Very few (but not zero!) of my meaningful relations have been through work.

I am not sure why you would say that. I mean it is true, but I am not sure how it is relevant here. If one avenue is not there, ones that crave it badly enough will venture forth. If I don't go to work and WANT to engage with others so badly, I will. And besides, meaningful relations is a meaningless term.

Example. My parent has neighbors. They have lived closely to one another. So closely and long, in fact, they had to sue to resolve some outstanding issues. In other words, neither prolonged proximity or meaningful relationship is a useful metric. I will trade those for a new neighbor every year.

Humans work like they always worked. Their predilections move them. If those are not satisfied, they are channeled.

You must hang out with some poor quality humans.

My meaningful relationships are based on how much I like the people.

Sitting within X meters of someone doesn't make me like them particularly.

Liking someone is based on how similar we are in aesthetics, politics, philosophy, and world view, not whether we worked on unrelated things in the same neck of the woods.

I've been in the work world for almost 40 years now and I have just one friend I met at work. Most of my friends are people I met through purest chance who happen to have similar world-views.

My dad retired from his factory job last year. Outside of company Xmas events, he met his colleagues exactly 0 times in a social context while he worked there.

I would argue that proximity matters, but there are many different ways of slicing proximity.

Certainly moving away from friends so that I no longer can interact with them routinely would affect the relationship.

But you can also view proximity as how often people show up in your routine. There are many people I knew and had solid friendships with just because we put in the effort to call or message in the evenings a few times a week.

Yes, and the point is that if you or your coworker is laid off or take a new job, that proximity is immediately nullified and the relationship typically withers and dies.

Spend less time socializing at work, and more time creating that prolonged proximity outside of work, so that relationships of your choosing can be formed that are less subject to the whims of your bosses and the economy.

that's why I show up to my olympic weightlifting club, and music shows, and acroyoga jams regularly.

I do like my co-workers. A lot. But if seeing them in the office was my only social life I'd die. I can't speak for everyone, but personally the time/effort invested into forming meaningful relations by regularly showing up to places where I can engage with others who have similar interests (oly lifting, music, acroyoga) has probably been the best thing I've done for myself.

And being able to work remotely greatly facilitates that.

even if that were the case, the only place you're getting prolonged proximity to a (relatively) fixed group of people is your workplace? that sounds super not good.

I do think there's a big cultural difference. I've worked over a decade each in the UK, Australia, and now the US. In the UK and Australia, it was very common to hang out with colleagues socially, but I see it rarely in the US. Maybe it has to do with the "pub culture" in the UK and Aus, and a few beers after work being common, which it doesn't seem to be in the US (at least where I've lived - places with a 'bar scene' like New York may be quite different).

I may be biased due to getting older and having a family, so I'd expect to hang out after work less anyway, but I observe that generally amongst younger colleagues too.

I’ve been working for 25 years across 8 companies. Only two of them has anyone heard of. One was a fortune 10 company at the time (ruined by the decisions of Jack Welch) and one is currently a fortune 10 company. I keep in touch in real life with three people. One person followed me between three companies between 2008-2015 and I married the other.

The problem where you end up not making any friends and you're all alone now because your Meetup groups are bust.