>For this reason I think WFH is a massively more risky social experiment than most realize.

I think it's the opposite. The standard where people commute to the office, spend all day in the workplace, and commute home with barely enough time to tend to their needs is the failed social experiment, creating unprecedented levels of isolation and entire generations of people who can't form relations outside of work.

I also don't think it's all that healthy for people's primary avenue for building friendships being in a venue where layoffs and transfers could disrupt that process suddenly and without any real recourse.

One thing the marketing of industrialization (I want to say propaganda, but I know how people are...) was quite successful at was in erasing memory of the period just before, when piece-work at home (and farming, lots of farming) was the primary form productive labor took. There is quite a lot of documentation of industrial bosses complaining about such set-ups because they allowed workers to set their own hours and modulate their output to their needs (excuse me, "be lazy").

> Having to have everything scheduled weeks in advance

I don't see how WFH makes this worse, in fact it probably makes it better (less time spent commuting, more ability to end the day early with a flexible employer, etc)

> Having to have everything scheduled weeks in advance is utterly exhausting and incredibly anxiety inducing to me. If I didn't already have friends I could do spontaneous things with, I'm not sure how I'd be able to have any sort of social life at all. I certainly am not alone in this, even if I'm a minority.

I feel similarly, but I don't understand how working at the office solves this problem. Are you saying that you mostly socialize by spontaneously going out after work with coworkers? Or that your you and your friends work in the same general vicinity, so you can text them near the end of the workday, and spontaneously go do something together?

I do WFH for about 9 months now and i’m not a big fan of it in general (for myself). I can’t go back in the office because i moved too far away, and would have to find a new job to work in an office (quite ironic, isn’t it?). There are some pros, like i eat a lot healthier, sleep a lot better, save a lot of money on gas. But two days without leaving the house is not uncommon, because I don’t have to and since i don’t know anybody around here and don’t do any team sports I haven’t made any friendships or contacts in any way.

I really liked being in the office and have the ability to talk to people which share your interests (which is just my work currently)

I solved that joining a coworking space. It changed my life, made a lot of friends since we see each other everyday. We have coffee/lunch chats which lead to friendships.

The great thing about it is you get to choose the space so it can fit what you're looking for (quiet, programmer heavy, artsy, walking distance, with a cafeteria, next to the gym, etc), you also don't have the pressure of them being colleagues so your relationship can be about other things (sports, games, music, pottery, going out)

Isn’t factory and office work the social experiment? Just a couple centuries ago most work was done at home, or out on the farm, with only the owner/tenant and his family around. WFH is somewhat of a reversion to the historical mean.

If we are going all “risky social experiment”, one could argue that almost all of humanity worked from home/neighborhood until passenger rail showed up in the mid 19th Century, and thus the actual anomalous human situation/experiment has been the last 150 years of commuting to work from home. A time of two World Wars and many major bloody military conflicts, breakdown of the family, weakening of community, growth and spread of colonialism, etc.. Perhaps Africa could have been spared the blessing of European colonialism if Nigel, Jacque, Fritz etc. had stayed at home making shoes. (Or maybe not.)

Humans and associated social institutions evolved out of a WFH culture for hundreds of years, and perhaps those time-proven institutions would work better in 2024 if we returned to a WFH culture. Commuting culture may have been the “massive risky social experiment” of the last Century.

Differing perspective but wanted to share:

I find trying to socialize and make friends in an office situation to be incredibly stressful. Everyone in an office is there to primarily make money, and the politics implied make it hard for me to let my guard down and meaningfully connect with anyone.

I greatly prefer socializing with people over hobbies -- everyone is at the gathering willingly to enjoy a hobby, which means I have something in common with everyone participating.

Far superior, but then... I like having a groove and knowing when my next social gathering will be. I like routines. It sounds like you don't, which I can sympathize with, and I'm glad you have friends to spontaneously hang out with and hope you get to expand your circle and enjoy your life.

> For this reason I think WFH is a massively more risky social experiment than most realize. It works for folks who were either already inclined to "go out and do things" or those who already had established social groups. We will see how this pans out in a generation or two.

I wonder if this would vary by country and culture?

I wonder if there is a statistically noticeable difference in experience between places like the US and Northern Europe that seem to be more more work-focused compared to Southern European countries like Spain and Italy which have a reputation for having a better work/life balance.

I WFH since pandemic. I have it good with current company and my home setup is a blast.

But next year resolution is that I will be renting a desk in a coworking space.

While I don’t have problem as I have enough fiends and family to hang out with.

I believe that I leave business opportunities lying somewhere there on the table and if current contract ends I will be on much worse bargaining position than when I will having more business connections hopefully created by sharing co work space.

I don’t think I’d have agreed to volunteer at church as much as I do without WFH.

> A lot of people will simply not do this, even if they know they should.

This cannot be understated. When you consider the number of singles and young couples out there, it's pretty astounding how difficult it is to meet them in an organic manner. I totally agree with the person you were replying to, in the sense that people can get out there and just start meeting others, but it's still a tremendous investment of time and effort when the vast majority of other friendship-seeking individuals out there aren't investing anything close to that level of effort. I know because I've pretty much figured out how to just talk to people I meet in public, but it's still exhausting when your desire is to meet people who can be longer term friends or even romantic partners.

What makes things even more difficult is the limited number of venues where it's feasible or appropriate for people to meet each other. I recently considered joining a church in order to expand my social circle (and yes, as well as open myself up to spiritual experiences) but, frankly, church crowds today resemble senior groups. I love talking to elderly folks, but it can be difficult to relate to them on a close friendship level. I find this to also be true of other ways to form social circles, to a somewhat lesser extent. Many meetup groups are full of the 50+ crowd, and surprisingly devoid of the 20s through 40s crowd. I think the older generations are just better at getting out there regularly; young people tend to show up to a single event (and even paid classes!) and never return. I can't entirely blame them, but it's also a chicken-or-the-egg problem. Everyone complains about being lonely, but then they don't get out there and return to the same venues so they can see the same people repeatedly.

There's a lot of busy people, but I've met enough people who really aren't that busy that I think business is too often used as an excuse to not leave one's comfort zone. It's so easy to stay in the comfort of one's home that I think that's what many people resort to doing. Netflix, Reddit, Doordash, Amazon, Hinge, and Pornhub in combination are much too immediately satiating.

The are many options such as:

- Going to pubs and striking up conversations at the bar

- Meetup groups

- Volunteering

- Going to places like museums and striking up conversations

- Singles mixers

- Bar trivia nights

- Taking classes

And far too few people do them consistently, if at all.

If it weren’t for church services and semi-regular in-office work, my in-person contact would be just wife and kids.

I believe the Japanese have a near analogous term for this: Hikikomori.

I completely disagree, and think work from home (which most of our ancestors did until the industrial revolution) is infinitely better for making and sustaining healthy friendships. There's not 90-120 minutes of commute time sitting alone in a car. There's not the very common occurrences of layoffs and promotions making you directly competing with each other. Instead you've got all that extra time to just spend time with your neighbors and make friendships.

You can choose to work from a co-working space, coffeeshops, libraries, or just stay at home. But instead of getting home exhausted at 6-7pm needing to cook, clean, chores, etc, you can get that stuff done during your lunch break and then pop around to a friend's house by 5:05pm.

It's so much better I can't imagine going back to an office where I'm sitting alone and sad in a cube all day trying to focus while people yammer on the phone right next to me.

Being an extroverted libertarian, I sort of struggle with this topic. What are we supposed to do with people who can’t take care of their own mental health? Force them? Wait until they become a burden on the rest of us?

It seems to me like there are no good options.

> For this reason I think WFH is a massively more risky social experiment than most realize. It works for folks who were either already inclined to "go out and do things" or those who already had established social groups. We will see how this pans out in a generation or two.

Right on all points, I think.

I agree, sailing is a particularly good sport for making friends… however it tends to be mostly older people. I just decided to make friends with people my parents age, and I’ve made a lot of good friends that way regardless.

That's a very big generalisation. While people here will tend to be in tech we all come from different places, have different experiences and work in vastly different things

> You are aware, that you are on a board of grinding workaholics, who work hard to have nobody escape the gulag of modern labor - by forcing everyone to grind their lifes to dust to compete with them?

As Pat Paulsen might have said, "Picky, picky, picky." Threads about social disconnection come up pretty often on the front page for all that. I don't think the people being ground into dust (and I agree with you that there are an increasing number of them) are on HN. People posting here seem to have the financial wherewithal to break the bonds of work at least occasionally and often more than that.

Sheesh. A little nihilist much?

Yes, modern capitalist society is really great at making human needs scarce (friends, relationships) and human wants abundant (junk food, video games).

But I don't think there's really a point in stewing too much about the society we live in, it's easier to accept that this is our reality, and that we have to work extra hard for the things in life that matter. Giving up only creates a much worse situation for yourself.

People back in the day had to do extremely difficult manual labor all day long, think of it as though the "extremely difficult labor" has changed into social labor - from making friends to dating to maintaining relationships.

And you know you don't have to be a workaholic, right? I work 9-5, I have time for other things in life. I have a few friends at the office but I'm not thinking "work is life" ever.

For games stuff, you can go to game stores and competitions. There are book clubs too. The trouble with a lot of these things is that most people don't actually want to make friends who are all about either of those things. They want to make demographically matched friends that are willing to do more than one thing. If your game group is a bunch of 18 year old dorky dudes, and you're in your 30s, you are likely to feel out of place. If you're single and want to date out of your friend group, you might have to broaden your horizons to include stuff that the opposite sex tends to like. You won't be welcome in many of those contexts either.

> I'm not sure how to find good public groups for people like me with the intent of finding friends for less public interests like video games, board games, books, etc.

I've found a local group of friends by posting that I want to start a D&D campaign - I did this both online, and by literally putting up posters. Later, I joined a discord with the same intent.

I've run one campaign with some local friends, and am in two others with other people. We see each other at least once every two weeks.

> so I’ve been resistant to putting down roots

Question about this. My partner is similar -- if we aren't going to be somewhere "forever" they are hesitant to do any "work" to socialize etc. because "we are leaving soon". In what ways do you perceive "putting down roots" as somehow unappealing if you don't know how long you'll be there?

(I almost said "how long you'll be around" -- but none of us know that, so really the question is even more pointed!)

> I think too many people think friendship is what happens between people that are the same

This is so true. Just think, why is it that as children we often become friends with the kid who lives next door or across the street? Is it that we magically have the same tastes? Or is it just that we see them all the time?

This was true for people I know who had kids 20 years ago, but not so much today. When I became a parent, I thought I’d be meeting and hanging around with all the other parents, but so far (kid is now 12), this didn’t end up happening. Kids all hang out online now. Nobody wants to get together in person. My kid has had some friends for years, where I still have not even met the friends’ parents. In the rare event one of them wants to come over to our home to visit, the parent quietly drops the kid off at the end of our driveway and speeds away like a ninja.

I’ve found most of my new friends in my 50’s by going to little local museums that interest me, such as a small clock museum and a military history museum, and inserting myself into them by volunteering to help out.

Make your own meetup. Honest advice, everybody sort of sees you as the guy to become friends with if you're the leader.

> Sports, especially, are something that I have a very difficult time imagining enjoying

There is a wide range of sports :) My mom always tried to force me into team sports like football, hockey and alike, which never really was my thing. But as an adult, I enjoy things like skiing, water-sports, table-tennis and a bunch of other sports, that I see less like "sports" but more like "enjoyable activities", but also really makes it easy to meet people with similar interests :)

Local library. Recreation centers. Local board game shops. Events and activities in the community. Volunteering. Religious groups. College campuses often host groups and events from the community. Art classes. Dance classes.

Check the local newspaper as they often list events and activities.

Go mentor a high school robotics team, or volunteer to help run events. It's 100% sports, minus the athletic dimension. I see tons of lifetime friendships being made.

> but most groups don't organically sprout around interests.

If you are only looking for people with the same niche interest, it will probably be more difficult to find local groups. But if you're open to meeting new people that are interested in social connectivity, local sports teams are the way to go. I've meet friends through co-ed sports that work in fields I would rather not come into much direct contact with: police officers, tsa, tax auditor, etc. People I never would have met otherwise (turns out they are just like other humans; who knew!) Seriously though, they don't all become best friends, but mostly social acquaintances and that works for me. I did get a couple best friends out of it some time ago.

> Sports, especially, are something that I have a very difficult time imagining enjoying.

Kickball. There are no high school/college/main pro leagues, so you avoid that one competitive team that all played on a school sports team. And get a bunch of people looking to socialize while playing a rather silly game no one is expected to excel at. To shore up that reality, join co-ed sports teams. I have witnessed games in both Mens and Womens leagues and they are much more about the competition.

> imagining enjoying

Try it and find out if you really don’t like it. Maybe you’ll hear about something else you will like more.

With websites and social media accounts being simple to create, just search google and instagram for “<x thing you’re interested in> club/meetup/group”. Lots of small groups make one for this purpose. It’s worked for me!

Book clubs, art clubs, movie club... Lot of options

Specially having same sports interests, does not help in finding people with more or less same values/ world view. I cannot really make good friends with people on the opposite side of my thinking.

Climbing gyms

Have you tried DnD? My father has a biweekly DnD session where he’s met a ton of people.

> And with the slow enshittification of meetup, where do you find these groups?

Meetup still works, although it is slowly enshittifying, I would agree. Taking away features that had always been there systematically so they can sell a subscription service to everyone. Ugh.

But for now you can still see lists of meetup events and descriptions and sign up to attend those events without paying.

If it weren't for Meetup I wouldn't have stumbled upon a local movies and dinner group last year that has quite a few people I really relate to and we now plan other activities outside of meetup as well. Trying out a few other new meetups next year as well that look maybe a bit promising.

I also have more and better friends at 25 then I had when I was 10 or 15 or 17.

One of the reasons, I think, is, being able to choose your friends. In schools, I was forced to see the same group of people every day, for years.

I don't disagree with you on the basic premise, but I'm pretty sure that the person you're replying to is a religious adult who has their shit together, and is probably not going to a church group that meets in a van down by the river, and practices "Steveism" or whatever.

For all of my problems with religion, churches are a good way for religious people to make friends and establish a social circle. It's one of the few Third Places left in our society.

I debated replying to this but I have to ask, “religious groups” is a very broad brush. I’ve been in various churches for most of my life and I’ve only seen them try to help the most vulnerable. In my area, post Helene it was the churches organizing volunteer chain saw crews to help get trees off of houses, cars and roads just as an example.

What would make you think they prey on vulnerable people?

I’m 36 and my new daughter (8 months) has helped me come out of my shell. It’s given me something to connect with other people about.

With the caveat that you need to be in a setting where the other “kids” are doing it full time too. If that were the case, I do think it would be easy. Interesting insight.