[mc32]

An issue is remote people may be at a disadvantage because they are remote and therefore may suffer consequences of not being in the office (visibility, chit chat, camaraderie, etc.) but they (we, or some portion) may feel they are unfairly suffering from unequal opportunity. On the other hand, they/we specifically have made the choice to be remote despite the inherent disadvantages (and also advantages though in another dimension).

[domepro]

Agreed, as I said, some people will not consider things like visibility, chit chat, camaraderie valuable. I don't really want to be friends with people I work with, or generally spend time with my coworkers when I'm in the office since I already spend 8+ hours daily looking at them. Even when remote, people I work with are not my friends, those are a separate bunch of people, I'm there to do my job, solve problems and I don't need camaraderie, chit chat or visibility for that. On the other hand, relying too much on office chit chat tends to make knowledge more word-of-mouth than written down if there are no documentation practices in place, while its practically a necessity to write things down when you're working remotely and that's a huge gain in my book. I think it's really really hard to to decisively say that one model is better than the other, but it does smell like distrust and micromanagement from the higher-ups to me when office work is considered mandatory.