Comment by vladvasiliu
Comment by vladvasiliu 3 days ago
> 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.