Remote work is bad for you(mrmarket.bearblog.dev) |
Remote work is bad for you(mrmarket.bearblog.dev) |
> I work for a fully remote company. I am married and I have the normal amount of friends. I have a great relationship with my family, who lives nearby (within an hour). My wife works from home 2 days a week so I am only completely alone 3 days out of the week, which isn't bad.
Old Geezer Story: A century or so ago, my father lived on a farm, in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Plains_%28United_States%2... of Colorado. Daily human company consisted of his father (grandma died of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberculosis before dad was a year old), maybe a hired hand when things were busy, and neighbors - who might live a mile or more away. Visiting even the little local farming town was a Big Deal - good weather forecasts didn't exist, roads could be deep mud, and anything motor-driven was extremely expensive (by small-farm standards), unreliable, and maintenance-intensive.
Dad's circumstances were shared by millions of Americans, stretching back centuries before he was born. There are loads of diaries, memoirs, histories, and such - telling how those people lived, and coped with the isolation.
Or didn't cope. It was well-known, back then, that many people "were just not cut out for" life on a remote farm. Yes, plenty of folks were judgmental, calling that a personal or moral failing. But my understanding is that the farmers, who knew what it was actually like, were far more charitable.
i do think there is a weird diaspora that comes from being 'technically in contact' with large swaths of people (say, your 150 person company) but physically in contact with very few, vs. being in obvious isolation (aka on a farm with just your family + known hired hand around.)
But yes - the social feel would have been very different from working 40 hour weeks at an in-person office with 150 coworkers.