Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

Your coworkers are not your friends and your company is not your family, and if your job is keeping you from having friends and family outside of work then you need to find a new job or place to live.

True, my WFH option has allowed me to spend weeks at a time with my parents and siblings, who live far from me, at very important times in their lives.

Previously I’d see them during holidays only, and now I see them once a month and actually am able to spend quality time with them.

And while I respect the idea and value of non-remote, I don’t think any amount of “in-person whiteboarding sessions and relationship building” would be worth sacrificing for the flexibility of spending quality time with my family and seeing them more often.

> Bro what sort of dystopiian offices have you been working in.

There are loads of places like this. The irony is that in such context people enjoy the watercooler talk as an escape from the hellscape that is their 9-5 shitty job, doing everything they can instead of their job to make their experience less miserable.

> I've never had that experience.

Lucky you.

> And never ever have I had a colleague spontaneously try to have casual zoom conversation with me while remotely working.

This has happened all the time for me (could be zoom, could be Slack). From scheduled informal chats with teammates to regular chats with close people to members of non-work or work channels of interest to random ones via Donut with yet unknown people, it's lively and on everyone's own terms.

> I've had people never turn their cameras on.

Ever since I have been remote they all did. If they don't it's either one of the odd low bandwidth situation and they save it for an acceptable audio experience, they're on the move - and open about it, with either an apology about possible noise when speaking thus unmuted or setting expectations about their ability to talk or follow - and audio only "phone mode" is more practical, or they're at home and privacy respecting of their SO or otherwise guest.

> And meanwhile, I'm here, a childless 20-sth, not having spoken to a human in days, wanting to hang myself with my headphone cable.

I am genuinely empathetic to your situation and am glad to hear from a nearby comment that it has resolved - at least to an extent - and you found an environment where you can be happier.

I say so because I realised long ago that people can come from all ways of life and be wildly different in their needs, and having been through similar suffering for something in the order of three decades - only from a symmetrical end - I can relate.

And I say "end" and not "side" because it's a continuum, there are no sides, there's no team A vs team B, and it's not a zero sum game.

> The pro-wfh people just don't care that young people are still growing up in this time I swear.

By and large "pro WFH people" are not arguing that everyone-and-their-dog must WFH, instead that WFH does make sense and is a true net positive for many, and that the recent pro-office-for-everyone discourse that it is inherently more productive because humans is at best loaded with prejudice that fails to take into account a good chunk of actual humans, some raising their voice, others staying silent, and at worst has hidden agenda.

The pendulum was mostly stuck one way for aeons, then it progressively moved with the rise of the Internet, and swung full-force with COVID. Now it's swinging back hard the other way. Change is hard, old habits die harder, but I'm hopeful that someday we'll find balance, but for that we need understanding of each other.

That is true.

There is a distinction to be made between loneliness and solitude though.

One can feel hopelessly lonely in a crowd, one can also find great solace in solitude.

In fact, another great cause of mental health issues is the apparently growing inability for people to stay still, instead constantly vying for interaction (and often resorting to that quick virtual dopamine hit loop, sometimes even when face to face)

There's balance to be had, both ways, but not everyone have the same needs.

Also, people's circumstances change over time, but their work not so much.

As a new grad, hell yeah I want to be in the office to interrupt and be interrupted for the learning, interact to know other, hope for serendipitous encounters, have a good time after work, meet a potential partner, yada yada.

As a family person with decade of work history, I see it as losing my balance, a hindrance the interruptions, the banter, the random assignments because you ran into someone in the cafe, having to deny after hours stuff again and again for the kids or appointments, having to take the whole day off for a 2 hour appointment at lunch, blah blah blah.

Not all new grads are the same, neither all seniors. Let people pick. The illusion of loss of productivity has been shattered and there's no going back.

There was a point in time when all you could buy was a black ford model-T. Ford would love to do that. But it can't anymore. Times have changed. Took Ford a long time and many executive shifts to move on and get along with reality.

So will this.