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Study: Remote working benefits fathers while childless men miss sense of community

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  • No one said “sole.” It’s about a sense of community between you and your coworkers, which is a very real and normal thing. It’s spelled out in the article very clearly:

    losing that sense of workplace community had a greater impact on childless men

    “Workplace community.”

    I’m a dad working remote and I love the benefits but I ALSO miss the sense of community with my coworkers which I used to get from lunches together, sharing the train ride home, or just working side by side at our desks.

    hmm, so having or not having kids have impact on your sence of workplace community during remote work?

    Does it add up to you?

  • You know there are always outliers because research often looks at populations in general and not the exact experience of a specific person. Unless it’s a case study but that’s different.

    Either way that’s a really good thing for you, the modern world makes it difficult to make and keep close to friends.

    True, and I was drawing on anecdotal evidence that I didn't elaborate on in my original comment. While I know there are people who do not do well or enjoy work from home, I have yet to meet those people, all my coworkers and friend group are loving work from home.

    So a more accurate statement would have been, based on my personal experience along with with coworkers and my friend circle this study is B.S.

  • Fathers versus childless men, rather than husbands vs unmarried men. Telling.

    It's a wildly different thing, though.

    Married vs. unmarried means you have a companion, but you still got the same demands on your life as before. You might have to arrange schedules, but that's about it. Your day has just as much free time as before, you can stay out just as long as before and your social opportunities aren't restricted due to the fact that you are married.

    In fact, there's no difference at all between married vs. unmarried and in a relationship vs single. Getting married changes nothing in that regard.

    Having kids, on the other hand, changes everything. Now your social activities are limited by your responsibilities towards the child(ren). Can't stay out until 2am if you know the kids will be awake at 7am and will wake you up 3 times in between. Can't take a random day off and do a day trip if the kid needs to be at school that day. Can't visit friends after work together with your partner if the kid needs to be in bed at 7pm. It's a massive limiter on social opportunities.

    At the same time, spending time with the kids is pretty great in its own right, and that's what the article touches upon. If you are married but don't have kids, you might get your fill with your partner after work. If you have 5h or so every day with your partner from getting back from work until going to bed, that's a ton of quality time.

    But if you return from work at 5pm and the kids go to bed at 7pm, then pretty much all the interaction you get is eating and preparing the kids for bed.

    As a father, working from home means I can see my kids grow up, especially in their earlier years. It means I was there when they took their first steps. I'm there when they start talking. I can actually spend time with them, get close to them, be part of them growing up. I'm there when they cry, when they say the funniest stuff. You know, be with them when it matters.

    With my wife, on the other hand, as much as I love her, I'm not going to miss a ton of really important things if I'm not around her 24/7. On the contrary, she's happy for any bit of actual alone time she gets.

  • This was also my experience during the main sweep of the pandemic. It was so great getting to cut the commute and be home. Something I have luckily managed to largely continue. Prior to the pandemic my kid was in daycare pretty much 7:30-5:30 so it was really nice to not have to do that, plus during our lockdown we used to go for a family walk at lunchtime.

    While some of the single guys I worked with hated staying home and were straight back in the office the moment they were allowed.

    I think it's funny that I had the opposite experience. My coworkers who had kids couldn't wait to get back to the office, while the few of us youngsters who didn't wanted nothing but to keep working remotely. Probably why those few of us left immediately when it became clear they were going to force everyone back.

  • I know this a gross oversimplification, but:

    "Remote working benefit those with a reason to stay home, but doesn't for those who don't have a reason to stay home" seems to be the general idea of the headline.

    edit: I think this is the study they're talking about, please double check the source before quoting: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36718392/

    oh yea heard this question asked in reddit on multiple instances, the ones that dont stay at home tend to waste time at watercooler chat, gossip,,,etc, not productive work, just that interaction they cant live without.

  • 41 year old male, no kids, no wife or girlfriend, been work from home for 5 years now. I've never been happier and more productive.

    I get my sense of community from my friends not my coworkers. This study is B.S.

    Yeah, you gotta have friends that are close by and you can get out with or they can come over. If you don't... Sometimes it feels lonely. But to be honest, you kinda get used to it.

  • Not everyones ideal life is to at all times be alone.

    the reasons they give are often super selfish, it was asked on many subs over the pandemic, they want to interact with said co-workers even if its unproductive and said coworkers do not want to make chit chat with said male workers.

  • I think it's funny that I had the opposite experience. My coworkers who had kids couldn't wait to get back to the office, while the few of us youngsters who didn't wanted nothing but to keep working remotely. Probably why those few of us left immediately when it became clear they were going to force everyone back.

    probably because they dont want to deal with thier kids 24/7, screaming,c rying,,,etc.

  • sense of community between you and your coworkers, which is a very real and normal thing

    No it fucking ain't.

    Forcing people together doesn't create community, it creates stress, and resentment, and burnout, and migraines.

    “Workplace community.”

    Biggest oxymoron I've ever seen since military intelligence.

    ALSO miss the sense of community with my coworkers which I used to get from lunches together, sharing the train ride home, or just working side by side at our desks

    Oh, you're one of those fucking extroverts.

    I can't begin to imagine the extent to which your poor coworkers must have despised you while you constantly bothered them while they tried to work, or have a quick decompressing lunch, or disconnect after a long day of work during the train ride home, the poor bastards. As if work wasn't bad enough by itself.

    if you hear the shit coworkers talk behind peoples back, you really dont want to interact with them most of the time, its just to save face by being nice, eventhough coworkers might not want to talk to you, someone like op might be annoying to them for whatever reason.

  • oh yea heard this question asked in reddit on multiple instances, the ones that dont stay at home tend to waste time at watercooler chat, gossip,,,etc, not productive work, just that interaction they cant live without.

    I'm guessing you've got a study that backs that assertion up as well?

  • Not everyone hates life like you do

    Work isn't life.

    It's the opposite of life (no, death is just its absence).

    hang out with co-workers all the time

    Bonding over shared trauma and Stockholm syndrome is not a good basis for a relationship (though there's probably no relationship other than you pestering them while they try to work).

    You people live such lonely lonely lives. I can't imagine existing just hating everyone like you. It's quite sad.

    Trauma bonding 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

  • sense of community between you and your coworkers, which is a very real and normal thing

    No it fucking ain't.

    Forcing people together doesn't create community, it creates stress, and resentment, and burnout, and migraines.

    “Workplace community.”

    Biggest oxymoron I've ever seen since military intelligence.

    ALSO miss the sense of community with my coworkers which I used to get from lunches together, sharing the train ride home, or just working side by side at our desks

    Oh, you're one of those fucking extroverts.

    I can't begin to imagine the extent to which your poor coworkers must have despised you while you constantly bothered them while they tried to work, or have a quick decompressing lunch, or disconnect after a long day of work during the train ride home, the poor bastards. As if work wasn't bad enough by itself.

    Imagine being this vitriolic in response to someone's personal anecdote.

    The person you responded to said they did find a sense of community like the study describes. Nowhere in there did they argue that anyone should be forced to go back to an office nor even that an office spot be made available to people.

  • True, and I was drawing on anecdotal evidence that I didn't elaborate on in my original comment. While I know there are people who do not do well or enjoy work from home, I have yet to meet those people, all my coworkers and friend group are loving work from home.

    So a more accurate statement would have been, based on my personal experience along with with coworkers and my friend circle this study is B.S.

    Tbf there's definitely some confirmation bias in there because a person who didn't enjoy being remote probably wouldn't seek that type of job

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    Itt: cognitive disonannce.

    The study isn't bs. Lemmy users just won't accept that they don't even come close to representing the average individual.

  • This post did not contain any content.

    I actually don't like my coworkers very much I definitely wouldn't hang out with them so not having to be near them all day is a benefit.

    It's not even that they are bad people, it's just that they are people who I wouldn't choose to hang out with.

  • Itt: cognitive disonannce.

    The study isn't bs. Lemmy users just won't accept that they don't even come close to representing the average individual.

    Or if we use less adversarial language, this study is far from universal and its findings should be applied with the understanding that not all people will not match those who were in the study. As with most things, far more research is needed to get a thorough understanding.

  • I like my coworkers. They're cool. I just went to acro yoga with one, and go bouldering with another. We show up, talk shit, and get the job done - sometimes it's a good time. Sometimes we get our asses kicked. But that builds camradrie, too.

    I will say, this is blue collar stuff. When I worked as a software dev, I definitely didn't care about spending much time with my coworkers.

    I used to work for a bunch of lawyers. I would happily take a fire axe to every single one of them.

    They really didn't like remote working and tried to put a stop to it and "sense of community" was their excuse as well, but it was really about control.

    It would be interesting if they did this study again in an environment like that, where people aren't really friendly with their co-workers. I imagine they would get a vastly different result.

    This study may not be BS in particular, for that one case, but it is BS in general

  • I guess it's a poor choice of words but there's definite value in workplace camaraderie. Don't let your jadedness fuel the bosses' union busting.

    Unions haven't got anything to do with it. Unions are about protecting you from unfair business practises, it's not a social club, nor do they try to be.

  • Unions haven't got anything to do with it. Unions are about protecting you from unfair business practises, it's not a social club, nor do they try to be.

    No union without social interaction to found and preserve it. It's why small businesses are much worse at ganging up on big businesses that exploit them than workers are at ganging up on bosses: Businesses aren't people, they don't have social interactions. Workers are and do, thus unions can and do form.

  • 41 year old male, no kids, no wife or girlfriend, been work from home for 5 years now. I've never been happier and more productive.

    I get my sense of community from my friends not my coworkers. This study is B.S.

    Just because you have anecdotal evidence of the contrary doesn't mean it can't be true, quantitatively. I, too, am a childless man - although I do have a wife - and don't resonate with this, but that doesn't mean I'll just cast aside the findings. Many, especially young, men are unhappy in their everyday, partly due to a lack of sense od community in the "modern" world.

  • Microsoft to Lay Off About 9,000 Employees

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    Actually you forgot about data mining or Spyware. Windows has literally become Spyware. I would switch faster than light if anticheat didn't gatekeep Linux. Edit: Microsoft products have literally become Spyware
  • NVIDIA is full of shit

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    My point is my 2060 can't reach 500 fps even if you run the game in DLSS. You need a more powerful GPU, DLSS can only increase your FPS if the FPS is terrible, it can't boost you from 250 to 500
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    What I'm speaking about is that it should be impossible to do some things. If it's possible, they will be done, and there's nothing you can do about it. To solve the problem of twiddled social media (and moderation used to assert dominance) we need a decentralized system of 90s Web reimagined, and Fediverse doesn't deliver it - if Facebook and Reddit are feudal states, then Fediverse is a confederation of smaller feudal entities. A post, a person, a community, a reaction and a change (by moderator or by the user) should be global entities (with global identifiers, so that the object by id of #0000001a2b3c4d6e7f890 would be the same object today or 10 years later on every server storing it) replicated over a network of servers similarly to Usenet (and to an IRC network, but in an IRC network servers are trusted, so it's not a good example for a global system). Really bad posts (or those by persons with history of posting such) should be banned on server level by everyone. The rest should be moderated by moderator reactions\changes of certain type. Ideally, for pooling of resources and resilience, servers would be separated by types into storage nodes (I think the name says it, FTP servers can do the job, but no need to be limited by it), index nodes (scraping many storage nodes, giving out results in structured format fit for any user representation, say, as a sequence of posts in one community, or like a list of communities found by tag, or ... , and possibly being connected into one DHT for Kademlia-like search, since no single index node will have everything), and (like in torrents?) tracker nodes for these and for identities, I think torrent-like announce-retrieve service is enough - to return a list of storage nodes storing, say, a specified partition (subspace of identifiers of objects, to make looking for something at least possibly efficient), or return a list of index nodes, or return a bunch of certificates and keys for an identity (should be somehow cryptographically connected to the global identifier of a person). So when a storage node comes online, it announces itself to a bunch of such trackers, similarly with index nodes, similarly with a user. One can also have a NOSTR-like service for real-time notifications by users. This way you'd have a global untrusted pooled infrastructure, allowing to replace many platforms. With common data, identities, services. Objects in storage and index services can be, say, in a format including a set of tags and then the body. So a specific application needing to show only data related to it would just search on index services and display only objects with tags of, say, "holo_ns:talk.bullshit.starwars" and "holo_t:post", like a sequence of posts with ability to comment, or maybe it would search objects with tags "holo_name:My 1999-like Star Wars holopage" and "holo_t:page" and display the links like search results in Google, and then clicking on that you'd see something presented like a webpage, except links would lead to global identifiers (or tag expressions interpreted by the particular application, who knows). (An index service may return, say, an array of objects, each with identifier, tags, list of locations on storage nodes where it's found or even bittorrent magnet links, and a free description possibly ; then the user application can unify responses of a few such services to avoid repetitions, maybe sort them, represent them as needed, so on.) The user applications for that common infrastructure can be different at the same time. Some like Facebook, some like ICQ, some like a web browser, some like a newsreader. (Star Wars is not a random reference, my whole habit of imagining tech stuff is from trying to imagine a science fiction world of the future, so yeah, this may seem like passive dreaming and it is.)
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    WTF I looked for something like this for a while and this never popped up. Awesome.
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    Just for the record, even in Italy the winter tires are required for the season (but we can just have chains on board and we are good). Double checking and it doesn’t seem like it? Then again I don’t live in Italy. Here in Sweden you’ll face a fine of ~2000kr (roughly 200€) per tire on your vehicle that is out of spec. https://www.europe-consommateurs.eu/en/travelling-motor-vehicles/motor-vehicles/winter-tyres-in-europe.html Well, I live in Italy and they are required at least in all the northern regions and over a certain altitude in all the others from 15th November to 15th April. Then in some regions these limits are differents as you have seen. So we in Italy already have a law that consider a different situation for the same rule. Granted that you need to write a more complex law, but in the end it is nothing impossible. …and thus it is much simpler to handle these kinds of regulations at a lower level. No need for everyone everywhere to agree, people can have rules that work for them where they live, folks are happier and don’t have to struggle against a system run by bureaucrats so far away they have no idea what reality on the ground is (and they can’t, it’s impossible to account for every scenario centrally). Even on a municipal level certain regulations differ, and that’s completely ok! So it is not that difficult, just write a directive that say: "All the member states should make laws that require winter tires in every place it is deemed necessary". I don't really think that making EU more integrated is impossibile
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    Googlebot sad when disallowed access to 18+ videos
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    Yeah, but that's a secondary attribute. The new ones are stupid front and center.
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    I bet that information was already available to business owners. In other words, they totally knew it was you complaining about the toilet paper they used for example.