Sorry to hear this - fwiw I was in a similar situation: divorce, estranged from parents, father with anger/mood problems he refused to fix. Social life tanked.
I joined cycling and hiking groups for a while... but thats very different from having someone close. I recommended trying to get on the dating scene again and find someone compatible. Good luck pal.
Another comment said to move to a city, highly recommended - there is loads to do and you meet people through other people in real-life (online/apps are a minefield)
I used Gemini recently to upgrade my 10-year old desktop PC. I listed my current components, budget, requirements and it walked me through different options/components etc. Gave me all kinds of tips. I committed probably ~£450 to the project and more or less trusted it.
The handful of times I did a manual "spot check" of it's advice, it turned out to be good. The upgrade was a success and I'm very happy.
My take away is that AI is a wonderful tool and if this "AI laptop" is optimised for that then it's a bet/product worth trying. Well done Google, I'll watch with interest.
This one has yet to enter my head. I read Martin Fowler's related article* a few times, and it is sound... But I still can't see microservices being so "complex" to be so avoided early on. Especially in 2026, with the level of IaC and pipelines we have. I might be naïve, but I just don't get it.
It depends on your workload etc - but there are TONs of advantages for the monolith approach when you factor in dev environments, access to good data for testing/development, dependencies on components/libraries/services etc.
Note: I'm saying microservices CAN be the right answer, just not always and we should over-engineering.
sauce: I work as a product engineer where we use microservices extensively. I have also worked on monoliths. Preferred working on the monoliths overall I think.
I don't want that to be limited to just architecture though - proper initial factoring of a software product is invaluable at the large and most microscopic level.
I remember 1999/2000-ish I had both a Pentium III/Intel motherboard and Athlon PC. The Pentium III system was rock solid, and performed fantasic. Even the CPU and motherboard looked amazing.
The Athlon was solid but less reliable, various reboots and glitches. I kind have always had a preference for Intel since then.
A lot of that probably came down to the motherboard chipset. IIRC Intel made their own chipsets for the Pentium III and they were good and reliable. Athlons were coupled with chipsets from VIA and whatnot.
Some of those chipsets were fine and others were less reliable or compatible. The quality of the drivers for each chipset may also have mattered.
I'm introverted but very glad I have the option of working from the office and being among fellow staff, we also have a lunchtime exercise club once a week. It's much better for my mental health.
In fact, I've added two days working outside of home instead of one because of the benefits. I think 3 days home/2 days office is the sweet spot.
We've been slowly creeping back toward being fully RTO, and my mental health has been in what I can only describe as "steep decline". I don't know if I pin it all on RTO, but it sure isn't helping the situation. I love my job, but hate the in-office requirements - I'm a systems admin.
Sorry to hear that. Being a sysadmin, I guess you're mainly interacting with systems rather than people and need to focus. They should exempt you from RTO except for the odd "all hands" meeting days.
I'm a software engineer in a Product Engineering team and it's about 75% hands-on engineering, 25% Slack/Teams interaction and alignments between people. I find being in the office helps to make connections with other staff in other teams (eg. bumping into people while making coffee in staff kitchen etc). I think thats important from a career perspective.
I'm not saying you're doing this, but I can't tell you how many complaints I've read where people who want to work in office get there, are bummed out about the fact that their colleagues all work from home, and go whinging to management who are looking for any excuse to bring people back into office.
I get that, and a lot of people like to be social with other people. But just because 10% (made up number) like it, there's no reason to force it on the rest of the workforce (not that you are).
I encourage people who are remote but want human contact to rent a desk once a week at a co-working space.
For me personally, I want to do my work as efficiently as possible, in as little time as possible, and then have my social time, which has very little in common with my work and/or colleagues.
I might be an exception, but I get up very, very early and work almost right away, and I don't want to be on a roll and then have to pack up, get in the car at a terrible traffic time where (some) people are driving like animals, hunt for parking and then find a desk. That's a huge _tax_ on my productivity.
But I don't expect or demand that the rest of the world do this.
As a side comment, I would agree with you though, that 2 in the office is better than one. But I also had a very effective pattern around 10 years ago, where I spent 2 days in the office per month, and that worked really well for me (though those days were far, far less productive than my at home work days).
Now, if the world adopted a 32 hour, 4-day work week I would probably be ok with the office 1 day a week.
The hubris of our generation damning our species into a global warming catastrophe just because we want to stand around the water cooler and have lunchtime exercise club for these last few decades at our apogee.
Zero days in office is the sweet spot. Get rid of all physical infrastructure. Its mind boggling that we are building a completely unnecessary second space for work and then build transportation infrastructure to move between two spaces all, compel people to drive back and forth, deal with traffic congestion and waste 2 hours/day, buy cars, pay for insurance, deal with accidents, use up precious mind space in driving through horrible traffic. If people have mental health issues, it doesn't mean that we need to build a second space for them. There are other ways to deal with mental health issues.
While this is true and many people echo this, I also think this is partially caused by an over-reliance on work.
Ideally, we should not be put in a situation where we have to get necessary social health through our jobs. It should be through our hobbies, our passions, our friends, and our family. The people and things we choose to spend time with.
I'm not judging you either, because this is also the case for me. But, I think, if I was WFH, I would have a lot more free time. I could dedicate that to social interactions. Most people don't, but they could.
What's your commute like? There are many aspects to the RTO vs. WFH debate, but having to waste away 1-3 hours a day on the road, coupled with the energy use in the OP, really cancels out the mental health aspects of being in office. It even detracts from the amount of work done.
The London office commute is 30 minutes train and 25 minutes walk. I really like that balance as it gives me sunlight, exercise and fresh air.
I work from a library on the other day, thats a 30 minute drive. I tend to leave before 0700 when the roads are peaceful. My car is pretty fuel efficient, i try to hypermile it and get ~50mpg.
Imagine how much more sunshine you could enjoy working in the evening and enjoying the outdoors during the day - good thing they've got the exercise club.
My sweet spot is the same. I like being at the office (because I like my colleagues), but with almost an hour commute each way, going every day is very draining. I'm glad my employer is giving us pretty much total flexibility.
Even 3 days in office, 2 days home feels significantly better because that's the point at which one is spending less days out of the week in the office
