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Isolation, anxiety, and depression in the remote workplace

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Re: Isolation, anxiety, and depression in the remote workplace

#31

Post by kirstenbirgit »

EMM_386 wrote: post #13

I am a fully remote worker nowhere near my "office", which is simply where our company is technically HQd. I have never met my boss or any of my coworkers in person. I do highly technical work, on a team that only hires very senior developers who have prior remote work experience. And I can say, it is NOT for everyone. If you do not have a life out of work, if you live alone, if you do not have a good network of real…

I've been traveling a lot lately to figure out whether I'd want to move. Currently in Denmark which is great in all sorts of ways except the weather. I really hope I can move to South Europe at some point.

Unfortunately I don't work remote, but if I did, I'd just cancel my apartment lease, put my things in storage and travel around the world and live out of hotels for a year to find out what I want.

Re: Isolation, anxiety, and depression in the remote workplace

#32

Post by lifeisstillgood »

For me the big lesson is it is possible to structure an environment for "accidental sociability" - the most obvious one being individual rooms in a shared house - but there are plenty of other examples

- and this is something I suspect that happier more productive socities as well as companies will embrace

Re: Isolation, anxiety, and depression in the remote workplace

#33

Post by sweetheart »

There are a lot of very, very good points in this article, but I can’t help disagreeing with the opening, in which the author talks about (or at least quotes Seneca on) the impossibility of making meaningful connections while living abroad and moving around.

Moving out of my home country and forcing myself to get comfortable meeting strangers was not only the most important thing I’ve done for myself, but gave me a handful of incredibly close friends I didn’t have before, and I was happily working remotely for a company in another country during that time.

It’s not for everyone, but don’t let this article dissuade you from trying it, if you can. Meeting people from all over the world, and learning a new language, all while working remotely was life changing in a way I didn’t think possible.

Re: Isolation, anxiety, and depression in the remote workplace

#35

Post by davidy123 »

I have decades worth of remote work experience. I don't think the problem is social isolation, as others point out that's another issue, you can experience isolation (alienation) regardless of your work situation.

But if you want to be more than a gear on a team, the main decision making and insight is often strictly between local workers, regardless of what gets said in meetings it's the water cooler or after work beers. If all the decision makers are in one place and you're not there, you're missing a lot of context. A few key in-person meetings as required goes a long way to mitigate this, but for organizations that see cost savings as a main benefit to remote workers this may be difficult to arrange.

Re: Isolation, anxiety, and depression in the remote workplace

#36

Post by tomp »

> Openly acknowledging that there can be serious mental health issues related to remote work. People are not alone in these struggles, and there’s nothing “wrong” with feeling anxious or depressed.

> Encouraging people to use sick days for mental health when they need them.

It's nice that a company actually cares, but I feel there's a way to push this too far... Like not everything is a "mental health issue". You feel sad, unmotivated, anxious about your future some days? Well everyone does, it's called being human (and not a psychopath)! I sometimes get the feeling that by encouraging indulging in these (often ephemeral, fleeting) feelings encourages a victim mentality of helplessness and doom... maybe we should be encouraging resilience instead (not in the "be strong suppress your feelings" kind of way, just as a middle ground).

Re: Isolation, anxiety, and depression in the remote workplace

#37

Post by icebraining »

fareesh wrote: post #24

There is really no reason why you cannot have a vibrant social life as a remote worker, or as a digital nomad. The latter is much harder but it's a choice that people make and I would assume they make it knowingly.

> I would assume they make it knowingly.

I think this is a dangerous assumption, and why OP wrote the article. People often make choices based on assumptions and bad information. Like not knowing that they need a vibrant social life to feel well, because they simply never lacked one.

Re: Isolation, anxiety, and depression in the remote workplace

#38

Post by icebraining »

jcroll wrote: post #17

I don't really see why people keep trying to "defend" remote working looking for optimizations in a practice which is fundamentally broken. At what point in our evolutionary history do you think the human animal, which evolved as a pack hunter in a highly socialized environment, was designed to work from home 40 hrs a week? We should be focusing on creating more flexible office environments for our workers where they…

We weren't "designed" to work in offices either. Or use computers. Yet we do it, because while these may bring troubles for going against our "design", they also come with advantages.

Our modern lifestyle is extremely different from the lifestyles that shaped our evolution over millennia. You can't just pick and choose to what aspects you apply the naturalistic argument.

Re: Isolation, anxiety, and depression in the remote workplace

#39

Post by Tempest1981 »

This shocked me:

"to encourage wellbeing: 40 days paid vacation per year: True disconnection is fundamental to help people de-stress and recharge."

Is this common elsewhere in the world? In the US, it Seems like 10 or 15 days is the norm, and maybe 20 after 5 years.

What do the FAANG+ companies offer?

Does the 2 months of vacation also contribute to that disconnected feeling, I wonder?

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