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Comment by akudha | Hacker News Reader

I don't even turn my video on these days during calls. Most of my team mates don't. Some of them don't know how I look and I don't know how some of them look. And yet, we work well as a team. We are all in different cities and countries and work remote.

Unless our physical presence is necessary (hairstylist, nurse, chef...), we should aggressively push back on "come to office 300 days a year" requirement. Only dumb middle managers and arrogant upper management (who probably have money invested in commercial real estate) think physical presence is required for all jobs. Either we work remote, or we improve housing and transportation. The former is easier to do while the latter is a near impossible problem to solve in the current political climate.

Those who claim they build friendships etc at work, maybe genuinely ask yourselves - how many colleagues from your previous jobs do you really keep in touch?

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This is fine for experienced workers who already know the job, but for anyone who is new (say first 2-5 years) or is looking for mentoring and growth/advancement opportunities, then the lack of in-person connections does hurt.

> Those who claim they build friendships etc at work, maybe genuinely ask yourselves - how many colleagues from your previous jobs do you really keep in touch?

I'll speak for myself and say that I am still regularly in touch with folks I worked at 4 jobs ago (12 years).. I guess it depends on why you are making those friendships, are you actually making friends or just looking to build social capital to give you advantage at work?

It can certainly be both, but if you don't keep in touch when you move on, then maybe it was only the latter.

I've a team member who is about a year out of college. He calls me 2-3 times a week asking for help on whatever task he is working on. His timezone is 10 hours ahead of mine. Mentoring is doable. Couple of months ago, there were some discussions on restricting remote work (thankfully it didn't go anywhere, at least not yet). He was distraught, as his commute was at least 90 minutes, one way.

Obviously nothing beats face-to-face interactions. But we need to consider the cost of it too. 3 hours of commute a day? Paying for gas, childcare? Polluting the environment, clogging the roads?

We can try to solve these problems with better infrastructure (like highspeed rails), banning corporations like BlackRock buying up large chunks of desirable neighborhoods/holding them hostage etc. That would require some serious effort and willpower, which seem hard to come by.

As for relationships, I too have a handful of people from years ago that I keep in touch. This can certainly be a disadvantage with remote work, but we need to compromise somewhere...

Yep, I agree with you. Bottom line is it's complicated. I don't think there's an easy answer, and neither "work at the office" or "work at home" are catch-all perfect solutions!

>how many colleagues from your previous jobs do you really keep in touch?

i still hang out with people i met at my previous job over 5 years ago.

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