Ask HN: Is remote work killing your network?
Hi 71a54xd!<p>I&#x27;ve struggled with this too. I was on study career-sabbatical travelling in Europe with my then-girlfriend&#x2F;partner.  She was banned from US entry by Trump exec. order and we came to her home of Australia (I&#x27;m from the USA) in March 2020 -- we stayed because it was obvious Trump &amp; fam were treating the pandemic as a way to further profit from dubious science, dividing people &amp; pandering.  Down under (Melbourne) we&#x27;ve had some of the most strict quarantine lockdowns of any place in the world -- I like it here and now I can&#x27;t imagine returning to the USA -- but accepting my network in US is mostly toast.  Making new friend during a pandemic is <i>really hard</i>.<p>The timing for the rapid transition to remote work globally wasn&#x27;t great. I don&#x27;t think it will be like this forever (but it might take a decade to sort out). Companies weren&#x27;t ready, and grey-haired CEO, peter-principal IT leaders &amp; HR departments weren&#x27;t technically equipped for the transition.  Most companies (globally) still relied heavily on email &amp; jira + meetings instead of chat,  IT was an expense but not seen as &quot;the core of the business&quot; pre-pandemic.  Few companies had transitioned to &#x27;remote-first&#x27; &amp; &#x27;async culture&#x27; pre-pandemic (mostly only bay area startups do this imho). Async culture(s) suggest remote employees get together &#x27;virtually&#x27; for coffee or beer and gives them discussion points - did any of your employers do that? I know most didn&#x27;t.<p>Other people have told me you shouldn&#x27;t go to work to make friends, be mentored, get free sushi lunches, you should go there to work blabla.  Also making friends @work is NOT the responsibility of your employer (and imho it is certainly not a priority at a startup who should be product focused!!!) --  unless the company highlights &amp; promises that vibe during the recruiting.<p>Covid&#x2F;remote work came during a global period of divisive social misery &amp; wealth inequality creating a lot of cognitive dissonance for anybody paying attention. When you think of &quot;digital social network&quot; which company more than any other &#x27;owns&#x27; that space? <i>Facebook</i>.  And while I won&#x27;t put all the blame on Zuck - because I know Russia FSB has a legion of trolls &amp; bot-nets manipulating the platform too.   The fact society can&#x27;t use <i>our</i> Internet&#x27;s &quot;social network&quot; really failed spectacularly.   Facebook and it&#x27;s related platforms are mentally toxic.  FB&#x2F;meta is algorithmically optimized to make you angry, isolated, pissed off &amp; alienated (just like Fox News) because it suits Zucks &amp; Putin&#x27;s long term power narrative(s)!  Zuck is in my view a fool -- not dumb, but incredibly foolish to have squandered such a responsibility &amp; good-will entrusted to him.<p>So for this pandemic - as long as meta&#x2F;facebook is the defacto global &quot;social network&quot;, i.e. zuckerberg et. al  is the primary party responsible for connecting us &#x27;digitally&#x27; with friends, family &amp; peers blabla. yeah we&#x27;re all sort of isolated &amp; socially f<i>cked mate.<p>We know </i>now* that Zuck isn&#x27;t interested in (y)our mental health or making us better.  Zuck isn&#x27;t interested in bringing families together, preventing teen suicide, or even disseminating the truth.  Zuck is a horrible person and I would happily kick him in the groin on behalf of humanity if given the opportunity so he could (if only for a moment) share humanities collective pain and perhaps even &quot;feel something&quot; akin to desiring compassion. The pandemic would have been a lot easier (socially) if there was a critical mass alternative to Facebook.   I heard Trump launched his own platform today -- maybe there is an opportunity for another alternative which focused on mental health &amp; positive news, and living your best life during the pandemic.<p>Nah, just kidding .. I don&#x27;t really wonder how Trump&#x27;s new social media platform will do that.  Trying to finding people online when the primary company which runs the social networks is facebook - consider perhaps it&#x27;s better to be isolated during the pandemic.<p>How I cope: Study &amp; learn whatever you want unfettered, humanity has been writing stuff for ~5,000 years now, there&#x27;s a lot to read (and it&#x27;s all online woot!!)  We live in such a cool age for geeks.  You sound technically competent -- it&#x27;s a shame you don&#x27;t realize what a hidden blessing this is.  I&#x27;ve found a lot of the technical chat rooms on Matrix.org to be &#x27;my people&#x27;  (it&#x27;s more like IRC) .. you might look there for whatever online social interaction with people smarter than you. mentoring, etc.<p>Cheers!