You have made yourself clear. We are talking about during work hours. That is the very freedom that WFH allows. Again, WFH is short for work from anywhere.

> how do we create environments that allow these types working hours interactions in a WFH setting?

Why do you think they don't already exist? I have WFH for 20 years now and have never found much difficulty to find people to work with, save the pandemic period. And I am based in rural area. Imagine how much easier it would be to find people to work with in a city!

As I alluded to earlier, I think the pandemic being the introduction to WFH for a lot of people has skewed perceptions. They went WFH because they had to stay home alone. But those days are quickly moving behind us. You can work anywhere again now.

Venture out into the world. There are people out there. If the cafe isn't working, try another venue. You are only limited by your ingenuity.

This sounds like a very convoluted workaround for something which, for some people, is solved by having an office to go into.

I think what is very clear every time this WFH topic comes up is that different people have very different strong opinions on it, which is fine. I wish people would respect each other’s opinions a bit more though.

For some people, working from an office works well from them. Personally, having worked from home for three years (2 pandemic, 1 in a remote job), I’ve found I really miss that “casual” social interaction with people at work and I don’t believe I could replace that by going into a cafe - maybe it’s a personality thing and/or a location/cultural thing but it’s very rare for me to just strike up meaningful conversation in a cafe here in London. Maybe a coworking space would be better but I still think there’s a lot of value to social interactions with your actual colleagues.

Others obviously feel differently, whether that’s because they want to live somewhere outside of a major metropolitan area, or because they don’t enjoy that kind of interaction, or whatever, and that’s also fine.

I guess the challenge is how companies reconcile the two into something that works. “Hybrid” only works if you have a decent number of people actually coming in to the office otherwise yeah, you might as well just go to a coworking space. I suspect we’ll see companies starting to align more to one model or the other as time progresses, and I think that’s fine - people can choose companies whos model works for them.

Not having a defined office to go into is the apparent problem, not the solution.

> I wish people would respect each other’s opinions a bit more though.

Where does this come from? I've never seen anyone's opinion disrespected as it pertains to this conversation. In fact, the beauty of WFH is that it gives you the full freedom to form your own opinions. Want to work at home? Do it! Want to work in an office? Do it! Want to work from the middle of a field? Do it! Want to work at sea? Do it! Nobody cares. The world is your oyster.

> I guess the challenge is how companies reconcile the two into something that works.

Does matchmaking need to be a business concern? There were periods of history where transportation, housing, even shopping, was dictated by a company but we eventually move away from those in favour of personal choice. All arguably practical necessities in their time, but considered a hinderance of freedom once the landscape changed. Is matchmaking not just that again?

WFH means work from anywhere. It does not preclude working in an office. But if you are respecting of opinion, as was asserted as being important earlier, then offices will only come into being if people wish to be a part of them. That does not require a third-party middleman to be involved. Workers who want to work in offices can easily coordinate that kind of thing themselves, just as they've come to coordinate transportation, housing, and shopping.

WFH does NOT mean 'Work From Anywhere'. The first hint is that "Anywhere" does not start with an 'H'. Many, if not most corp employees are compelled to stay within state (US) and border (EU) limits due to tax code restrictions. It's literally illegal for many to just work from outside their jurisdiction. It probably gets even more complicated for employees on a VISA. But I digress, It's really ironical that you chide OP that you see no disrespect while simultaneously dismissing and disrespecting their opinion.

In case you truly don't get it. Working physically from the office while a vast number of their peers are at home does not make it work from office. The location isn't the factor here, it's the medium of interaction. Sitting on zoom calls all day in the office has no discernible difference than sitting at home. What the OP and TFA posits is that the lack of real human interaction, the social cues, the energy or more informally 'the vibe' is very different when working remotely vs working in-office with everyone else there.

Again, this isn't trying to spark yet another debate on RTO/WFH/Remote preferences, but to underline that empathizing with the opposing point of view is a virtue that earns the respect you speak of.

It's just annoying how so many 'smart' people on HN keep pedantically hammering the point that you can just totally just work from the office. Sure, you're technically correct, but just comes off of as socially clueless. I feel it tends to be the same kind of people that are surprised when the more affable, but average engineer is promoted over them, the misunderstood genius. Turns out people like to work with people they like over some opinionated rando who happens to close JIRA tickets a little bit faster than others.

Sadly, while your amusing pedantry is technically correct in a vacuum, it completely fails within the prior context given. Did you forget to the read the comments up to this point or were you aiming to give us a good laugh?

> Working physically from the office while a vast number of their peers are at home does not make it work from office.

Agreed. Hence the idea of venturing out into the world to meet with peers. If what you are struggling to say is that nobody wants to work with you, I guess that's life. Slavery is a thing of the past. You can't force people to do things they don't want to do.

> Sitting on zoom calls all day in the office has no discernible difference than sitting at home.

If you are using Zoom (or similar) all day you're not doing WFH. WFH brings very different operating semantics and doesn't just try to duplicate the office over the internet. What you describe is work from office. Location isn't the factor here.

> but to underline that empathizing with the opposing point of view

What points of view are you referring to? All we have is reality. Trying to ascribe emotions to attempts to understand the world is bad faith participation. Granted, this may be the result of not having read the prior comments as suggested above. But replying without having read the comments is also bad faith participation.

> Turns out people like to work with people they like

Seems they don't else they would work together. WFH encourages people to work together in the flesh so if it is not happening what does that tell us? That certain individuals are best avoided? I can agree with that, although I have to wonder why that was worth pointing out if that was your goal.