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Comment by Gigachad | Hacker News Reader

I got to the end of last year and decided I can’t take remote work anymore. I hate video calls. I hate MS Teams. I hate sitting at home alone every day. I missed going out after work on a Friday with coworkers. I missed shit talking with people at lunch.

Decided to pack up my stuff and move to the city. I now come in to the office every day and it’s improved my mood so much. There is so much joy from getting on the train every morning and hearing the chatter. Then walking in to the office and getting to work with real people instead of feeling like an automation in a box churning through jira tickets. In a few weeks I got to know the people I work with better than the 2 years I had been interacting with them on Teams.

Remote work is convenient for odd cases like having an appointment mid day, but for the vast majority of the time, I want to work with and talk to people in person.

Almost every day I see comments here ridiculing the idea that someone might enjoy the presence of their coworkers. This is just not the reality everyone lives in.

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For me the choice was teams meetings all day from the office or the same from home, saving myself the commute.

I interact with people outside of work so remote work doesn’t have a sense of isolation for me.

I have lunch with people almost every day, just they aren’t coworkers.

And I save lots of money on the commute, not to mention environmental impact.

I’m glad you like the change, but not everyone does.

Sitting in the office on calls all day is pointless, I agree. Personally I'm at the point where unless you are particularly important, I will not get on a call with you. If you want my help, come walk to my desk and talk to me. Otherwise I might reply to an email when I feel like it.

For me best thing to happen is the remote working - team mates are in UK and India, and I am in NY. Works well. I catch up with others monthly which works well

> I interact with people outside of work

Ding ding ding.

I think this right here is the key. It was eye opening to learn how few of my coworkers had anyone outside of work. It’s heartbreaking but clearly a burning epidemic.

I also learned how many of my coworkers prioritized being in the office every day of the week over working at home with their spouses and/or children. I can’t get over that in particular. It’s none of my business, but nonetheless it angers me.

Well, I have lots of friends and interactions outside of work, but I still prefer going into the office.

Personally, I think what makes people happy is a multidimensional surface with lots of peaks and valleys. Univariate explanations are reductive.

Same, but I have a hard limit for how many days per week I would prefer going into the office. I cannot fathom those who have a life outside of work actually wanting to spend 5 days a week going to the office when they have a choice otherwise.

You need to work on your imagination a little bit then.

Don't have any free time to, I've got to be in the office 5 days a week.

sometimes people like spending time with coworkers!

Sometimes they hate spending time with their families too lol.

People are always so quick to bring this up as if it's a gotcha, but it's not.

You spend roughly half of your waking hours working. Do you really want to spend that much time isolated, only interacting with other people through screens?

Yes, absolutely.

I realize that not everybody does though.

The thread proves there is no right answer. Some people crave in-office work and face-to-face interaction, some people prefer working from home with interaction with non-coworkers, and some people prefer working from home in isolation. This isn’t a race to find the right way and prove the others wrong!

Personally, since going remote and moving out to the boonies, I have had some weeks where I never even came within 100 meters of anyone other than my family, and it was absolutely glorious! Treating “society” as optional is amazing and liberating. Obviously not everyone shares this outlook and that’s ok!

Or rather there's more to it. Do people really prefer working from the office or do they just want to escape and dump their responsibilities on their other half or family in general?

For those that have kids - who picks them up if you're in the office? Is your partner forced not to work or remote so you get to go in?

For those that have older family to look after, again who does it?

Or who does the housework etc?

There was an earlier discussion on why open source is mostly male dominated... well guess why...

Picking up kids - happens past 5pm typically with afterschool or daycare. Looking after older family and housework - how can you do it if you are working? Unless you mean checking in on someone old every few hours or starting your laundry, and not some time-consuming chore.

It could be anything.

1 person said they trash talk with coworkers during lunch. Perhaps instead we could have washed the dashes or started the washing machine or the laundry as you say. You can collect the parcel. Lots of small jobs.

Or when you aren't "working" in the office what do you do? Go over to a coworker and talk about "non-work"? Are you actually "working" intensively every minute?

Maybe read up on the studies or even listen to women that have had to do household work whilst working from home? What do you mean how? Good question. How do they survive when such men have forced it all on them and pretend it is nothing?

Trash talking or having coffee with colleagues not doing work still ends up benefiting the company as it helps create good bonds. Google famously offered all the amenities on campus since it wanted employees to interact with each other and spwan new ideas. It worked extremely well for them (first hand experience, btw. I was there).

> women that have had to do household work whilst working from home?

I don't think women should be doing household work whilst working from home either. So no idea what you are trying to argue, unless you want coasting jobs which pay you a lot to just be at home and do your housework or childcare. That ain't gonna happen.

> I don't think women should be doing household work whilst working from home either.

Then magic happens? Who does it?

> It worked extremely well for them

So did we have 2 Googles where 1 did what you said and 1 didn't? Otherwise how are you drawing this conclusion to what led to its success? Maybe this is 1 part of the puzzle but it might not have been the deciding factor.

Also who says that if they all went remote and Google offered the tools for their employees to bond online that it would not work?

All you are saying is it's worked 1 way so it must be better than the other way because of some fear of the unknown?

> That ain't gonna happen.

It's pretty sad that your view of work from home = no work at all. So if anyone puts in the same amount of work hours whether it's 9-5 or 9-10 + 11-8 or whatever the balance is what's the difference? All you do is attack people that follow a different schedule and call them coasting?

> Then magic happens? Who does it?

You do it after hours or on weekends or hire help for that. A lot of couples with kids figured that out before the pandemic so not really any rocket science stuff about that.

> Google offered the tools for their employees to bond online that it would not work?

My company has gone all in on making remote-first work and the leadership is sincerely trying all it can. We tried many tools for online socializing (games, food and drink, some social apps...). They all sucked. Finally the company gave up and started shelling up big bucks to fly everyone in for offsites. And that has its big challenge of crazy expensive flights and hotels, or a lack of dates/locations where everyone can make it. If you got any tools which did the trick for your team, please do share.

> follow a different schedule and call them coasting

Your literal words: "do household work whilst working from home". That's not having a different schedule. That is coasting.

> You do it after hours or on weekends or hire help for that. A lot of couples with kids figured that out before the pandemic so not really any rocket science stuff about that.

Did they? You mean where 1 side dumped it on the other side? Lots of census data worldwide (and others) have indicated it is the male dumping the work on the female and calling it "figured out".

If that's what you meant then sure. As in make someone else suffer. You can't do it after hours. You can't do it when you choose to. Like literally do you just tell a newborn to stop being hungry because it's not the weekend? As to hiring help - can everyone afford it? And does that mean you are hands off?

> My company has gone all in on making remote-first work and the leadership is sincerely trying all it can. We tried many tools for online socializing (games, food and drink, some social apps...). They all sucked. Finally the company gave up and started shelling up big bucks to fly everyone in for offsites. And that has its big challenge of crazy expensive flights and hotels, or a lack of dates/locations where everyone can make it. If you got any tools which did the trick for your team, please do share.

It doesn't sound like the tools here. It's the mentality, attitude and direction. From your replies you've already indicated that sitting on a desk during certain hours is the priority and not the actual tasks. Even if I did the same amount of work as in the office but did my chores during that time you'd scold me for it... even if in the office I'd go for a walk, gym or coffee or anything else... To you as the manager what's the real difference?

All you're doing is lifting in-person to remote 1:1 just like when some businesses move to the cloud. It's a different beast. It's still about socializing in the tradition sense isn't it? And then you said you just fall back again to in-person trips.

> Your literal words: "do household work whilst working from home". That's not having a different schedule. That is coasting.

As in you don't take breaks in the office? You don't talk to people or do activities that equate to non-work? Perhaps you don't but if you really believe that 0 workers do in an office environment we're in another world.

In your literal words: "do other activity whilst in the office". That is coasting according to you. Same same.

> It's the mentality, attitude and direction.

I think this is the core of our disagreement. Mentalities and attitudes are forged over the years and hard to change, both for individuals and companies. If you do not have a compelling alternative, people will revert back to what they know and are comfortable with. If provided with a great experience, people will even change their habits and glue their faces to a black rectangle with a screen as the last 15 years have shown.

So - why should we (individuals, companies) change our attitudes and mentalities when it comes to WFH and team bonding? Whatever I have seen so far from the pro-WFH side is a subpar experience.

Alternatively, question why we spend so much time "working".

We do not work 8 hours, but our schedules are set that way. We're only working ~3 hours per day, the rest is mostly fluff. Give people back those 5 hours and you've got a very different answer than "force people into the office just so they have time to socialize".

Little different to how it often played out in the office, but minus the politics and the few odious characters who make office life so unbearably banal.

I’d rather do my socialising in the local community, head out to grab a sandwich from a local business, and not have to spend half of my remaining waking hours travelling to and from a place I don’t really want to be in the first place.

Sure. When I worked in the office I mostly communicated through IM or email.

>"Do you really want to spend that much time isolated, only interacting with other people through screens?"

Absolutely. And I do not need to be "interacting" when I am working. There is a chat / email which I would read at my convenience. In case of emergency there are calls.

> Do you really want to spend that much time isolated, only interacting with other people through screens?

Yes. Also, the choice is made for me. I work in software and data and everyone I work with is digital whether I’m in the office or home or Timbuktu. So I don’t really have a decision. Every day my “team” is in multiple counties and time zones. There’s no way to spend time with them every day in person. Unless I want to say hello to security guards and chitchat with work strangers I’d rather spend that time with other people.

I guess there are some industries where teams can be in the same room and building. I don’t work in such an organization and I like my job. I don’t feel isolated.

Yes! People trying to highlight the downsides of distanced work keep ignoring this important point. For a bunch of us, even pre-pandemic and working from _an_ office teams were often split across multiple offices, so every meeting already involved a video call.

Today, it's _easier_ for me to have an unscheduled sync with a teammate because I can immediately hop on a zoom call from my private home office. Before the pandemic, I had to first try to find an unused conference room or phone booth (because having calls in the open-plan office was disruptive). Sometimes, when there was no good space available, I'd end up standing holding a laptop (and thus unable to take any notes) in the stairwell, which had less consistent wifi signal. If a meeting runs long, we don't have to scramble as we're kicked out of rooms by the next scheduled group. And scheduling larger group meetings isn't limited by the ability to reserve multiple large conference rooms across multiple offices.

People trying to tell me that I'd be more productive from the office are so far unwilling to commit to providing an office which doesn't waste my time on this nonsense.

I wouldn’t say it’s heartbreaking. When you are at school that’s your main venue for meeting people, and when you are at work that’s the same. Almost all of my friends and acquaintances were met through work and I’m not really sad or embarrassed about that.

I also have a family who I love, but I don’t feel I need to be with them 24/7, or that I’m prioritising anything over them by wanting a career and to work physically with coworkers.

It isn’t reasonable for the WFH advocates to see us people who prefer the office as sad loners with messed up priorities. I personally find Zoom life 100x more depressing.

> I also have a family who I love, but I don’t feel I need to be with them 24/7, or that I’m prioritising anything over them by wanting a career and to work physically with coworkers.

And who looks after the kids or elderly parents when you're physically in the office? Or the house duties? Or do we pretend they don't exist?

The only way you can pretend you don't need to be with a child 24/7 is if you neglect your duties. You are prioritising work over family. There's no other way.

> It isn’t reasonable for the WFH advocates to see us people who prefer the office as sad loners with messed up priorities.

That's not what you prefer though. You prefer forcing everyone to accompany you in the office like a sadist. You've heard that some people prefer remote yet you force your ideals on them.

You don't prefer the office. You prefer you AND others in the office.

Different.

> And who looks after the kids or elderly parents when you're physically in the office?

You know, when you are WFH, you are supposed to work. Looking after kids is not working for your employer, unless you are coasting at your job. In which case, such jobs should be consolidated. I think that's what happened at Yahoo back in the day.

And when you're in the office you are supposed to work. So why are people complaining about missing out on "small talk" or anything else non-work?

Same same.

Small talk helps forge bonds between team members. As an exec, I actuall encourage people mingling over lunches, coffees or walks because that creates better teams in my experience.

Yes - your experience - that's the problem i.e. the past.

Might as well you say we don't need the Internet because in your experience floppy disks are fine.

Why don't you do an actual comparison or study?

As in did you have a team with the exact conditions minus small talk and 1 with small talk and then concluded the small talk 1 created better teams? No. So how do you know which 1 it was?

I hope execs lead people forward with correct decisions using sound logic and not some vague correlation. Are we going for the 5G causes COVID drama too? In my experience the rumor might hold some value...

> Why don't you do an actual comparison or study?

What makes you think I haven't done so? I have surveyed enough people at work and socially. A majority prefers hybrid, a small number favors fully remote while a small numbers wants fully in-office. Top reasons people wanted to come in office: meeting everyone in person, getting complex work (eg. designing a system) done, getting mentorship and onboarding help, free food. Top reasons people wanted to WFH: traffic.

There are a handful of cases on extreme ends with patterns like: hating social interaction, not having right conditions at home to work from etc.

Your comments in this thread were abusive and broke the site guidelines extremely badly. We ban accounts that do that. Personal attacks are particularly not ok.

I'm not going to ban you right now, even though it looks like you've been breaking the site guidelines in other places too, because I didn't see anything this bad in your other comments and because we hadn't warned you before. But please don't do post like this again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> It was eye opening to learn how few of my coworkers had anyone outside of work.

So where do I go out and meet people who aren't super religious, ballroom dancing nuts, or alcoholics?

The other thing I'll add is that when you're in tech, there's a good chance you share a lot of interests with coworkers. This isn't the case with a lot of community social groups. Sure, they're people you see, but you don't have enough in common with them for them to ever be more than acquaintances.

hackerspaces

same crowd, but with people from different companies

Most of which

are in cities

> So where do I go out and meet people who aren't super religious, ballroom dancing nuts, or alcoholics?

Lots of coworkers have been just the same. No difference.

I'm in a B-tier central valley city and even here we have a monthly multi-location art event, and coffee walk and talks. I can get brunch with the atheists or chat up other small dog owners during doggie socials. The biggest impediment to my social life is the anxiety of awkwardness when meeting new people, not the lack of opportunities.

I'm well equipped to understand the vulnerability disclosure spectrum and when and how to reveal personal information so that my relationships don't stagnate nor am I dumping on people I've just met. I can navigate conservations adeptly to find topics of common interests and genuinely connect. I've purposely enriched myself with topics tech folks tend to dismiss like psychology, sociology, and mysticism which have fruited deep personal connections with others in ways I've never dreamed of.

The effort-reward structure is much more gentle than I would have thought even 10 years ago.

> It’s none of my business, but nonetheless it angers me.

Why does it anger you so much that different people have their own situations and preferences?

What I dislike the most about the WFH vs RTO debate is how the strongest advocates on each side seem completely baffled by the other.

> prioritized being in the office every day of the week over working at home with their spouses and/or children.

When my kids were young going into the office was easier work than staying home and keeping them. I felt guilty about not being at home with them and being able to be in the office.

I've been WFH since around 2017 or so. After a while, it starts to feel like I ship code into the void. Like I'm a freelancer who happens to be working for a company rather than an employee. This gets even worse after a round or two of layoffs and/or reorgs and being on teams with people I've never met.

I had to visit our office (first time since Jan 2020) to do some emergency heads down work with my teammates and it's incredible how I had forgotten what it feels like to be part of a company.

With that combined with the fact that people are increasingly bad at hiding the fact that they're often just taking off mid-afternoon (always fun to need a set of eyes for a critical hotfix pull request and get radio silence on Teams!), the difficulty of focusing at home, and the expense of trying to live somewhere with an extra bedroom or area as a dedicated home office, and I really wish I could go back to the office. Unfortunately I don't live in the same state as the office anymore, so I am stuck like this for now.

The failure isn't on you nor the need for an office. It's on the company for not creating the culture. Online communities e.g. in gaming have always been vibrant. It didn't always require in-person meetups to make it work.

Company culture is set after it grows beyond a certain size. And it is very hard to change it. So why should company change it if it can continue in the same old way?

And if you think companies should change their cultures to find good talent, let me assure you - companies know that and track attrition carefully. If they didn't think they had an upper hand in forcing RTO, they wouldn't have done that. It is much easier to find workers who can come to the office than what HN seem to believe.

> If they didn't think they had an upper hand in forcing RTO, they wouldn't have done that.

And 640k ought to be enough for everybody too right?

> So why should company change it if it can continue in the same old way?

Yeah like why should the world improve if we can continue the same way? Why move to electricity if there's fossil fuel. Why do anything?

>"After a while, it starts to feel like I ship code into the void"

It depends on what's your role. I am responsible for product design and development. I definitely do not feel like my part of code is shipped "into the void". I see it working and serving customers

Remote since 2000, run my own software product development company from home.

>"I hate video calls

Absolutely, this is why I mostly do productive work. Calls are limited and not video.

>"I hate MS Teams."

I do not hate it since I do not use it.

>"I hate sitting at home alone every day."

I do not. I work but since (except rare meetings) I am on my own schedule I free to go for a swim, bike ride, walk whatever any time I want.

>"I missed going out after work on a Friday with coworkers"

Nope. I have actual friends and we meet whenever we feel like.

>"I missed shit talking with people at lunch."

Again I have friends and can talk to them any time. Often over Skype as we spread over the world. With those here in Toronto usually meet in person on evenings / weekends.

We are just different people.

>"Remote work is convenient for odd cases"

No. It is convenient for people who like it. You are always free to go to the office if that's your cup of tea.

>"I see comments here ridiculing the idea that someone might enjoy the presence of their coworkers.

Nothing to ridicule on my end. As already said to each their own.

>"This is just not the reality everyone lives in."

Bullshit. Speak for yourself. There are enough people on each end of the spectrum.

> No. It is convenient for people who like it. You are always free to go to the office if that's your cup of tea.

This doesn't work. It's not what they want. They want an office full of people so you "the remoter" has to go in as well!

Well if the split is 50/50 there should be enough people for them.

Personally I've solved my remoting / independence problem back in 2000 and do not give a shit what they want.

> Well if the split is 50/50 there should be enough people for them.

Not to mention not everyone wants to come in every day and then you might not meet the right people on the same day.

> I want to work with and talk to people in person.

That's fine. You can do that. As you said you "want".

> Almost every day I see comments here ridiculing the idea that someone might enjoy the presence of their coworkers. This is just not the reality everyone lives in.

And there's the problem. How did you enjoy the presence of your coworkers?

If you were the only 1 in the office would you then complain?

Hint: yes.

So the gist of the issue is you want to go to the office AND force everyone to be back just so YOU are not lonely?

> I hate sitting at home alone every day.

You didn't and don't have to. What does this have to do with remote?

> I missed shit talking with people at lunch.

Again how is this a remote problem? Because you can't have lunch with people including coworkers if remote?

This mentality is exactly why the west will continue to face a worsening loneliness crisis and worsening social cohesion. The idea that developing relationships requires some kind of sacrifice and actual human interaction in the context of performing a larger goal is for some reason treated as completely alien.

Remote work is convenient for the not-so-odd case of having young children at home.

In these circles and at this hour of the night on a Saturday? Families are inconceivable and children are best not contracted.

Edit: It’s either Saturday or Sunday at this point. It’s a weekend. None of us should be here. I’m not going to be pedantic.

time is relative. It may be saturday for you but not for everyone.

Why shouldn't we be here??

No coworker or company culture is worth losing having lunch with my partner and seeing them throughout the day working from home. All of that is transient, as roles come and go. For me (n=1! ymmv!), it would be kind of silly to have a partner and not see them except from when you wake until you depart for your job and when you arrive home until bedtime, five days a week. Work is where the paycheck is, home is where the people I want to spend time with are. I empathize with folks who get their social life/interactions from their workplace, but I do not. There’s enough org variety we can self select into the best orgs for how we want to live our lives.

(remote for ~10 years, married 15, together 20)

Edit: I acknowledge some relationships require time apart. n=1!

I absolutely need the time away from my partner

> Edit: I acknowledge some relationships require time apart. n=1!

This is about the freedom to do so. Nothing stops you from going to a cafe or somewhere else. It's remote work.

It's about freedom not 1 or the other.

I vigorously agree. The anecdote is provided because, so often, people make an argument that much isn’t lost by being forced into an office. And that simply isn’t true.

Having young children at home and having to take care of them, you won't be able to work at all. I know that because I have a few of my own.

I go into the office, but it's still pretty empty. It's getting to the point where I might leave in 6 months for somewhere where people actually come in. I'm just not sure where that is anymore.

My company has already lost good people because of this. They want to work somewhere with people, and that wasn't us.

There is so much joy from getting on the train every morning and hearing the chatter.

Hey, if you've got the time to spare, and like getting up significantly earlier than you would otherwise have to. And you are into ... chatter.

Then walking in to the office and getting to work with real people instead of feeling like an automation in a box churning through jira tickets.

I've had plenty of onsite jobs where I felt like no less of on automaton (or worse). Seems uncorrelated with onsite/remote, per my data trail.

>Almost every day I see comments here ridiculing the idea that someone might enjoy the presence of their coworkers.

This seems misleading, I've rarely come across that even among people who are in threads proclaiming they completely prefer remote 100%.

What I do see is a ridiculing of the idea that you have to be in an office environment to socialize, or that those relationships are anywhere near as fulfilling as people who actively choose to be somewhere out of a shared interest (and not a financial incentive).

There are also great discussions on which type of work benefits most from team in person environments and which doesn't.

Either way, I wholly despise the binary perspective on remote/office work as mostly being quite short sighted. The idea isn't we should pick one or the other, it's the desire for more flexibility on how we approach work hours.

I may like my coworkers just fine but there are a thousand other reasons why being in the office or physically around them is not so fun. Smelling the smokers/smoke sometimes for hours when someone leaves the smoker room door open or the constant coughing or the ever so slightly audible music through their headphones may all seem like non-problems to the people who cause them but it's not so nice to be on the receiving end. I highly suspect that all these so called sociable people are often being sociable at a cost to others. And taking these random social breaks all the time is not productive, it doesn't matter how much they paint a picture of these amazing ideas that come out from randomly meeting someone in the hallway. Also I have never met someone who actually likes going to the office more than working from home so it might literally be people who have their own office at the office, aka: bosses, higher ups. I mean if I had my own entire office at work then I wouldn't mind so much either. I actually temporarily had my own office for a while and it felt great. Total peace and quiet and you can still talk to people in person when someone wants to. Then it changes and all the small problems reappear.

> I have never met someone who actually likes going to the office more than working from home

That would seem to be a comment on the number/type of people you meet more than anything. There are days I'm happy to WFH but I'm very glad I don't do it 5 days a week any more (and I used to ~18 years ago, as well as through much of 2020 and 2021).

I think we all simply want full control over whether we go into the office or not, on daily basis. I am not fully home office either but ultimately home office is superior because you have more control over your life.

Actually I have pretty poor self control working from home, the fridge is far too accessible, as are various other distractions around the house! The main advantage is that I can easily make myself a decent cup of coffee at home at minimal cost - machines at the office will provide free but invariably undrinkable coffee, or you can pay $5+ for a decent cup if you're prepared to ride the elevators to ground level and walk a few hundred metres. The only other reason to avoid the office is when the weather's crap (given I commute by bike).

The usage of "metres" also gives away that your office environment likely has more accessible things around it too. Anywhere I have had an in office job has had nothing but parking lots and road around it.

I live in one of the least densely populated countries on the planet! I would think there'd be just as many tech jobs based in downtown office buildings in the US as there are here...(admittedly this the first job I've had with such an office, having been in same industry/city for >25 years).

That’s terrible. In Australia, basically every office is surrounded by literally hundreds of options for food and coffee accessible by a short walk.

Might make sense why some people have such different views of the office when the actual environment is vastly different.

For sufficiently restricted values of "basically every" perhaps! True for the CBD, and sure, most inner-suburban offices have a very decent selection of such options (not 100s, but certainly more than enough), but there are tech jobs based in outer-suburban offices where that is definitely not the case. One of my first jobs was in such an office (in Kilsyth) and I still have somewhat fond memories of being there for various reasons.

> This seems misleading

It's not as in those that claim so prove they can't type, write out something coherent or use online tools. They don't know how to build relationships otherwise. It's the only way they can interact with people (in-person).

> The idea isn't we should pick one or the other, it's the desire for more flexibility on how we approach work hours.

The remote argument has always been do what you like vs the in-office argument has always been force everyone back. The problem with those preferring in-office is that they don't prefer to go to the office. They prefer to have someone (unwillingly) go to the office to sit next to them.

Companies need to adjust to WFH to make sure everyone still feels like a team. People will bellyache about it, but you need regular video calls and the occasional meat-space meet-up or you just feel like an anonymous cog in a big machine. Some people prefer keeping their coworkers at arms length, and that's fine for them. Others need to be on the look out for a culture that helps you feel like part of a team.

We had this originally, but over the last year, the people who enjoyed and attended the social calls all ended up coming in to the office and ignoring the optional chat calls.

That's not an issue with remote work. That's the way the company operates - it's failure on the "people" and culture team.

I share the sentiment.

I am considering actually measuring my mood but it looks like the office helps me.

45 minutes of walking after work does a lot of good to my mental health. I also do a sort of one meal a day “diet” where i consume just coffee at work, and it actually costs a lot less.

Worst case is that I leave late and it’s cold so i take an uber, but I actually prefer it.

For real? All of those things are what I detest about having A Job. I bought a farm, am no longer working in a corporate job, and would rather die indigent than ever go back to that shit again.

> Decided to pack up my stuff and move to the city.

Might I ask which city? SF and NYC are pretty different these days.

Melbourne, Australia. Best decision ever. Should have moved sooner.

Yore problem is not remote work, your problem is the lack of meaningful relationships

I'm in the same boat.

Your joy sounds like my nightmare.

Please keep in mind that some of your coworkers might hate talking to you and only do so to avoid conflict. For each coworker, try to track the amount of conversations you initiate with them and the amount of conversations they initiate with you. If the former ever significantly exceeds them latter, consider leaving them alone.

Edit: I just noticed that your HN account is less than two years old, and yet you've managed to post 3,772 times. Whoa. You certainly love to socialize!

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