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Comment by DC1350 | Hacker News Reader

WFH makes the new grad experience miserable if you go to college somewhere far from where you grew up. I’m graduating soon and the only place I have geographic ties to is my home town where I tried very hard to get away from forever. Everyone I know from college is scattering all over the continent. Does anyone have tips for choosing where to live as a remote worker, or how to make friends as a young person in a new city without an office? I’m feeling pretty lost. I don’t think I would ever accept a job that isn’t promising a return to the office as soon as possible

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Well, pick a big city? While it will definitely happen, it's unhealthy to befriend only coworkers. Learn how to make friends outside of your office life. That way your employer can't use your social life against you leaving.

Trust me, after the pandemic, when the daily grind kicks in and your office life and daily commute drains every ounce of energy, you'll be happy to WFH.

> Well, pick a big city?

I know. I guess it’s just choice paralysis.

Making friends in a new city is really hard even without covid.

Anecdotally I found meetup helped me out a lot. After a few weeks of awkward gatherings I finally found people I clicked pretty well with. Forcing yourself to go is hard though.

What types of meetups did you find worked best?

Play a sport. Preferably something coed. Nothing hyper competitive.

You'll make friends AND stay in shape.

Most people working in tech earn a good enough living to be able to afford an apartment not far from work. You don't have to have a long daily commute. There are multiple cities in North America and Europe that are not insanely expensive, and it can be realistic to live somewhere a 10-to-20-minute walk or bike ride from work.

You have a choice, you don't have to choose the suburban lifestyle.

It's ok to make friends at the office. I have a lot of great friends from my last company and from my current one and I did pick a city. I've gone to their weddings, traveled together, and have developed friendships that have lasted for almost 10 years so far for some of them. You tend to have a lot in common with other tech folks and you don't have to deal with the anti-tech discussions as much that seems to happen so much nowadays.

I think that cities with a high net flow of migration tend to be easier. Of course this means high cost of living because of housing competition, but it’s easier to make new friends when you’re surrounded by other people who are also looking for the same. I lived in Berlin for a few years and made a lot of close friends but almost none of them were originally from the city. It’s tough to break into pre-existing social networks.

I would say that it also helps a lot if you know at least 1-2 people who moved to that city just before you. You can plug into their social network and work together to expand it.

The other advice I have is find people who share your interests through sites like meetup.com. Lots of people who show up to those events will also have space on their dance cards. Get comfortable going out to shows, art exhibits, or whatever you’re into by yourself, and then if you hit it off with someone at a meetup event you’ll have something to talk about and something to invite a new freind to join you at.

I was lucky to be in your position only months before the pandemic (though I never went to college), so I built up a reasonable set of friends before WFH (both at work and outside of work).

The biggest factor in your decision should be ease of meeting new people, imo. Cities were already bad for this in the first place, but I view them as the "least worst" option. Try leverage your existing network if you know anybody where you're moving to, because they're going to be in the same position. Hacker meetups, game jams, industry conferences or other hobbies work really well too -- though you might want to avoid being in the tech bubble because I'm totally stuck inside it.

Once you've got a few friends, you can leverage their social network to meet new people and explore new hobbies and stuff.

WFH does mean you can more easily keep in touch with college friends. Me and a few buddies have a Discord server where we co-work and we also have something similar within my company (where it's easier to not worry about leaking secret stuff). This has been one of the few things that's kept me sane over the last year.

Edit: Happy to share more if you've got something specific in mind.

At least in bigger cities, there tend to be a lot of clubs and other organizations for outdoor activities, sports, etc. That may not be to your taste but I've always been more involved with that sort of thing than work colleagues even when I was working in a fairly large office on a day-to-day basis. (I've been remote or effectively remote for years.)

> how to make friends as a young person in a new city without an office?

I emigrated from my home country around 4 years ago, and none of my friends are people I've worked with. I'm not against it, but at my old job my coworkers were mostly 10+ years older, married and had children, so they had their own thing going on.

There's lots of ways to make new friends outside of work, depending on what floats your boat. You can go to industry meetups, join a sports club, take up a hobby, go to live music gigs etc. But to be honest, making friends is just one of those things that happens organically, from random encounters multiplied by time. After university, it takes a bit longer to make friends, since people generally have a well established social circle and spend less time socialising due to work and other responsibilities. It took me a year or two to find my feet and "build a network" of friends.

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