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Comment by Consultant32452 | Hacker News Reader

It's worth noting that this is NOT what remote working is really like. During regular times you can more easily go work in your local cafe for a few hours, more easily hang out with your friends after work to get socialization. If you're a social person this is a double-whammy, you lost socializing at work and socializing with friends at the same time. I'm not suggesting you would ever like normal remote work, I have no idea. I just wanted to say this isn't what remote work is really like.

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Strange, I had the opposite experience - hated working remote in the past but been mostly OK with WFH during COVID - I think the main reason is that during COVID everyone else was also working from home, not just me. So the company had to come up with procedures that suit well remote workers, and I never felt "out of the loop" compared to others.

I find being "out of the loop" to be one of the best parts of being remote. Whatever small amount of useful things I'm out of the loop on is dwarfed by the benefit of being out of the loop on all the political/personal drama. Of course this is a very individual experience so everyone's mileage will vary greatly.

Yeah I think it depends on you personal disposition and on the environment aka company culture

I suspect many people can't work at the local cafe as something might leak if a person took a picture of their screen.

And I know, just for me. On scale of 1 to 10 if for me WFH is a 3 then work from cafe is a 5 and work from office is a 10 (note: this is with cool people on cool stuff, those numbers and even order might changes of those 2 things were not true). I don't generally talk to anyone at a cafe so I don't get any social interaction quota. I can't bounce ideas off people at the cafe, they aren't generally fellow SWE. So while it feels less isolated than WFH it's not a substitute for me.

Not to mention that working with just a laptop is an ergonomic nightmare.

I have a mixed bag of feelings regarding WFH. I realize that the current situation at my employer is not comparable to a real remote (and asynchronously organized) setup. Way too many people try to emulate the office, while at home. I have meeting in meeting staring at a screen not getting any meaningful work done during the regular hours most people are active. To be able to deliver on deadlines I needed time in the very early mornings and late in the evenings. This led to massive overtime and also to the situation that my significant other and I weren't seeing each other nearly as much as before Corona while both working from home without a daily 1.5 - 2 hour commute.

Some small project teams got it right and reduced meetings and replaced them with asynchronous communication. This was a great experience. But sadly I got pushed into projects were this just wasn't the case.

So probably your experience is more of a Covid-19 experience than remote work.

Yeah that's true. In my case, though, my social life is almost back to normal, and I find working in cafes incredibly uncomfortable and distracting.

It's definitely been better since I've been able to get out and see friends, but I'm still itching to get back to the office.

When I switched from in-office to remote work a decade ago I had to make a conscious effort to increase my out-of-work socializing. I want to stress that I agree/understand remote work will never be for everyone and many people will prefer an office and I hope they get that option. At the same time everyone sort of got thrown into this by surprise and we've done a poor job of helping people make the most out of this transition. I'm a team lead and the last 6 months I've mostly been a therapist helping people cope with stress and transitioning to new ways of doing things. Mental health is so important and as a society we've failed to address that on all levels, not just remote/on-site work.

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