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Comment by rmk | Hacker News Reader

I think human connection and doing things as a community has fallen by the wayside in the modern world. It will be particularly bad with fully remote work: most people do better cognitively and emotionally when they have contact with a variety of people and have the changes of scene that are part of a normal day.

It's also sad to see the complete disconnect at the workplace, where people are no longer building relationships thanks to remote work. I do not know about others, but I am loath to discuss personal life on slack or on zoom. I am much more likely to do it at lunch, in person, with colleagues, or in hallway conversations. Nothing at remote work in the past two years has replaced that.

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This hasn't been my experience at all. Plenty of social connection and discussion of personal lives in my team meetings, just less with coworkers who aren't on the same team. I'm doing better cognitively and emotionally working from home - I can take breaks more freely and use them more fully, going on walks around my neighborhood instead of a dull corporate park, interacting with my fiancé instead of coworkers, napping on my lunch break. I have more energy, time and money to socialize with friends outside of work and pursue fulfilling personal projects thanks to not commuting. I'm more productive at work because I'm less distracted by office gossip and unproductive coworkers and because I'm happier.

Right. But the discussions about a benefit of in person work is that hanging out with coworkers end up as “I already have friends, I don’t need work fake friends”.

I just don’t think the end state is a cohesive company doing their best work. Just a bunch of individuals doing their micro task.

I will not be able to make friends at BigCo. My coworkers are all in wildly different stages of life than me, or don’t speak fluent English, and making any comment outside of a thin politically acceptable line could threaten my family’s livelihood.

On the other hand, saying nothing is safe. And if I do have the opportunity to pick between two equal candidates, and one is like me and has shared interests and one is not, I’m supposed to choose the latter to encourage diverse team building.

A job is not a place for friends. Not in corporate America anyway.

I agree that a job is not a place for making friends. But collegiality and good relationships with colleagues is still better than a complete disconnect from them. After all, a huge percentage of waking hours are spent at work.

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