For me, working alone remotely and Zoom calling all day has totally killed my passion for the field.
I’ve always had a percentage of remote work, but with no in person work, events, travel, socialising, it’s just not enough to hold my attention and passion.
I’ve drifted into taking a year out of the industry and thoroughly enjoying stepping back for a while.
I’m mentally waiting for things to “return to normal” but feeling like I might be waiting for a long time.
That's really interesting. My feelings are exactly the opposite. Chats with coworkers are a "/zoom meeting" command away. Everyone's name shows up on the screen so I don't awkwardly forget them. My desk setup is exactly how I like it. I can listen to whatever music I want to all day. I can do chores to get away from the screen for a few minutes. No lines at the bathroom.
I don't think I could ever work at a non-fully-remote company again. There are challenges, and you have to force yourself to socialize at all, but it's working for me. I always enjoyed working in the office (was never really bothered by noise, I can focus through it), but remote is much better. The time that you get back by not commuting and the ability to start work without being "fully ready" is great. (I have an incremental morning routine now, rather than rushing to shower, eat, caffeinate before sitting bored on a train for a half hour.)
Remote work has given me almost two more hours of life a day (that I'd otherwise spend commuting), it made me realize how sleep deprived I used to be, and substantially improved my health - through home cooking, being less stuck to the chair, and having more time for sports.
Additionally, it has greatly improved my career, since the advent of somewhat commonplace remote work means that I have access to jobs in areas where the pay is substantially better (up to 3x my current salary). If I end up quitting it will be either to capitalize on those new opportunities or to set in stone my ability to work remotely.
> Remote work has given me almost two more hours of life a day (that I'd otherwise spend commuting)
I get this sentiment, but I want to stress to people who feel this way that long commutes are not a problem with our work culture, they are a problem with our car culture.
Instead of retreating to our homes in the suburbs, people should be demanding more compact cities with expansive public transportation. Instead of losing our "second place", let's fight to get our "third place" back!
Recently I changed job, now my commute is 15 minutes, 10 kilometers.
At work I don't have to cook for lunch, I have great air conditioning and above all I don't work from the basement, like I did at home during lockdowns.
In Australia we had been barely touched by Covid until recently. My work generally involves a lot of rural road travel and talking to farmers and I really do miss that. Can't say I miss the air travel too much, it's the random stuff that happens when you are on the road that I miss more than anything. Listening to truckies on the UHF, blasting music or just motoring with purpose, listening to the FM Radio with a schedule to keep and sometimes not knowing exactly where you will be sleeping is damn fun sometimes. Talking to random people in pubs in small towns, sometimes digging through their cast offs in op-shops. Sleeping in a swag in the tray of my ute if I had to or nothing else was available. Small town, rural Australia is always an adventure.
Now - at home in a make-shift lab and coding. I still talk to people but Zoom just isn't the same. Supply chain issues are giving me headaches and relying on transport and post to get my gear out to people is frustrating and time consuming in a way that throwing it in the ute and driving isn't.
I had high hopes we would basically be back to normal this year but Delta has killed that for the moment.
I felt the same way, I was tired of it all for months, burned out working 14-18 hour days trying to keep up with demand as traffic on the site I work for grew 200% from Covid19 lock downs (people had more time to spend online).
I was in lockdown and just worked, stayed home, slept a bit and worked out, probably lived a prison lifestyle.
I've moved out of the city and have taken up some more outdoor hobbies which has been good, but more importantly, I just stepped back, now working 4-8 hours a day max.
I saved some cash and I've decided that if I lose my job for taking it easy, then so be it. Funnily enough, I seem to be more productive now.
My experience is the exact opposite. Having to be around people all day has been slowly draining the will to live from my soul for years. I dread the return to ‘normal’.
Another thing that I hear a lot is people complaining about a lack of work/life balance due to work from home and again here I feel the exact opposite. It has always felt really strange to me to confine work and the rest of my life into separate blocks of time and space. Going to an office, and spending an 8 hour block of time just on work, then going home and spending another 8 hour block on personal things before sleeping seems really unnatural and unhealthy to me.
With WfH I can blur the lines between them. When I’m stuck on something work related, I can just do some mindless chore around the house and that usually ets my mind unstuck. There is nothing more stressful than sitting at my desk in the office while beings stuck with nothing to do to take my mind off it for a while other than browsing the internet.
It just feels more natural and way less stressful to me to naturally flow from work to personal stuff and back.
Yes, it was so amazing to just get to restructure my life as I saw fit to achieve what I needed to do.
That and just being able to do things in parallel was extremely valuable. Laundry could be run during the day. Same with the dishwasher. I could be around at 1 to put ribs in the oven for dinner. No more having to schlep down to the post office for missed deliveries.
It was quite fun while it lasted as I prefer to be able to blend everything I need to do into a single list.
> There is nothing more stressful than sitting at my desk in the office while beings stuck with nothing to do to take my mind off it for a while other than browsing the internet.
Go for a walk? Talk to another colleague about the problem or present them with a related theoretical?
Same with me dude, I'm getting burnt out just waking up, sleeping, and playing in the same place again and again. Used to have a lot of fun with other people in the office too
That’s not healthy, can attest. You need a space dedicated for work and you need to get outside once in a while. If it’s all mixed up it can go really wrong over time. I hope I’m not overstepping, this is heartfelt advice from someone who did it wrong for too long.
Find yourself a co-working space somewhere in town. I live in a rather small town, but even here I found a place with about 20 other people. I started 2 weeks ago. I did more than the previous 6 months. I just cannot work at home.
I think that is a very self defeating attitude by someone who didn't even bother to try and improve their situation.
You don't have to be the sad lonely remote worker if that bothers you so much. Remote work has definitely HUGE advantages allowing people to find a much healthier work life balance and has undeniably a net positive effect in comparison to what we had before, but I agree, 100% remote and never stepping out of your house again and meeting other people is NOT healthy at all. Good news is, nobody forces you to live like this though. I have signed up for a co-working space where I live. WeWork offices are littered around the world. It costs only $199 or something like this to get a flexi hot desk where you can go to any WeWork in your country. I go into a co-working space at least once or twice a week. I sit next to other people who also work and we chat, socialise, we still play ping pong during our breaks and we stroll out to a pub afterwards. Most co-working spaces even organise weekly/monthly social events which makes it even easier to connect with other people.
If you feel isolated because of remote work, then it's not because of remote work, it's because of your own choice to not help yourself. It's like a child crying that their trousers are wet after repeatedly pissing themselves instead of going to the bathroom.
We are never going back to normal. I don't know how to make people understand that. It seems they keep believing that if they just go along and do what they are told, things will be normal again.
You will see more variants of covid, more restrictions. If you go along with vaccinating and wearing health passes, you will be left alone for now. But you will have to continue to accept whatever they say. You no longer have any right to say no.
You do know that this will end, right? The Black Plague ended and they didn't even have antibiotics back then (heck, they didn't even have proper handwashing back then :-) ).
Yes, there will probably be some changes compared to life before Covid, but by and large normal activities such socializing, in developed countries, will be back to regular levels once we've vaccinated enough people. Which should be by mid-2022 at the latest.
Of course, if people refuse to be vaccinated, they're only prolonging this hell. Can't have both personal freedom and lack of personal responsibility, democracy doesn't work like that.
I've worked remote for over a decade but this past year has been harder because you had so many more chores around the house plus less options to go outside plus school closures.
So, I am basically quite tired. I am kinda considering just taking a sabbatical year.
I still like the work, but the non-stop stress from corona, the non-stop news and the barely functioning society makes work a bit futile.
I've discovered the only thing I enjoyed to buy were books. And I need more time and quiet to read them.
Might just be a bit of burnout. I've been a professional programmer for almost 50 years. I love it. But every 10 years or so, I fantasize about throwing all the computers out the window and doing something totally non-tech. Usually lasts about 6 months, then some new tech grabs my interest and I start all over again :-)
No matter how much you love something, you need the occasional break..I think that's just human nature.
> I still like the work, but the non-stop stress from corona, the non-stop news and the barely functioning society makes work a bit futile.
I don't know how the breakdown of society makes itself felt for you, but if it's through news: take a sabbatical from news. The important stuff ("the sky is falling") will still reach you, but all the stuff that's not immediately relevant to you (i.e. everything not happening in a 30m radius around your home) isn't, and can't stress you out.
I'm one of these people. Changed to a 40% contract, work Mon-Tue. I am in a privileged position where I'm able to live with my wage comfortably, albeit frugally. Living in Nordics helps too.
I was expecting that I'd be dwelling deep with all of those side projects that I was craving to do on work days instead of solving semi to not-at-all exciting problems for a company. Found out that those were mostly escapistic fantasies to regain my creative mind under the time and stress pressures.
Now I enjoy living simply. I feel better mentally and physically. Interesting to see where this will go. Maybe I'll eat the hustle fruit some day and start grinding - this idea that dictated my adult life seems very alien for me now.
How does a 40% contract work for the company? Is what you are doing just rather small/not urgent (I mean this respectfully) for the company? I have asked a couple managers why companies do not offer this option and their answer is usually deadline/project size.
An aside, though I think a worthy one; my favorite casual rebuttal to the pretentious phrase "knowledge worker" exists here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yDXPkor-Wxk
On topic though, I think that to the extent the New Yorker is describing the subset of technical work that many HN participants are engaged in, burn out was already a big problem pre-pandemic. So it's not a complete surprise for burnout to be on the rise during a such a global level catastrophe, even though many in tech have done well for themselves with steady high salary throughout the duration of the pandemic
Nice article and thanks for sharing. I can relate to the article in that I’ve been a consultant for four years now. I, like many, am now remote with no foreseeable return to an office. I feel like Ive gone through so many phases of feelings since Ive been home and it’s wearing me down badly. I am ready to turn in my notice with no prospect on the horizon simply so I can go back to being normal, or as near to it as can be. I used to love my job. Now it’s this beast hiding in another room of my house and I fight with it every day.
I don't know if I'm going to quit 'knowledge work', but its sadly telling that the most satisfying project I've had all year is refurbing my mower deck with some paint and new blades and bearings.
I used to go to work with my dad and we'd bust out torches and welders and saws and compressors. Neither of my kids had anything beyond a passing interest in computers and my job (infosec) is completely invisible to them. There are definitely rewarding parts of the vocation and I'm still glad I'm in it, but visceral satisfaction can be difficult to find.
I don't know what this has to do with anything lol.
Working with your hands is so satisfying. As is seeing the results with your eyes after a day of work. That being said, I am not good enough at that stuff to actually live of it. Plus, doing these jobs at scale still needs a ton of knowledge work.
Unless you were on cusp of retirement, I too believe that people will return back to work.
I also think that there will be some price to pay in terms of inflated pay packages and promotions people are getting these days. Some are warranted, some not.
While I've pay disequilibrium and imbalance before, never to this extent. When business cycle shifts and economy turns, the extent of layoff will be far greater.
Soo much this! There's always going to be boom and bust cycles. And you know you're going to get screwed in the 'bust' cycles. The only question is, will you take full advantage of the 'boom' cycles.
Anyone else pushing their sabbatical for when the world finally opens up?
I'd like to take some time off and decompress. Travel a little, learn a few things and eventually work on my side projects but the world being closed is a big mental blocker as that doesn't permit free travel.
Waiting for the world to open up so that I can sell everything and buy a 1 way ticket to Bali. Don't see it happening anytime soon though.
The world isn't closed. I've been traveling for most of 2021, and when I started, I was "shocked" to find fellow travelers who've been traveling throughout 2020 as well.
Asia is fully closed. That's due to their culture. Latin America is fully open, due to the same reason. The Covid restrictions map is the new map of the world. Pick a green spot and go.
> Asia is fully closed. That's due to their culture.
The famous shared culture of 3 billion people. /s
Not sure which countries you were looking at, but there are some where they do not have sufficient supplies of vaccines. That might be why they're closed to visitors.
I left my lucrative cybersecurity startup job to pursue full time independent research in AGI. Several months in and it's been great progress wise, and I have to live more frugally.
Being on the cyber startup was like being on a cruise ship headed to some destination that was "just okay", all the while seeing an island off in the distance that we were slowly passing by, which is where I wanted to be. I jumped off the bow and started swimming towards the most meaningful goal I could hope to apply my skills toward. Will I advance the field of artificial consciousness? I hope to. There's so much I don't know, and even more no one really knows. COVID was a gift. Political and economic turmoil is a gift. I was already focusing on the goal of AGI, but the strife of the world gave me the will to leap for it.
I'm in a similar situation; worked in a lucrative salary startup job with same "heading towards profitability and okay" and felt like that's not the destination I wanted to be; and now I'm working as a researcher in research-oriented startup toward consciousness research, with more freedom (but less than half the original salary).
While it's not related to COVID and remote work that much, not being able to spend the earned money on fun activities for sure put an extra question-mark in the "why am I doing this again?"
I'm a software architect and really want to transition to AGI work. I feel like it's the most meaningful area of advancement I can work in. Any advice on how to get involved without being a software developer? I refuse to go back to programming lines of code.
AGI draws upon dozens of fields. The facet of AI Safety and Risk Mitigation consulting is where I started, and I was heavily influenced by Dr. Roman Yampolskiy. By the time we met in person I was already designing a bootstrap. It was a joy to get my hands in the code. When you find your real meaning for being on this earth, you won't refuse anything to go after it.
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I’ve always had a percentage of remote work, but with no in person work, events, travel, socialising, it’s just not enough to hold my attention and passion.
I’ve drifted into taking a year out of the industry and thoroughly enjoying stepping back for a while.
I’m mentally waiting for things to “return to normal” but feeling like I might be waiting for a long time.
I don't think I could ever work at a non-fully-remote company again. There are challenges, and you have to force yourself to socialize at all, but it's working for me. I always enjoyed working in the office (was never really bothered by noise, I can focus through it), but remote is much better. The time that you get back by not commuting and the ability to start work without being "fully ready" is great. (I have an incremental morning routine now, rather than rushing to shower, eat, caffeinate before sitting bored on a train for a half hour.)
Remote work has given me almost two more hours of life a day (that I'd otherwise spend commuting), it made me realize how sleep deprived I used to be, and substantially improved my health - through home cooking, being less stuck to the chair, and having more time for sports.
Additionally, it has greatly improved my career, since the advent of somewhat commonplace remote work means that I have access to jobs in areas where the pay is substantially better (up to 3x my current salary). If I end up quitting it will be either to capitalize on those new opportunities or to set in stone my ability to work remotely.
I get this sentiment, but I want to stress to people who feel this way that long commutes are not a problem with our work culture, they are a problem with our car culture.
Instead of retreating to our homes in the suburbs, people should be demanding more compact cities with expansive public transportation. Instead of losing our "second place", let's fight to get our "third place" back!
Only that I now spend most of that extra time for more work & I'm behind 1.5 years on all my podcasts
Now - at home in a make-shift lab and coding. I still talk to people but Zoom just isn't the same. Supply chain issues are giving me headaches and relying on transport and post to get my gear out to people is frustrating and time consuming in a way that throwing it in the ute and driving isn't.
I had high hopes we would basically be back to normal this year but Delta has killed that for the moment.
Also...
> Sleeping in a swag in the tray of my ute
Loved that. It''s so good it could be a line in a song. Nice writing!
You write beautifully.
I was in lockdown and just worked, stayed home, slept a bit and worked out, probably lived a prison lifestyle.
I've moved out of the city and have taken up some more outdoor hobbies which has been good, but more importantly, I just stepped back, now working 4-8 hours a day max.
I saved some cash and I've decided that if I lose my job for taking it easy, then so be it. Funnily enough, I seem to be more productive now.
Another thing that I hear a lot is people complaining about a lack of work/life balance due to work from home and again here I feel the exact opposite. It has always felt really strange to me to confine work and the rest of my life into separate blocks of time and space. Going to an office, and spending an 8 hour block of time just on work, then going home and spending another 8 hour block on personal things before sleeping seems really unnatural and unhealthy to me.
With WfH I can blur the lines between them. When I’m stuck on something work related, I can just do some mindless chore around the house and that usually ets my mind unstuck. There is nothing more stressful than sitting at my desk in the office while beings stuck with nothing to do to take my mind off it for a while other than browsing the internet.
It just feels more natural and way less stressful to me to naturally flow from work to personal stuff and back.
That and just being able to do things in parallel was extremely valuable. Laundry could be run during the day. Same with the dishwasher. I could be around at 1 to put ribs in the oven for dinner. No more having to schlep down to the post office for missed deliveries.
It was quite fun while it lasted as I prefer to be able to blend everything I need to do into a single list.
Go for a walk? Talk to another colleague about the problem or present them with a related theoretical?
You don't have to be the sad lonely remote worker if that bothers you so much. Remote work has definitely HUGE advantages allowing people to find a much healthier work life balance and has undeniably a net positive effect in comparison to what we had before, but I agree, 100% remote and never stepping out of your house again and meeting other people is NOT healthy at all. Good news is, nobody forces you to live like this though. I have signed up for a co-working space where I live. WeWork offices are littered around the world. It costs only $199 or something like this to get a flexi hot desk where you can go to any WeWork in your country. I go into a co-working space at least once or twice a week. I sit next to other people who also work and we chat, socialise, we still play ping pong during our breaks and we stroll out to a pub afterwards. Most co-working spaces even organise weekly/monthly social events which makes it even easier to connect with other people.
If you feel isolated because of remote work, then it's not because of remote work, it's because of your own choice to not help yourself. It's like a child crying that their trousers are wet after repeatedly pissing themselves instead of going to the bathroom.
As it happens, I spent most of the year on the beach with zero regrets whatsoever.
Enjoy your WeWork.
You will see more variants of covid, more restrictions. If you go along with vaccinating and wearing health passes, you will be left alone for now. But you will have to continue to accept whatever they say. You no longer have any right to say no.
Yes, there will probably be some changes compared to life before Covid, but by and large normal activities such socializing, in developed countries, will be back to regular levels once we've vaccinated enough people. Which should be by mid-2022 at the latest.
Of course, if people refuse to be vaccinated, they're only prolonging this hell. Can't have both personal freedom and lack of personal responsibility, democracy doesn't work like that.
Dead Comment
So, I am basically quite tired. I am kinda considering just taking a sabbatical year.
I still like the work, but the non-stop stress from corona, the non-stop news and the barely functioning society makes work a bit futile.
I've discovered the only thing I enjoyed to buy were books. And I need more time and quiet to read them.
Maybe it's a form of weird midlife crisis.
No matter how much you love something, you need the occasional break..I think that's just human nature.
I don't know how the breakdown of society makes itself felt for you, but if it's through news: take a sabbatical from news. The important stuff ("the sky is falling") will still reach you, but all the stuff that's not immediately relevant to you (i.e. everything not happening in a 30m radius around your home) isn't, and can't stress you out.
There is no 'safety net' anymore: many things are either closed or handling Corona. This is what I mean by breakdown of society.
Dead Comment
I was expecting that I'd be dwelling deep with all of those side projects that I was craving to do on work days instead of solving semi to not-at-all exciting problems for a company. Found out that those were mostly escapistic fantasies to regain my creative mind under the time and stress pressures.
Now I enjoy living simply. I feel better mentally and physically. Interesting to see where this will go. Maybe I'll eat the hustle fruit some day and start grinding - this idea that dictated my adult life seems very alien for me now.
On topic though, I think that to the extent the New Yorker is describing the subset of technical work that many HN participants are engaged in, burn out was already a big problem pre-pandemic. So it's not a complete surprise for burnout to be on the rise during a such a global level catastrophe, even though many in tech have done well for themselves with steady high salary throughout the duration of the pandemic
I used to go to work with my dad and we'd bust out torches and welders and saws and compressors. Neither of my kids had anything beyond a passing interest in computers and my job (infosec) is completely invisible to them. There are definitely rewarding parts of the vocation and I'm still glad I'm in it, but visceral satisfaction can be difficult to find.
I don't know what this has to do with anything lol.
I also think that there will be some price to pay in terms of inflated pay packages and promotions people are getting these days. Some are warranted, some not.
While I've pay disequilibrium and imbalance before, never to this extent. When business cycle shifts and economy turns, the extent of layoff will be far greater.
Soo much this! There's always going to be boom and bust cycles. And you know you're going to get screwed in the 'bust' cycles. The only question is, will you take full advantage of the 'boom' cycles.
I'd like to take some time off and decompress. Travel a little, learn a few things and eventually work on my side projects but the world being closed is a big mental blocker as that doesn't permit free travel.
Waiting for the world to open up so that I can sell everything and buy a 1 way ticket to Bali. Don't see it happening anytime soon though.
Asia is fully closed. That's due to their culture. Latin America is fully open, due to the same reason. The Covid restrictions map is the new map of the world. Pick a green spot and go.
The famous shared culture of 3 billion people. /s
Not sure which countries you were looking at, but there are some where they do not have sufficient supplies of vaccines. That might be why they're closed to visitors.
While it's not related to COVID and remote work that much, not being able to spend the earned money on fun activities for sure put an extra question-mark in the "why am I doing this again?"