DarkCloud@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 08:13
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Can’t wait until we figure out that improving society for the people in it, improves society overall.
PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk
on 16 Jun 08:13
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I know this a gross oversimplification, but:
“Remote working benefit those with a reason to stay home, but doesn’t for those who don’t have a reason to stay home” seems to be the general idea of the headline.
edit: I think this is the study they’re talking about, please double check the source before quoting: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36718392/
This was also my experience during the main sweep of the pandemic. It was so great getting to cut the commute and be home. Something I have luckily managed to largely continue. Prior to the pandemic my kid was in daycare pretty much 7:30-5:30 so it was really nice to not have to do that, plus during our lockdown we used to go for a family walk at lunchtime.
While some of the single guys I worked with hated staying home and were straight back in the office the moment they were allowed.
the reasons they give are often super selfish, it was asked on many subs over the pandemic, they want to interact with said co-workers even if its unproductive and said coworkers do not want to make chit chat with said male workers.
The issue is that people that want socialization complain that those who enjoy solitude don’t want to socialize with them, so those that prefer solitude should be forced into the office instead.
It’s a really odd thing. Stop relying on work to satisfy your socialization needs. Try a hobby instead. Anything should do - Magic the Gathering, Warhammer 40k, Tabletop RPG, sports, dance classes, anything.
During the pandemic my partner stayed inside for about a month, I was the only person she interacted with. I kept going to work because I was an “essential” worker (not really), so I kinda envied her, but by the end of that month she was going a bit crazy.
I think it’s funny that I had the opposite experience. My coworkers who had kids couldn’t wait to get back to the office, while the few of us youngsters who didn’t wanted nothing but to keep working remotely. Probably why those few of us left immediately when it became clear they were going to force everyone back.
It may be both a factor of who you live with (the ones itching to get back to the office either lived alone or with people they didn’t really gel with), and could have also been the length of time we were in lockdown (we had one of the strongest in the world - for the first 6 weeks or so even McDonald’s wasn’t allowed to open). After a couple of months of not being allowed to leave the house and having no face to face contact with friends or family, I can understand the desire to get back to the office. The people I have in mind mostly lived close to the office, too.
One other factor may have been that our remote working infrastructure was in no way ready for the entire organisation to work from home with a couple of day’s notice. Video calls were just not possible for the first stretch as the work computers were all VPNed through a potato.
oh yea heard this question asked in reddit on multiple instances, the ones that dont stay at home tend to waste time at watercooler chat, gossip,etc, not productive work, just that interaction they cant live without.
I’m guessing you’ve got a study that backs that assertion up as well?
FelixCress@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 08:42
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Stop the fuck with “sense of community” and other crap.
flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz
on 16 Jun 08:48
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I’m starting to understand that many people never felt the sense of community, in the workplace or otherwise. Yes it’s possible.
The trick is that it doesn’t depend on the company, it depends on the people. Last time it happened to me, we pretty much all quit together because we were frustrated at the company but kept being friends afterwards.
mybuttnolie@sopuli.xyz
on 16 Jun 09:25
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after studying mostly from home for 3 years, I’m very happy to be working on-site. feels a lot less lonely.
You’re mad at me because I’m an enjoyable person who gets along with co workers now? Are you saying I should feel sorry for people that can’t make friends outside the Internet?
I’m genuinely confused at what your point is here.
It’s the opposite of life (no, death is just its absence).
hang out with co-workers all the time
Bonding over shared trauma and Stockholm syndrome is not a good basis for a relationship (though there’s probably no relationship other than you pestering them while they try to work).
You people live such lonely lonely lives. I can’t imagine existing just hating everyone like you. It’s quite sad.
Trauma bonding 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
ideonek@piefed.social
on 16 Jun 08:48
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Come on, work being the sole source of community is the problem here. What are we even talking about?
flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz
on 16 Jun 08:51
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Yes, but it’s also the most logical place. What other activity do you dedicate so much time to? Maybe sleeping but it’s hard to build a community around that.
ideonek@piefed.social
on 16 Jun 10:59
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According to my kids, candies are the most logical place to get most your nutritions from. Where else could you get so many calories?
If most of your time at work is spent socializing, couldn't you cut your work time and build your community elsewhere?
If most of your time at work you spent on honest hard-work working, how much community are you really building?
Cut you calories. Life doesn't happen at work.
Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 16 Jun 12:49
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Eh, I became a stay at home mom over the pandemic, and while I’ve never worked in an office, but on the shop floor, I do miss the shenanigans. But its almost like a trauma bond, where its like, hey, we’re all stuck here, best make the nest of it and try snd have fun while we are here.
I’m fully isolated now, and at this point terrified of crowds, when i never was before.
Not arguing at all people who can work remotely shouldn’t, they should, for a litter or reasons. But I do miss my coworkers from my employee owned factory where culture was held in high standard. Im also not arguing this should be the only place one finds community, I’m only saying, for a person like me, it helped sometimes to joke around on the new guy or collectively bitch about issues at work or hear other folks problems and offer advice or help when I could.
We socialized outside of work too. I can’t get invited to a party, or a wedding, or anything if I literally don’t know anyone. I’ve only ever known how to make friends in structured environments. But that’s wierdo me.
No, I think that's the fair take. But to me, it's similar when people say "Studies may teach me a thing, but I'm glad I went there because I met all this people"... Yes, you spent X years there. You'd probably bound with someone over that time if it was a different place as well. It's perfectly understandable to have a need for structure. I just wish that work isnt that sole source of structure in most people live.
6nk06@sh.itjust.works
on 16 Jun 11:05
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It would be logical to work less and get our own community. A lot of people work hard all their lives and die soon after retirement. That’s not logical.
Great places to socialize are sports-clubs, social-clubs, volunteering, activism, religious communities…
I’d much rather spend five hours a week distributed over two or three occasions with people i share interests with, than with people i share work with. Meanwhile at work i am mostly engaged in small talk, that is quite repetitive as i see the people every day and i have to guard what i can say and what i cannot say more than in other circles.
FriskyDingo@sh.itjust.works
on 16 Jun 16:32
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No one said “sole.” It’s about a sense of community between you and your coworkers, which is a very real and normal thing. It’s spelled out in the article very clearly:
losing that sense of workplace community had a greater impact on childless men
“Workplace community.”
I’m a dad working remote and I love the benefits but I ALSO miss the sense of community with my coworkers which I used to get from lunches together, sharing the train ride home, or just working side by side at our desks.
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com
on 17 Jun 03:37
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sense of community between you and your coworkers, which is a very real and normal thing
No it fucking ain’t.
Forcing people together doesn’t create community, it creates stress, and resentment, and burnout, and migraines.
“Workplace community.”
Biggest oxymoron I’ve ever seen since military intelligence.
ALSO miss the sense of community with my coworkers which I used to get from lunches together, sharing the train ride home, or just working side by side at our desks
Oh, you’re one of those fucking extroverts.
I can’t begin to imagine the extent to which your poor coworkers must have despised you while you constantly bothered them while they tried to work, or have a quick decompressing lunch, or disconnect after a long day of work during the train ride home, the poor bastards. As if work wasn’t bad enough by itself.
if you hear the shit coworkers talk behind peoples back, you really dont want to interact with them most of the time, its just to save face by being nice, eventhough coworkers might not want to talk to you, someone like op might be annoying to them for whatever reason.
timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Jun 12:26
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Imagine being this vitriolic in response to someone’s personal anecdote.
The person you responded to said they did find a sense of community like the study describes. Nowhere in there did they argue that anyone should be forced to go back to an office nor even that an office spot be made available to people.
Well, that settles it. Who can argue with this kind of airtight logic?
Your post is unnecessarily hostile and offers nothing, son. I’ve worked at the same place for 8 years now, probably longer than you’ve been out of diapers, and yes, working alongside people does form a bond. If you’ve ever had to cooperate with someone, trust someone, get through difficulties with someone, you’d know all this. But from the way you enjoy flinging obscenities at strangers I doubt you have much experience forming bonds with people, period.
Oh, you’re one of those fucking extroverts.
And here’s the part where I just laugh in your face.
I like to think I would less judgmental about people attepting to communicate with me in the only language I know. Maybe approach like that is the reason work is the only place where people spent time with you ;)
Your comment was unintelligible, sorry. I can hear you whining now, very clearly, and trying to insult me personally. So I guess you can communicate successfully when you try.
Same. I’ve always hated office culture and don’t miss it one bit.
ohwhatfollyisman@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 09:09
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romcom idea: childless man has crush on childed man. he’s raring to come back to work to hang out with hot dad man, but the latter is forced to work remotely.
the whole plot swivels around how they get around the lack of opportunities to be together.
latenightnoir@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 16 Jun 09:35
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Oh, yes! I sure do miss that community made up of ass kissers and people who are just as miserable as I am! Or those 2-3 chill people with whom I meet for a chat weekly anyway, outside work hours because I sure as hell ain’t in the mood for socialising while I’m wasting (at least) a third of my day and life doing busiwork for someone else!
rottingleaf@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 09:41
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It’s not about remote vs office work, but working remotely all the time reminds particularly painfully about not having a SO or many friends. When working from office, covertly texting a good acquaintance 2-3 times a day kinda replaces that. When at home, you could do much more of that, or probably bunch together to work, but you don’t. Just sit there, smell your socks, sip tea, get distracted for nothing good, and feel how your life passes into abyss. When in office, you at least have the stress of many loud people around to distract you from that.
KingGordon@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 12:37
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Dude you need to up your life a bit. Dontchathink?
Yes, the issue is that those loud people are also distracting you from work.
solsangraal@lemmy.zip
on 16 Jun 09:46
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i’m skeptical of any study that concludes anyone would rather deal with all the bullshit of working in the office rather than wfh
no one goes to work for the “community,” which can also be gotten literally anywhere other than work
sounds like something corporate slavedriving senior executives decided they wanted a “study” on to prove people want to work in the office
spankmonkey@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 14:32
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no one goes to work for the “community,” which can also be gotten literally anywhere other than work
I can confidently say that a lot of my coworkers do go to work for a sense of community and also hang out with those same coworkers after hours. They basically get to see their community at work, and most of them don’t have a home office set up, so the office is a better setting for them.
I separate work and home life almost entirely, and love working from home, but do want to acknowledge that some people do want to be in the office and it isn’t only the toxic ones.
yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de
on 16 Jun 20:47
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which can also be gotten literally anywhere other than work
Can it? For absolutely everyone, regardless of (mental) health? No one benefits from being monetarily pressured to interact with people even if the interaction is only surface level?
ok. the reasons someone might actually want to go to work in the office (e.g., can’t interact with people who aren’t getting paid to interact) are not the same reasons CEOs want to force you to work in the office (control; oversight; subjugation)
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
on 16 Jun 09:56
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I’m childless and all I can say is fuck community.
Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 16 Jun 12:39
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They’re not distinguishing “remote work” from “working from home” which are two entirely different things. There are whole communities of remote workers who meet and work together around the world. I guarantee you that remote working men who take advantage of these kinds of environments have a better sense of community than men who are forced to go sit in a cubicle with a group of people like the cast of The Office with less sense of humor.
anotherinternetnomad@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 11:29
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I’m not going to deny that some people enjoy going to work and enjoy interacting with their coworkers, but this feels like it’s missing the forest for the trees. What about the affects commuting has on one’s civic engagement in their actual community?
“There’s a simple rule of thumb: Every ten minutes of commuting results in ten per cent fewer social connections. Commuting is connected to social isolation, which causes unhappiness.”
archive.ph/…/there-and-back-again
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 16 Jun 12:42
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I’ve always thought that researchers should plot outcomes against commute times.
I broadly agree, but I think there’s a bit of a “correlation is not causation” effect at play, too
I would expect people who are very career-focused would prioritise socialising less, and also be more willing to do a long commute for a job they are highly invested in. But the reduced socialising wouldn’t necessarily be caused by the commuting (not entirely, at least).
pdqcp@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 16 Jun 11:42
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They miss the sense of community because we no longer have 3rd places to hang out. For those unaware:
CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 11:52
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In office, I’m a chatty bitch. I have a habit of maybe over-socializing. For sure, my productivity goes down in the office. Oh, and people listen to me just as much WFH as they did in the office when it comes to work stuff.
At home, I can just turn on some music and focus on what I need to get done. I can work on my 20+ jira points I have every god damn sprint. Meetings (ad-hoc or planned) already cause delays for me and I’m already working to much (the highest so far, has been a 16-hour day).
I don’t miss the ‘sense of community’ because there isn’t one. Plus, most of my co-workers live in different states, and many in different countries. There’s no in-person collaboration even if I’m in the office. It’s still everything done over chat/video call.
My company, like so many others, went back on everything they said about WFH. They used to say how great it was because they could find talent from anywhere instead of being arbitrarily constrained by location. Like, obviously, the best talent doesn’t just happen to live next to you. Then it moved to hybrid, for those all important in-person, face-to-face collabs and synergy and all the other bullshit LinkedIn BS you can spew. And now, they’re doing RTO full on and even shaming those who work from home or would want to. Full-on bully tactics in meetings too. Even started shaming the upper mgmt, because their excuse was “well, other companies are doing it” so I hit back with the “if other companies were committing fraud, would we?” a spin on the “well if everyone else was jumping off a bridge, would you” I grew up hearing all the time. I actually brought that up in a corporate meeting, they never responded, so I’m taking that as a yes… yes they would and will, so long as they figure they can get away with it (or the penalties don’t outweigh the profits).
And then I find out Tim Walz (Minnesota Governor) is also for RTO… so I emailed his office, letting him know just how utterly disappointed in him I was, and to not expect my vote ever again.
Sorry, I’ll get off my soapbox. I’m just truly passionate about this. WFH, I’m far less miserable on a day-to-day basis. Working in the office, I was in multiple car accidents going to and from work (none of which I caused). I’ve been in exactly 0 since WFH. No longer spending 1-2 hours a day just traveling, so I can work remotely, in an office. If I ever win the lotto, I’ll be rich enough I could run for president and one of my pillars would be pushing businesses to utilize WFH if the position can do that. Fewer cars on roads, means less congestion for those who have to be onsite. There should be a noticeable decrease in vehicle-related accidents and fatalities.
Ownership will abuse labor as much as it can. Sometimes to make more profit. Sometimes for murkier reasons. I think some management are just stupid and they’d hurt the company to follow their unfounded feelings.
When the pandemic started, his company decided to have everyone work from home. They very quickly discovered that they were just as productive, and the owner decided it made sense to dump their office space.
A group of employees decided to go on vacation together, while still working. Since they are all remote, they didn’t actually have to work from home. They got an Airbnb with good Internet, worked during the day, and saw the sites and had fun together after work.
If you’re remote and you miss that sense of community, reach out to your coworkers and ask them if they want to hang out after work. It’s possible they don’t and you’ll be disappointed. It’s also possible that they feel the same way but didn’t know they could do something about it.
Either you’ll be the hero that saved everyone from their solitary existence, or you’ll have to accept that they don’t want to hang out with you.
codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 16 Jun 16:49
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This is a good idea, but also working remote frees up time to meet new affinity groups.
Not to dump on people’s relaxation strategies, but even the most introverted person can’t survive on video games and gooning alone.
If you don’t want or like hanging with coworkers, find a local bar to hang out at and meet some folks, go to a community board game night, join a choir, attend an anime viewing night, just do something to take initiative and meet some folks that like what you like.
Another person already said it, but the issue is the lack of third spaces. You don’t need to physically go to an office to get a sense of community. Working remotely makes it easier to get a sense of community if there are third spaces because you’re not stuck in a building for 8 hours. If your only source of community is your workplace, then you have other problems.
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
on 16 Jun 13:34
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And then I’m a single father, so I’m just fucked!
FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 16 Jun 13:34
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For a lot of disabled people it’s remote work or starve to death.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 13:36
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Nah there’s no propaganda that will get people to think working in the office every day is in any way better to having freedom again
blattrules@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 13:58
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I’m a childless man and I don’t miss the sense of community one bit.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 14:25
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I have more time to spend with the community that isn’t tied to my income.
Same here, much prefer the peace and quiet as well as avoiding the complication & stress of maintaining a personal relationship that may or may not last. As long as I have my dog with me I’m never lonely.
To me this highlights that many single men have problems with loneliness.
Portosian@sh.itjust.works
on 16 Jun 15:04
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Remote work is a step in the right direction at least. In my case, I’m generally just too exhausted to bother going anywhere other than home and work, which definitely limits any socializing. Work culture isn’t entirely to blame of course, but it sure isn’t helping.
I would claim it’s only a step in the right direction for someone if they will actually start doing something social. It’s not enough that there is more opportunity to if you never actually do it…
altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 16 Jun 14:47
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As a childless asocial workaholic with some degree of toxicity that LinkedIn bastard probably dream of, my performance heavily depended on the importance of the task. WFH let me be more passionate about some projects and papers that I used all benefits of cutting commute, was way less distracted and motivated. But bullshit paperwork, letters, chats and reports lagged even further behind than they did in the office, right up to the deadline. Sometimes because I did the work itself instead and no one looked over my shoulder.
For me RTOing into a nearly-empty building in the off-season when most take vacations was the most dumb idea, and since it was a typical rule-for-thee, I had almost none supervison, was arriving late, leaving early and put a shit ton of hours into various MMOs. The complete opposite to what I did in a brief moments of quarantine. Look, jerks, you paid me to level my chars, that’s what you wanted?
I think like in a trust-based environment clocking in is unnecessary and various bosses over time did get it, I payed back by reporting stuff myself so they were sure I’m on it at any given time. Like we are actually a team of some sort, they do their stuff, I do mine, we pass things to each other etc. The others were completely disconnected from empoyees and to compensate their inability to trust, got high on controlling shit, were sending down teamworking events, talking about being a family or other sectarian career manager bullshit, relied on and encouraged snitching on each other. These were the positions I nailed down to me clocking out and stop giving a fuck, before eventually leaving.
And for coworkers: they either do their work, or leave it to others, and I rarely GAF about other characteristics. The high stress environment of labor is not where I prefer to socialise, nor I’m in the mood to. I crave work-related communications that makes all objectives clear and obvious, work-related stories I can learn from, you know, the stuff I came here for, and not a social club with gossips, drama and all that. If I’m given 2hrs+ from not riding to your building, I can have two socializations and a half if I want to. The exhaustion it causes not helps but prevents me from going out with friends, and I’m double pissed that some bosses make an act like that’s better for their workers while not giving them any agency and doing it solely for themselves.
Rant: over.
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net
on 16 Jun 15:11
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Well then call me the outlier, cause I’m a childless man who has been happily working remote since before covid. I’d rather be jobless than go back to office work. I have a small group of non-work friends that I enjoy spending time with, and back when I did office work the majority of my friends were not work friends.
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 18:58
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This childless man loves his peace, quiet, and alone time.
But maybe I don’t qualify as I have dogs, friends, and kickass neighbors.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works
on 16 Jun 20:41
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Fathers versus childless men, rather than husbands vs unmarried men. Telling.
It’s clearly telling that the study is looking at men with regards to their possession of a child or an infant of some kind, rather than regarding wether they take part in some sort of commited marital relationship or partnership
Married vs. unmarried means you have a companion, but you still got the same demands on your life as before. You might have to arrange schedules, but that’s about it. Your day has just as much free time as before, you can stay out just as long as before and your social opportunities aren’t restricted due to the fact that you are married.
In fact, there’s no difference at all between married vs. unmarried and in a relationship vs single. Getting married changes nothing in that regard.
Having kids, on the other hand, changes everything. Now your social activities are limited by your responsibilities towards the child(ren). Can’t stay out until 2am if you know the kids will be awake at 7am and will wake you up 3 times in between. Can’t take a random day off and do a day trip if the kid needs to be at school that day. Can’t visit friends after work together with your partner if the kid needs to be in bed at 7pm. It’s a massive limiter on social opportunities.
At the same time, spending time with the kids is pretty great in its own right, and that’s what the article touches upon. If you are married but don’t have kids, you might get your fill with your partner after work. If you have 5h or so every day with your partner from getting back from work until going to bed, that’s a ton of quality time.
But if you return from work at 5pm and the kids go to bed at 7pm, then pretty much all the interaction you get is eating and preparing the kids for bed.
As a father, working from home means I can see my kids grow up, especially in their earlier years. It means I was there when they took their first steps. I’m there when they start talking. I can actually spend time with them, get close to them, be part of them growing up. I’m there when they cry, when they say the funniest stuff. You know, be with them when it matters.
With my wife, on the other hand, as much as I love her, I’m not going to miss a ton of really important things if I’m not around her 24/7. On the contrary, she’s happy for any bit of actual alone time she gets.
cholesterol@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 23:38
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Would they equally write ‘mothers’ vs. ‘childless women’ in another article about remote work, I wonder.
It’d be married and single women, most likely. (Edit: they prefer to classify us by our relationships with men.)
ThatKomputerKat@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 01:12
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As a childless man, fuck no I don’t.
LilB0kChoy@midwest.social
on 17 Jun 02:01
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Truth.
FourWaveforms@lemm.ee
on 17 Jun 01:28
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I’m a childless man and FUCK that, the office isn’t my social scene. I don’t care to drive in there just to talk to the same people in person. ZERO point in doing that. We have meetings electronically and that’s more than enough.
fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com
on 17 Jun 02:56
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You mean, you, a presumably young man, don’t come to the office to chat with your 50 year old office mom, or your CEOs and managers, or your coworkers whose interests only overlap yours so far as employment opportunities? How bizarre!
Ah, then maybe you would enjoy talking to the 50 year old office mom!
Assuming those are still a thing, of course. They were a thing when my office’s age averaged ~ 25, but I seem to remember losing the office mom position when the overall office age got higher… but maybe the position went away more generally…
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 02:55
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As a childless man, they will have to pry my work from home out of my cold, lots of free time having hands.
As a childless woman, SAMEEEEEE. My dog is a fantastic coworker.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Jun 03:07
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Mmmm I am a childless man, and I live by myself, and I am 100% cool with that, and feel fine. But to be fair, I’ve got a pretty good circle of friends, and a really strong core friend group.
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com
on 17 Jun 03:11
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Humour is a defence mechanism. Altruism is a defence mechanism. And with those two, camaraderie is a given.
Also it would be a sorry state of affairs if workers under capitalism had their defence mechanisms, but not canalisation workers shovelling literal shit.
Unions haven’t got anything to do with it. Unions are about protecting you from unfair business practises, it’s not a social club, nor do they try to be.
No union without social interaction to found and preserve it. It’s why small businesses are much worse at ganging up on big businesses that exploit them than workers are at ganging up on bosses: Businesses aren’t people, they don’t have social interactions. Workers are and do, thus unions can and do form.
I like my coworkers. They’re cool. I just went to acro yoga with one, and go bouldering with another. We show up, talk shit, and get the job done - sometimes it’s a good time. Sometimes we get our asses kicked. But that builds camradrie, too.
I will say, this is blue collar stuff. When I worked as a software dev, I definitely didn’t care about spending much time with my coworkers.
I used to work for a bunch of lawyers. I would happily take a fire axe to every single one of them.
They really didn’t like remote working and tried to put a stop to it and “sense of community” was their excuse as well, but it was really about control.
It would be interesting if they did this study again in an environment like that, where people aren’t really friendly with their co-workers. I imagine they would get a vastly different result.
This study may not be BS in particular, for that one case, but it is BS in general
last_philosopher@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 03:18
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For me WFH has helped me have a community. The office was never a real community, and the fact that we all worked together got in the way of being actual friends. Instead with the added time from WFH I was able to prioritize my social life and go to more events and meet people I actually have stuff in common with. Additionally my in-office job forced me to live in a dead suburb, WFH allowed me to move to a city with a lot more social opportunities.
Of course probably not everyone prioritized that. The office might be good for some people, but for people like me who don’t necessarily socialize at the office very easily WFH is much better for community.
I’ve been working from home with my older family members since COVID started and I’ve been pretty happy since it’s always been my goal. I’ve also had a knee injury for the past 3 weeks, and it’s potentially prevented me from making it worse, and allowed me to continue working. I’ve almost been working remotely for the majority of my career, which is kind of cool to think about. I like working from home, but I understand not everyone likes it.
Honestly, I’d probably sooner retire from tech and work something else if I was forced to go back into an office with no possibility of getting a remote job.
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Jun 03:38
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Why can’t your workers be your workers, your family be your family, your friends be your friends?
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com
on 17 Jun 04:34
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41 year old male, no kids, no wife or girlfriend, been work from home for 5 years now. I’ve never been happier and more productive.
I get my sense of community from my friends not my coworkers. This study is B.S.
ComradeRachel@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 17 Jun 05:10
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You know there are always outliers because research often looks at populations in general and not the exact experience of a specific person. Unless it’s a case study but that’s different.
Either way that’s a really good thing for you, the modern world makes it difficult to make and keep close to friends.
True, and I was drawing on anecdotal evidence that I didn’t elaborate on in my original comment. While I know there are people who do not do well or enjoy work from home, I have yet to meet those people, all my coworkers and friend group are loving work from home.
So a more accurate statement would have been, based on my personal experience along with with coworkers and my friend circle this study is B.S.
wellheh@lemmy.sdf.org
on 17 Jun 12:42
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Tbf there’s definitely some confirmation bias in there because a person who didn’t enjoy being remote probably wouldn’t seek that type of job
True, but we were full time in the office before lockdown and at least half the staff is from before lockdown. Also our job listings are for hybrid positions since there is a rarely enforced office mandate.
AWistfulNihilist@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 17:55
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I was and am in a situation where WFM became voluntary because we outgrew the space while everyone was at home.
We have no limit of volunteers to work in the office, we have multiple people who never left the office, they continued to commute and went in every day.
So my anecdotal experience is the exact opposite of yours, which is why we don’t put a ton of stock in them and look at aggregates in studies. Making sense?
MashedTech@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 07:47
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Yeah, you gotta have friends that are close by and you can get out with or they can come over. If you don’t… Sometimes it feels lonely. But to be honest, you kinda get used to it.
Just because you have anecdotal evidence of the contrary doesn’t mean it can’t be true, quantitatively. I, too, am a childless man - although I do have a wife - and don’t resonate with this, but that doesn’t mean I’ll just cast aside the findings. Many, especially young, men are unhappy in their everyday, partly due to a lack of sense od community in the “modern” world.
Or if we use less adversarial language, this study is far from universal and its findings should be applied with the understanding that not all people will not match those who were in the study. As with most things, far more research is needed to get a thorough understanding.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 19:07
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The study isn’t bs.
There’s a lot of “I’m childless and proud and how dare you suggest living in isolation and screaming at my computer screen all day has had any negative impact on my mental health. You’re just trying to trick me into breeding! A thing I became intensely averse to just recently, after spending 16 hours a day on incel forums full of reactionary influencers.”
So much of the knee-jerk ingrained responses online are indicative of people who have utterly lost the ability to think for themselves and are only capable of lashing out in defense of their latest favorite social media trend. Add in the artificial interactions created by bot accounts and people spamming content for self-promotion, and you’ve got a real recipe for mass psychosis.
I work in a bar, and I love seeing most of my coworkers. I obviously can’t speak on the WFH aspect, as it’d be impossible for me, but enjoying the company of the people you work with isn’t a foreign concept, especially in the service industry
chiliedogg@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 16:44
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It’s something I’ve noticed in general.
I had an amazing boss who was single and lived alone, and really love her staff. We had unecessarily long staff meetings every week. When I started I was annoyed by them until someone pointed out that the time we spent with everyone getting distracted and going off-topic and padding out the meeting while we ate our lunch around the conference room table was, for her, the weekly family meal.
I still don’t like unnecessary meetings, but it gave me a different perspective on why some people like them.
jpreston2005@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 16:49
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The ability to work from home has given me innumerable benefits, but I must admit that as a very introverted guy who’s been going through some shit, and who’s go-to move during times of anxiety and depression is to distance themselves from everyone… yeah, sometimes I do miss my coworkers. A lot of them are pretty great people. Doesn’t mean I’d rather spend 3 hours a day sitting in traffic to see them, just means I low-key miss someone to bitch with.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 19:01
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In theory, we have the Third Space for that kind of socializing. Parks, plazas, union halls, club spaces and dance halls, churches, community centers, libraries…
In practice, they’ve been gradually privatized and monetized until everything is The Mall. If you don’t have $10 to spend for the hour, there’s nowhere you can legally so much as sit down. Hard to socialize on these terms.
My city decided to take its $7B budget and close a $330M shortfall by gutting parks, libraries, and other public amenities. Meanwhile, the police and fire departments are seeing a budget surge of over $100M.
I want to kick your city in the nuts. How could you gut parks and libraries.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
on 18 Jun 14:28
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John Witmire is a DINO by every definition of the word. He’s deep in bed with the police, he loves privatization of public services, and he makes common cause with the state’s Republican leadership on a regular basis. Nothing the man loves more than “balancing the budget” on the backs of public workers and low income residents.
But he’s been a Democrat since he took his State Senate seat and squatted in it back in 1983. So the party apparatus loyally and mechanically supported him all through the primary and general elections. The “It’s my turn” candidate is taking his turn.
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 17 Jun 17:12
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I would love to work remote, but the nature of my job kinda conflicts with that (field service engineer).
That said, I actually like my coworkers quite a lot (there’s only 4 of us). This is the first place I’ve worked where I genuinely feel like we all care about each other’s well-being. I was in the hospital for a few days back in March and they texted periodically just to check how I was doing. Wishing each other happy father’s day/birthday/anniversary/etc, congratulating baby births, invited to kids’ birthday parties, and other things of that nature. Not just surface-level stuff, either. I would hang out with these guys.
Myself and everyone I know works remote. We’re all childless/childfree and not a single one of us miss any community, we all feel there are zero downsides to it. This just comes across like propaganda to stop people working remote and return to office.
lightnsfw@reddthat.com
on 17 Jun 18:49
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I’m single and childless and I personally like being hybrid. Full work from home fucks my mental health up pretty bad. I’m definitely in the minority among my peers though. I also wouldn’t ever ask that anyone else be forced to come back to the office just because it isn’t for me.
RedPostItNote@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 19:22
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I go in office when I want to, a few hours a day or a few times a week for a couple hours. But full work from home had me talking to myself… way too much.
Yeah, every sense of community I’ve ever felt with a job was also ruined by that same job. I don’t remotely miss it, and I’m firmly child-free.
owsei@programming.dev
on 17 Jun 19:09
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I agree that forcing return to office is either stupid or harmful. But I do like the people I work with, and not seeing them anymore would be saddening
The solution is obvious though, simply allow choice
douglasg14b@programming.dev
on 17 Jun 20:21
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I work remote (Going on 9 years now) and I miss a sense of community. Do I want to stop working remotely? Hell no, screw that. But two things can be true the same time, I can enjoy and encourage them at work, dnd I can also miss a sense of community.
I think it’s okay to hold this opinion because it’s individual to everyone.
This just comes across as propaganda
Being dismissive and pulling the rhetoric that this is propaganda is toxic as fuck.
Cosmonauticus@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 20:46
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I have friends and live with friends and I still feel lonely when working remotely. I like hybrid the most because sometimes i need to just go into work and talk about the things im working on with people who actually understand (not work related talks just for fun)
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 18:58
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Best thing about working from home is stepping away from my desk, popping upstairs, and tossing my little baby boy up in the air a few times while he giggles and smiles.
BackwardsUntoDawn@infosec.pub
on 17 Jun 23:40
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threaded - newest
Can’t wait until we figure out that improving society for the people in it, improves society overall.
I know this a gross oversimplification, but:
“Remote working benefit those with a reason to stay home, but doesn’t for those who don’t have a reason to stay home” seems to be the general idea of the headline.
edit: I think this is the study they’re talking about, please double check the source before quoting: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36718392/
This was also my experience during the main sweep of the pandemic. It was so great getting to cut the commute and be home. Something I have luckily managed to largely continue. Prior to the pandemic my kid was in daycare pretty much 7:30-5:30 so it was really nice to not have to do that, plus during our lockdown we used to go for a family walk at lunchtime.
While some of the single guys I worked with hated staying home and were straight back in the office the moment they were allowed.
Yeah I went 3 months without having a single face to face conversation with someone, it was pretty shit even with online gaming and discord.
That sounds amazing
Pretty much. It’s feels like someone complaining that they won the lottery.
Not everyones ideal life is to at all times be alone.
So they ruin it for everyone else.
the reasons they give are often super selfish, it was asked on many subs over the pandemic, they want to interact with said co-workers even if its unproductive and said coworkers do not want to make chit chat with said male workers.
Good, then go socialize.
The issue is that people that want socialization complain that those who enjoy solitude don’t want to socialize with them, so those that prefer solitude should be forced into the office instead.
It’s a really odd thing. Stop relying on work to satisfy your socialization needs. Try a hobby instead. Anything should do - Magic the Gathering, Warhammer 40k, Tabletop RPG, sports, dance classes, anything.
During the pandemic my partner stayed inside for about a month, I was the only person she interacted with. I kept going to work because I was an “essential” worker (not really), so I kinda envied her, but by the end of that month she was going a bit crazy.
I think it’s funny that I had the opposite experience. My coworkers who had kids couldn’t wait to get back to the office, while the few of us youngsters who didn’t wanted nothing but to keep working remotely. Probably why those few of us left immediately when it became clear they were going to force everyone back.
probably because they dont want to deal with thier kids 24/7, screaming,c rying,etc.
It may be both a factor of who you live with (the ones itching to get back to the office either lived alone or with people they didn’t really gel with), and could have also been the length of time we were in lockdown (we had one of the strongest in the world - for the first 6 weeks or so even McDonald’s wasn’t allowed to open). After a couple of months of not being allowed to leave the house and having no face to face contact with friends or family, I can understand the desire to get back to the office. The people I have in mind mostly lived close to the office, too.
One other factor may have been that our remote working infrastructure was in no way ready for the entire organisation to work from home with a couple of day’s notice. Video calls were just not possible for the first stretch as the work computers were all VPNed through a potato.
oh yea heard this question asked in reddit on multiple instances, the ones that dont stay at home tend to waste time at watercooler chat, gossip,etc, not productive work, just that interaction they cant live without.
I’m guessing you’ve got a study that backs that assertion up as well?
Stop the fuck with “sense of community” and other crap.
I’m starting to understand that many people never felt the sense of community, in the workplace or otherwise. Yes it’s possible.
The trick is that it doesn’t depend on the company, it depends on the people. Last time it happened to me, we pretty much all quit together because we were frustrated at the company but kept being friends afterwards.
after studying mostly from home for 3 years, I’m very happy to be working on-site. feels a lot less lonely.
Not everyone hates life like you do. I hang out with co-workers all the time. Kept relationships will after I’m done.
🙄
🤷♂️ I can make friends at work just fine
Well if YOU can, that’s all that matters.
What does this even mean 🤣?
You’re mad at me because I’m an enjoyable person who gets along with co workers now? Are you saying I should feel sorry for people that can’t make friends outside the Internet? I’m genuinely confused at what your point is here.
Read again. Slowly.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/8906bc4b-b9cb-4506-a222-078d4f2beb55.png">
Maybe they used the wrong language. You roll your eyes, so you don’t hate life, heard.
So then why, genuinely, do you reject the idea of community with such conviction?
piefed.social/comment/6620002
Work isn’t life.
It’s the opposite of life (no, death is just its absence).
Bonding over shared trauma and Stockholm syndrome is not a good basis for a relationship (though there’s probably no relationship other than you pestering them while they try to work).
You people live such lonely lonely lives. I can’t imagine existing just hating everyone like you. It’s quite sad.
Trauma bonding 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Come on, work being the sole source of community is the problem here. What are we even talking about?
Yes, but it’s also the most logical place. What other activity do you dedicate so much time to? Maybe sleeping but it’s hard to build a community around that.
According to my kids, candies are the most logical place to get most your nutritions from. Where else could you get so many calories?
If most of your time at work is spent socializing, couldn't you cut your work time and build your community elsewhere?
If most of your time at work you spent on honest hard-work working, how much community are you really building?
Cut you calories. Life doesn't happen at work.
Eh, I became a stay at home mom over the pandemic, and while I’ve never worked in an office, but on the shop floor, I do miss the shenanigans. But its almost like a trauma bond, where its like, hey, we’re all stuck here, best make the nest of it and try snd have fun while we are here.
I’m fully isolated now, and at this point terrified of crowds, when i never was before.
Not arguing at all people who can work remotely shouldn’t, they should, for a litter or reasons. But I do miss my coworkers from my employee owned factory where culture was held in high standard. Im also not arguing this should be the only place one finds community, I’m only saying, for a person like me, it helped sometimes to joke around on the new guy or collectively bitch about issues at work or hear other folks problems and offer advice or help when I could.
We socialized outside of work too. I can’t get invited to a party, or a wedding, or anything if I literally don’t know anyone. I’ve only ever known how to make friends in structured environments. But that’s wierdo me.
No, I think that's the fair take. But to me, it's similar when people say "Studies may teach me a thing, but I'm glad I went there because I met all this people"... Yes, you spent X years there. You'd probably bound with someone over that time if it was a different place as well. It's perfectly understandable to have a need for structure. I just wish that work isnt that sole source of structure in most people live.
It would be logical to work less and get our own community. A lot of people work hard all their lives and die soon after retirement. That’s not logical.
Quality over quantity.
Great places to socialize are sports-clubs, social-clubs, volunteering, activism, religious communities…
I’d much rather spend five hours a week distributed over two or three occasions with people i share interests with, than with people i share work with. Meanwhile at work i am mostly engaged in small talk, that is quite repetitive as i see the people every day and i have to guard what i can say and what i cannot say more than in other circles.
Being back mandatory poker nights!!!
No one said “sole.” It’s about a sense of community between you and your coworkers, which is a very real and normal thing. It’s spelled out in the article very clearly:
“Workplace community.”
I’m a dad working remote and I love the benefits but I ALSO miss the sense of community with my coworkers which I used to get from lunches together, sharing the train ride home, or just working side by side at our desks.
No it fucking ain’t.
Forcing people together doesn’t create community, it creates stress, and resentment, and burnout, and migraines.
Biggest oxymoron I’ve ever seen since military intelligence.
Oh, you’re one of those fucking extroverts.
I can’t begin to imagine the extent to which your poor coworkers must have despised you while you constantly bothered them while they tried to work, or have a quick decompressing lunch, or disconnect after a long day of work during the train ride home, the poor bastards. As if work wasn’t bad enough by itself.
if you hear the shit coworkers talk behind peoples back, you really dont want to interact with them most of the time, its just to save face by being nice, eventhough coworkers might not want to talk to you, someone like op might be annoying to them for whatever reason.
Imagine being this vitriolic in response to someone’s personal anecdote.
The person you responded to said they did find a sense of community like the study describes. Nowhere in there did they argue that anyone should be forced to go back to an office nor even that an office spot be made available to people.
Well, that settles it. Who can argue with this kind of airtight logic?
Your post is unnecessarily hostile and offers nothing, son. I’ve worked at the same place for 8 years now, probably longer than you’ve been out of diapers, and yes, working alongside people does form a bond. If you’ve ever had to cooperate with someone, trust someone, get through difficulties with someone, you’d know all this. But from the way you enjoy flinging obscenities at strangers I doubt you have much experience forming bonds with people, period.
And here’s the part where I just laugh in your face.
hmm, so having or not having kids have impact on your sence of workplace community during remote work?
Does it add up to you?
Try reformulating your question in English and I’ll see if I can answer you.
I like to think I would less judgmental about people attepting to communicate with me in the only language I know. Maybe approach like that is the reason work is the only place where people spent time with you ;)
Your comment was unintelligible, sorry. I can hear you whining now, very clearly, and trying to insult me personally. So I guess you can communicate successfully when you try.
I'm glad you understood me know, thank you. I adapted your approach to learning languages - speaking slow and laudly. It worked like a charm.
A lack of non alcoholic third spaces is what I would like to talk about.
Childless man here, I work mostly remotely.
I don’t miss any sense of community.
Same, but I do have my own community away from work and have always prioritized my friends over co-workers.
Let’s fix this headline:
Remote work benefits all in different ways.
Oh c’mon the headline is clear. Get pregante XOR go home!
What community? Getting whipped along with your work colleagues? I swear these studies are totally sponsored by some business interests.
Same. What an asanine thing for the article to assert.
Agreed. This article sounds like the kind of BS corporate media’s trying to parrot to gaslight us into giving up WFH.
Same. I came here to make the exact same comment.
Same. I’ve always hated office culture and don’t miss it one bit.
romcom idea: childless man has crush on childed man. he’s raring to come back to work to hang out with hot dad man, but the latter is forced to work remotely.
the whole plot swivels around how they get around the lack of opportunities to be together.
keep cooking
Oh, yes! I sure do miss that community made up of ass kissers and people who are just as miserable as I am! Or those 2-3 chill people with whom I meet for a chat weekly anyway, outside work hours because I sure as hell ain’t in the mood for socialising while I’m wasting (at least) a third of my day and life doing busiwork for someone else!
It’s not about remote vs office work, but working remotely all the time reminds particularly painfully about not having a SO or many friends. When working from office, covertly texting a good acquaintance 2-3 times a day kinda replaces that. When at home, you could do much more of that, or probably bunch together to work, but you don’t. Just sit there, smell your socks, sip tea, get distracted for nothing good, and feel how your life passes into abyss. When in office, you at least have the stress of many loud people around to distract you from that.
Dude you need to up your life a bit. Dontchathink?
You hear yourself and you can spot the issue, right?
Yes, the issue is that those loud people are also distracting you from work.
i’m skeptical of any study that concludes anyone would rather deal with all the bullshit of working in the office rather than wfh
no one goes to work for the “community,” which can also be gotten literally anywhere other than work
sounds like something corporate slavedriving senior executives decided they wanted a “study” on to prove people want to work in the office
I can confidently say that a lot of my coworkers do go to work for a sense of community and also hang out with those same coworkers after hours. They basically get to see their community at work, and most of them don’t have a home office set up, so the office is a better setting for them.
I separate work and home life almost entirely, and love working from home, but do want to acknowledge that some people do want to be in the office and it isn’t only the toxic ones.
Can it? For absolutely everyone, regardless of (mental) health? No one benefits from being monetarily pressured to interact with people even if the interaction is only surface level?
ok. the reasons someone might actually want to go to work in the office (e.g., can’t interact with people who aren’t getting paid to interact) are not the same reasons CEOs want to force you to work in the office (control; oversight; subjugation)
I’m childless and all I can say is fuck community.
I’m sorry to hear this. What makes you say this?
Dude what? It was a great show!
They’re not distinguishing “remote work” from “working from home” which are two entirely different things. There are whole communities of remote workers who meet and work together around the world. I guarantee you that remote working men who take advantage of these kinds of environments have a better sense of community than men who are forced to go sit in a cubicle with a group of people like the cast of The Office with less sense of humor.
I’m not going to deny that some people enjoy going to work and enjoy interacting with their coworkers, but this feels like it’s missing the forest for the trees. What about the affects commuting has on one’s civic engagement in their actual community?
“There’s a simple rule of thumb: Every ten minutes of commuting results in ten per cent fewer social connections. Commuting is connected to social isolation, which causes unhappiness.” archive.ph/…/there-and-back-again
I’ve always thought that researchers should plot outcomes against commute times.
I broadly agree, but I think there’s a bit of a “correlation is not causation” effect at play, too
I would expect people who are very career-focused would prioritise socialising less, and also be more willing to do a long commute for a job they are highly invested in. But the reduced socialising wouldn’t necessarily be caused by the commuting (not entirely, at least).
They miss the sense of community because we no longer have 3rd places to hang out. For those unaware:
The Great Places Erased by Suburbia (the Third Place)
yewtu.be/watch?v=VvdQ381K5xg
youtu.be/VvdQ381K5xg
In office, I’m a chatty bitch. I have a habit of maybe over-socializing. For sure, my productivity goes down in the office. Oh, and people listen to me just as much WFH as they did in the office when it comes to work stuff.
At home, I can just turn on some music and focus on what I need to get done. I can work on my 20+ jira points I have every god damn sprint. Meetings (ad-hoc or planned) already cause delays for me and I’m already working to much (the highest so far, has been a 16-hour day).
I don’t miss the ‘sense of community’ because there isn’t one. Plus, most of my co-workers live in different states, and many in different countries. There’s no in-person collaboration even if I’m in the office. It’s still everything done over chat/video call.
My company, like so many others, went back on everything they said about WFH. They used to say how great it was because they could find talent from anywhere instead of being arbitrarily constrained by location. Like, obviously, the best talent doesn’t just happen to live next to you. Then it moved to hybrid, for those all important in-person, face-to-face collabs and synergy and all the other bullshit LinkedIn BS you can spew. And now, they’re doing RTO full on and even shaming those who work from home or would want to. Full-on bully tactics in meetings too. Even started shaming the upper mgmt, because their excuse was “well, other companies are doing it” so I hit back with the “if other companies were committing fraud, would we?” a spin on the “well if everyone else was jumping off a bridge, would you” I grew up hearing all the time. I actually brought that up in a corporate meeting, they never responded, so I’m taking that as a yes… yes they would and will, so long as they figure they can get away with it (or the penalties don’t outweigh the profits).
And then I find out Tim Walz (Minnesota Governor) is also for RTO… so I emailed his office, letting him know just how utterly disappointed in him I was, and to not expect my vote ever again.
Sorry, I’ll get off my soapbox. I’m just truly passionate about this. WFH, I’m far less miserable on a day-to-day basis. Working in the office, I was in multiple car accidents going to and from work (none of which I caused). I’ve been in exactly 0 since WFH. No longer spending 1-2 hours a day just traveling, so I can work remotely, in an office. If I ever win the lotto, I’ll be rich enough I could run for president and one of my pillars would be pushing businesses to utilize WFH if the position can do that. Fewer cars on roads, means less congestion for those who have to be onsite. There should be a noticeable decrease in vehicle-related accidents and fatalities.
Ownership will abuse labor as much as it can. Sometimes to make more profit. Sometimes for murkier reasons. I think some management are just stupid and they’d hurt the company to follow their unfounded feelings.
Labor should organize.
My oldest has no children and works fully remote.
When the pandemic started, his company decided to have everyone work from home. They very quickly discovered that they were just as productive, and the owner decided it made sense to dump their office space.
A group of employees decided to go on vacation together, while still working. Since they are all remote, they didn’t actually have to work from home. They got an Airbnb with good Internet, worked during the day, and saw the sites and had fun together after work.
If you’re remote and you miss that sense of community, reach out to your coworkers and ask them if they want to hang out after work. It’s possible they don’t and you’ll be disappointed. It’s also possible that they feel the same way but didn’t know they could do something about it.
Either you’ll be the hero that saved everyone from their solitary existence, or you’ll have to accept that they don’t want to hang out with you.
This is a good idea, but also working remote frees up time to meet new affinity groups.
Not to dump on people’s relaxation strategies, but even the most introverted person can’t survive on video games and gooning alone.
If you don’t want or like hanging with coworkers, find a local bar to hang out at and meet some folks, go to a community board game night, join a choir, attend an anime viewing night, just do something to take initiative and meet some folks that like what you like.
Another person already said it, but the issue is the lack of third spaces. You don’t need to physically go to an office to get a sense of community. Working remotely makes it easier to get a sense of community if there are third spaces because you’re not stuck in a building for 8 hours. If your only source of community is your workplace, then you have other problems.
And then I’m a single father, so I’m just fucked!
For a lot of disabled people it’s remote work or starve to death.
Nah there’s no propaganda that will get people to think working in the office every day is in any way better to having freedom again
I’m a childless man and I don’t miss the sense of community one bit.
I have more time to spend with the community that isn’t tied to my income.
Also a father, so double benefits!
Same here, much prefer the peace and quiet as well as avoiding the complication & stress of maintaining a personal relationship that may or may not last. As long as I have my dog with me I’m never lonely.
I’m a dad and I do. Our anecdotal stories have been registered!
what is this study? why does the article not link to it and the data? what is the sample size, located where? waste of time post, downvoted.
It’s propaganda.
It’s a finnish gov:t newspaper reporting on a gov:t study.
Here’s the link:
ttl.fi/…/the-benefits-of-remote-work-are-not-equa…
To me this highlights that many single men have problems with loneliness.
Remote work is a step in the right direction at least. In my case, I’m generally just too exhausted to bother going anywhere other than home and work, which definitely limits any socializing. Work culture isn’t entirely to blame of course, but it sure isn’t helping.
I would claim it’s only a step in the right direction for someone if they will actually start doing something social. It’s not enough that there is more opportunity to if you never actually do it…
As a childless asocial workaholic with some degree of toxicity that LinkedIn bastard probably dream of, my performance heavily depended on the importance of the task. WFH let me be more passionate about some projects and papers that I used all benefits of cutting commute, was way less distracted and motivated. But bullshit paperwork, letters, chats and reports lagged even further behind than they did in the office, right up to the deadline. Sometimes because I did the work itself instead and no one looked over my shoulder.
For me RTOing into a nearly-empty building in the off-season when most take vacations was the most dumb idea, and since it was a typical rule-for-thee, I had almost none supervison, was arriving late, leaving early and put a shit ton of hours into various MMOs. The complete opposite to what I did in a brief moments of quarantine. Look, jerks, you paid me to level my chars, that’s what you wanted?
I think like in a trust-based environment clocking in is unnecessary and various bosses over time did get it, I payed back by reporting stuff myself so they were sure I’m on it at any given time. Like we are actually a team of some sort, they do their stuff, I do mine, we pass things to each other etc. The others were completely disconnected from empoyees and to compensate their inability to trust, got high on controlling shit, were sending down teamworking events, talking about being a family or other sectarian career manager bullshit, relied on and encouraged snitching on each other. These were the positions I nailed down to me clocking out and stop giving a fuck, before eventually leaving.
And for coworkers: they either do their work, or leave it to others, and I rarely GAF about other characteristics. The high stress environment of labor is not where I prefer to socialise, nor I’m in the mood to. I crave work-related communications that makes all objectives clear and obvious, work-related stories I can learn from, you know, the stuff I came here for, and not a social club with gossips, drama and all that. If I’m given 2hrs+ from not riding to your building, I can have two socializations and a half if I want to. The exhaustion it causes not helps but prevents me from going out with friends, and I’m double pissed that some bosses make an act like that’s better for their workers while not giving them any agency and doing it solely for themselves.
Rant: over.
Well then call me the outlier, cause I’m a childless man who has been happily working remote since before covid. I’d rather be jobless than go back to office work. I have a small group of non-work friends that I enjoy spending time with, and back when I did office work the majority of my friends were not work friends.
This childless man loves his peace, quiet, and alone time.
But maybe I don’t qualify as I have dogs, friends, and kickass neighbors.
Fathers versus childless men, rather than husbands vs unmarried men. Telling.
What does it tell
It’s clearly telling that the study is looking at men with regards to their possession of a child or an infant of some kind, rather than regarding wether they take part in some sort of commited marital relationship or partnership
It’s a different world.
With a kid you get to know other parents, lots of social activities and people you are around.
Sounds horrible, glad I have no intention of bringing a child into this torturous world.
It’s a wildly different thing, though.
Married vs. unmarried means you have a companion, but you still got the same demands on your life as before. You might have to arrange schedules, but that’s about it. Your day has just as much free time as before, you can stay out just as long as before and your social opportunities aren’t restricted due to the fact that you are married.
In fact, there’s no difference at all between married vs. unmarried and in a relationship vs single. Getting married changes nothing in that regard.
Having kids, on the other hand, changes everything. Now your social activities are limited by your responsibilities towards the child(ren). Can’t stay out until 2am if you know the kids will be awake at 7am and will wake you up 3 times in between. Can’t take a random day off and do a day trip if the kid needs to be at school that day. Can’t visit friends after work together with your partner if the kid needs to be in bed at 7pm. It’s a massive limiter on social opportunities.
At the same time, spending time with the kids is pretty great in its own right, and that’s what the article touches upon. If you are married but don’t have kids, you might get your fill with your partner after work. If you have 5h or so every day with your partner from getting back from work until going to bed, that’s a ton of quality time.
But if you return from work at 5pm and the kids go to bed at 7pm, then pretty much all the interaction you get is eating and preparing the kids for bed.
As a father, working from home means I can see my kids grow up, especially in their earlier years. It means I was there when they took their first steps. I’m there when they start talking. I can actually spend time with them, get close to them, be part of them growing up. I’m there when they cry, when they say the funniest stuff. You know, be with them when it matters.
With my wife, on the other hand, as much as I love her, I’m not going to miss a ton of really important things if I’m not around her 24/7. On the contrary, she’s happy for any bit of actual alone time she gets.
Would they equally write ‘mothers’ vs. ‘childless women’ in another article about remote work, I wonder.
It’d be married and single women, most likely. (Edit: they prefer to classify us by our relationships with men.)
As a childless man, fuck no I don’t.
Truth.
I’m a childless man and FUCK that, the office isn’t my social scene. I don’t care to drive in there just to talk to the same people in person. ZERO point in doing that. We have meetings electronically and that’s more than enough.
They’re all jerks anyways
You mean, you, a presumably young man, don’t come to the office to chat with your 50 year old office mom, or your CEOs and managers, or your coworkers whose interests only overlap yours so far as employment opportunities? How bizarre!
I’m not young
Ah, then maybe you would enjoy talking to the 50 year old office mom!
Assuming those are still a thing, of course. They were a thing when my office’s age averaged ~ 25, but I seem to remember losing the office mom position when the overall office age got higher… but maybe the position went away more generally…
As a childless man, they will have to pry my work from home out of my cold, lots of free time having hands.
As a childless woman, SAMEEEEEE. My dog is a fantastic coworker.
Mmmm I am a childless man, and I live by myself, and I am 100% cool with that, and feel fine. But to be fair, I’ve got a pretty good circle of friends, and a really strong core friend group.
No we don’t. Work is work, not fucking community.
Yes I do, speak for yourself.
Well, just from reading that I can assure you your coworkers don’t.
I guess it’s a poor choice of words but there’s definite value in workplace camaraderie. Don’t let your jadedness fuel the bosses’ union busting.
Unions aren’t community.
They’re a necessary defence mechanism against capitalism.
Humour is a defence mechanism. Altruism is a defence mechanism. And with those two, camaraderie is a given.
Also it would be a sorry state of affairs if workers under capitalism had their defence mechanisms, but not canalisation workers shovelling literal shit.
Unions haven’t got anything to do with it. Unions are about protecting you from unfair business practises, it’s not a social club, nor do they try to be.
No union without social interaction to found and preserve it. It’s why small businesses are much worse at ganging up on big businesses that exploit them than workers are at ganging up on bosses: Businesses aren’t people, they don’t have social interactions. Workers are and do, thus unions can and do form.
I like my coworkers. They’re cool. I just went to acro yoga with one, and go bouldering with another. We show up, talk shit, and get the job done - sometimes it’s a good time. Sometimes we get our asses kicked. But that builds camradrie, too.
I will say, this is blue collar stuff. When I worked as a software dev, I definitely didn’t care about spending much time with my coworkers.
I used to work for a bunch of lawyers. I would happily take a fire axe to every single one of them.
They really didn’t like remote working and tried to put a stop to it and “sense of community” was their excuse as well, but it was really about control.
It would be interesting if they did this study again in an environment like that, where people aren’t really friendly with their co-workers. I imagine they would get a vastly different result.
This study may not be BS in particular, for that one case, but it is BS in general
For me WFH has helped me have a community. The office was never a real community, and the fact that we all worked together got in the way of being actual friends. Instead with the added time from WFH I was able to prioritize my social life and go to more events and meet people I actually have stuff in common with. Additionally my in-office job forced me to live in a dead suburb, WFH allowed me to move to a city with a lot more social opportunities.
Of course probably not everyone prioritized that. The office might be good for some people, but for people like me who don’t necessarily socialize at the office very easily WFH is much better for community.
I’ve been working from home with my older family members since COVID started and I’ve been pretty happy since it’s always been my goal. I’ve also had a knee injury for the past 3 weeks, and it’s potentially prevented me from making it worse, and allowed me to continue working. I’ve almost been working remotely for the majority of my career, which is kind of cool to think about. I like working from home, but I understand not everyone likes it.
Honestly, I’d probably sooner retire from tech and work something else if I was forced to go back into an office with no possibility of getting a remote job.
Being childfree is its own reward.
41 year old male, no kids, no wife or girlfriend, been work from home for 5 years now. I’ve never been happier and more productive.
I get my sense of community from my friends not my coworkers. This study is B.S.
You know there are always outliers because research often looks at populations in general and not the exact experience of a specific person. Unless it’s a case study but that’s different.
Either way that’s a really good thing for you, the modern world makes it difficult to make and keep close to friends.
True, and I was drawing on anecdotal evidence that I didn’t elaborate on in my original comment. While I know there are people who do not do well or enjoy work from home, I have yet to meet those people, all my coworkers and friend group are loving work from home.
So a more accurate statement would have been, based on my personal experience along with with coworkers and my friend circle this study is B.S.
Tbf there’s definitely some confirmation bias in there because a person who didn’t enjoy being remote probably wouldn’t seek that type of job
True, but we were full time in the office before lockdown and at least half the staff is from before lockdown. Also our job listings are for hybrid positions since there is a rarely enforced office mandate.
I was and am in a situation where WFM became voluntary because we outgrew the space while everyone was at home.
We have no limit of volunteers to work in the office, we have multiple people who never left the office, they continued to commute and went in every day.
So my anecdotal experience is the exact opposite of yours, which is why we don’t put a ton of stock in them and look at aggregates in studies. Making sense?
Yeah, you gotta have friends that are close by and you can get out with or they can come over. If you don’t… Sometimes it feels lonely. But to be honest, you kinda get used to it.
Just because you have anecdotal evidence of the contrary doesn’t mean it can’t be true, quantitatively. I, too, am a childless man - although I do have a wife - and don’t resonate with this, but that doesn’t mean I’ll just cast aside the findings. Many, especially young, men are unhappy in their everyday, partly due to a lack of sense od community in the “modern” world.
I’ll concur - same stats as you too.
Itt: cognitive disonannce.
The study isn’t bs. Lemmy users just won’t accept that they don’t even come close to representing the average individual.
Or if we use less adversarial language, this study is far from universal and its findings should be applied with the understanding that not all people will not match those who were in the study. As with most things, far more research is needed to get a thorough understanding.
There’s a lot of “I’m childless and proud and how dare you suggest living in isolation and screaming at my computer screen all day has had any negative impact on my mental health. You’re just trying to trick me into breeding! A thing I became intensely averse to just recently, after spending 16 hours a day on incel forums full of reactionary influencers.”
So much of the knee-jerk ingrained responses online are indicative of people who have utterly lost the ability to think for themselves and are only capable of lashing out in defense of their latest favorite social media trend. Add in the artificial interactions created by bot accounts and people spamming content for self-promotion, and you’ve got a real recipe for mass psychosis.
I actually don’t like my coworkers very much I definitely wouldn’t hang out with them so not having to be near them all day is a benefit.
It’s not even that they are bad people, it’s just that they are people who I wouldn’t choose to hang out with.
I work in a bar, and I love seeing most of my coworkers. I obviously can’t speak on the WFH aspect, as it’d be impossible for me, but enjoying the company of the people you work with isn’t a foreign concept, especially in the service industry
It’s something I’ve noticed in general.
I had an amazing boss who was single and lived alone, and really love her staff. We had unecessarily long staff meetings every week. When I started I was annoyed by them until someone pointed out that the time we spent with everyone getting distracted and going off-topic and padding out the meeting while we ate our lunch around the conference room table was, for her, the weekly family meal.
I still don’t like unnecessary meetings, but it gave me a different perspective on why some people like them.
The ability to work from home has given me innumerable benefits, but I must admit that as a very introverted guy who’s been going through some shit, and who’s go-to move during times of anxiety and depression is to distance themselves from everyone… yeah, sometimes I do miss my coworkers. A lot of them are pretty great people. Doesn’t mean I’d rather spend 3 hours a day sitting in traffic to see them, just means I low-key miss someone to bitch with.
In theory, we have the Third Space for that kind of socializing. Parks, plazas, union halls, club spaces and dance halls, churches, community centers, libraries…
In practice, they’ve been gradually privatized and monetized until everything is The Mall. If you don’t have $10 to spend for the hour, there’s nowhere you can legally so much as sit down. Hard to socialize on these terms.
My city decided to take its $7B budget and close a $330M shortfall by gutting parks, libraries, and other public amenities. Meanwhile, the police and fire departments are seeing a budget surge of over $100M.
I want to kick your city in the nuts. How could you gut parks and libraries.
John Witmire is a DINO by every definition of the word. He’s deep in bed with the police, he loves privatization of public services, and he makes common cause with the state’s Republican leadership on a regular basis. Nothing the man loves more than “balancing the budget” on the backs of public workers and low income residents.
But he’s been a Democrat since he took his State Senate seat and squatted in it back in 1983. So the party apparatus loyally and mechanically supported him all through the primary and general elections. The “It’s my turn” candidate is taking his turn.
I would love to work remote, but the nature of my job kinda conflicts with that (field service engineer).
That said, I actually like my coworkers quite a lot (there’s only 4 of us). This is the first place I’ve worked where I genuinely feel like we all care about each other’s well-being. I was in the hospital for a few days back in March and they texted periodically just to check how I was doing. Wishing each other happy father’s day/birthday/anniversary/etc, congratulating baby births, invited to kids’ birthday parties, and other things of that nature. Not just surface-level stuff, either. I would hang out with these guys.
Myself and everyone I know works remote. We’re all childless/childfree and not a single one of us miss any community, we all feel there are zero downsides to it. This just comes across like propaganda to stop people working remote and return to office.
I’m single and childless and I personally like being hybrid. Full work from home fucks my mental health up pretty bad. I’m definitely in the minority among my peers though. I also wouldn’t ever ask that anyone else be forced to come back to the office just because it isn’t for me.
I go in office when I want to, a few hours a day or a few times a week for a couple hours. But full work from home had me talking to myself… way too much.
Yeah, every sense of community I’ve ever felt with a job was also ruined by that same job. I don’t remotely miss it, and I’m firmly child-free.
I agree that forcing return to office is either stupid or harmful. But I do like the people I work with, and not seeing them anymore would be saddening
The solution is obvious though, simply allow choice
I work remote (Going on 9 years now) and I miss a sense of community. Do I want to stop working remotely? Hell no, screw that. But two things can be true the same time, I can enjoy and encourage them at work, dnd I can also miss a sense of community.
I think it’s okay to hold this opinion because it’s individual to everyone.
Being dismissive and pulling the rhetoric that this is propaganda is toxic as fuck.
The truth often is somewhere in the middle
I have friends and live with friends and I still feel lonely when working remotely. I like hybrid the most because sometimes i need to just go into work and talk about the things im working on with people who actually understand (not work related talks just for fun)
So you like to go into work in order to waste time talking talking about non work related things? Make sense why you should stay remote.
Its not a waste of time, its very useful. I can see how a robot such as yourself wouldnt understand.
You can spend your 8 hours a day in a cubicle and I will spend it having fun and working along side people I genuinely like.
.
Best thing about working from home is stepping away from my desk, popping upstairs, and tossing my little baby boy up in the air a few times while he giggles and smiles.
me with my dog
me with my snake
That‘s one way to call it.
This was me until I realized I didn’t have a child and that I lived in the first floor.
Where was I going? What giggled as I tossed it into the air?
Lol my old boss hated remote work because he had to spend time with his family.
“I gotta get to the office mates!”
Take the same approach as home schooling. Community comes from engaging in other activities.