Ask HN: Is remote work killing your network?
19 by 71a54xd | 19 comments on Hacker News.
After two years of being beaten into this new way of working I honestly feel more at a loss for what my career is than any other time in my life. I've been doing software work about four years now, first year or so was at a big co. next two were at a series B startup (8 mo. in person the rest remote due to covid). I took a full-remote job at another startup thinking their processes would be better calibrated and I'm finding being social / building any kind of work relationships being nothing but an uphill battle. I'm not incredibly social outside of work, sure I can go to a bar and meet new people relative to a group of friends and don't necessarily think I have serious social anxiety (more than the average person) but the idea of 80% of accessible work for me (looking at my level of ability / experience / leetcode foo) is sort of freaking depressing. My growth has without a doubt stalled, I can focus sort of but working from home with an office isn't great and having to pay for a noisy co-working space isn't exactly a "win" either. I'm in New York currently, sort of decided to hold out while I have a group of friends here / sort of took a risk hoping office culture would sort of come back. Realizing that's likely not looking like a probable outcome at this point and curious what others on HN think about this. Even at the Big Co. I could get lunch with people, found mentorship relatively easily etc. Now, it's this bizarre constant process of scheduling, trying to "leverage" the time of who you're talking to and all feels very effete and robotic. I should also add that if I ever have to start doing meetings in VR I'll willingly just become a lumberjack and chuck my MacBook into the nearest river. Basically, I'm on the fence in terms of moving into a rural area with cool outdoor things (and lower CoL) since why live in New York without an office. Or stay in NYC for the "network" but what's the point if I'm not super social and if I don't have the chops to really see the comp gains you get working here? The Future of Work TM is looking pretty bleak - what do you kind folks think? Cheers!