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Comment by DiscourseFan | Hacker News Reader

Ok, I will be the first to say that I hate offices: the culture, the aesthetic, the rituals and customs. But I'm not necessarily sure that--especially for young people--work from home is the best option. Someone who is married, has kids, has a whole social world in their neighborhood, that person would enjoy and promote work from home, but that person is usually in a higher power position. A young person just starting out or at least earlier on in their career doesn't really have the opportunity to make friends, meet people (romantically), or otherwise make social connections while working from home.

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My job dictating my friends, romantic attachments and other social connections is incredibly disgusting and dystopian to me. Meaningful social activity has only occurred outside the workplace, to me. Being forced to commute to an office decreases the chance for that by stealing even more free time, and it pushes many people to move away from their friends/family to entirely different cities or countries!

> My job dictating my friends, romantic attachments and other social connections is incredibly disgusting and dystopian to me. Meaningful social activity has only occurred outside the workplace, to me.

last stats I found is that 43% of marriage come from the workplace so it's most certainly not something to discount that easily

Shocking statistic if true. Especially after considering gender imbalances it's hard to imagine, particularly in tech

“Met at work” doesn’t necessarily mean “met coworker” - if you marry the barista at your coffee shop you did the first but not the second.

I find it hard to believe (unless it's data from the 80s). Online dating has absolutely devoured all other ways to meet people romantically

Your job isn’t dictating your relationships - it’s giving you an opportunity at making some.

Disgusted? By… a company… having an office? We have shockingly different interpretations of dystopian!

It's not just having an office. It means work-life balance is so tilted that your workplace is basically your whole life. That implies all sorts of terrible things.

Why even leave work? You'd get all sorts of nice marriage statistics if you force people to live in a prison-camp environment 24/7

The point is that alternative (sitting around in home working on your computer) is not more social.

There are severe social costs to pushing/forcing people to relocate away from friends/family and spend time commuting, so I disagree with that conclusion

Do you go to work to accomplish your assigned goals or do you go there to socialize? These things seem contradictory.

A salaried employee who can maintain productivity in a WFH environment has far more time and freedom to socialize, wholly on their own terms, than an employee who is forced to expend some amount of time on commuting.

For people who go to work to get work done, WFH is the obvious best choice.

> Do you go to work to accomplish your assigned goals or do you go there to socialize? These things seem contradictory.

I mean if you can get 8 hours of solid uninterrupted coding, good job, but otherwise social interactions gonna happen.

And while some also happen over remote chat, it is nicer in person. Of course that flips if you hate your coworkers or don't share any common interests.

But yes, trading for 2h commute is definitely not worth it. 15 min commute to work ? Why not. Especially if you can do some shopping along the way.

Honestly, hybrid 1 day-at-work currently work well for me. The on-site day is mostly planning, some gossip and whatever requires some bigger coordination, then rest of the week nobody bothers me.

>I mean if you can get 8 hours of solid uninterrupted coding, good job, but otherwise social interactions gonna happen.

I see these interactions as overhead related to work ("hey I need your help with $COMPLEX_PROBLEM" or chitchat waiting for a meeting to start), not a conduit for genuine friendship. They're (hopefully) cordial and pleasant, but almost completely work-related.

I don't use work time to discuss hobbies, music, or other interests at length. I do mention these things in passing, and if a coworker shares interests and wants to talk more, we sync up outside of work hours. Is this not the way most people operate?

> The on-site day is mostly planning, some gossip and whatever requires some bigger coordination, then rest of the week nobody bothers me.

That sounds like a pretty good balance if everyone is local. For more distributed teams needing 'virtual onsites', there are some interesting concept such as Gather

https://www.gather.town

https://sea.ign.com/ign-sea/174057/news/how-virtual-office-a...

You're not locked in at home. There's very little stopping you from joining a coworking space, going to the coffee shop etc and working in an environment outside of your home. In fact this is far more beneficial for your career because assuming other people are doing so, you are passively networking with people outside of your company and finding better opportunities.

People have gotten so use to the corporate propaganda of work being your life that they cannot understand you can live and socialize outside of work, and that it's far healthier to do so. I've made friends at work and while working full remote but corporations use this to add friction for people to stay.

> There's very little stopping you from joining a coworking space

I know my employer wouldn't cover this cost, and I'm guessing most of them won't, so why on earth would I take money out of my paycheck to be able to work from an office instead of the one my employer provides? Further, confidential discussions with customers or coworkers in a space filled with people working for other companies sounds like a very bad idea.

Co-working spaces have private booths and such for sensitive discussions. And ultimately because it's cheaper to go to a nearby co-working space on occasion than it is to move and live close to the office.

I'm full remote. Moving to the office would quite literally cost 1.5x in rent.

Regarding cost, some employees might still find it worthwhile to use a co-working space at their own cost, if they save enough on commuting (which employers also typically don't pay for), or if they earn enough to be able to absorb the cost.

Regarding confidentiality, using co-working spaces needn't be full-time, but could be combined with WFH, just like going to the office can, which could help somewhat.

> Your job isn’t dictating your relationships - it’s giving you an opportunity at making some.

This is abuser level rewording. Are you a manager?

Seriously though, if 'work is giving you opportunities to make relationships' to the point where it's a significant downside to get rid of it in some capacity, then we should consider that we're in a live-to-work system, which is dystopic.

Disgusted by companies encouraging you to become entirely dependent on them for your social life, making it much more difficult to stand up for yourself, ask for a pay rise, or leave.

I've seen severely underpaid people stay far longer than they would have out of a misplaced sense of loyalty towards their peers. The only entity that benefits from that arrangement is the company.

It's also IMO a significant part of how some companies retain people.

In years past there's always been a persistent strain of criticism of perk-heavy offices because "it's a ploy to get you to work late" - I think the criticism has actually been off the mark. It's actually a little bit more sinister than that: the perks create a culture where your entire social world exists at work, and massively raises the barrier to quitting.

If you've worked at a perk-heavy FAANG like Meta or Google you've met them: the people for whom nearly all of their friends are from work, who relish going into work for the social contact. For them leaving the company isn't just leaving a job, or even colleagues they like, it's the near-total obliteration of their social world.

I don't begrudge people for making friends at work - you have to do a job, you may as well make the best of it, but I would heavily caution people against forming the bulk of their social world around their workmates.

Having a life outside of work isn't just good for you personally, it's IMO pretty critical to your career's success.

Correct, this is what companies build "culture" for. Turnover goes way down in situations like this and once their employees have a mortgage and fixed living expense they basically only need to give them cost of living adjustment for 20+ years or they quit

Replace office with school. They're extremely similar in concept. Is making friends at school dystopian to you?

The modern school system is incredibly dystopian and prison-like, yes.

Many people talk about surviving school, especially people with autism or similar divergence from the acceptable norm. Making friends at school is a small non-guaranteed consolation prize for them, and it comes at the cost of lifelong trauma.

Let people, including children, socialize on their own terms.

Agreed. I think it is even worse than the workplace. My social skills were stunted because I mainly learned how to attempt to socialise in a structured prison-like environment. I was trained to obey the authority figure saying to ignore friends if they tried to speak to me during class. Forced into classes with people I didn't get along with. Often my friends were put into a different class so I was forcibly segregated from them, damaging the relationship. I'm in 30s and still have nightmares about school often

It’s easy to find friends in a group of people you have things in common with and spend lots of time with. I know not every job is like this, but some of my best lifelong friendships started at workplaces. (And outlasted the companies that they started at)

If I could upvote this more than once.

Been working 12+ years remotely in a company that has been doing it even longer in some departments. It works and you can get around all the complaints no problem. I understand some people prefer to work in an office and I understand it also depends on the type of business you are it. I get that but people also need to remember times change.

> A young person just starting out or at least earlier on in their career doesn't really have the opportunity to make friends, meet people (romantically), or otherwise make social connections while working from home.

Sure they do - if they live in a city. I am a young person who started my first FTE job last year and am WFH. I have an incredibly bountiful friend group that comes from hobbyist meetups, social bike rides and dating apps.

I think we as a society would benefit from evolving the "third place". A place that is neither work nor home where you can socialize. Like it or not, lot of people want remote work, so the best path forward is to adapt.

This is traditionally called “the pub” in the UK or “the bar” in the US.

Maybe it’s time for society to work on that drinking habit, eh?

That used to be called church.

Probably what we will end up with is school from home, work from home, everything from home. Socialisation will move entirely online where you meet up on VR Chat or whatever is popular at the time. Many people will almost never leave their house.

This is... demonstrably untrue? People who work from home generally aren't house-bound, they will still go to the coffee shop, the local park, local stores, meetups, pubs, bars, etc.

Sure, if you live in a very amenity-poor area WFH may in fact be quite isolating - but if anything that reinforces the main thrust of the argument: live in a city where there are things to do other than working and hanging out with coworkers!

I think it’s is quite observably already happening. We have a growing portion of anti social shut ins and the problem is only getting worse.

I think it’s realistic that social media and VR will just completely take over.

Shut-ins have always existed, at least they can be employed now. That is actually a nice pro for generally available remote work.

The Bar or Church they haven't gone away.

The church at least has gone away for an increasing segment of the population. And bars are squeezed by increased rents etc, sadly.

And, frankly, while alcohol has its place in society, it shouldn't be the basis thereof.

that's called the pub mate

India really struggles in this regard. We don’t have a widespread pub/bar culture so everyone meets out on the streets…just knots of people sitting on bikes and chatting with each other.

This is traffic nuisance but also makes the streets relatively safe (on average).

I just wish a “third place” culture would spontaneously arise if only to decongest the roads.

I think this is right. I'm married with kids and have little desire to go to an office. It was indeed different when I Was younger -- I didn't cook at home as much so enjoyed office lunches with coworkers, I lived in a smaller apartment which was easier to find closer to work, etc.

It occurs that shows including "Call my agent", "The Newsroom", and to some extent "Madam Secretary" depict the better version of office life (particularly for young people) pretty well.

I'm someone who entered the workforce fully, 100% remote (ignoring jobs I had as a teenager anyway) at 19 and I couldn't disagree more.

I actually have (and especially back then, had) a life outside of work believe it or not, and the thought of all of my social interactions (especially back then) being tied to the office sounds absolutely disgusting and completely dystopian.

I don't particularly care for anyone in my company or any of my past ones bar 1 or 2 people, and I much prefer keeping it that way, where my work life is a completely separate universe to anything even resembling my personal life.

I've been working from home 12+ years and been working since 2001 in an office outside of that.

I am the same. I've only ever met 1 person who I would want to hang out with outside of work.

I work for a big corp with a big grad intake. We are RTO 4 days a week and I think its great, lots of young people working together, going out after work. I feel kinda sad for those at home.

Cool. I WFH and so does my wife so I get to spend more time with my favorite person. My kids' school is a very short drive so I get to see them 5 minutes after I get off work. I guess I no longer get the appeal of going out after work with young people.

I’d rather not drink with coworkers anyway. I have a tendency to ramble when drinking.

I think the assumptions many are making incorrectly is that the workplace is the center of one's social life. This is truly the triumph of a bizarro and dreary corporate capitalist individualism and an indictment of the state of our families and communities. Certainly, the workplace is a part of our social lives, but the argument that WFH leads to isolation should lead the arguer to reflect on what is wrong with the way he is living his life rather than condemn what I think is a welcome change. IMO, remote work can amortize the affects of market changes so that people aren't forced to uproot their lives to find work. They can work in the vicinity of their children. They can save time by avoiding commutes. All of this seems to contribute to the formation of community because it reduces social churn. Once communities form, the other aspects of community life can come into existence that open up the possibilities that are attributed to the workplace but that are not proper to it. The notion that you cannot make friends or find a spouse or whatever without the workplace or corporation being the social organizing principle is truly horrifying. This echos the WEF's ideas of how social life ought to be organized. I think that remote work will also cause a redistribution of other kinds of labor that office workers have long benefited from (like the restaurant industry). All of this seems to enable better social conditions.

Most people have a 40 hour/week contract and it would be a shame to spend that in solitary confinement.

You can go to the office, play ping-pong, rant about your boss, flirt with coworkers and then "go home" and socialize some more (if you want that.) It's not either-or.

I've found that if you spend all time together at home, at the end of the day, you have nothing to talk about with whomever you happen to live with.

It's often frowned upon to make romantic arrangements with workmates. But the rest, sure. I guess some new social construct will be needed. Like in the old days - balls, cotillions, clubs?

Oh, we Europeans have no problem with that. The difference we have is that we have employee protection laws that put a hard cap on working hours to 48h a week on average over a year (with some rare exceptions, usually for crews of offshore rigs, boats, public health/safety, military and private security) - and that this stuff gets audited, especially on complaints. And when the government looks at a company, they audit everything, not just the person who complained...

I don’t really understand how that’s at all relevant. The point is that social connections are more difficult with remote work irrespective of how many hours you’re working.

When you have to work 60h+ weeks, you're way too exhausted in the evening to do anything social, and you'll lose the weekend to barely recovering. That forces many people to look for companionship in their coworkers.

I don’t work 60+ hour weeks, I work an entirely respectable number of hours. I don’t in any way feel “forced” to look for companionship with my coworkers, I want to, they’re nice people. And remote work makes it harder.

Human civilization existed without office culture for many millennia, and we managed to socialize and reproduce just fine. Even in modern times a very tiny percentage of people in the world are white collar office workers, and the rest somehow don't have any of the problems you mention. Heck I'm willing to wager that people who don't have these kinds of office jobs do better socially and romantically than those sitting behind a desk all day.

> Human civilization existed without office culture for many millennia, and we managed to socialize and reproduce just fine.

Because they worked together outside of office.

You couldn't remote in into a cow. Before office being a place to work together there was factory floor, and before that it was the field

> You couldn't remote in into a cow

Don’t give John Deere ideas

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