Do you mean "leave your house... to work somewhere else"? If so, that's sort of an option. But at that point, I might as well be working with my coworkers.
If you mean "leave your house... outside work hours", this is also becoming more and more possible, yet most of my waking hours are part of my workday.
I've been working remote for over a decade now - the first eight of which were under non-pandemic conditions. Working from a coffee shop, from a park, from a plane or train are all eminently possible, and variation is the key to things being enjoyable.
Unfortunately the pandemic has sent middle managers mad for video calls and status updates, which has made things generally less productive.
This. Before the pandemic I'd go work from somewhere nice once or twice a week. That made home not that boring. Not possible anymore with the pandemic, although things are starting to feel normal again and last week I worked from a coffeeshop in front of a nice lake which was wonderful.
Work from a co-working space. You get the social aspects with more freedom (to move spaces, to be friendly or frosty with a co-tenant without risking employment, etc). I co-own a co-working space and we have part-timers and remote workers in the mix.
Do "work hours" apply? If so, yes, outside of them.
Leave your house to exercise, to do some task, to just see people going around. Do not stay all your time outside of work alone, go somewhere where there are people, and meet them. It doesn't need to be every day, but often enough.
I think what's really happening here is that most people, especially older men, are realizing how much of their social life is tied to work and going to the office. My advice is to get some hobbies, make some friends, join some groups. Even if you aren't willing to go out, finding groups and chatting online in a voice or video call is probably better than just sitting in your home alone.
This is where a lot of my friends split on remote work, albeit for a different reason. They often moved to new cities, so they built a life entirely around work.
I went back to my hometown, so I had a large social network there already. Co-worker events intruded on my time with them.
Yeah - I have been pretty slack with my social life over the past two years with the pandemic and a lot of friends moving away as well.
But I still wouldn't trade remote work for the world. I can get a climb in at my local gym in the morning and a swim in the afternoon - with plenty of time left to cook n clean and some quality time with the missus.
edit - also my home desktop is just awesome... 12k of total pixels across three monitors... An awesome omnidesk standing desk... can eat from the fridge the food that I need n want. Aint no office offering me this...
Am hoping with the Omicron abating can finally get out a bit more and re-establishing some connections.
I suspect there's a good chance you're going to wake up one day and find that you're an older man, so you might want to prepare yourself for the kind of social change that often comes with that.
That said, I'm actually dreading return-to-work to a certain extent, because it's optional at my company right now, so I've been able to make my office into a nice little interruption-free cocoon. I spent the summer outside with a laptop and 5G hotspot, but the weather right now isn't really conducive to that.
I wish we'd stop calling it "return-to-work" - I've been working for years. We should call it something closer to what it is. "Return-to-burning-hours-every-day-on-the-interstate" maybe?
I think you are right. I've been fully remote for about 13 years. I love it, but I also have other things to keep me busy. I am a member of the local tennis club, and have many friends and acquaintances there, as well as year-round activities.
We also have many church friends in the area, and my wife and I do gardening and other outdoor activities, so, any "free time" that we end up with is easily filled.
Don't just be remote and a total couch potato, enjoy the freedom, and make the best of it.
This is the solution but the pandemic crippled it's practicality as a huge census shifted to WFH. It's been 2 years now and even in Texas, which has aggressively "reopened", most social stuff has been slow to come back and quick to be paused. I dine out a lot but pretty much with a small family circle these days, minimal work meals & entertainment.
Why older men? All through my career, it was the younger folks who tended to treat the office as a social hub as well as the place they worked. As they got older, they'd develop more contacts in their communities through spouses, children, etc. and "fade" from the social swirl at work. At the very top of the age distribution you might find empty-nesters who have trouble connecting online, but those people were already leaving of the workforce (voluntarily plus ageism) so statistically I think they're outweighed by the youngsters who never knew any other way to meet people. What experience have you had that's different?
It's harder to make friends once you get past a certain age. We become too set in our ways to be able to make friends.
Even if you have a hobby, it needs to be something that needs to be pursued in a group setting. Thus, hobbies such as singing in a choir will be much more effective at stimulating social contact than solo pursuits.
Disconnected co-workers can make remote work feel unbearable. The success of remote work is a company wide struggle and is largely a culture test. Those companies that can culturally transcend the geographical workplace will inherit the 21st century.
YMMV as always and your question makes you vary from my perspective already.
No I am not sick of remote work at all. I love it! My quality of life has improved many fold. No more commute means I get a lot more time on my hands to do the things that I'd otherwise not have enough time for or for which it would be too late in the day (think kids that need to go to bed shortly after everyone is home vs. having hours of time. Better sleep because we can sleep longer in the morning before everyone has to leave. Since I'm an introvert, no more draining office interactions. Even though as a manager I sit through lots of meeting in front of a screen, it's way less draining than doing it in the office.
Now as you can see from the above, I have lots of interactions still and part of that could be attributed to the fact that I have a bunch of meetings. Our company is pretty good w/ getting everyone to talk to each other and work with each other not just through text messages. Got a question? Quick call. "Team building" events chats on video, sometimes w/ games or food or just talk etc.
FWIW I do see the extroverts struggling but hey, us introverts struggled for decades before...
>FWIW I do see the extroverts struggling but hey, us introverts struggled for decades before...
I'm an extrovert. It was hard at first, but then I stopped "waiting to go back" and I sunk my teeth into "working remote". I shifted my personal social schedule to emphasize face-to-face friends. I crave leaving the house on the weekend - and I spend more time at the home-improvement store. I have spent money on my home office. I have shifted my body language to express myself within the bounds of the camera
I feel guilty saying that the pandemic has changed my life for the better in so many ways. Being fully remote has given me an autonomy over my life which has led to a level of happiness I've never known before. Having the details of my physical existence abstracted away from how I earn a living has been the greatest thing to ever happen to me. It allowed me to pursue so many things in life I had put off like building a family and friendships and focusing my life around things that really matter. I can't imagine ever going back to the way things were before, and I spend time literally every single day thinking about how lucky and fortunate I am to be in this position.
I joke with a friend that the future title of my memoir will be something like "How a Bat Gave me My Life" simply because work no longer has a monopoly on every hour of the weekdays. As long as I do my work, I can otherwise structure my time as I choose.
I can work extra on Tuesday and take a long lunch on Wednesday with a friend (like 3 hours) and nobody will know or care.
Unpopular opinion, but I was not a big fan. It was mainly because my house lacked a dedicated, private office where I could work, compared to my real office.
My living space isn’t that big, but I’ve got a great office at the job. Big desk, big screens, giant whiteboard, and it’s just around the corner, so commute is minimal.
I want an in depth study that looks at things like this, as I prefer remote work because I have a bigger desk, bigger screens, a whiteboard, more screens, a better chair, and am not seated near a large window that dumps a ton of glare on my screen (my prior job).
So for me, remote is an upgrade in terms of infrastructure. For you, it is obviously a downgrade.
How many people who hate remote work have a Herman Miller Aeron vs a wooden kitchen chair?
How many who love remote work went from an open office vs a private office?
Agreed. For me, the logistics of having a dedicated office just down the road far outweigh the costs of the commute, and I like the mental and physical separation of home and work.
But, if that commute was 45 mins, or if I had a larger living space and a worse onsite location, I can guarantee that my opinion would reverse.
I see most discussions around liking/disliking remote work include the infrastructure/equipment as argument. I personally like remote in great part because of it.
I love my 4k display, my standing desk, my keyboard, my Aeron Chair. However, I doubt that if those were offered it'd be reason alone for me to go back to the office.
Remote work doesn't mean stuck in your basement. Go work from Starbucks, spend a day at WeWork or other shared office space, apply as a non-degree seeking student at the nearest university and hang out on campus. The world is your oyster, provided you can keep normal business hours.
I’d prefer a hybrid arrangement of 1, maybe 2 days at most to have close in-person collaborative work with a team and to get the meetings out there in person, but it’s impossible to be sick of having no commute.
My very first real career job started February 2020, so I was only in the office for about two months, which was alright. But work from home is all I really know so far. Would be nice to have an office within walking distance though
People used to have offices. Not anymore. You'll be lucky to have a cubicle. You'll more likely work in an OpenOffice plan. Some unlucky ones will probably learn the term "hot desking". Ffs stop this nonsense and just let me work from home.
I would say though that it would be nice to have social events with my coworkers again. They're all great people and I love socializing with them. I was never the type to chat at the office though since I'm always trying to get stuff done when I'm there. So, I'm looking forward to the restart of happy hours and hope they'll set up some retreats and things, the last thing I want is to go back to having people try to chat with me while I'm working.
Even before Covid, I had a job I liked, The pay was decent for my local market, I liked my coworkers. I had a decent amount of autonomy and I got to upskill quarterly.
I was still looking for another job that was fully remote. I will never work in a loud open office again.
I don't miss office work one bit. When I commuted to an office building in the NYC area for a company I'm sure you've heard of, all the bathroom stalls would be full at a certain point in the day.
If you had to go -- my god -- and good luck finding an open stall.
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[ 8.5 ms ] story [ 200 ms ] threadRemote work has downsides, but you have the ability to fix them as opposed to the office where your only option is to switch jobs.
If you mean "leave your house... outside work hours", this is also becoming more and more possible, yet most of my waking hours are part of my workday.
Unfortunately the pandemic has sent middle managers mad for video calls and status updates, which has made things generally less productive.
Leave your house to exercise, to do some task, to just see people going around. Do not stay all your time outside of work alone, go somewhere where there are people, and meet them. It doesn't need to be every day, but often enough.
I went back to my hometown, so I had a large social network there already. Co-worker events intruded on my time with them.
But I still wouldn't trade remote work for the world. I can get a climb in at my local gym in the morning and a swim in the afternoon - with plenty of time left to cook n clean and some quality time with the missus.
edit - also my home desktop is just awesome... 12k of total pixels across three monitors... An awesome omnidesk standing desk... can eat from the fridge the food that I need n want. Aint no office offering me this...
Am hoping with the Omicron abating can finally get out a bit more and re-establishing some connections.
That said, I'm actually dreading return-to-work to a certain extent, because it's optional at my company right now, so I've been able to make my office into a nice little interruption-free cocoon. I spent the summer outside with a laptop and 5G hotspot, but the weather right now isn't really conducive to that.
Don't just be remote and a total couch potato, enjoy the freedom, and make the best of it.
Even if you have a hobby, it needs to be something that needs to be pursued in a group setting. Thus, hobbies such as singing in a choir will be much more effective at stimulating social contact than solo pursuits.
Been working remotely for ~7 years.
If you don't spend time together outside work (work events don't count) then you're right.
However, I've had a number of coworkers translate to friends, especially after we stopped working together.
Work friends are like any other relationship: both sides have to work to make and keep things going.
However, so much of the rest of my life is going to be work: I'd like to enjoy the people at my workplace.
Yea I miss the office interactions, but not to the point where I’d want to go back in full-time.
I made a rule of not taking my work laptop outside of my desk. Previously, I was working from my couch and even my bed.
I’d also recommend taking an hour of lunch break to go outside (if possible).
No I am not sick of remote work at all. I love it! My quality of life has improved many fold. No more commute means I get a lot more time on my hands to do the things that I'd otherwise not have enough time for or for which it would be too late in the day (think kids that need to go to bed shortly after everyone is home vs. having hours of time. Better sleep because we can sleep longer in the morning before everyone has to leave. Since I'm an introvert, no more draining office interactions. Even though as a manager I sit through lots of meeting in front of a screen, it's way less draining than doing it in the office.
Now as you can see from the above, I have lots of interactions still and part of that could be attributed to the fact that I have a bunch of meetings. Our company is pretty good w/ getting everyone to talk to each other and work with each other not just through text messages. Got a question? Quick call. "Team building" events chats on video, sometimes w/ games or food or just talk etc.
FWIW I do see the extroverts struggling but hey, us introverts struggled for decades before...
I'm an extrovert. It was hard at first, but then I stopped "waiting to go back" and I sunk my teeth into "working remote". I shifted my personal social schedule to emphasize face-to-face friends. I crave leaving the house on the weekend - and I spend more time at the home-improvement store. I have spent money on my home office. I have shifted my body language to express myself within the bounds of the camera
I feel guilty saying that the pandemic has changed my life for the better in so many ways. Being fully remote has given me an autonomy over my life which has led to a level of happiness I've never known before. Having the details of my physical existence abstracted away from how I earn a living has been the greatest thing to ever happen to me. It allowed me to pursue so many things in life I had put off like building a family and friendships and focusing my life around things that really matter. I can't imagine ever going back to the way things were before, and I spend time literally every single day thinking about how lucky and fortunate I am to be in this position.
I can work extra on Tuesday and take a long lunch on Wednesday with a friend (like 3 hours) and nobody will know or care.
My living space isn’t that big, but I’ve got a great office at the job. Big desk, big screens, giant whiteboard, and it’s just around the corner, so commute is minimal.
So for me, remote is an upgrade in terms of infrastructure. For you, it is obviously a downgrade.
How many people who hate remote work have a Herman Miller Aeron vs a wooden kitchen chair?
How many who love remote work went from an open office vs a private office?
But, if that commute was 45 mins, or if I had a larger living space and a worse onsite location, I can guarantee that my opinion would reverse.
I love my 4k display, my standing desk, my keyboard, my Aeron Chair. However, I doubt that if those were offered it'd be reason alone for me to go back to the office.
I was still looking for another job that was fully remote. I will never work in a loud open office again.
If you had to go -- my god -- and good luck finding an open stall.