Americans are returning to cities after remote-work exodus, data shows

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/03/30/census-population-immigration-dc-new-york/

by bediger4000 • 3 years ago

53 137 3 years ago

washingtonpost.com

voisin• 3 years ago

Turns out we didn’t all change at our core humanity. By and large, we like to be with other people.

analognoise• 3 years ago

Exactly. Going remote, I spend way more time with people that actually matter.

rockzom• 3 years ago

Capitulation

betaby• 3 years ago

Can it be explained by simple population growth? Asking from Canada - we are growing at the rate +1M/year.

xkqd5• 3 years ago

The article does go on to say it’s probably immigration related.

Gigachad5• 3 years ago

I got to the end of last year and decided I can’t take remote work anymore. I hate video calls. I hate MS Teams. I hate sitting at home alone every day. I missed going out after work on a Friday with coworkers. I missed shit talking with people at lunch.

Decided to pack up my stuff and move to the city. I now come in to the office every day and it’s improved my mood so much. There is so much joy from getting on the train every morning and hearing the chatter. Then walking in to the office and getting to work with real people instead of feeling like an automation in a box churning through jira tickets. In a few weeks I got to know the people I work with better than the 2 years I had been interacting with them on Teams.

Remote work is convenient for odd cases like having an appointment mid day, but for the vast majority of the time, I want to work with and talk to people in person.

Almost every day I see comments here ridiculing the idea that someone might enjoy the presence of their coworkers. This is just not the reality everyone lives in.

prepend3• 3 years ago

For me the choice was teams meetings all day from the office or the same from home, saving myself the commute.

I interact with people outside of work so remote work doesn’t have a sense of isolation for me.

I have lunch with people almost every day, just they aren’t coworkers.

And I save lots of money on the commute, not to mention environmental impact.

I’m glad you like the change, but not everyone does.

Gigachad5• 3 years ago

Sitting in the office on calls all day is pointless, I agree. Personally I'm at the point where unless you are particularly important, I will not get on a call with you. If you want my help, come walk to my desk and talk to me. Otherwise I might reply to an email when I feel like it.

xkqd5• 3 years ago

I interact with people outside of work

Ding ding ding.

I think this right here is the key. It was eye opening to learn how few of my coworkers had anyone outside of work. It’s heartbreaking but clearly a burning epidemic.

I also learned how many of my coworkers prioritized being in the office every day of the week over working at home with their spouses and/or children. I can’t get over that in particular. It’s none of my business, but nonetheless it angers me.

camdenreslink• 3 years ago

Remote work is convenient for the not-so-odd case of having young children at home.

xkqd5• 3 years ago

In these circles and at this hour of the night on a Saturday? Families are inconceivable and children are best not contracted.

Edit: It’s either Saturday or Sunday at this point. It’s a weekend. None of us should be here. I’m not going to be pedantic.

toomuchtodo2• 3 years ago

No coworker or company culture is worth losing having lunch with my partner and seeing them throughout the day working from home. All of that is transient, as roles come and go. For me (n=1! ymmv!), it would be kind of silly to have a partner and not see them except from when you wake until you depart for your job and when you arrive home until bedtime, five days a week. Work is where the paycheck is, home is where the people I want to spend time with are. I empathize with folks who get their social life/interactions from their workplace, but I do not. There’s enough org variety we can self select into the best orgs for how we want to live our lives.

(remote for ~10 years, married 15, together 20)

Edit: I acknowledge some relationships require time apart. n=1!

RestlessMind12• 3 years ago

Having young children at home and having to take care of them, you won't be able to work at all. I know that because I have a few of my own.

FpUser4• 3 years ago

Remote since 2000, run my own software product development company from home.

"I hate video calls

Absolutely, this is why I mostly do productive work. Calls are limited and not video.

"I hate MS Teams."

I do not hate it since I do not use it.

"I hate sitting at home alone every day."

I do not. I work but since (except rare meetings) I am on my own schedule I free to go for a swim, bike ride, walk whatever any time I want.

"I missed going out after work on a Friday with coworkers"

Nope. I have actual friends and we meet whenever we feel like.

"I missed shit talking with people at lunch."

Again I have friends and can talk to them any time. Often over Skype as we spread over the world. With those here in Toronto usually meet in person on evenings / weekends.

We are just different people.

"Remote work is convenient for odd cases"

No. It is convenient for people who like it. You are always free to go to the office if that's your cup of tea.

"I see comments here ridiculing the idea that someone might enjoy the presence of their coworkers.

Nothing to ridicule on my end. As already said to each their own.

"This is just not the reality everyone lives in."

Bullshit. Speak for yourself. There are enough people on each end of the spectrum.

re-thc21• 3 years ago

No. It is convenient for people who like it. You are always free to go to the office if that's your cup of tea.

This doesn't work. It's not what they want. They want an office full of people so you "the remoter" has to go in as well!

waboremo4• 3 years ago

Almost every day I see comments here ridiculing the idea that someone might enjoy the presence of their coworkers.

This seems misleading, I've rarely come across that even among people who are in threads proclaiming they completely prefer remote 100%.

What I do see is a ridiculing of the idea that you have to be in an office environment to socialize, or that those relationships are anywhere near as fulfilling as people who actively choose to be somewhere out of a shared interest (and not a financial incentive).

There are also great discussions on which type of work benefits most from team in person environments and which doesn't.

Either way, I wholly despise the binary perspective on remote/office work as mostly being quite short sighted. The idea isn't we should pick one or the other, it's the desire for more flexibility on how we approach work hours.

Nathanba2• 3 years ago

I may like my coworkers just fine but there are a thousand other reasons why being in the office or physically around them is not so fun. Smelling the smokers/smoke sometimes for hours when someone leaves the smoker room door open or the constant coughing or the ever so slightly audible music through their headphones may all seem like non-problems to the people who cause them but it's not so nice to be on the receiving end. I highly suspect that all these so called sociable people are often being sociable at a cost to others. And taking these random social breaks all the time is not productive, it doesn't matter how much they paint a picture of these amazing ideas that come out from randomly meeting someone in the hallway. Also I have never met someone who actually likes going to the office more than working from home so it might literally be people who have their own office at the office, aka: bosses, higher ups. I mean if I had my own entire office at work then I wouldn't mind so much either. I actually temporarily had my own office for a while and it felt great. Total peace and quiet and you can still talk to people in person when someone wants to. Then it changes and all the small problems reappear.

re-thc21• 3 years ago

This seems misleading

It's not as in those that claim so prove they can't type, write out something coherent or use online tools. They don't know how to build relationships otherwise. It's the only way they can interact with people (in-person).

The idea isn't we should pick one or the other, it's the desire for more flexibility on how we approach work hours.

The remote argument has always been do what you like vs the in-office argument has always been force everyone back. The problem with those preferring in-office is that they don't prefer to go to the office. They prefer to have someone (unwillingly) go to the office to sit next to them.

dumbotron3• 3 years ago

I go into the office, but it's still pretty empty. It's getting to the point where I might leave in 6 months for somewhere where people actually come in. I'm just not sure where that is anymore.

dukeyukey• 3 years ago

My company has already lost good people because of this. They want to work somewhere with people, and that wasn't us.

dumbotron3• 3 years ago

Decided to pack up my stuff and move to the city.

Might I ask which city? SF and NYC are pretty different these days.

Gigachad5• 3 years ago

Melbourne, Australia. Best decision ever. Should have moved sooner.

vkgfx• 3 years ago

I've been WFH since around 2017 or so. After a while, it starts to feel like I ship code into the void. Like I'm a freelancer who happens to be working for a company rather than an employee. This gets even worse after a round or two of layoffs and/or reorgs and being on teams with people I've never met.

I had to visit our office (first time since Jan 2020) to do some emergency heads down work with my teammates and it's incredible how I had forgotten what it feels like to be part of a company.

With that combined with the fact that people are increasingly bad at hiding the fact that they're often just taking off mid-afternoon (always fun to need a set of eyes for a critical hotfix pull request and get radio silence on Teams!), the difficulty of focusing at home, and the expense of trying to live somewhere with an extra bedroom or area as a dedicated home office, and I really wish I could go back to the office. Unfortunately I don't live in the same state as the office anymore, so I am stuck like this for now.

re-thc21• 3 years ago

The failure isn't on you nor the need for an office. It's on the company for not creating the culture. Online communities e.g. in gaming have always been vibrant. It didn't always require in-person meetups to make it work.

FpUser4• 3 years ago

"After a while, it starts to feel like I ship code into the void"

It depends on what's your role. I am responsible for product design and development. I definitely do not feel like my part of code is shipped "into the void". I see it working and serving customers

DangitBobby3• 3 years ago

Companies need to adjust to WFH to make sure everyone still feels like a team. People will bellyache about it, but you need regular video calls and the occasional meat-space meet-up or you just feel like an anonymous cog in a big machine. Some people prefer keeping their coworkers at arms length, and that's fine for them. Others need to be on the look out for a culture that helps you feel like part of a team.

Gigachad5• 3 years ago

We had this originally, but over the last year, the people who enjoyed and attended the social calls all ended up coming in to the office and ignoring the optional chat calls.

subsection1h• 3 years ago

Please keep in mind that some of your coworkers might hate talking to you and only do so to avoid conflict. For each coworker, try to track the amount of conversations you initiate with them and the amount of conversations they initiate with you. If the former ever significantly exceeds them latter, consider leaving them alone.

Edit: I just noticed that your HN account is less than two years old, and yet you've managed to post 3,772 times. Whoa. You certainly love to socialize!

lotsoweiners2• 3 years ago

Your joy sounds like my nightmare.

re-thc21• 3 years ago

I want to work with and talk to people in person.

That's fine. You can do that. As you said you "want".

Almost every day I see comments here ridiculing the idea that someone might enjoy the presence of their coworkers. This is just not the reality everyone lives in.

And there's the problem. How did you enjoy the presence of your coworkers?

If you were the only 1 in the office would you then complain?

Hint: yes.

So the gist of the issue is you want to go to the office AND force everyone to be back just so YOU are not lonely?

I hate sitting at home alone every day.

You didn't and don't have to. What does this have to do with remote?

I missed shit talking with people at lunch.

Again how is this a remote problem? Because you can't have lunch with people including coworkers if remote?

antibasilisk2• 3 years ago

This mentality is exactly why the west will continue to face a worsening loneliness crisis and worsening social cohesion. The idea that developing relationships requires some kind of sacrifice and actual human interaction in the context of performing a larger goal is for some reason treated as completely alien.

m3drano• 3 years ago

I'm in the same boat.

PartiallyTyped• 3 years ago

I share the sentiment.

I am considering actually measuring my mood but it looks like the office helps me.

45 minutes of walking after work does a lot of good to my mental health. I also do a sort of one meal a day “diet” where i consume just coffee at work, and it actually costs a lot less.

Worst case is that I leave late and it’s cold so i take an uber, but I actually prefer it.

xchip2• 3 years ago

Yore problem is not remote work, your problem is the lack of meaningful relationships

theodric• 3 years ago

For real? All of those things are what I detest about having A Job. I bought a farm, am no longer working in a corporate job, and would rather die indigent than ever go back to that shit again.

lisasays• 3 years ago

There is so much joy from getting on the train every morning and hearing the chatter.

Hey, if you've got the time to spare, and like getting up significantly earlier than you would otherwise have to. And you are into ... chatter.

Then walking in to the office and getting to work with real people instead of feeling like an automation in a box churning through jira tickets.

I've had plenty of onsite jobs where I felt like no less of on automaton (or worse). Seems uncorrelated with onsite/remote, per my data trail.

Barrin92• 3 years ago

every time there's some temporary exogenous shock there's always the same wave of "certainly this is the end of XY" predictions. The entire globe is urbanizing, regardless of country or culture. It's such a strong secular trend and the economic and cultural gravitational pull of urban areas is so strong that people en masse moving to the countryside is a very obvious fantasy.

and saying it right now for the future, the Bay Area is going to continue to be the overwhelming center of tech in the US and nope, everyone's not going to move to Austin.

randomdata• 3 years ago

While you are right about increasing urbanization, prior to the pandemic there was clear movement away from large cities into small urban areas. That is what seemed to accelerate during the pandemic.

I’m not sure that some kind of push to truly rural living was ever really on the docket. Leaving the city doesn’t have to mean living in the wilderness. There is quite a bit in between. A town with 2,000 people is deemed urban.

geodel2• 3 years ago

Yeah and Detroit is going to continue to be the hub of Auto industry and Pittsburgh is going to continue to be the hub of Steel industry.

imbusy111• 3 years ago

Ok, so the pendulum is swinging in the other direction, balance is being restored. Young people need to be with other young people in dense cities, where they can meet each other. As a 33 year-old with a family, going back to the city would be dreadful for me.

ajdude• 3 years ago

As a 33-year-old with no family, I'm happy to finally have a chance to go back in the office again.

xkqd5• 3 years ago

Right, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine you would be happier to have a family outside the concrete jungle. At that point, you would do everything in your power to flip this.

I get it’s a bit over the line for me to make that assumption, but I think it’s probably a safe one.

anon291• 3 years ago

I live in a city with a family and it's lovely.

cglan• 3 years ago

Kind of a rant, but if you hang out on places like Reddit, sometimes it feels like the whole world has crippling social anxiety and hates people.

In real life, everyone seems to be craving human interaction. It’s sad sometimes. Being afraid to have small talk with people isn’t introversion, it’s a mental problem. Places like NYC have completely popped off again and I think we’ll see more and more demand for walkable social areas

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 3 years ago

Being afraid to have small talk with people isn’t introversion, it’s a mental problem.

It's a societal problem. Too many people invade our attention constantly to try and sell us something, whether that be a product or service, a fad, or political bullshit. We have necessarily become defensive about people invading our attention uninvited.

DangitBobby3• 3 years ago

I doubt people not liking small talk is a recent development. It's probably not fair to call it a mental problem, but the crippling anxiety some people experience around phone calls and simple conversations are absolutely mental problems and have nothing to do with advertisments.

re-thc21• 3 years ago

Agree with the other commenter that "small talk" has always been a problem. Just as a courtesy and trying to keep up with work appearances do many keep it up. Way before remote but outside of work in-person and in forums there have been lots of rants on "small talk".

It's also very robotic. Small talk never want real responses. Oh like when you begin the conversation with "How was your day?" and the expectation is to say "fine thanks" or similar? What's the point?

Are you sure everyone hates people or just those requesting things like "small talk" are the problem?

yucky• 3 years ago

You're right, but that's because Reddit is a place where people with crippling social anxiety who hate people, tend to hang out online. It wasn't always that way, but seems to have taken that turn around the time Yahoo neutered Tumblr, when they all seemed to have migrated over to Reddit and made it unusable.

ramblerman• 3 years ago

Subreddits are still pretty valuable, but agreed that the front page is hell.

Its teenage angst, nihilism, and dangerous witch hunts. Like a kind of lord of the flies, but with “adults” in the mix.

silisili• 3 years ago

Have a browse at MildlyInfuriating sometime. 75% of those posts would be resolved just by talking to someone for 30 seconds. You hit the nail on the head, it's like everyone there is afraid to speak to another person.

vitehozonage• 3 years ago

Whether to define something like that as a mental problem is completely arbitrary and culturally defined by what is normal. Additionally, some people have no choice but to live with their mental problems or whatever you want to call them.

I take issue with the idea that psychology, psychiatry and drugs are for the purpose of normalising everyone.

antibasilisk2• 3 years ago

In real life, everyone seems to be craving human interaction. It’s sad sometimes. Being afraid to have small talk with people isn’t introversion, it’s a mental problem.

It's often disturbing how obvious it is. I can tell when someone is deeply lonely, and as much as I feel sorry for them, the lack of awareness they have about the way they're presenting themselves makes me feel overwhelmed and avoid interacting with them.

Thankfully I invested a lot of time into reverse engineering how normal people behave in high school when I ran out of other things to do, so now when I meet people they think I'm well adjusted and charismatic instead of an extremely eccentric and unpredictable nerd.

xkqd5• 3 years ago

The article doesn’t take an ounce of oxygen to mention it, but how many people are being forced back to the office or city for risk of losing their jobs?

I’m not giving an ounce of fucking credit when people are having their livelihoods threatened because the incestious controlling boards want their CMBS values to go back up and pump the value of their other investments in the city.

RestlessMind12• 3 years ago

How many people left urban areas for rural in the first place? I guess very little. Most of the migration was towards suburbs or cheaper cities.

acchow• 3 years ago

Seems to me everyone is craving human interaction, but they have gotten so comfortable being at home all the time, they forgot how to muster the energy to get out of the home

bilbo0s2• 3 years ago

Might be more the case that they have no one to get out of the home with?

I think what this data actually shows is that there are many people out there who strongly desire to know and hang out with people who are neither family nor co-workers. It's hard to get the opportunities to do that if you aren't in a city. If they could do that in the rural areas or the butbs, they probably would. But rural areas have far fewer people.

And the burbs are not set up for chance encounters. The burbs are more setup for planned encounters. Which brings you back to the original problem of finding someone to plan an encounter with. :(

re-thc21• 3 years ago

This might be a problem with the US? In lots of other places e.g. in Asian cities you don't need anyone.

There are so many events, attractions, opportunities etc happening just by strolling the streets. It's lively. Everything is walkable and accessible. Public transport is easy.

DangitBobby3• 3 years ago

I agree, but I don't think my friends would be any more likely to have enough energy to hang out if they were forced to return to the office.

geodel2• 3 years ago

Good. It did create a panic in heart and mind of folks for a moment who proclaim there will only be two kind of people in the world 1) Those who already live in the city and 2) Those who will move to city soon.

stn_za2• 3 years ago

Some of the comments here...wow.

If you crave human interaction, here's a thought: "Go outside". You don't need to go to work to meet other humans.

rmk2• 3 years ago

Not practical, if you spend the majority of your waking hours working, as most Americans do.

But having interactions outside of work is also important, and this is where 'go outside' would be helpful.

stn_za2• 3 years ago

Go work from a coffee shop or something then.

RestlessMind12• 3 years ago

If you are going to spend half of your waking hours with a team, it's better to have good bonds with them rather than mere transactional relationships. And in-person interactions makes better team connections than Zoom.

re-thc21• 3 years ago

Your comment has 0 to do with WFH or remote. All you've said is that Zoom is worse than in-person. Well there could be another tool. Does remote = Zoom now?

And Zoom can be better than a poor office with a terrible chair, small monitor and other bad equipment. Again this doesn't mean in-person itself is bad either.

mkolodny• 3 years ago

I moved back to SF in 2021 after living outside Yosemite (in Mariposa) for a year. There've been ups and downs.

porcoda• 3 years ago

Seems odd to me to group places like NY and SF together solely based on the second derivative of their population. If one has bounced back and restarted growth, while the other continues to shrink, just less rapidly, you can’t say they’re comparable. Regrowth vs slowed shrinkage are different things, even if they look similar by calculus.

voicedYoda• 3 years ago

I live in a big city in the USA, and i truly hate being forced into an office. I have tons of outside activities, hobbies, community involvements, and commuting is a waste of time to be in someone else's environment, getting constantly interrupted, not having the ergonomics I've spent decades learning to have, and enabling my context switching when necessary.

I'm fine with the occasional on site collaboration and camaraderie are fine, but every week? No. I'm productive because I'm a professional.

xchip2• 3 years ago

Sure, and they are returning to the offices.... Yet another sponsored article trying to set a trend.

waselighis• 3 years ago

The amount of projection in these remote vs in-office discussions is staggering. Just because you have a preference doesn't mean you should expect everyone else to have the same preference. Some people like going into the office everyday, others like working from home everyday, and everything else in-between.

There may be other factors at play as well. Maybe a person would like to go into the office more often, but they don't want to live in the city or make a long commute everyday. Maybe their particular office is very boring and quiet, or maybe it's loud and distracting and overstimulating. Maybe you get along great with your coworkers, or maybe your coworkers are intolerable and you can't stand being around them. Some people have crafted the perfect home office for themselves, and others may not have space for a home office.

It's very much a matter of personal taste, but there could also be many other factors at play. Point is, what works for one person doesn't work for everyone.

genman• 3 years ago

Correction: are forced to return to cities.

Americans are returning to cities after remote-work exodus, data shows

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