Can you check out what we are making to solve this at www.getparallel.io ? I feel like it would have worked really well for you. Would love to know your thoughts.

And I reflected on that experience a decade ago realizing I put myself into solitary confinement - a prison punishment - and covid did that to billions of people who didn’t realize that social interaction is at the center of what gives us energy. So I deeply empathize.

I think the best advice I can give is to reach out to people and have normal conversations when you don't need anything. If you only talk to people when you need something from them, they are going to be less likely to talk about things that they have going on outside of work. Talk about anything that they are interested in. Plus the beauty of messaging apps is that people can respond when they have time and if they are busy they can ignore the messages.

Also if you get some downtime in meetings or join early, ask how things are going, what the weather is like, or if they have any weekend plans. There usually is a bit of time before or after meetings where you can still socialize.

It seems that you are pretty social and take extra steps to build the connections. So, wondering if it would be easier for you to not have to do the leg work and be able to get into the main things you and your co-worker can talk about for hours.

Since you work at a hybrid env, would you mind checking us out at www.getparallel.io ? We wrapped up our MVP and our whole thing is to have great social connections no matter the work environment. So your hybrid POV will be helpful.

What do you title these 1:1s so that your coworkers will accept them, and so that your manager won't lift and eyebrow?

(caveat that it's for normal water cooler talk and not a top-of-the-iceberg issue of a very big iceberg of issues.)

Could you please check out www.getparallel.io ? I would love to get your thoughts on it.

We completely take out the leg work initially needed to build and establish relationships in a work env. We are here to make WFH better. Some of the best work is done when people bond over things that aren't even work.

I love the way you put it. We are trying to do exactly that, build camaraderie from day 1 without the leg work. If I join a new team, instantly knowing who else is a Cricket fan is a sure fire way for me to get close to them and fit into the team faster.

Could you please check out www.getparallel.io ? I would love to get your thoughts on it.

Do you think the offsite events would be fun if you already knew people there had similar passions as you? For example, lets say an offsite get scheduled. You see the people on a platform and you see similarities between you and them. For example if your profile has game of thrones, star wars, FIFA, NBA, EVs as something you love, and then before the off site you see a co-workers with some of the same stuff too, would that make the off site better? Because then you could go to the offsite and immediately talk to that person about the game last night, or about FIFA.

I probably get half as much work done during that morning as I would at home, but I do feel like it’s helped me get settled and feel part of the team much faster. Even that short time each week gives you the opportunity for inside jokes and so on.

Obviously I’m in a lucky position in that it takes me 15 minutes on the bus door-to-door and to be honest I’m not sure I could be bothered going in if it meant a full day. I’m very hesitant to set precedents for being in the office in case WFH gets taken away or nerfed or something. Not that I’ve had any indication that’s on the cards, I just don’t really trust any companies at all, no matter what their “people team” talks about.

Make an effort to connect with coworkers in person whenever there's a business or on-site trip. See if the company has any hosted events, holiday parties, or other in-person meetups (and if not, suggest some). If there's any coworkers that live nearby, suggest meeting up for lunch or after-work drinks occasionally.

Beyond that, as others have mentioned, you can seek out local social organizations and clubs, or even just try to interact with your neighbors more.

Heh. My pattern with forums was to join with the intention of taking part, end up making just a couple of comments on a couple of threads (related to why I was interested in the forum in the first place), and then forgetting that I had a login there.

How about all that leg work wasn't needed?

I wanna run a hypothetical scenario by you. Lets say you are a fan of the new Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon fan. There is a platform only within your company that you can see which other coworkers you connect with that are also a fan of this big show. Lets say 8 outta 10 people in your team watches the show. So, meetings become more interesting because now you can talk about this immediately.

Now add tons and tons of other topics that you might have in common with your team. Instead of waiting months and years to find out your co-worker of 2 years also loves Tennis, you can know it now, talk about it now, and socially have a better dynamic now.

What do you think of a platform that already does the legwork for you? To bring the teams closer and connect more people based on what they love.

New people settle in faster in on site environments because we adapt to environments especially when we are required to.

The ideal situation requires a lot of effort and probably some desire to side-step professional development (talking about work) to spend time with people you currently work with doing something you enjoy (like playing board games). The ideal situation for me is probably something like being able to easily "coordinate company socials" with "let's play a game over Zoom/Discord". Even better if the Zoom/Discord are not company monitored and the interaction is ephemeral. Few products or services would give up the data collection since morale and performance can be measured in relation to the usage of these products or services.

I love WFH. I think our solution actually comes close to your ideal situation. Would you mind checking us out at www.getparallel.io ? We wrapped up our MVP and our whole thing is to have great social connections no matter the work env.

On the other hand, not having a commute, and not having to fake being busy during down times makes it easier to strengthen outside of work friendships and hobbies.

I also think occasional remote meetups in person can really help. I think it's easier to hold a casual text or zoom conversation if you've interacted in person a bit

I wanna run a hypothetical scenario by you. Lets say you are a fan of the new Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon fan. There is a platform only within your company that you can see which other coworkers you connect with that are also a fan of this big show. Lets say 8 outta 10 people in your team watches the show. So, meetings become more interesting because now you can talk about this immediately.

Now add tons and tons of other topics that you might have in common with your team. Instead of waiting months and years to find out your co-worker of 2 years also loves Tennis, you can know it now, talk about it now, and socially have a better dynamic now.

What do you think of a platform that already does the legwork for you? To bring the teams closer and connect more people based on what they love.

Do you think you would be interested in a world where WFH stays. But companies offer a way for you to connect with your co-workers based on your most passionate interests? For example if you love soccer, watching tennis, massive Star Wars fan, love taking cruises, you end up seeing your other co-workers who like the same things. So, you can start conversations based on those interests. Meetings would be more fun when you guys talk about the US Open tennis matches or what cruise was the best etc. While being WFH.

I want to know what you think about something like this.

Even if they lived in the apartment next to me, maybe I don’t want to hang with them after hours or on the weekend? Maybe I don’t want to talk work outside the office?

If your lonely go find a bar - don’t drag us all back to the workplace!

Do you think you would enjoy working with your co-workers virtually more if you had shared interests to talk about? Literally stuff like soccer or a fav show, or a certain EV? It isn't about hanging outside of work. Introverts don't want that. But lets say a guy you have been working with for months-years, also like the same bands as you do. So, boom meetings are more fun and you have something more to talk about rather than the weather every time. Question is, why wait months-years to find out things you already have in common with people you talk with every day?

This isn't about not having friends, or going back to the office at all. This is about making WFH experience better.

Additionally if I am bothered by someone or am generally not interested in them, it's far easier to avoid them in a WFH setting. My interactions with them can truly be limited to only whatever it takes to get the job done.

That said, I recognize that working this way isn't for everyone. Some people need to breath the same air to feel a connection with others. I have just never needed that.

I haven’t found a solution.

It has really helped getting people comfortable with each other, as well as being a shockingly effective way to solve tricky problems and get new people up to speed.

But what I do lament is that it's very difficult to guide and mentor rank newbies. After a certain amount of push, we hired a few kids right out of college to be able to give them guidance. A couple of them flourished and grew but there are stragglers. One in particular has personally given me a lot of grief and I really wish I could meet them in person so I could guide them as my mentors guided me. A lot of the time, text and voice conversations just don't express ideas well enough. I don't think it's wise to deny that we are a species which has learnt to communicate through cues, gestures and other physical contexts and all of this is lost now. Messages that are meant to educate can sound mean and demeaning and I have to constantly think over ways to express concerns and suggestions in a way that won't discourage my mentees. A smile, a shrug and a few words of reassurance and encouragement go a long way. After all, most of us are constantly learning and there's no shame in ignorance as long as you ask the questions

I am quite worried about the silos we've erected for the new folk who need the help to grow. Some of them will manage but I fear that a lot will be left in the dust with little recourse

I agree with the silos too. I think we as a world should strive to make work more fun, friendly and honestly less miserable.

I am asking this favor from some of the people here with unique POVs. Would you mind checking us out at www.getparallel.io ? We wrapped up our MVP and our whole thing is to have great social connections no matter the work environment.

You know the unfortunate fact that taller people are paid more, well when you're WFH your height is 2 inches in your little Zoom square.

Not trying to be mean, just being realistic about the vibe I'm sensing from the people big on being back in the office and I think the dominoes are starting to topple.

My point for our startup is to enhance the WFH experience.

For more context on what we are trying to do, you can check us out here: https://www.getparallel.io/

MVP done while we are still testing the waters.

Short answer - relationships cannot be made via zoom. Thus, interactions are transaction based. I can provide a million examples of why this is a fact in as simple as online dating where you always want to end up meeting the person and digital correspondence is not sufficient to cross the boundary of trust between 2 humans.

…and trust is the one thing that gets you promoted, gets you the benefit of the doubt when you need to leave the office and inconveniently make your coworkers pickup your slack, provides a social barrier via awkward convo when your manager has to let someone go and is debating who vs the simplicity of 3 clicks to removing even a more productive person with whom they have no relationship with by just removing a person on slack and zoom and your jira board. Do you let go the person you know that has 2 kids and you met their kids and they do ok work vs the solo ic who does not seem to want to talk about anything but their work and go home? Surprise surprise most managers would easily coach the ok person they feel closer to vs even the most productive person who they cant get a read on and assume they may even leave some day. Humans being humans.

Trust also forms camaraderie, your tribe in an office, the people you can gripe to with trust in their silence vs someone can easily record or back talk you with your manager via zoom. In office, you can see where people move and who they talk to and thus their relationships.

Therefore, you cannot solve building better relationships via more technological solutions. Humans grasp many small pieces of meta data via in person contact.

Small companies may want whatever your solution is, but large ones where divisions need to scale and trust needs to scale already know this truth and will not buy into it. They would rather wait for covid to be less fearful amongst their constituents and bring them in office which is already happening at banks and apple and soon to be many other orgs next year.

BUT! For the fully remote small companies where work is distributed amongst maybe 20 people in different geos, maybe some small tools will work.

Just remember, a bunch of startups tried to build products to address this at the start if the pandemic and failed learning this truth that human relationships need in person contact.

And as you solicit more advice, notice how the proponents of wfh typically are in roles that are more transactional in nature or accept the risks of or want a more transactional relationship with their work. Most people, especially young ones without enough background understanding how human orgs work, will think they want wfh but in fact want in office with some flexibility to get their outside work life tasks done more easily. And it is not until peoples heads are on chopping blocks or they are passed up for a promotion that they will realize the mistake of wanting 100% remote work.

If you have enough leverage to know you don’t need relationships to be safe, to get promoted, to do what you want to do, more power to ya!

I speak of large orgs where not all people and teams can be like that. And unfortunately, large orgs cannot say “team a you stay wfh team b you come in since you need to gel with team c in office” due to fairness. So a one size fits all will be applied like Apple is doing.

If you don't mind, please check out what we are doing here: https://www.getparallel.io/

We are big fan of WFH and want it to stay. We just wrapped up our MVP and talking to accelerators.

It's easy to get into a work mindset when using work tools. That can in turn cause us to skip those human interactions such as more personal conversations that might usually happen at lunch or whatever. Taking the time to elicit them, where natural, without the natural cues is hugely important. I have honestly never felt more connected with a team than I do with my current one, which was formed almost entirely post-pandemic. Hell, folks were building real human relationships with just pen and paper for ages not long ago. It can absolutely be done.

But I speak of large orgs here, not 100 person startup where some of these things can be more easily managed… but still I know these companies do a lot of offsites to make up for the lack of connection in office.

The real insight a lot of people have had is that they can work just fine with their remote colleagues without a manger needing to watch them. I'm sure most managers such as yourself aren't like that, but it only takes one in an org to really make people unhappy.

And totally agree on the work being visibly the exact same output if not more in my case.

But one example I can give is how for certain folks who want to build a professional career or want to grow, they need to know who in what group they can connect with. And in office it looks like you sometimes seeing a person many gravitate towards and ask about them and find out they are a somebody. In slack there are no similar strong signals and you have to browse many channels and who knows if they would accept your zoom invite to connect. And in most orgs, driving this kind of connection building is nearly impossible remote - asking an introvert to go be social is hard enough in person let alone ask them to browse slack channels.

And as a byproduct most people stagnate, feel alone. How do you try and make friends? How do you try to find people like you? Productivity is there but feeling of any other benefit from work is gone and lets be honest, not all software work is meaningful and clearly adds to the bottom line. Adding unit tests to a codebase is a lot more tolerable when you have people you chit chat with on your breaks or go to lunch with. Again.. big corp type work situations. But I know it is also true of non high growth startups or medium sized companies as well. The KtLo work (keep the lights on) is needed but not super invigorating.

So far, I've been involved with several teammates and building meaningful relationships remotely has been impossible for one reason or another. It's always just a quick chat about the weather and maybe something interesting that happened to someone that week, but that's it. At best, it's just a shallow form of camaderie.

I do believe that good relationships can be built remotely, but it's not trivial to do. At my workplace, there was never a meaningful cultural shift towards remote work after COVID hit.

But hey, a bit of loneliness is better than being stuck in traffic for 2 hours a day right?

Before, when working in the office, we used to follow the SAFe framework, which promotes doing a 2-day planning workshop every 4 to 6 sprints.

I got to know more about my colleagues during those 2 days offsite than during the 4 in-office sprints preceding it.

- Have very direct conversations on your team about how you want communication to go. Our agreements sit right next to our team charter.

- How the company manages chat seems to affect how people communicate. If there's zero organization and everything gets dumped into a single channel, then people also stop bantering in that channel.

- Company chat channels shouldn't just be for business. Have some community channels that let people coordinate around topics. Supply "feed" channels where people can dump pictures and videos; I tend to post pictures of my dog, plants, or brews.

- Let people create channels on their own but give them a framework for doing so. That way they're more discoverable and descriptive. For instance, all of our community channels start with #comm- and team channels start with #team-

- Email should only be for formal and external communication. Having all of your communication in one place, for the most part, is quite nice.

- Establish quasi-working hours. My team has a window where all or most of us are online. It's not super strict, but it's there so we can coordinate. Most of our work is done asynchronously though.

- Have a stated bias towards using video. We also use the video tool built into our chat application instead of something external like Zoom.

- All meetings are remote first.

My first job out of college had lots of socializing. In fact, that's where I met my wife.

Now I have kids. I don't really want to socialize with coworkers.

Socializing with coworkers was low before COVID. Now it's even slightly lower and I'm okay with that.

Edit: Also the impact of social connection on productivity might depend a lot on role and personalities involved.

I'd rather socialize with my neighbors, actual friends, and family. Which wfh has given me more opportunities for.

Although one way I've managed to make more social connections is by spending more time in my local community. I have a pass to my local co-working space, I infrequently work out of my coffee shop, and I attend local developer meetups. Some of the people I've met through them I often grab a coffee with during the day.

Do you think if you found out more shared interests with your co-workers, your work day-to-day wouldn't get better? Hypothetically: Like knowing a fellow dev you have worked with for years or a new member of the team is also a big fan of a specific EV or sport like you and is watching the US Open or preordered the new F150 Lightening?

Would that not make work, feel less like work? Overall establish a more welcoming/belonging dynamic?

My social connection with my coworkers has lowered, but I don't mind, because that's not why I work, and I've fostered a lot of social connections outside of work due to my move to full remote.

But would it be bad if you were to have good social connections at work as well?

Coworkers are, generally, not the same as "real" friends. Certainly not those on your immediate team. Keep the relationship professional.

It's going to be a challenge to share deep personal feelings and views, because at the end of the day, the things you say to them can put your employment at risk.

Does taking about politics with co-workers help? No. But does talking about sports, cars, shows, movies, tech advancements etc help? Absolutely.

Miss chatting, going out for an hour at lunch with co-workers.

Miss being able to do whiteboard sessions and have proper discussions.

I also feel less productive at home. It’s more difficult to focus at home, much easier to get distracted.

You don't _need_ a 'second place', but you may find it helpful to double down on the first and third.

The original book, The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg, is a bit dated. It was written at the cusp of modern connected life (late 80s?). While it does bore a few faults, the concept has helped me immensely in being purposeful and direct in adopting a 'third' place.

That said, I’ll acknowledge my bias - I’m fairly quiet and introverted, I feel more comfortable with video chats than water cooler talk.

When we were all working in an office together, the socialisation was way more natural. Someone did something funny, you all laughed together. You made a coffee/tea in the kitchen, had a brief, totally natural & lovely chat with someone, then went back to work.

But with WFH there's no spontaneity. We have a morning meeting with brief status-updates and fixed time for "chit-chat". Everyone just awkwardly goes quiet. What the hell do you talk about in a hangout where you're addressing 20 people?

I think this speaks to the way we form bonds with people. But maybe it's just me.

We form bonds by experiencing stuff together. All of my friends I either went to work with or studied with. We weren't stuck in a room and told "now be friends!" Even my brother-in-law. All the family dinners stuck making small talk couldn't amount to one day when we fixed up a car together.

WFH we've definitely lost the opportunity for those moments. There's social events (lawn bowls lol), but those are often outside of working hours and require people to divert time that could be spent with their own family/friends.

Our platform doesn't want outside activities to be the only way to bond. The easiest way to bond is to talk about interests both people share.

Could you please check out our platform and give us some feedback? We are essentially trying to cut out the legwork needed to form meaningful social bonds.

https://www.getparallel.io/

So as a point, no, we were all very looking forward our first onsite with many hugs (onsite was blocked due to covid)

Every job I’ve had has similarly been a mix of locations with teams over multiple sites.

Working from home during the pandemic has been a natural extension of that.

You can build deep and meaningful connections with people online. You just need to approach it differently.

Look at entire gaming communities that do so despite never meeting.

Working apart from each other also doesn’t mean you can’t meet up outside work unless you truly live far apart. You can still socialize, but this time on your own terms instead of during work.

Anyway personally I haven’t felt a deterioration in connections. In fact I talk more often to my colleagues, and more importantly, to a wider range of colleagues than before.

I do however think different people have different aptitudes for online socialization. I do notice some people who were not terribly social at work, suddenly stop talking to anyone they don’t work with directly. And many people have issues not having face to face communication for context clues.

However I think this is totally subjective to the individuals, and having worked at multiple multi site companies, I think remote work can be much better for wide team building.

You can do away with the smaller cliques to some degree, disseminate information in easier to find locations and reduce tribal knowledge. People in other locations can be seen as equals to the ones local.

In fact when I worked in the office and supervised teams across multiple locations, I’d treat everyone on the team as remote when it came to most communication. Team chat rooms were encouraged instead of people coming by my desk unless needed. What I saw was that more people were aware of everything going on and were able to do better work as a result. I also found people who were too shy to ask questions were suddenly more able to ask them and have them answered because they saw the more confident individuals also asking things in the open chats rather than in person.

There are definite downsides to it all, but I find it really scales better in the long term

That said, for the last 40+ years, people have also been building relationships online, much stronger than usual office ones. And, for much of that period, it was without even the benefit of videoconferencing. Some of my closest friends are from various open source communities, for example, and I've only ever met about half of them in-person.

I think many companies haven't yet figured out how to provide fertile soil for distributed teams to bond. And I've heard of cases where employees try to do it organically, but their style is cramped by the company (e.g., mandated corporate communications tools that aren't amenable to this, keyloggers as part of "endpoint security" having people feel under surveillance, suspicions that video calls are recorded, culture and metrics/demands that don't permit genuine casual interaction time).

Another speedbump sometimes might be for people who've grown up with their in-person charisma/presence a part of how they interact, and haven't yet fully adapted to other modalities. Nobody is tall on webcam, but a lot of other human qualities are still important, and can be expressed and perceived.

I really liked your POV. I am asking this favor from some of the people here with unique POVs. Would you mind checking us out at www.getparallel.io ? We wrapped up our MVP and our whole thing is to provide the fertile soil as you mentioned.

1. If you work from home obviously you will have lack of (work) social connections, yes WFH ain't that much fun as office.

2. I don't really need to know coworkers, it's useless information unrelated to my work. I work with some people 6+ years and have absolutely zero clue about their background or anything, actually I am almost longest working person there, I see people in emails changing while I am staying there, I dunno what happens to those people who stop writing me emails, whether they had kid, died or left for other company.

3. I don't even know what is "fit into company", I deliver results, nobody cares about some unmeasurable "fit", must be an American thing.

4. I know for sure social connections and open space office in work decreased my productivity/performance and time spent working. I was among the chattiest people in work, so I would enjoy that, but certainly it would take toll on my results.

5. My kid was born 7 years ago, so I wouldn't have time for social interactions outside work anyway other than on playgrounds/trips.

looking at things that make work fun as "useless info" is a pretty bleak way to live life. I enjoy knowing that my co-worker is a soccer fan. So, after the weekend I can talk to him about the game. That doesn't mean I don't have other friends to talk soccer with. But talking to a co-worker about it makes work fun. It also builds great relationships which is always dependable in the corporate world.

"Fit into company" isn't an American thing haha. As you said, everyone changes and you are still there. So, lets say you join a new company tomorrow. Wouldn't it be great to know what similar interests you share with your new team from day 1? It makes it easier to get to know them, start work and even gives most people the confidence to ask difficult questions. Thats what fitting into a company fast looks like. It also increases productivity for the new people because they have fit in faster.

Since starting a new job a few months ago, I reached out to some former tech colleagues that live close by, and meet up every few weeks at a local pub. It's kind of of like a meetup, but there's no agenda, speakers, or specific tech focus. People are encouraged to organically invite other people that fit the group, which has seen it grow from three to twelve people in about three months.

I honestly think it's one of the best tech groups I've been part of, and has been a big part of keeping me sane in my 100% WFH job.

I've never been a massively social person at work to be honest, so I don't miss it hugely, but it's definitely a loss. I still prefer working at home for the most part though. Maybe if I didn't have a family and a long commute I'd feel differently!

Some people like to socialize at work, they find it indispensable in fact. On the other side of the bell curve you find people that feel liberated by not having to socialize with everyone else. This difference has to do with personalities as well as different stages in life, and can only marginally be influenced by company policies and work routines.

None of this will determine whether WFH home will take over or not however. WFH will likely become ubiquitous because it gives companies a competitive cost advantage. People who need an on-location workplace in order to fulfil their social needs will likely chose careers in the service sector, jobs like barbers, health workers etc.

I return to my family and friends and so do they.

As for my own morale, it’s much improved since in the downtime I can have water cooler chat with my real life friends and family.

I like to think that if WFH had been here in 2000, my college buddies would have had a great time staying in the same house and working. Instead we moved to different states for jobs.

Everything was just better than any workplace environment I've been in, and way better than the 'startup house' i lived in when i thought we had good ideas and that my colleagues were my friends and nice to live with.

We have weekly catch up meetings over video chat, as well as other meetings which also helps and generally everyone has their camera on which helps.

These connections I have built over Slack and MS Teams have directly translated into real life, and when we do meet up for company parties or whatever, it’s as if I’ve always been there and the social connection remains.

I suggest that video chats are probably the best format for this. Encourage people to work camera on, and to schedule small calls regularly with each other rather than always coordinating on chat/email. Start with some small talk, go into shop talk, and see what naturally falls out at the end just like regular meetings. If you're a lead/manager then set an example to this end and encourage (don't force) others to follow it.

You leave or they leave and 90% of the time you never hear from them again.

I realize a lot of people use work as a social crutch, but honestly if the closest friends you have are people who are paid to hang out with you, you have deeper problems.