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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

#101

Post by teunispeters »

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…

Me too, having moved half way across Canada to get a bit of a quieter home, far from where cost of living was spiralling out of control. (Vancouver BC - and it is for everyone there, pretty much).

Oh I have a family and have set up house, and that helps a lot. I'm still finding community and roots and trying to remember what I like doing when not working .. but I already know I like working with hands so that helps direct me some already. so I'm slowly teaching child sewing (as I slowly remember how to, myself).

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

#102

Post by ubercow13 »

b112 wrote: post #49

As others have said, in this thread, there are a lot of mixed issues in this article. Living a nomad/traveling lifestyle =! remote work. Loads of people remote-work from home, but change nothing else in their lifestyle. I've been working remotely my entire life. 30+ years now. One thing that is key, is looking at the blue sky . Being outside occasionally. You will note that the article talks about work/life balance,…

Sometimes you have transit to the office but it’s underground. Not that it matters because it’s dark outside when you start and finish work anyway.

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

#103

Post by deevolution »

I think a great antidote for this, specifically for people who are lonely, is to move into a multi bedroom apartment with 3+ other people or even find a coliving space. There are some of these on NYC and from my experience it's comparable to living in a dorm - which is the kind of healthy experience the author says he missed most. You get to meet and interact with a variety of people on a daily basis, some of whom could lead to deeper connections. Plus its cheaper than a studio or 1br apartment!!

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

#104

Post by meddlepal »

cgb223 wrote: post #34

Can anyone who’s remote but in a non-engineering role share there experiences? I’ve always wondered how a highly social job like a Product Manager, or Salesperson could possibly work remotely when you need to have a ton of meetings and face to face contact

I've known a lot of remote sales people and they usually work a geographical region and spend time on client/customer sites or golfing.

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

#105

Post by jarofgreen »

quicksilver03 wrote: post #53

Is it true that most remote-first companies only hire people who have already significant (>1yr) experience working remotely? That's the impression I have reading this and other HN threads about remote work. It's sort of a catch-22 situation, not dissimilar to the one beginning developers find themselves in when looking for jobs that require experience.

I don't know about "most" but we are remote first and no we don't. We do ask people about it during the interview tho, so I guess people who have done it before will be at an advantage. But we certainly don't require experience. Research a lot so you can talk about it during interviews, I guess, and good luck!

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

#106

Post by shrimpx »

This same old tired story...

It turns out happiness takes lot of work. Having a healthy social life takes a lot of trying, failing, and some successes that you cherish.

Some people tragically take their co-workers as their friends and the office as their social environment. That's really dangerous. You need to go out there and try, be awkward, fight to make some close friends in the real world. Office drama and venting over a beer after work is not a social life. Also the office is not a dating pool. Being depressed that your office doesn't have any cute girls or boys... oh boy, I've seen it!

Isolation and depression is due to lacking social skill and not having the drive or insight to develop that skill.

Remote work is hardly related. It's related only because people take the office as their social scene and of course when they go remote they lost their entire social scene.

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

#107

Post by _bxg1 »

I saved up some money and quit my first programming job after a year and a half to freelance. I only had a vague idea of the work I wanted to do, but I wanted to have no master and I thought it would be my absolute best life.

Within two weeks I was deep into anxiety and depression. I tried to establish routines, tried working from a coffee shop, etc. None of it really helped. I was still fairly new to the city I lived in and didn't have many friends, and wasn't a social person by nature. I was incredibly isolated.

I started dating someone a few weeks later and that helped. I picked up some one-off contracts, built a website for a local music store, did some personal projects, etc. But still, after another six months I was back in a hole. I wasn't quite so isolated but I still crumbled under the pressure of not knowing what to do next, not being able to take a break from the working mentality even though I could barely bring myself to do any work at all. I ended up taking a desk job just to pull myself out of the spiral.

Economically I probably could have made that work as a source of income, but psychologically it was just unbearable.

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

#108

Post by mavdi »

Again another article of “It applies to me, therefore must apply to everybody”

If remote work isn’t working for you, don’t do it. I’ve done everything this dudes done but it has been the happiest time of my life. One would perhaps dare to think, different people react differently to the same things.

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

#109

Post by blondie9x »

shrimpx wrote: post #106

This same old tired story... It turns out happiness takes lot of work. Having a healthy social life takes a lot of trying, failing, and some successes that you cherish. Some people tragically take their co-workers as their friends and the office as their social environment. That's really dangerous. You need to go out there and try, be awkward, fight to make some close friends in the real world. Office drama and venti…

Well said. Very well said.

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

#110

Post by 11235813213455 »

b112 wrote: post #49

As others have said, in this thread, there are a lot of mixed issues in this article. Living a nomad/traveling lifestyle =! remote work. Loads of people remote-work from home, but change nothing else in their lifestyle. I've been working remotely my entire life. 30+ years now. One thing that is key, is looking at the blue sky . Being outside occasionally. You will note that the article talks about work/life balance,…

I go out a few times per week by bike for food, stretching exercises every day, and Sundays it's 5h of bike in the hills, that's the vitamin B, hormones and health catch-up for the week
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