While there may be many things that you got from a shared workspace, there are only a few of them that aren’t also available remotely.
You probably don’t need to be caricaturing other people’s experience to justify your own. I imagine you’d still be fine to do you without making it suggest anything in particular about the rest of us.
> You probably don’t need to be caricaturing other people’s experience to justify your own.
I don’t follow — whose experiences am I caricaturing? I meant his comments resonate with my own experience of working remotely.
I don't think all companies need to operate in one particular way, but getting the sense of belonging and meaning out of work some people want I think does generally require the team/org/company they're at to have that culture.
It's my sincere hope that Malcolm continues his slide into irrelevancy.
There's nothing in the natural order that says I must starve if I don't report to a particular building every day and sit at a particular desk when the tools for me to perform the same labor at a place of my own choosing exist. Forcing me to do so in order to maintain an employment contract is coercion, plain and simple, and the sooner society destroys that norm the better.
“Force” doesn’t seem like the right model here, any more than any other aspect of requiring to work for a living counts as force. (Which you might think it does, but singling out just office/remote as the part that’s by force doesn’t seem like it makes sense.)
The vast majority of people seek meaning and belonging within their personal lives through religion, philosophy, family, and deep friendships. Of all these factors, deep friendships are typically available through the workplace, but I’ve found most work friendships to be shallow and dominated by the shared connection to the workplace. Why spend 20-40 hours per month commuting for that? Imagine all the deep friendships that could be cultivated with that much time every month?
Get some hobbies, maybe a pet?
Sorry, is that just your commentary, or is there something in that article linking work as identity to loneliness?
I agree that using work, or any other one thing as your sole source of identity isn’t healthy. I don’t see how that’s incompatible with finding meaning and belonging from work, any more than it’d be incompatible with finding meaning and belonging in anything else.
> Get some hobbies, maybe a pet?
I have a pet. I have some hobbies, though generally I find that I and others doing the hobby don’t have enough time to devote to it to really develop deep connection from it. Part of its also maybe just the things I’m interested (or not interested) in. I’d like to have more hobbies though, and generally more extra-work life activities. But that doesn’t replace my desire for work to also be meaningful.