re: Work from Home is a Disaster
A reply to Nikhil's blog.
My whole lifestyle is only viable because I work remotely and have been for more than half a decade. I started working in good health, but two COVID infections, stress-related GERD, and several bouts of depression robbed me of most of my stamina. These days, it would take me tight time management to get things done and rest whenever my body would need it. I could take naps if I have to. I could cook and control my food intake. I could work when my mind works best, which is unfortunately nighttime. I'd be hard-pressed to find employment working onsite, and the commute would destroy any shred of time and energy I could spare for my creative endeavors.
But the crux of Nikhil's argument is this: "People who worked remotely for two or more years lost their social skills. They became shy, reserved, and confined to their comfort zones and small groups. They forgot the art of striking up conversations with strangers. They forgot how to have fun with people. Single men became glued to dating apps and lost the ability to approach women even in safe, everyday settings."
To which I say bullshit.
Or in a more polite term, overgeneralizing.
I'm a natural introvert. I have everything I need right at home. I spent COVID years thriving when people went stir crazy. I know how to entertain and amuse myself.
So surely working remotely destroys what little social skills I have? After all, I've been doing this for more than two years.
It is correct that I spend most weekdays cooped up in my place, but the empty weekends I have this year can be counted on one hand. People come into town, we go out. I invite people to my place if I don't feel like going out. The town has enough events to fill one's social calendar. Cultural festival? Historical exhibit? You can find something interesting every day. And do you know what no-commute affords me? Having hobbies. I'm a regular at a cafe and a lunch spot. Hold regular conversation with the shopkeepers. Have interesting encounters with people coming into the shop. I play board games and cards in an LGS two nights a week. I talk to strangers and invite them to our table, teaching hesitant bystanders random games.
What Nikhil conveniently forgets is you meet people everywhere, not just in your workplace. And as far as meeting strangers goes, you meet even more strangers outside. In the past three months alone I met, to name a few, a nuclear engineer, a college lecturer, and a government worker. We talked about game design, foreign policy, LLM in the workplace, ... It's easier to vary the places you go to if you're not bound to be... you know, in the office. But surely it's easier to give into your desire to isolate yourself! Oh yes, surely. Tell me about it. But I'm also an adult and I can take care of myself. People may have tendencies, but they don't always choose the easy way out. They don't have to be babied by "mandatory touching grass". I find this argument as stale as the one often lobbed towards homeschoolers.
There's another part I find especially funny. "It’s much easier to bond over coffee and shared gossip about management than over Zoom calls. Coffee breaks, stress balls, and group meetings create an environment where talking to people comes naturally. These are the moments that often spark lifelong friendships." In one of my best workplace recollections, my team did, in fact, have a daylong Zoom always-on call where people could hop in and hang out if they wanted. In contrast, where I used to work onsite, I could name no one in the office not in my immediate team, because every department was so insulated. Coffee breaks may be the time one would relish their freedom, a sweet respite from their colleagues for half an hour. Stress balls may mean not wanting to talk with other people unless strictly necessary. Naturally can often mean naturally for me.
Oh, and none of them ended up with lifelong friendships. We met, we did as we should, we moved to different places, and communication ceased. Whatever contacts we had after were all business. We asked each other for job-related recs, at most.
In almost ten years of working in general, I'll tell you the most disastrous phase: the hybrid working years. People had to rent near the office when they wanted people back, but renting in an expensive area only to attend the office intermittently in bizarre schedules (one workplace wanted two weeks out of a month, another three days a week) sucked. These people basically got hefty pay cuts, because previously they could work from cheaper satellite cities. Well, you could still live in these cheaper area, right? Right? Just gotta love the time and energy you waste on commute! And that's before we consider the complication when you have a family to care for (in both places I worked in, it was a total disaster because the companies hired all across the country when they were still fully remote. Feel free to consider this an edge case. We should be working local anyway, yeah? Sucks to be you if you happen to live where local job opportunity and minimum wage is abysmal. Gotta have that grit, uproot yourself and your family a thousand kilometer away).
And after spending almost three hours getting to the office (and psyching yourself for another three hours back in the evening, lovely) you find that your meeting is over Zoom anyway because several attendees are having their WfH rotations. Thing is, work is already broken and no amount of pretension is going to return everything back to pre-covid era. Heck, pre-cloud era.
But that's just my experience and I do not wish to impose this on anyone. The trouble we keep facing is because everyone seems to think there is one-size-fits-all solution whether it's onsite, remote, or hybrid. I have a friend who loves the structure and accountability working onsite brings, as he has difficulty managing himself alone. He absolutely hates the WfH days in hybrid arrangement. We should be more into giving people options when we can, as much as we can.
Addendum 05/11/25: As I reread this piece, I realize that I might have come off slightly more incensed than I should, and I apologize for the behavior. I do not intend to disparage Nikhil as a person, and should you read this, thank you for pushing the topic forward. I find it an interesting one to answer.