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Comment by sussexby | Hacker News Reader

Currently in crisis because I simply can't handle communication in remote work. For something I do for the majority of my working day, I feel devoid of human interaction to such an extent that it's massively affecting my mental health.

I regularly find myself clock-watching until the next time I can talk to someone because everyone is always busy - there are no water coolers or coffee breaks to stitch in between.

Even if you create the virtual coffee break and have a chat with people, often we're pushed to abandon it - presumably because it's flipped from an opportunistic (oh, we're all of the phone, let's go grab a coffee) to a scheduled event which a) gets dropped and b) doesn't naturally recur.

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I have to admit as someone who enjoys WFH and would never work in an office again, that having co-workers like you is one of the main reasons. You should work on not relying so much on others. You may be benefiting from all that social "charging up", but you're taking that from the person on the other side of the conversation.

I work to make money, not to fill someone's social void. You'll be happier if you explore the root cause of your issue and get a little more comfortable with yourself.

I mean, they can just as easily tell you to deal with in-person. This isn't a particularly useful contribution imo.

They're not referring to socializing with you, per se. I see this mistake made all the time in these discussions. Many just prefer to be around other people, myself included. They're not necessarily the caricature of the "overly social office mate that needs to find friends outside of work" that you are implying.

I really think you're overassuming your knowledge of the person you're responding to.

It’s not a mistake. People who are pro-WFH are so dogmatic about it (and so protective of their “right” to WFH) that they intentionally reduce anyone who prefers working in an office to somebody with no social life.

Many of them bought homes way out in the boondocks assuming this covid remote crap would never end…

Yeah, and? That gives them the right to put down anyone who likes working in an office by calling them an anti-social loser?

Every decision has consequences.

Anybody who thought “covid remote crap would never end” is either way more optimistic or way more pessimistic than I am.

Totally agree. I really hate how so many people paint those who want 2019 normal office interaction back are somehow deeply flawed and just need to straighten up and fly right somehow.

I actually agree 100% with this perspective. Well said.

I guess it’s unsurprising that people without the social capacity to handle in office work would not have the social capacity to empathize with someone who prefers it.

Or more fairly, probably the inverse; plenty of WFHers wouldn’t be so derisive, we just don’t hear from them

That’s quite the generalization, and isn’t at all the typical pro-WFH attitude I see on HN.

I’m pro-WFH and have WFH-d since 2009 but I’d love to go to the office more, if the office were nice and in the right place.

No offense to you, but this is why my next job will not be remote.

Yet another case where capitalism incentivizes pathologizing natural human behavior. It is absolutely normal to want to talk to people, to chitchat, to be social for some portion of the half of your waking hours that you are getting stuff done. At least on assembly lines you can have some of that. WFH can be demonic.

The root cause of my “issue” is I’m human and I’ve evolved to work with people face-to-face, not through a computer.

I’m not yearning for social interaction because I need a friend. I’ve got friends and they’re not at my job.

I’m yearning for the variety of different communication methods I have in a physical domain with the added bonus that I can change the environment I’m in to accommodate different tasks.

It’s fine to have preferences, it’s telling if you’ve reduced anyone who differs with yours into a mental disorder. Personally, I believe that your attitude is the bigger red flag.

Send your DMs when people are on "busy" status anyway. They can respond later. That's the huge advantage of remote work. Async communication is so much more efficient. If you're watching the clock, there's something wrong.

Async communication is not even remotely close to socializing, and hardly feels like genuine human interaction.

Work != socializing. Quality work requires deep concentration over long stretches of time, not tapping on a shoulder at random intervals. Both IRL and virtually.

I keep seeing people say this, but I always sympathize with others who lament the lack of socialization that comes with remote work. I have several engineering friends, and myself, who all have gone full remote and are starting to go a little insane from feeling lonely all the time.

"Just socialize outside of work!" seems to be everyone's go-to response, totally missing how much time is taken up by the 8+ hours of the workday, and how much ambient socialization has been lost with that time now spent remote.

Sure, remote is more convenient for "deep work", but I honestly never had issues with that in-office: If I had my headphones on, people didn't bother me. If I had questions, I'd take them off and look around to see if anyone else was "surfaced" to talk to, or ping someone on slack. In the meantime I could kill time chatting with my team or going for a walk around the building--when I would inevitably find someone else from another team who was taking a break, and I could either ask them or just chat.

Now it's just me, in my apartment, all day, except for maybe standup. The only reliable face-to-face human interaction I have is my partner when they come home from work--and they're usually exhausted and ready to go to bed in an hour.

Work absolutely used to be a significant portion of socialization--just like going to classes used to be, in college or secondary school. We've absolutely lost that.

> "Just socialize outside of work!" seems to be everyone's go-to response, totally missing how much time is taken up by the 8+ hours of the workday, and how much ambient socialization has been lost with that time now spent remote.

You're working remote, not necessarily working from home. The world is your office now.

For particularly meeting heavy days I have experienced no shame going on a daytrip while on those calls. It's nobody's business how you do your job remotely anyway. Get some coding in while stopped somewhere. Yes this means I have to make up for lost time in the day with all the interruptions. No I can't just put away the laptop at 5pm because I still have stuff to do (usually done by 8pm), but it's worth it. If Sarah from accounting is allowed to flex time to pick up her kids from soccer practice, I'm allowed to shoot the shit with random people I meet while getting gas or trying a new restaurant. There's your new watercooler. Go to the beach or something. If your partner is driving you around, even better. Use the laptop like its namesake suggests.

Not exactly a "digital nomad" lifestyle, but it's such a mood boost to mix light travel with working hours. It's a win for everyone if productivity goes up from these little things.

My team does collaborative sessions twice a week with the whole team, and has a game session once a month. Between all the rest of the meetings, and between the important work we get done through chat, I feel that we do get to know each other and enjoy the time we spend together online. Plus we have public and private social chats full of devs of relatively the same level or age groups where coworkers feel comfortable chatting about sensitive topics. I feel socially fulfilled by this but I can't know if everyone else does.

> Work != socializing.

That's plain unhealthy.

> Quality work requires deep concentration over long stretches of time, not tapping on a shoulder at random intervals. Both IRL and virtually.

This has little to do with socializing or not.

>> Work != socializing.

> That's plain unhealthy.

Why? I have friends and people I socialize with, I don't have to socialize with my coworkers. I am friends with people I've met along the way, but with everyone else I keep a distance and remain professional. Why is it unhealthy to have boundaries around work relationships?

It's a basic psychological need: humans are social animals. People spend 40+ hours at week at work for many decades. Unless you work only 5 hours a week, it's a huge fraction of a lifetime.

I had this issue and the only way I could solve it was moving to a primarily in-office company. This was the best thing I ever did for my mental health.

Not trying to start a big debate over the whole issue, but just sharing that I felt very similarly to you ("massively affecting my mental health") and that it was solved by doing the obvious: going back to the office.

No amount of socializing outside of work or hobbies or 1:1s during the workday sufficed for me.

It would be interesting to see what happens when all the extroverts self select for in office work and introverts self select for wfh.

I did the same as DiggyJohnson. And I'm introverted. Even introverts need human connection and interaction. And in my experience, being in an office is easier for an introvert.

Being 100% remote for several years was terrible for my mental health. As to why... well, a lot of it was precisely because I'm introverted.

As an introvert, it's a lot more draining to do the explicit communication required to work remote effectively. Maybe 10% of people can work effectively over written comms. As a lead, I had to schedule zoom calls and make explicit face to face time to make any of it work. In an office setting, this happens more naturally and is a lot easier.

On top of that, I found at a 100% remote company it seems more common for people issues to happen. When you are only interacting over text most of the time, misunderstandings seem to happen more often.

I found it very draining to fix these issues. It was much harder than if we had been in an office together, where we could just have a quick chat and fix sensitive topics. It's also more obvious in an office setting when this stuff happens and so you can sort it faster.

Well said, I appreciate you sharing this. I consider myself almost completely neutral on the extrovert / introvert scale, but when it comes to this topic, there’s a lot of spurious assumptions made about the type of person that prefers to be in office. It strikes me as caricature.

My team is incredibly quiet on slack and I find it pretty frustrating. We're under 10 people so I don't expect constant chat but it's not uncommon for our guild channel to have a day go by with no messages.

I try to keep it alive by posting interesting articles, updates and tools and things like that and that sometimes drums up some conversation but it's rare that my teammates do the same thing.

I'm not sure if I'm more passionate about tech, more extroverted, more obsessed with improving processes or just less busy than them. It's been like this at multiple companies I've been at so it's not unique to my current team. And I'm clearly the outlier.

I just try to not take it personally and keep going. I feel like I post really cool things, especially new tools/repos/projects that benefit everyone to the void sometimes.

> I'm not sure if I'm more passionate about tech, more extroverted, more obsessed with improving processes or just less busy than them. It's been like this at multiple companies I've been at so it's not unique to my current team.

It's none of these things. I am the same way but we are the minority.

> I try to keep it alive by posting interesting articles, updates and tools and things like that and that sometimes drums up some conversation but it's rare that my teammates do the same thing.

It's a lot of work to read articles when people post them or evaluate a tool. It's even more work to form an interesting opinion about it and discuss it.

I enjoy researching things on my own time, but I find it stressful to add to my workload at work, especially when it's not related to the other work I'm already doing.

I sympathize. You're the person who does this because they love it and sees room for improvement everywhere. Unfortunately, most people are not like that. I know because I've been in a few teams and it's rare to find the person who is seeking constant improvement. Most get to just good enough and stop there. It's fine. It is what it is.

find the social outside of work? Work has always been work for me and nothing more, not really looking for socialising.

In fairness I've been fully remote for 10 years but I see friends during the day for coffees, lunch, exercise. And then multiple sports clubs in the evenings

I have a great social life outside of work and still felt the same as GP during the remote work day. And I'm pretty reserved at work, not known for bothering people incessantly.

> Work has always been work for me and nothing more, not really looking for socialising.

But work is 40-50 hours of my week. That's a HUGE portion of my life. Almost half my waking hours are at work. (7x16=112 waking hours a week. 35-45% of it at work).

Not taking time to socialize during that period is draining as hell for me. I guess what I'm trying to say is you're way overestimating the percentage of people who can go to work and just... work. Most people need the socialization.

Sounds like WFH isn't for you then.

That's... my point. WFH isn't for a lot of people. And there are factions who say stuff like "Just get a hobby dude!" as if that fixes anything.

Outside of just cutting WFH, alternatives are to work in places where there's people: libraries, co-working spaces, co-working coffees etc.

You'll have no commitment to come everyday, have people to talk to, and still hopefully be close enough to home to get back anytime you need pure calm or a full dedicated environment.

To note, for many people WFH means their family is around one door away, which makes it a widely different experience from people living alone.

Do more 1:1s. You'll have to chase some things piecemeal across two to three people, but you'll soon figure out who actually owns a topic and be able to have more in-depth conversations.

I have a friend who often works alone for extended periods of time in isolated locations and loves being with people. Similar to your situation, but more outdoorsy. His solution is having an open phone line, just have a call going and occasionally saying things, chatting, joking, etc, or not. Sometimes it's real quiet for long stretches, but it's less lonely. I'm a quiet guy, and even I enjoy being on those calls.

Take your own breaks. Hang out with friends. Take a lunch. Your officemates do not have to be your end-all of social interaction :)

Welcome to my world. You aren’t alone. Remote work absolutely ruined my career…

I really hope what shakes out is some places are all in on the office and some are all in on remote. None of this dithering crap that came post 2020

This is why I went back to the office, but it took me a very long time to realize it.

Try to exercise a lot during the day, it helps.

i had the same problem. i solved it by becoming much more social in my non-work parts of life.

If its affecting your mental health so much, perhaps you should change jobs.

What did you want to talk about?

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