Comment by ljm 3 days ago
totally depends on the job, team, and culture as well I think.
I thought I'd enjoy going back to the office, until 5 days a week was enforced and I was frequently getting interrupted.
As another commenter said, nurturing a social life is more difficult when working from home, you have to be deliberate about it. I felt the office just made it more convenient to hang out, but it never really happened because I was too burned out by the work.
I used to get drained by uncomfortable clothes without noticing it until I got on the Vuori train. There are plenty of other brands now but the Meta pants and Strato Tech Tee are my go-to's. Sizing up helps too.
Not sponsored, I encourage you and anyone else who suffers from clothing-drain to try different brands too. Stretchy, breathable, and clean/crisp looking work best for me.
Weeeelll, one of the issues is that I'm female and am sensitive to pressure. Wearing a bra all day everyday SUCKS, especially since I'm a very strange size and shape so finding ones that fit costs hundreds of dollars and hours of my time. But God forbid men be aware that we have breasts and that sometimes they dangle or have nipples.
Sizing up also doesn't work for women - we look slovenly then unless we go tailor everything which is more time and $.
I prefer being able to work in a sports bra and sweatpants.
I'm a huge fan of Zoomer fashion and the minute they reach enough critical mass in the workforce for me to adopt it professionally, I'll be there. Or once I finally have enough wrinkles/am in my 40s so nobody mistakes me for one of the kids with all the attendant headaches that brings. (It's super interesting to me how generational fashion rolls into the workforce - I can wear skinny jeans or jeggings to work now because Millennials are a decent enough chunk of people writing the dress codes now. I remember when the only option were those stupid trouser pants, but I thank my lucky stars I wasn't working in the pantyhose era. Fuck. That.)
No, that idea has completely eluded me for the two decades I've spent in the workforce.
My bra size isn't even manufactured/sold in my country, and at one point in my life I was a size that was so rare one company in the world made it.
And this is without getting into non bra issues like my shoulders being much smaller than my bust by size and while some alterations are possible, changing the shoulders requires essentially redoing the entire garment if that can be done on a garment at all. Truly fitting professional clothing would essentially require bespoke or made to measure clothes and I'm not rolling in money. (And even if I was, I'd prefer to spend it on weird tinkering hobbies like the rest of you.)
The clothes that fit me best off the rack involve substantial amounts of stretch and are too casual for the workplace. (Mostly tops; skirts are very easily altered).
The office makes it convenient to hang out with people who aren’t friends and unlikely to become so.
In my 10+ years working in offices, I made exactly one friend (someone who I see outside of work).
I would rather not commute and spend that time with actual friends, more quality social interaction over quantity.
(YMMV of course)
I’d just find it easier to make plans when I’m already in the city, rather than wrapping up and travelling into the city and arriving a bit later as a result.
One of those things where I’m happy to hang out with a friend for an hour so if I’m already out, but travelling there only to return after an hour is less attractive.
that’s generally what happens when you / the people you work with are socially awkward autismos. i hang out with several colleagues outside of work multiple times a week, and consider them friends
No, it is quite common.
I'm very much a prefer-to-work-in-the-office-with-the-people-I'm-working-with person, but I've not made many long-lasting friends in my 24 years in the workplace since leaving full time education. Many short-term friends, yes, but not long-term, compared to the balance of people I've met in “hobby time” & similar.
> As another commenter said, nurturing a social life is more difficult when working from home
If you're happy with token interactions, sure. Your colleagues are right there (even talking to you while you try to work!). But IME, and from what I hear others say on HN and elsewhere, those aren't really "friends". The relationships are very superficial. How many of these people would help you move? With how many do you keep in contact when one of you changes jobs? I know exceptions exist, but those seem to be rather rare.
So, if you actually want a deeper relationship, you still have to look for it deliberately. Only now, you have even less time to do it, since you're stuck in the office for 8 hours a day and possibly a few more depending on your commute. Whereas if you're at home, if it's not practical to go have lunch with a buddy or something, at least you can deal with some of your chores that can be time-consuming, while not requiring you to interact with them continuously, like laundry, waiting for a delivery, slow cooking something, etc.
I think it’s a little condescending to call them token interactions. They can be, but they also don’t have to be. I’ve worked in teams which were like little families while they lasted. I’ve had co-workers become real friends whom I still see many years after we stopped being co-workers. I’ve also had co-workers who were token interactions at best. I think it completely depends on who you are as a person, and also who you work with. Even if you don’t become life long friends you can easily have valuable social interactions with co-workers. Just like you can grow apart from friends. It’s all depending on the situation, and most often on you. At least in my experience.
5 days on office places are silly in my book. They’ll lose anyone talented enough to get another job. I’m an in office person for the most part, but if you take away my flexibility I’m frankly just going to work for someone who gives it back to me. Why wouldn’t I want the ability to work from home when I need to pick up the kids early or similar? In my experience the best of both worlds is when you let people work where they want but try to staff your teams with half of each preference or with people in between and then label certain days as preferred in-office days. Notice how I said preferred and not enforced. I my teams it has usually developed sort of naturally, often depending on what is for lunch.
Agreed! At the end of the day, humans at work are still humans, and can form any level of human connection with their coworkers. Long-lasting friendships that persevere past being coworkers isn't super common, but that's because making those friendships isn't super common in general. I think the very real human connections we can make with coworkers is a large part of why it can be easy to confuse mutual loyalty between coworkers with loyalty to a company (which is effectively never mutual because companies don't operate in a way that incentivizes caring about the feelings of individuals).
That doesn't make it reasonable to _force_ people back into offices though. Companies requiring in-office work so that the workers can experience social interaction that they don't have time for outside work sounds pretty dystopian, and arguing for that for one's own personal benefit at the cost of others feels pretty selfish to me. To be clear, I think it's totally reasonable for a company to hire someone with the understanding that they'll be in-office, but the issue with what's going on now for me is that plenty of people who were hired with the understanding that they _wouldn't_ ever have to be in an office are now being told that they need to. I'd argue that forcing someone originally hired remotely to pick between coming into the office or resigning is effectively equivalent to firing without cause, and it's disappointing that it isn't viewed that way legally.
You've never had lasting relationships with co-workers?
A significant percentage of my social circle is former coworkers. I still meet up with some that I haven't worked with for over a decade. Or even several decades if you count pre-career jobs.
It'd be pretty weird for me to assume those interactions have to be token interactions.
I did, maybe one or two over some 12 years.
I've been friendly with most of my co-workers, but aside from the two above, I wouldn't consider any of them "friends". As in we'd never randomly hang out outside of after-work drinks.
I find nurturing a social life much easier when I'm WFH because I don't end each day dead on my feet from being overstimulated all day, being in uncomfortable clothes, etc. It also means I don't have to choose between chores and going out after work/on weekends. (A lot of my job is being available for issues and/or requires waiting on SMEs so I have downtime). And it means my social battery isn't drained by the 40 conversations about coworkers' kids that I don't care about (I participate to create a good social environment, but it's just not an enjoyable conversation topic for me) so I can spend my social energy on people and topics that actually fill my cup.