I’m a childless man and I don’t miss the sense of community one bit.

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.

what is this study? why does the article not link to it and the data? what is the sample size, located where? waste of time post, downvoted.

To me this highlights that many single men have problems with loneliness.

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.

As a childless asocial workaholic with some degree of toxicity that LinkedIn bastard probably dream of, my performance heavily depended on the importance of the task. WFH let me be more passionate about some projects and papers that I used all benefits of cutting commute, was way less distracted and motivated. But bullshit paperwork, letters, chats and reports lagged even further behind than they did in the office, right up to the deadline. Sometimes because I did the work itself instead and no one looked over my shoulder.

For me RTOing into a nearly-empty building in the off-season when most take vacations was the most dumb idea, and since it was a typical rule-for-thee, I had almost none supervison, was arriving late, leaving early and put a shit ton of hours into various MMOs. The complete opposite to what I did in a brief moments of quarantine. Look, jerks, you paid me to level my chars, that’s what you wanted?

I think like in a trust-based environment clocking in is unnecessary and various bosses over time did get it, I payed back by reporting stuff myself so they were sure I’m on it at any given time. Like we are actually a team of some sort, they do their stuff, I do mine, we pass things to each other etc. The others were completely disconnected from empoyees and to compensate their inability to trust, got high on controlling shit, were sending down teamworking events, talking about being a family or other sectarian career manager bullshit, relied on and encouraged snitching on each other. These were the positions I nailed down to me clocking out and stop giving a fuck, before eventually leaving.

And for coworkers: they either do their work, or leave it to others, and I rarely GAF about other characteristics. The high stress environment of labor is not where I prefer to socialise, nor I’m in the mood to. I crave work-related communications that makes all objectives clear and obvious, work-related stories I can learn from, you know, the stuff I came here for, and not a social club with gossips, drama and all that. If I’m given 2hrs+ from not riding to your building, I can have two socializations and a half if I want to. The exhaustion it causes not helps but prevents me from going out with friends, and I’m double pissed that some bosses make an act like that’s better for their workers while not giving them any agency and doing it solely for themselves.

Rant: over.

Nah there’s no propaganda that will get people to think working in the office every day is in any way better to having freedom again

For a lot of disabled people it’s remote work or starve to death.

And then I’m a single father, so I’m just fucked!

In office, I’m a chatty bitch. I have a habit of maybe over-socializing. For sure, my productivity goes down in the office. Oh, and people listen to me just as much WFH as they did in the office when it comes to work stuff.

At home, I can just turn on some music and focus on what I need to get done. I can work on my 20+ jira points I have every god damn sprint. Meetings (ad-hoc or planned) already cause delays for me and I’m already working to much (the highest so far, has been a 16-hour day).

I don’t miss the ‘sense of community’ because there isn’t one. Plus, most of my co-workers live in different states, and many in different countries. There’s no in-person collaboration even if I’m in the office. It’s still everything done over chat/video call.

My company, like so many others, went back on everything they said about WFH. They used to say how great it was because they could find talent from anywhere instead of being arbitrarily constrained by location. Like, obviously, the best talent doesn’t just happen to live next to you. Then it moved to hybrid, for those all important in-person, face-to-face collabs and synergy and all the other bullshit LinkedIn BS you can spew. And now, they’re doing RTO full on and even shaming those who work from home or would want to. Full-on bully tactics in meetings too. Even started shaming the upper mgmt, because their excuse was “well, other companies are doing it” so I hit back with the “if other companies were committing fraud, would we?” a spin on the “well if everyone else was jumping off a bridge, would you” I grew up hearing all the time. I actually brought that up in a corporate meeting, they never responded, so I’m taking that as a yes… yes they would and will, so long as they figure they can get away with it (or the penalties don’t outweigh the profits).

And then I find out Tim Walz (Minnesota Governor) is also for RTO… so I emailed his office, letting him know just how utterly disappointed in him I was, and to not expect my vote ever again.

Sorry, I’ll get off my soapbox. I’m just truly passionate about this. WFH, I’m far less miserable on a day-to-day basis. Working in the office, I was in multiple car accidents going to and from work (none of which I caused). I’ve been in exactly 0 since WFH. No longer spending 1-2 hours a day just traveling, so I can work remotely, in an office. If I ever win the lotto, I’ll be rich enough I could run for president and one of my pillars would be pushing businesses to utilize WFH if the position can do that. Fewer cars on roads, means less congestion for those who have to be onsite. There should be a noticeable decrease in vehicle-related accidents and fatalities.

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.

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

They miss the sense of community because we no longer have 3rd places to hang out. For those unaware:

The Great Places Erased by Suburbia (the Third Place)
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=VvdQ381K5xg
https://youtu.be/VvdQ381K5xg

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!

Childless man here, I work mostly remotely.

I don’t miss any sense of community.