As a software engineer, I needed to meet people for my growth in the start of my career, and I needed to meet people for character development. Old farts complain that younglings are not socially/emotionally independent and apt to talk to their computer all day, but that’s also a recipe for suicide.
as a software engineer (and lately manager) my most toxic workplace was my first and only non-remote job - from 2010 to 2014/2015. and to my surprise my best job (in terms of org patterns, good tech and people management) was as a contractor.
also, just to make sure it's clear to anybody reading about remote vs non-remote. remote doesn't mean no meatspace meeting ever allowed. remote team members are not under chess king rules. we did meet IRL. for some jobs it was just 1 week in 10 months. (thanks COVID) but otherwise it can be a lot more. (1 week every quarter kind of makes sense, but so does anything that members are up to - especially if they live close to each other.)
While I believe the benefits of being remote outweigh the downfalls, I definitely feel that growth as a professional and as an engineer is stunted by being remote. I miss the days of being able to easily ask questions and collaborate, even with people on different projects or in different departments. That, to me, is the biggest downside
From the abstract: Findings show that early career artists have the least social capital, established artists have the most, and late career artists begin to lose social capital unless they actively maintain it.
