap the 8 years and £60k+ I've spent on education to go and become a bartender or garden landscaper. At least I'd get to talk to some people that aren't on a screen, and I'd see the sun every now and again.

Feel ya.

Even aside from your difficulty in finding people, the whole argument that "well, you can make friends outside of work" is a non-sequitur. It's illogical for two reasons:

1) Outside of work hours is a different topic. My work hours used to be social and enjoyable, and then they became antisocial and not enjoyable. Outside of work remained similar.

2) The knock-on effect of mass WFH is that outside of work hours the city is less busy and there are generally less people in the cafes, bars, at meetup events and so on because the urban agglomeration effect is reduced.

The second one is probably going to get better over time as stuff like border controls are released and it hasn't really caused me any direct issues (I'm just sad that the buzz is gone). The first one isn't - by definition WFH is less social regardless of whether you do something after work or not.

In contrast, I work fulltime, mostly remote (for now), and absolutely love what I do. Technology that I worked on will make the world a better, more sustainable place and I think that's rad.

I go out camping and jeeping with a group from work and have a network of friends outside of work too.

So it is certainly not given that remote working has to be some forlorn place. It is, as most areas of life, what you make of it.

>Nothing adjacent to what most people consider "work".

What are you doing to afford food and rent? We see a lot of people foregoing work, such as yourself, but how are you people surviving? London is an expensive city - how does one survive without income there?

Did you miss the bit of my post where I said I was ten years in?

Money doesn't just disappear if you don't spend it, you need funds to live, not income.

Rude

> Money doesn't just disappear if you don't spend it, you need funds to live, not income.

It does. It's called inflation.

Don't be an asshole on the internet. There are bigger assholes on the internet and they can outwit your smart ass replies trying to belittle someone who hasn't been an asshole to you and was asking a genuine question.

Yeah nobody is forgoing work. The only people who left the workforce could already afford to do so before 2020.

Thanks. I had similar feelings, but somehow felt guilty. I did start the lockdowns with same thought, but couldn't actually do much, due to the guilt. Nice to know that it was ok to go in that direction. Now I feel I have wasted 2 years, doing nothing. But at-least, it was 2 good years of not hating the grind.

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