<story><title>We Can&apos;t Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons</title><url>https://blog.davidtate.org/we-cant-let-people-work-from-home-for-stupid-reasons/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lastofthemojito</author><text>I think a lot of the responses to the straw man&amp;#x27;s questions are reasonable and thoughtful.  But I think this sentiment:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;I don&amp;#x27;t want to change the way I work, I just want people to join me in the office. My kids are driving me crazy. Is it weird to say I&amp;#x27;m lonely; I miss my office friends.&lt;p&gt;Deserves more respect.  There are lot of types of people out there, and it seems like at least some of them are energized by being surrounded by smart people doing interesting work.  For whatever reason, for some folks, exchanging Slack messages with those same smart people isn&amp;#x27;t similarly energizing compared to overhearing and jumping into interesting in-person conversations, etc.  Maybe the tech giants need to be very accommodating to remote work in order to maintain their massive workforces, but I think a lot of typical companies could just say &amp;quot;we prefer being in-office&amp;quot; and find sufficient local folks to make that happen.  That won&amp;#x27;t be for everyone.  But there might be a sizeable enough cohort that performs better in the office that it&amp;#x27;ll be a good option for some companies.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>NikolaNovak</author><text>I mean, I&amp;#x27;m a strong introvert (defined here as somebody who likes people but is drained by socialization). Any given day I&amp;#x27;d prefer working at home than from office; will prefer lunch at computer than cafeteria; dinner with friends or &amp;quot;me time&amp;quot; over team-building exercise; being at home with family than in office with co-workers. I&amp;#x27;m friendly with my co-workers but we&amp;#x27;re not out-of-office friends -- I have my own circle of friends and family and interests.&lt;p&gt;But working from home, only home, for 16 months now? At macro level, it drained me of motivation after a few months - and it took a lot of self-examination to realize I&amp;#x27;m no longer at my peak and why, because the change was slow and subtle. I lose this internal intuitive feeling of what we&amp;#x27;re doing and more importantly, why it matters. Everything is just words on the screen; success or failure, it&amp;#x27;s just an email or slack. There&amp;#x27;s no energy and pride to soak in when we wrap up a project. And most of all, I recognize I&amp;#x27;m highly motivated by successful peers I respect; and I just don&amp;#x27;t get to experience that the same way. I see the good results&amp;#x2F;work of my peers, but I don&amp;#x27;t get to &amp;quot;see them be successful &amp;#x2F; good at their job&amp;quot;, which is subtly but critically different thing, more of a continuous and passive experience - what you call &amp;quot;being surrounded by smart people doing interesting work&amp;quot; really rings true.&lt;p&gt;So while any given morning I&amp;#x27;d rather stay at home, I recognize that in long term, I&amp;#x27;m suffering from &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; staying home.&lt;p&gt;I cannot IMAGINE what an extrovert is feeling these days :-&amp;#x2F;.&lt;p&gt;(Oh and yes, I love them to death but there IS such a thing as &amp;quot;too much contiguous time spent with my kids&amp;quot;, for me at least it turns out... but office is not necessarily the solution for that:)</text></comment>
<story><title>We Can&apos;t Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons</title><url>https://blog.davidtate.org/we-cant-let-people-work-from-home-for-stupid-reasons/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lastofthemojito</author><text>I think a lot of the responses to the straw man&amp;#x27;s questions are reasonable and thoughtful.  But I think this sentiment:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;I don&amp;#x27;t want to change the way I work, I just want people to join me in the office. My kids are driving me crazy. Is it weird to say I&amp;#x27;m lonely; I miss my office friends.&lt;p&gt;Deserves more respect.  There are lot of types of people out there, and it seems like at least some of them are energized by being surrounded by smart people doing interesting work.  For whatever reason, for some folks, exchanging Slack messages with those same smart people isn&amp;#x27;t similarly energizing compared to overhearing and jumping into interesting in-person conversations, etc.  Maybe the tech giants need to be very accommodating to remote work in order to maintain their massive workforces, but I think a lot of typical companies could just say &amp;quot;we prefer being in-office&amp;quot; and find sufficient local folks to make that happen.  That won&amp;#x27;t be for everyone.  But there might be a sizeable enough cohort that performs better in the office that it&amp;#x27;ll be a good option for some companies.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mywittyname</author><text>What ever happened to social clubs?  I remember my grandpa was a member of the Knights of Columbus and would frequently go there to socialize &amp;#x2F; network.  I feel like these clubs used to be pretty common: Scouts, Rotary Club, Moose&amp;#x2F;Elk Lodge, KoC, Veterans of Foreign Wars (which no longer requires members to be former military), and local cultural&amp;#x2F;historical clubs are pretty prevalent.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been to a lot of these clubs at the invite of friends, but found that most of the members are 60+.  Maybe these clubs need to get out there and advertise themselves to a younger audience, because it&amp;#x27;s quite clear that many people &lt;i&gt;need&lt;/i&gt; the social outlets that these provide.  Plus, dancing is fun and people should do more of it.</text></comment>