It leads to me wanting to kill myself more often and needing to invest more time in therapy, commutes, and recovery. And over half the engineers I've spoken with, who drop their facade, feel the same.
Being stuck in a chair all day with people watching you is not a good life.
Being forced to adhere to arbitrary social convention instead of speaking sincerely and expressing yourself is not a good life.
Choosing to lay in bed, work in the sun, recline on the couch, say hi to your cat, be your most authentic self, is a better life. Personally not dealing with the anxiety and body pain makes me more productive. But maybe everyone is right and we can get more productivity out of people by gutting their personalities and self-appreciation; but if that's the cost, I sincerely do not care. I'd rather everyone enjoy their short lives than spend them colorlessly and regret their choices on their deathbeds.
Some people feel exactly the opposite and are happier working in an office than remotely - even if they believe remote work is more productive!
Iirc it's very roughly like 20-30% want full remote, 50-60% want some type of hybrid (where there's a wide spectrum of hybrid models, from rarely-in-office to usually-in-office), and 10-20% prefer always or almost-always in office.
The ideal situation IMO is to have all options available: some teams are remote, some teams are in-office. The proportion over time should hopefully work out such that everyone can get what they want.
Personally, I'm happier and healthier with a hybrid model (where people work in office the same days) than full remote. And like you, I also know I'm not alone because of people I know who are very unhappy right now due to forced remote during COVID. I sincerely hope we soon enter a future where everyone has options that best suit them.
>I sincerely hope we soon enter a future where everyone has options that best suit them.
I'd like that too.
I am curious, why do you like going into the office? Does it give you something that you need, or does being remote too long make you uncomfortable because of something your mind is doing to you, which you have to escape?
I enjoy the structure it adds to the day, the built-in activity I get commuting, the ease of adding other activities onto my day before or after work since I work in Manhattan, the office amenities that give me one less thing to worry about (e.g. food), the stronger team bonding and socialization I get from working with people in person, the ease of working through certain nitty gritty problems together and with a whiteboard, and the ease of forming more informal friendships/acquaintanceships with others in the office.
I'd also add that I've always had and prioritized a short commute, and I like where I live and wouldn't want to move, so the cons are minimal for me. (The one thing I prefer about remote work is being able to take a 2hr mid-day break those days my brain is just fried; much easier at home, and I can then be more productive after that break.)
Work "friendships" are almost always a facade. It's because we *have* to work with them on a day to day basis, to get the work done. Being nice to each other is easier than being indifferent or hostile.
But, when work ends (quit, layoffs, terminated), those work "friendships" almost always dissolve into nothingness whence they came. When there's no more 40h/week together forced time, they dissolve. The after-work drinks are directly related to work. No common work? No common drinks. No more forced socialization means that fakeness is made apparent.
The real key: focus on not-work. Focus on clubs. Focus on get-togethers. Or parties. Or hell, hookups. Focus on things that don't use the "work" glue to force together. Those things will last when your job changes, or gets bought out, or whatever.
I have made good friends through work, including people I keep in touch with after changing jobs. Even if we don't keep in touch, I appreciate the transitory friendship for what it was. It's not like I keep up with most people from college either, but they were still my friends.
I could do those other things you say, but none nearly for as much time as the time I spend at work, so work friends come quite easily and naturally by comparison. Proximity has a big effect on making friends[0]. And I could do those activities you suggest in addition to getting to know people at work, because those other things happen off work hours. (Though realistically, I'm too old for parties and not single enough for hookups :))
Though, club thing has actually never worked for me. Those acquaintances end up feeling the most distant because we meet too infrequently. Probably requires a hobby you're really into so that you get more frequent exposure to one another (IIUC this makes CrossFit a good way to make friends).
Work "friendships" are almost always a facade. It's because we *have* to work with them on a day to day basis, to get the work done. Being nice to each other is easier than being indifferent or hostile.
I can't really disagree more with this comment.
Some of the people most important and amazing friendships I've ever made have been created in an office. So many people ex-colleagues are still great friends and over time, our friendships have even grown over the years, even after not working together anymore. Like seriously, I've made friends with incredible people living in cities and working in offices which I don't imagine will ever be replicated with online working.
I now work for a 100% remote, I love it and while I do make friends, there's no way the bonds are even sightly as strong as those I formed hanging out with people, in-person. Since working remote, I've had to make new friends to hang out with and what's funny is, those friendships seem way more lucid and difficult to maintain because it's usually just based around hobbies and the friendships can be soured by the slightest bit of annoyance / jealously or whatever because there's no real consequence to treating each other poorly.
When it comes to my peers that I've worked with face to face, we had to trust each other, share hardships and work through problems and that made us become closer.
What I believe will happen is there will be people who work in offices together, and they will have more leverage over the "remotes" because they'll be a core group of people who share closer ties. Eventually this socializing is what will bring people back to cities and offices, that's where the power will be.
If you could say your school friends were "real friends", you can say your work friends are real friends. Modulo some child-like naivety, you were only friends with your schoolmates because you had to be at school with them. Hell, say you're homeschooled, and you're friends with kids in your neighborhood; you're only friends with them because you have to live around them. You can always make this argument for all except purely Internet friends you plucked from the æther of some Discord server.
No-strings-attached friends are different from school/geographic/work friends, in terms of quality of life threat and the social strategy that should govern your interactions, but I don't think you can't say they're all friends.
I feel like you're speaking anecdotally, but at least in my experience some of my best friends were people that I met in previous companies. We still get together for weekly D&D sessions. But I make a concerted effort to maintain my friendships that I've developed even if we no longer work together, and that may be the key difference.
In my earlier 20-something days of office work, the social interactions were important. After work drinks were incredibly good times, as were group lunches and office banter. Sometimes people meet their partners at work, or make good friends, or just have consistently good conversations. This stuff matters when you want it to matter.
Now I know that isn't always guaranteed wherever you work, or wanted at all stages of your life/career. But I understand if people do crave those things.
+1 after talking to a lot of people about this I have come away with the impression that it's mostly a stage-of-life thing. I had a blast in the office in my early/mid-20s with bunch of coworkers around the same age. Met my now-wife at the office. However, in my 30s, I have zero desire to return to any office even if it's a hybrid scenario. The good thing is that there do seem to be lots of viable fully remote opportunities now.
How does not being around other people make you your "most authentic" self? We are only human through others. Every word you've ever spoken, every thought you've ever had, is codified in a language that was created over hundreds of thousands of years by people attempting to communicate. Are you anything without that language? It is a description of how you think.
I wish it wasn't so popular for people in tech with mental issues to project them onto everyone else, instead of looking at the early family life that made them. Your parents failed if you are so afraid of the other. It is not everyone else's fault that they don't hate people.
Putting on clothing with collars and buttons is a huge hit to my sense of "authenticity", to start. You feel pressured to to put on airs, deal with smalltalk, etc.
But it's only putting on airs and small talk to you. Why is your perception normal and the regular one "fake"? I grew up thinking like you did, in a household of people like this, and there couldn't be anything further from the truth. It's a projection of an insecurity around being unable to control the people around you.
I've no interest in controlling the people around me. I'm interested in controlling myself, which I'm not allowed to do at work due to the need to survive. Your choices are determined by your options; you do not pick your options at work, your employer does.
Those who it's fake for are not allowed to throw it off.
I get my socialization in groups I choose to be a part of where I don't have to curtail my every thought to avoid political retaliation that affects my livelihood.
And get a PhD before you start throwing around words like "mental issues" for things you disagree with.
Being stuck in a chair all day with people watching you is not a good life. Being forced to adhere to arbitrary social convention instead of speaking sincerely and expressing yourself is not a good life.
Choosing to lay in bed, work in the sun, recline on the couch, say hi to your cat, be your most authentic self, is a better life. Personally not dealing with the anxiety and body pain makes me more productive. But maybe everyone is right and we can get more productivity out of people by gutting their personalities and self-appreciation; but if that's the cost, I sincerely do not care. I'd rather everyone enjoy their short lives than spend them colorlessly and regret their choices on their deathbeds.