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Comment by rubicon33 | Hacker News Reader

Worked from home ~5 of my ~10 years in development.

Obviously, the "pros" of WFH are massive. No commute. Comfortable office. Food in the fridge. Daytime exercise + showers. Etc. etc.

I found however that too much of a good thing, is bad. For me, the lack of in person communication started to atrophy my enjoyment of life. I wouldn't have been able to really tell you it for the first few years, but I was slowly moving toward being mildly depressed.

Returning to office restored my excitement for my work. I credit my colleagues and the process of working toward a big goal with other people. We really underestimate how important this is for mental health.

If you're in office and you now what I mean, show some love to a fellow co-worker. You gotta admit it's nice to see each other.

View on HN

The obvious counterpoint is that many people were and are miserable commuting into a workplace and then putting in the grind. It's actually humorous that most tech "social media" like HN, Reddit, Digg, and so on were much busier back when most of us were in offices, because we all would bide our days doing anything but work. You could see the bursts as the primary demographic timezones started their "work" days.

Not everyone, of course: I had a peer once who absolutely couldn't stand his family, and he would be at the office before everyone, staying until late at night. Volunteered on weekends too. Almost all of his contributions were the sort of thing that could have been easily automated, but he was happy just wiling hours away. Mileage varies and everyone's situation is unique.

Then of course there's the change element itself being a temporary boost. Turn the lights down and productivity increases. Turn them up and productivity increases. Return them to the normal and productivity increases. Having a varied life is essential. HN's history is littered by posts of people who changed some element of their life and This Changes Everything...at least during the initial period. Then it fades and they abandon it.

None of this is to diminish your personal experience that you obviously enjoy.

> It's actually humorous that most tech "social media" like HN, Reddit, Digg, and so on were much busier back when most of us were in offices, because we all would bide our days doing anything but work.

Do you have a source on this? I’m both curious and skeptical.

(And ironically, for many in Europe and Eastern NA/SA it’s the work day right now.)

100% anecdotal. Zero credible sources.

On the anecdote side I do know that within the past couple of years I saw a discussion on here about how many visitors someone gets from a top of the front page on HN. The numbers were absolutely miserly compared to what I experienced getting the same repeatedly years earlier. Like, 1/20th or less.

Maybe it's just HN that declined, but if so where did the tech news community go? Digg? /. Reddit /r/programming (to some degree yes for the last one, though still it is nothing compared to what once was).

Everything is much quieter and more restrained than it was.

And sure, there are time zones circling the globe. But generally on the English tech sites, the US/Canada are going to dominate the demographics and have an outsized effect on spikes.

Right, but you could find and link to that thread instead of “citing it” from memory.

As it is it remains conjecture.

(Aside, this thread now has 300 comments after just 2 hours. HN’s purported slowdown in the WFH era feels grossly exaggerated.)

Yes, it's conjecture. I explicitly, outright said it was an unproven anecdote. Demanding citations when I'm explicitly giving a "feel" narrative is misplaced and not charitable.

As to how many uniques you can expect from a front-page on HN, go ahead and search. Pre-2020 you can find countless people detailing 30,000+ uniques in the first few hours (my own, personal, direct experience was 50,000+). Now, if you average out more recent reports, you can expect about 11,000 over the first 24 hours.

And sure, the most inclusive possible discussion gets a few hundred comments. Everyone wants to put some paint on the shed. There is a 4 hour old submission on the front page with 2 comments. Eh, guess it doesn't represent much.

Ah, see I think denigrating the conversation by moving to personal attacks - painting me as a child who “stomps my feet” - is far less charitable. I legitimately wanted to see the data / could be persuaded.

Aside, my personal anecdote is that this lack of decorum is why I rarely comment on HN anymore. So perhaps you are right.

Given that I explicitly stated that it was 100% unproven conjecture and anecdotes, replying with scare-quotes and demands for citation is not a good example of decorum. It's argumentative and hostile, and with little intention of good faith.

Anyways, hope you have a good day.

> changed some element of their life and This Changes Everything...at least during the initial period. Then it fades and they abandon it

This is basically the essence of life

It’s sometimes called Hedonistic Adaptation

And it’s also almost the same concept as the endless arising and passing, the source of “suffering”, in many eastern spiritual traditions

>For me, the lack of in person communication started to atrophy my enjoyment of life.

I would suggest that it's possible to interact with people outside of work. It's genuinely sad to me how many of these "if I don't go into the office I have no one to interact with" posts I see.

This is so common on HN. I find it rather dystopian, as if we’ve all finally given our full selves to our corporate jobs and can’t piece our own lives together. I can feel the “but you’re at work 8 hours a day” commenter typing away as I type this, but the point is that all your social interaction doesn’t and shouldn’t come from your job regardless. That isn’t healthy.

People are often in a weird headspace at work too and a bit guarded. I don’t know why that as a social setting is inherently healthier than surrounding yourself with people outside work.

Yeah, it's super-weird for me too.

I have a circle of friends and a habit that we keep since 20+ years: every Friday morning we meet for a coffee in a physical coffee shop. Location varied along time, I lived as close as 2 minutes walk from my apartment to (now) 1 hour drive (because of the traffic).

It's not a religious thing, people miss meetings. Got other stuff, or just not being in the mood (like I drank till 2 AM, no way I'm waking up at 6 so I can be out the door at 7 so I'll be in the coffee shop at 8, stay an hour then back home). But the habit has stuck and we kept our friendship. Some people have left the group (one died), others joined it. It's easy to expand a group once you have a stable kernel: just go out for some coffees at day or drinks at night and talk to people.

I get along well with work colleagues as well, mostly I'm asking the question: if I leave this company, will I be ever talking to these guys ever again? If the answer is yes (stay in touch through WhatsApp and the occasional beer in a bar) then they're more than acquaintances and useful connections in case I need a job. Like recently got laid out (whole office closed, some 200 people fired), found a new job in less than a week. Connections, people.

So office has some value but it's far from being "the whole world".

While true, I think you are missing the time commitment and the relationships. Once the kids get home and you have dinner and soccer and karate and chores, a lot of people don't have time to squeeze in "find friends" time. Additionally, they may want to spend that limited time with their kids. Work interactions are free from a time commitment and that may be the best chance for some people to have adult interaction.

When you go into the office, you can build quite a history with people over time. I have good friends that I've worked with (off and on) for over 25 years. And we are not just "work friends". I've also felt much a part of a "team" working in person than wfh and those connections and trust can manifest in the work too.

I think that we need to continue to acknowledge that this is a human preference. And we all have quite different history, goals and situations.

That’s not how I read it. I have a fine social life outside work, but when my wife heads out every morning and I’m alone from roughly 8-6 every weekday, I feel exactly how that comment described.

It’s not that I don’t see friends and family outside those hours, it’s just that those hours constitute like half of the awake hours of my life, and the grind sucks when I do it alone.

Also the fact that the change of pace helps in general, you can turn his anecdote around and it still sounds plausible (worked in the office for 5y and started to get slightly depressed, really appreciated starting WFH once it came, etc).

That's great that you get something out of being in the office.

I really wish the powers that be would put some data to this. You and I are complete opposites; paying exhorbitant rent, transportation, and living costs usurped much of the enjoyment I could get out of going to an office. I build infra products and in an office setting I usually get a lot of interrupts because product folks generally lack some amount of knowledge/background to fill in gaps on how to use products like mine. When I'm remote they have to follow a support queue, read docs, learn more about infra basics, and attend talks on infra. When I'm in person they can just stop by my desk.

My hypothesis is that folks who like going into an office generally fall into a couple categories:

- people who get/enjoy a substantial amount of social interaction out of work and work adjacent activities

- people who work on public facing products who don't have many internal customers

- people with disruptive home environments

The thing that upsets me is that we're being treated the same and that most of this is to save face for their real estate investment. Not to mention all the half-truths/gaslighting about the universalness of productivity.

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