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Comment by nluken | Hacker News Reader

> their coworkers are the only people they regularly interact with in-person

This sort of self-alienation seems to be a pretty widespread problem larger than the in-person/remote debate. That said, it's probably better for those experiencing it to have some in-person socialization in the office than none.

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How do you know they aren't travelling the world while "working from home"? Sure, they aren't keeping up with a set group of friends, but they are making new friends every day. The world is bigger than just your tiny little apartment. You can go to Latin America, where they share largely the same timezone as us, but you can play with turtles! Or rescue dogs! Or clean up after penguins (south of argentina). It's really up to you if you think humans are the only way to not be lonely, then yeah, hit up a bar and cry yourself to sleep. But there are other ways. There is so much other there if you just work from home,and stop going into the shitty office, with terrible people. Have you ever noticed the office makes people less original? They all end up looking and acting the same as each other, and I'm the only who who's just come home from petting a penguin and they're like "we just came home from the bar.... again.... for the third time this week...." The office is dead, long live working form home.

Sure you could use remote work to do things, but in practice most people don't. Forcing everyone back into the office without a good reason isn't a good solution, but I think that the option to work in person is an ideal situation to those who like to socialize with others. Personally, I have that flexibility and have started to take advantage of it by working while traveling. But I've observed of my WFH coworkers don't seem to, which goes back to the original point- the alienation is not a function of not going into the office. It's a separate issue that giving that option to people can mitigate.

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