I’m glad someone is bringing awareness to the negative aspects of remote work / digital nomadism. It’s been romanticized far too much and encourages too many people to take for granted the structures of an office and fixed work times to provide healthy social interaction and reinforced purpose.
From all the different comments here, viability of remote work clearly varies by personality and personal life state. I’ll just share my story a bit for what it’s worth.
I own my own company and now I work remote. I am actually pretty outgoing and effective at making new friends by jumping into groups / activities solo. That said, I did not think about the need to make extra efforts when making the shift to not having an office with built-in community. My initial reaction was get my home setup with all the coffee/food/workstation so I wouldn’t have to leave (how efficient!), but now I realized that exacerbates the negative aspect of isolation. If you don’t have a family or friends pulling you into activities (older friends with families of their own are not going to be inviting you to activities regularly), things can get quiet pretty quick. I definitely miss the team lunches, happy hours and office off-site days (hell I end up crashing some of my friends' company offsites now). As for work balance, I’m quite self-driven but without a set schedule, it requires mindfulness and discipline to keep work flow in a healthy balance. This is an ongoing effort for remote workers, whereas for most colocated jobs, it’s just built-in when you show up.
I love my work so I don’t intend to find a job (although I have seriously considered it and will continue to keep it as an option) but if given the choice between a remote job working for someone else and being colocated with a kickass team, I’d go with the team 100% at least for this single stage of my life. It’s a lot easier to feel engaged with your work, have a healthy work-life balance (depending on the company), and have healthy social interactions.
From all the different comments here, viability of remote work clearly varies by personality and personal life state. I’ll just share my story a bit for what it’s worth.
I own my own company and now I work remote. I am actually pretty outgoing and effective at making new friends by jumping into groups / activities solo. That said, I did not think about the need to make extra efforts when making the shift to not having an office with built-in community. My initial reaction was get my home setup with all the coffee/food/workstation so I wouldn’t have to leave (how efficient!), but now I realized that exacerbates the negative aspect of isolation. If you don’t have a family or friends pulling you into activities (older friends with families of their own are not going to be inviting you to activities regularly), things can get quiet pretty quick. I definitely miss the team lunches, happy hours and office off-site days (hell I end up crashing some of my friends' company offsites now). As for work balance, I’m quite self-driven but without a set schedule, it requires mindfulness and discipline to keep work flow in a healthy balance. This is an ongoing effort for remote workers, whereas for most colocated jobs, it’s just built-in when you show up.
I love my work so I don’t intend to find a job (although I have seriously considered it and will continue to keep it as an option) but if given the choice between a remote job working for someone else and being colocated with a kickass team, I’d go with the team 100% at least for this single stage of my life. It’s a lot easier to feel engaged with your work, have a healthy work-life balance (depending on the company), and have healthy social interactions.