Remote work increases social isolation
10 points by apromixately
10 points by apromixately
Forcing people out of isolation through being in an office is a paternalistic take that denies people their agency. If people need to be more social, it's a sad world when that is fulfilled through being in the office and through mandating that others be in that office against their will.
Forcing people out of isolation through being in an office
And in the past at least the excuse was the time they spent in the water dispenser exchanging ideas. Now employees want us to talk to a LLM all day (in the ofiice). /shrug.
in the past at least the excuse was the time they spent in the water dispenser exchanging ideas.
That was a stupid excuse back then too. I hardly ever discussed stuff with colleagues in the caffeteria. We always went back to the computers and hit up slack or w/e - because we had searchable, written record then, which we could turn into notes, tickets, milestones and whathaveyou, far more easily than words we exchanged weeks prior.
Like, most ideas we exchanged did not materialize, did not get acted upon until much, much later. Anything that needed action soon, we scheduled a meeting. With laptops, and notes taken. Wouldn't have mattered a single bit if we were two cities apart at home.
I think this is more about shooting the shit with your colleagues incidentally, like when grabbing a coffee or having lunch or drinks after hours. Of course, you could argue as GP does that it's a sad world where your only meaningful socializing is with colleagues.
Forcing people out of isolation through being in an office is a paternalistic take
Is it anyone's take? This is not what the paper is saying.
I guess I was already thinking on the corpo mails that will soon be sent with this paper as a proof of being in the office is better for the worker bees' mental health.
Yeah, when remote workers live alone, don't take any time for themselves, and don't have any social hobbies outside of work, they can easily wind up working 60-hour weeks and never going outside. That isn't really an inherent remote work problem, though, the problem is that without the default socialization of an office job that too many people have no idea what else to do and don't know how to set healthy boundaries on their work time.
I have always found that it gave me MORE time to be social without the 10-12 of commuting. Yea I did work more hours than I did if I was in an office but I also have more free time!
Unless I'm missing something, their conclusion seems a bit strange to me given the data presented.
Reading their own data it seems like the real factor for isolation and mental distress is living alone which can be compounded with having a remote job (assuming their "working remotely" ~ "remotable job" proxy is valid). Their own chart in the conclusion shows an improvement for people in "remotable jobs" when living with family which is direct contradiction with their conclusion.
It seems to me like the conclusion looks more like: living alone is not good for people's mental health and being in a remotable job can make things worse is this situation. By that I mean that the emphasis should be on the "living alone" part and not "remotely working" part the way they do.
By that I mean that the emphasis should be on the "living alone" part and not "remotely working" part the way they do.
Well, in my opinion changing to a non-remote job is easier than getting into a relationship or finding someone to live with :-)
Sure, but looking at their own data it wouldn't help someone's situation that much. They'd still be better off trying to get into a relationship.
As someone who struggles to create new connections (i.e. I don't have any friends) I'm lucky to have the option to go the office; nobody seems to care if I'm late and it's not that far away from home (which is not an usual case). In interviews I always say I value both not being forced but also having the option to go if I want to.
Having said that, I agree with most of the comments by now. Being forced sucks, and it's easy to be absorbed by work. But at the same time, I'm concerned with how reclusive people seems to become. I'm "shocked" when someone says that they can be in the underwear all day; do they even have a reason to leave the bed then? I know that some of those who value home office do have personal activities, but on the other hand it seems to have enabled other people to not leave the house at all.
I've only had time to read the abstract not the paper but here's what I would be looking for:
I think remote work can be great, but it can also have signifiant problems with staff connecting, working together or learning from each other - and these are worse when staff are junior or new in a role.
However the abstract seemed to present it as a binary - remote work or not.
How much did they investigate better remote work? Remote work with steps taken to mitigate these things? Remote work where people met up in person on a regular basis, either set number of days per week or variable frequency, at certain points of a project? Remote work with people supported to have good home offices, or to use local co-working facilities? Is just forcing everyone into an office the answer - how much variation do you get between an office that thinks about these things vs one that doesn't? In short, are we focussing on the wrong thing here?
I think the problem is slack time. If you're never bored at work and just trying to focus all day then there is no time for socializing. If you're in the office you will get that much better automatically, as you meet people on the way to grab a drink, or go to lunch together, or have some minutes between meetings. This is the typical watercooler talk for me. Also just getting to talk to other teams, not only your own.
I'm against pushing people to go anywhere and I've not worked at a fully remote company, but I've worked remotely for long stretches of time for years now - but I regularly go to the office and I also like that (in my case it's been twice per month for the last 4 years or so, plus any events like workshops or summer bbq event). It would work just as well with fully remote people, although I see some of them also several times per year and I think getting some connection works better that way.
I've not made friends at work in a long time, so not sure if this is typical with age or if it just didn't work out at the last few companies, but maybe I've been fortunate enough that I never disliked spending some free time every once in a while with some of them.
Also I haven't lived alone for a very long time, so I can't comment on that part.
I wanted to post the NY times comment but NY times is banned because of their paywall so here is the paper.