>Working remote is just what I need, and I am way more productive.
I acknowledge that you and many others derive personal satisfaction from productivity. I do too. However, I strongly believe we should move away from productivity as the measure of whether we should work from home. Primarily because it individualizes productivity and turns any deficits into a moral failing. It is incumbent on our employers to create the conditions which align productivity with our well-being as people, and balance those. Else, we are being exploited.
Put another way, and framing it opposite from what you said:
"Working remote is not what I need because I am less productive" should not be an argument against working from home. You may not need working remotely for other reasons -- social being one of them -- but it's important not to prioritize productivity to the occlusion of all other factors.
I put in forty hours a week as per my employment contract states. If I'm more or less productive is irrelevant to the amount of time I have to take care of myself or my family.
If I have a productive day, I sign off between 4-5 PM. If I have a non-productive day, I sign off between 4-5 PM.
If I happen to be more productive it does not mean I get more hours to do stuff in my personal time / get more personal time.
Because I am more productive when working from home, I can easily get the job done in half the time. This means that my manager is happy, and I sign off after lunch and have the rest of the day for myself. That's also why I always try to schedule meetings no later than 1pm.
I have all those too. But even when you are fully remote, and have a healthy outside social support system away from work, you cannot ignore the reality that is you spend the majority of your waking hours working alongside these people, often for the same goals and deadlines. It's a basic desire to connect with others we share our time with.
Unless you are one of the rare people where you truly are a solo shop (even then you have people requesting the work from you), I want to meet, converse, and get to know the people that I spend a bulk of my waking hours with, and depend on together to do a good job because I feel like that's showing those other people basic dignity.
> It's a basic desire to connect with others we share our time with.
I think you're creating a universal here where there is none. I have secure boundaries, and I can enjoy a coworker's company and work without having to be friends with them. And there's also an ugly side to this, where people don't want to have coworkers that they wouldn't want to be friends with. That's not some natural urge, that's something that people impose on a situation that is alienating to people who don't share your politics, or your tastes, or even like the way you treat people (I'm referring to the hypothetical "you" here.)
I have really enjoyed working with people who I'd never want to know outside of work, and have a huge amount of respect for those people whose work ethic and trustworthiness showed a real thoughtfulness and concern about what they were doing and for their coworkers' time and development. That's good enough for me, we don't have to share musical tastes or hobbies. On the other side, I've certainly made friends with people at work, but some of the people I made friends with I hated working with. The two things are barely connected.
Apologies if I wasn't clear, I didn't say or mean be friends with them. But being coworkers with someone is indeed a type of relationship. I wasn't meaning to conflate those two, but acknowledge the commonality between the two.
Me too, but I met my wife through work (we didn't work together, but I met her through a lady I did work with). I think a lot of young people - not just men - are hoping to interact with potential romantic partners through work.
This is true historically but the culture does seem to be moving away from the idea of it being OK to date coworkers. I know a lot of younger people (like me) would be quite nervous about the prospect of coming onto someone in the workplace. Even with good intentions there is potential for miscommunication or making someone uncomfortable.
I once thought I would like to have kids, based on the incredible diversity and splendor of the experiences and people and places the world had to offer. It seemed right, to create new lives to share in that.
Now that the texture of being a person in the world is mainly to be on Zoom calls, I think it would be cruel. Zoom school, Zoom friends, Zoom job, Zoom dates, only to produce yet another human who can attend Zoom school. What kind of life is that to being a child into?
We’ll still have books! That might be worth it on its own. And places take a while to decay. Maybe we can wander the remnants of places, from back when places were a thing. Maybe there will still be enough weirdos to sustain some kind of live performance tradition in unusual and expensive places. Maybe some especially backwards communities, after they have sold the school buildings, will retain the athletic fields. But I dunno. A world where the default condition is to sit alone on the internet from your nowhere-sprawl house, cradle to grave, is pretty fucking bleak.
I don't really miss at all the office, let alone my co-workers. Working remote is just what I need, and I am way more productive.