Childless man here, I work mostly remotely.
I don’t miss any sense of community.
Same, but I do have my own community away from work and have always prioritized my friends over co-workers.
Let’s fix this headline:
Remote work benefits all in different ways.
Oh c’mon the headline is clear. Get pregante XOR go home!
What community? Getting whipped along with your work colleagues? I swear these studies are totally sponsored by some business interests.
Agreed. This article sounds like the kind of BS corporate media’s trying to parrot to gaslight us into giving up WFH.
Same. I’ve always hated office culture and don’t miss it one bit.
Same. What an asanine thing for the article to assert.
Same. I came here to make the exact same comment.
Come on, work being the sole source of community is the problem here. What are we even talking about?
Yes, but it’s also the most logical place. What other activity do you dedicate so much time to? Maybe sleeping but it’s hard to build a community around that.
According to my kids, candies are the most logical place to get most your nutritions from. Where else could you get so many calories?
If most of your time at work is spent socializing, couldn’t you cut your work time and build your community elsewhere?
If most of your time at work you spent on honest hard-work working, how much community are you really building?
Cut you calories. Life doesn’t happen at work.
Eh, I became a stay at home mom over the pandemic, and while I’ve never worked in an office, but on the shop floor, I do miss the shenanigans. But its almost like a trauma bond, where its like, hey, we’re all stuck here, best make the nest of it and try snd have fun while we are here.
I’m fully isolated now, and at this point terrified of crowds, when i never was before.
Not arguing at all people who can work remotely shouldn’t, they should, for a litter or reasons. But I do miss my coworkers from my employee owned factory where culture was held in high standard. Im also not arguing this should be the only place one finds community, I’m only saying, for a person like me, it helped sometimes to joke around on the new guy or collectively bitch about issues at work or hear other folks problems and offer advice or help when I could.
We socialized outside of work too. I can’t get invited to a party, or a wedding, or anything if I literally don’t know anyone. I’ve only ever known how to make friends in structured environments. But that’s wierdo me.
No, I think that’s the fair take. But to me, it’s similar when people say “Studies may teach me a thing, but I’m glad I went there because I met all this people”… Yes, you spent X years there. You’d probably bound with someone over that time if it was a different place as well. It’s perfectly understandable to have a need for structure. I just wish that work isnt that sole source of structure in most people live.
It would be logical to work less and get our own community. A lot of people work hard all their lives and die soon after retirement. That’s not logical.
Quality over quantity.
Great places to socialize are sports-clubs, social-clubs, volunteering, activism, religious communities…
I’d much rather spend five hours a week distributed over two or three occasions with people i share interests with, than with people i share work with. Meanwhile at work i am mostly engaged in small talk, that is quite repetitive as i see the people every day and i have to guard what i can say and what i cannot say more than in other circles.
No one said “sole.” It’s about a sense of community between you and your coworkers, which is a very real and normal thing. It’s spelled out in the article very clearly:
losing that sense of workplace community had a greater impact on childless men
“Workplace community.”
I’m a dad working remote and I love the benefits but I ALSO miss the sense of community with my coworkers which I used to get from lunches together, sharing the train ride home, or just working side by side at our desks.
hmm, so having or not having kids have impact on your sence of workplace community during remote work?
Does it add up to you?
Try reformulating your question in English and I’ll see if I can answer you.
I like to think I would less judgmental about people attepting to communicate with me in the only language I know. Maybe approach like that is the reason work is the only place where people spent time with you ;)
Your comment was unintelligible, sorry. I can hear you whining now, very clearly, and trying to insult me personally. So I guess you can communicate successfully when you try.
I’m glad you understood me know, thank you. I adapted your approach to learning languages - speaking slow and laudly. It worked like a charm.
A lack of non alcoholic third spaces is what I would like to talk about.
Being back mandatory poker nights!!!
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!
Same here, much prefer the peace and quiet as well as avoiding the complication & stress of maintaining a personal relationship that may or may not last. As long as I have my dog with me I’m never lonely.
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.
During the pandemic my partner stayed inside for about a month, I was the only person she interacted with. I kept going to work because I was an “essential” worker (not really), so I kinda envied her, but by the end of that month she was going a bit crazy.
That sounds amazing
Pretty much. It’s feels like someone complaining that they won the lottery.
Not everyones ideal life is to at all times be alone.
Good, then go socialize.
The issue is that people that want socialization complain that those who enjoy solitude don’t want to socialize with them, so those that prefer solitude should be forced into the office instead.
It’s a really odd thing. Stop relying on work to satisfy your socialization needs. Try a hobby instead. Anything should do - Magic the Gathering, Warhammer 40k, Tabletop RPG, sports, dance classes, anything.
the reasons they give are often super selfish, it was asked on many subs over the pandemic, they want to interact with said co-workers even if its unproductive and said coworkers do not want to make chit chat with said male workers.
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?
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.
This is a good idea, but also working remote frees up time to meet new affinity groups.
Not to dump on people’s relaxation strategies, but even the most introverted person can’t survive on video games and gooning alone.
If you don’t want or like hanging with coworkers, find a local bar to hang out at and meet some folks, go to a community board game night, join a choir, attend an anime viewing night, just do something to take initiative and meet some folks that like what you like.
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.
Tbf there’s definitely some confirmation bias in there because a person who didn’t enjoy being remote probably wouldn’t seek that type of job
True, but we were full time in the office before lockdown and at least half the staff is from before lockdown. Also our job listings are for hybrid positions since there is a rarely enforced office mandate.
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.
Just because you have anecdotal evidence of the contrary doesn’t mean it can’t be true, quantitatively. I, too, am a childless man - although I do have a wife - and don’t resonate with this, but that doesn’t mean I’ll just cast aside the findings. Many, especially young, men are unhappy in their everyday, partly due to a lack of sense od community in the “modern” world.
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Can’t wait until we figure out that improving society for the people in it, improves society overall.
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’m single and childless and I personally like being hybrid. Full work from home fucks my mental health up pretty bad. I’m definitely in the minority among my peers though. I also wouldn’t ever ask that anyone else be forced to come back to the office just because it isn’t for me.
I go in office when I want to, a few hours a day or a few times a week for a couple hours. But full work from home had me talking to myself… way too much.
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
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 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
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.
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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.
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.
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…
i’m skeptical of any study that concludes anyone would rather deal with all the bullshit of working in the office rather than wfh
no one goes to work for the “community,” which can also be gotten literally anywhere other than work
sounds like something corporate slavedriving senior executives decided they wanted a “study” on to prove people want to work in the office
no one goes to work for the “community,” which can also be gotten literally anywhere other than work
I can confidently say that a lot of my coworkers do go to work for a sense of community and also hang out with those same coworkers after hours. They basically get to see their community at work, and most of them don’t have a home office set up, so the office is a better setting for them.
I separate work and home life almost entirely, and love working from home, but do want to acknowledge that some people do want to be in the office and it isn’t only the toxic ones.
which can also be gotten literally anywhere other than work
Can it? For absolutely everyone, regardless of (mental) health? No one benefits from being monetarily pressured to interact with people even if the interaction is only surface level?
ok. the reasons someone might actually want to go to work in the office (e.g., can’t interact with people who aren’t getting paid to interact) are not the same reasons CEOs want to force you to work in the office (control; oversight; subjugation)
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).
