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There are still in-office jobs out there, where you can have lunch with humans, and maybe even make friends with your coworkers. I have one. It's not a popular opinion on this site, but it's OK to admit that being isolated home alone for 40+ hours a week is not healthy for your personality type.
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I'm back in the office (3 days a week) and there's some weird cultural thing on my team that I don't quite understand. Coworkers I sit next to will message me on Teams instead of just standing up and talking to me over the cube wall. No one eats lunch together or really converses outside of meetings. We have meetings on Teams even though everyone in the meeting is in the office sitting next to each other. I'll book rooms for the meetings and inform the team only to be the only one in the room.

I sometimes wonder if the change to the culture and ways of working from the covid-era WFH days became more pervasive than I realized.

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Could be just the team culture. The meeting thing is pretty weird, but what happens if you just show up and tap them on the shoulder? Do they get annoyed or overall happy to chat? What about just drinking coffee/tea?

It also can be that the office space itself is too noisy so any discussion can distract a lot of people.

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It sounds weird indeed, but maybe some higher-ups decided this is a way to go in case people need to be isolated again or when it's necessary to hire some remote coworkers who shouldn't be left behind, etc.
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Remote doesn't need to be isolating. You can make friends with remote coworkers, but it requires a culture where jumping on a call to work things out is normalized.

I've found most work communication apps not to be very condusive to it, but Discord is pretty good.

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Yea, you have to be proactive. I have friends with non-traditional work schedules to spend time with during the working hours when I take breaks from work. I go to coffee shops and make friends with the workers there. And I make sure to engage in social activities like group cycling. I love WFH but would never make it so I am sitting in front of my computer alone at home 40 hours a week.
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You still sit at home, alone, in front of a screen to talk to these people. It's still really depressing.

I sincerely miss working in an office, but with my current job it would've been impossible anyway (everyone is remote in different countries). I've only once met some of my coworkers irl a few years ago when we went to a conference together.

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Discord's killer feature is the "hangout" room.

You can see if people are in there and actively talking before you join and that alone encourages spontaneous drop ins.

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COVID will be seven years old this December. Many of us here are still working from home since that time.

It doesn’t feel like seven years. 2020 feels like last year.

What can one typically accomplish in seven years? An undergrad, masters, and maybe a PHD. It is a long time.

The years have flown by

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It hurts that I relate with this so much. I am wasting my 20s.

I see people who advocate for permanent wfh has plans with their social circle. Either already has a family or friends. Sucks to be the one trying to build a new life.

Btw, I don’t believe them a bit. All I see are rotten people who no longer speaks new things, or is a living instagram bot.

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I just turned 40 and am right there with you. I speak out of both sides of the mouth, having been a self-employed beneficiary of remote work since _my_ early 20s -- I was doing the digital nomad thing before it got very common. However, when I think about regrets and life choices about occupation, it's the foreclosing on in-person camaraderie and socialisation that tops the list.
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Different strokes for different folks at different stages in their lives. If I wrote OP's post 7 years ago before WFH, I'd have said: "on my death bed I'm going to realize I spent my life driving 2.5 hours each way to an office to type into a machine and to maintain physical proximity to people I don't really like or dislike. It's just so gruesomely UNNECESSARY."
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I can see your point. Right now, it's really on the opposite spectrum of how it used to be. Forced commute + interaction vs. forced isolation. Sure either side could take steps to mitigate, like renting the "quiet cubicle" on the one side or "working from a coffee shop" on the other, but as it stands, "WFH" is really the downswing of the "commute to office" upswing.
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Ok let's be honest 2.5 hours each way is an abomination and I bet most people who hate their WFH situation prefer it over that shit.
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Oh absolutely. I take my comment back.
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It's hard trying to build a new life out there, but we have to keep our heads up. We CAN make it better
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Yeah but that's because people suck so fucking much.

1. "Sorry can't come" an hour after we were supposed to meet - this alone kills 80% of my friendships

2. "I like edgy humor" and then a month later "I'm going to report you to HR" literally had this happen to me

3. Most people have very little depth and stick to superficial smalltalk, which I find very exhausting

And when on top of that you say "I wish my friend had similar values and enjoyed at least one common hobby" then it's basically over. Not to mention the fact that most people aren't open to new friendships. If they're married then they straight up say "wife doesn't allow", if they're not then it's "yeah let's grab a coffee someday".

My motto is "if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go alone" because trying to be cooperative with people has never yielded me better results than just doing the shit on my own.

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#1 seems like abnormal behavior.

#2 seems situational so I can't speak to that

#3 I think anxiety pervades people's lives, and I often wonder how many of them are "holding on by a thread" and literally don't have capacity for ANYTHING that may stir the pot, like a new friend, so they give any tired excuse to avoid rocking their boat.

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This is the result of having everything customised to you. I don’t know how old you are and I am not going to assume. I feel the way we live our lives, algorithmic everything tailored to us, we just don’t accept differences anymore.
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Yeah people are like that but you have to keep trying. It's better than the alternative.
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