I’m a childless man and I don’t miss the sense of community one bit.
I have more time to spend with the community that isn’t tied to my income.
Also a father, so double benefits!
I’m a dad and I do. Our anecdotal stories have been registered!
My oldest has no children and works fully remote.
When the pandemic started, his company decided to have everyone work from home. They very quickly discovered that they were just as productive, and the owner decided it made sense to dump their office space.
A group of employees decided to go on vacation together, while still working. Since they are all remote, they didn’t actually have to work from home. They got an Airbnb with good Internet, worked during the day, and saw the sites and had fun together after work.
If you’re remote and you miss that sense of community, reach out to your coworkers and ask them if they want to hang out after work. It’s possible they don’t and you’ll be disappointed. It’s also possible that they feel the same way but didn’t know they could do something about it.
Either you’ll be the hero that saved everyone from their solitary existence, or you’ll have to accept that they don’t want to hang out with you.
I know this a gross oversimplification, but:
“Remote working benefit those with a reason to stay home, but doesn’t for those who don’t have a reason to stay home” seems to be the general idea of the headline.
edit: I think this is the study they’re talking about, please double check the source before quoting: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36718392/
This was also my experience during the main sweep of the pandemic. It was so great getting to cut the commute and be home. Something I have luckily managed to largely continue. Prior to the pandemic my kid was in daycare pretty much 7:30-5:30 so it was really nice to not have to do that, plus during our lockdown we used to go for a family walk at lunchtime.
While some of the single guys I worked with hated staying home and were straight back in the office the moment they were allowed.
Yeah I went 3 months without having a single face to face conversation with someone, it was pretty shit even with online gaming and discord.
That sounds amazing
I think it’s funny that I had the opposite experience. My coworkers who had kids couldn’t wait to get back to the office, while the few of us youngsters who didn’t wanted nothing but to keep working remotely. Probably why those few of us left immediately when it became clear they were going to force everyone back.
probably because they dont want to deal with thier kids 24/7, screaming,c rying,etc.
It may be both a factor of who you live with (the ones itching to get back to the office either lived alone or with people they didn’t really gel with), and could have also been the length of time we were in lockdown (we had one of the strongest in the world - for the first 6 weeks or so even McDonald’s wasn’t allowed to open). After a couple of months of not being allowed to leave the house and having no face to face contact with friends or family, I can understand the desire to get back to the office. The people I have in mind mostly lived close to the office, too.
One other factor may have been that our remote working infrastructure was in no way ready for the entire organisation to work from home with a couple of day’s notice. Video calls were just not possible for the first stretch as the work computers were all VPNed through a potato.
oh yea heard this question asked in reddit on multiple instances, the ones that dont stay at home tend to waste time at watercooler chat, gossip,etc, not productive work, just that interaction they cant live without.
I’m guessing you’ve got a study that backs that assertion up as well?
Another person already said it, but the issue is the lack of third spaces. You don’t need to physically go to an office to get a sense of community. Working remotely makes it easier to get a sense of community if there are third spaces because you’re not stuck in a building for 8 hours. If your only source of community is your workplace, then you have other problems.
Oh, yes! I sure do miss that community made up of ass kissers and people who are just as miserable as I am! Or those 2-3 chill people with whom I meet for a chat weekly anyway, outside work hours because I sure as hell ain’t in the mood for socialising while I’m wasting (at least) a third of my day and life doing busiwork for someone else!
41 year old male, no kids, no wife or girlfriend, been work from home for 5 years now. I’ve never been happier and more productive.
I get my sense of community from my friends not my coworkers. This study is B.S.
You know there are always outliers because research often looks at populations in general and not the exact experience of a specific person. Unless it’s a case study but that’s different.
Either way that’s a really good thing for you, the modern world makes it difficult to make and keep close to friends.
True, and I was drawing on anecdotal evidence that I didn’t elaborate on in my original comment. While I know there are people who do not do well or enjoy work from home, I have yet to meet those people, all my coworkers and friend group are loving work from home.
So a more accurate statement would have been, based on my personal experience along with with coworkers and my friend circle this study is B.S.
I was and am in a situation where WFM became voluntary because we outgrew the space while everyone was at home.
We have no limit of volunteers to work in the office, we have multiple people who never left the office, they continued to commute and went in every day.
So my anecdotal experience is the exact opposite of yours, which is why we don’t put a ton of stock in them and look at aggregates in studies. Making sense?
Yeah, you gotta have friends that are close by and you can get out with or they can come over. If you don’t… Sometimes it feels lonely. But to be honest, you kinda get used to it.
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As a childless man, they will have to pry my work from home out of my cold, lots of free time having hands.
As a childless woman, SAMEEEEEE. My dog is a fantastic coworker.
They’re not distinguishing “remote work” from “working from home” which are two entirely different things. There are whole communities of remote workers who meet and work together around the world. I guarantee you that remote working men who take advantage of these kinds of environments have a better sense of community than men who are forced to go sit in a cubicle with a group of people like the cast of The Office with less sense of humor.
childless men miss sense of community
Myself and everyone I know works remote. We’re all childless/childfree and not a single one of us miss any community, we all feel there are zero downsides to it. This just comes across like propaganda to stop people working remote and return to office.
I work remote (Going on 9 years now) and I miss a sense of community. Do I want to stop working remotely? Hell no, screw that. But two things can be true the same time, I can enjoy and encourage them at work, dnd I can also miss a sense of community.
I think it’s okay to hold this opinion because it’s individual to everyone.
This just comes across as propaganda
Being dismissive and pulling the rhetoric that this is propaganda is toxic as fuck.
The truth often is somewhere in the middle
I agree that forcing return to office is either stupid or harmful. But I do like the people I work with, and not seeing them anymore would be saddening
The solution is obvious though, simply allow choice
Yeah, every sense of community I’ve ever felt with a job was also ruined by that same job. I don’t remotely miss it, and I’m firmly child-free.
I have friends and live with friends and I still feel lonely when working remotely. I like hybrid the most because sometimes i need to just go into work and talk about the things im working on with people who actually understand (not work related talks just for fun)
So you like to go into work in order to waste time talking talking about non work related things? Make sense why you should stay remote.
Its not a waste of time, its very useful. I can see how a robot such as yourself wouldnt understand.
You can spend your 8 hours a day in a cubicle and I will spend it having fun and working along side people I genuinely like.
No we don’t. Work is work, not fucking community.
I like my coworkers. They’re cool. I just went to acro yoga with one, and go bouldering with another. We show up, talk shit, and get the job done - sometimes it’s a good time. Sometimes we get our asses kicked. But that builds camradrie, too.
I will say, this is blue collar stuff. When I worked as a software dev, I definitely didn’t care about spending much time with my coworkers.
I used to work for a bunch of lawyers. I would happily take a fire axe to every single one of them.
They really didn’t like remote working and tried to put a stop to it and “sense of community” was their excuse as well, but it was really about control.
It would be interesting if they did this study again in an environment like that, where people aren’t really friendly with their co-workers. I imagine they would get a vastly different result.
This study may not be BS in particular, for that one case, but it is BS in general
I guess it’s a poor choice of words but there’s definite value in workplace camaraderie. Don’t let your jadedness fuel the bosses’ union busting.
Unions aren’t community.
They’re a necessary defence mechanism against capitalism.
Humour is a defence mechanism. Altruism is a defence mechanism. And with those two, camaraderie is a given.
Also it would be a sorry state of affairs if workers under capitalism had their defence mechanisms, but not canalisation workers shovelling literal shit.
Unions haven’t got anything to do with it. Unions are about protecting you from unfair business practises, it’s not a social club, nor do they try to be.
No union without social interaction to found and preserve it. It’s why small businesses are much worse at ganging up on big businesses that exploit them than workers are at ganging up on bosses: Businesses aren’t people, they don’t have social interactions. Workers are and do, thus unions can and do form.
To me this highlights that many single men have problems with loneliness.
Remote work is a step in the right direction at least. In my case, I’m generally just too exhausted to bother going anywhere other than home and work, which definitely limits any socializing. Work culture isn’t entirely to blame of course, but it sure isn’t helping.
I would claim it’s only a step in the right direction for someone if they will actually start doing something social. It’s not enough that there is more opportunity to if you never actually do it…
Can’t wait until we figure out that improving society for the people in it, improves society overall.
This childless man loves his peace, quiet, and alone time.
But maybe I don’t qualify as I have dogs, friends, and kickass neighbors.
I’m a childless man and FUCK that, the office isn’t my social scene. I don’t care to drive in there just to talk to the same people in person. ZERO point in doing that. We have meetings electronically and that’s more than enough.
You mean, you, a presumably young man, don’t come to the office to chat with your 50 year old office mom, or your CEOs and managers, or your coworkers whose interests only overlap yours so far as employment opportunities? How bizarre!
I’m not young
Ah, then maybe you would enjoy talking to the 50 year old office mom!
Assuming those are still a thing, of course. They were a thing when my office’s age averaged ~ 25, but I seem to remember losing the office mom position when the overall office age got higher… but maybe the position went away more generally…
I actually wouldn’t enjoy talking to most people at work, because that would involve going there instead of doing it from the computer where I already am
I’m not going to deny that some people enjoy going to work and enjoy interacting with their coworkers, but this feels like it’s missing the forest for the trees. What about the affects commuting has on one’s civic engagement in their actual community?
“There’s a simple rule of thumb: Every ten minutes of commuting results in ten per cent fewer social connections. Commuting is connected to social isolation, which causes unhappiness.” https://archive.ph/2020.02.27-211238/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/there-and-back-again
I’ve always thought that researchers should plot outcomes against commute times.
I broadly agree, but I think there’s a bit of a “correlation is not causation” effect at play, too
I would expect people who are very career-focused would prioritise socialising less, and also be more willing to do a long commute for a job they are highly invested in. But the reduced socialising wouldn’t necessarily be caused by the commuting (not entirely, at least).
