[grardb]

Assuming the word "hybrid" is being used to mean that an individual employee has to go into the office for at least some amount of time per week/month/whatever:

Here's the issue I have with the main argument I see against remote work, or rather the main argument I see in favor of forcing people to commute to an office ("satisfies the need of some workers to have regular face to face interactions with coworkers"):

I want to be at home, and I am fine being at home. Why should I need to go to an office because of a coworker's need for social interaction? I don't need that social interaction. To me, the argument always seems very self-centered from the point of view of pro-office people. Let the people who need that social interaction go to the office, and let everyone else stay home if they want. There's no reason that someone should be forced to go to an office because of the needs of other people, especially when those needs have nothing to do with work.

This is like arguing that I should be wearing a certain color of clothing because some people like to (or need to?) see that color. That's not my problem to solve for them.

I get plenty of social interaction outside of work hours. There should be zero expectation for me to spend more time, energy, and/or money (getting ready, preparing or buying lunch, commuting both ways, etc.) so that people who aren't my friends get to look at/talk to me in 3D.

[closeparen]

I would be happy to socialize only with people who opt in. That’s how it is already, no one forced you to go to the lunch table or tag along for drinks.

To the extent that we collaborate on work, though, having to Zoom with you instead of having a normal free-flowing conversation forms an imposition on me. It becomes an extreme imposition when I am also prohibited from having normal free flowing conversations with other people in the office, out of a sense of “inclusivity” or “leveling the playing field” for you.

[ev1]

I am curious how this does not present an opposite extreme: forcing me to stop my work to have an unnecessary conversation instead of discussing in asynchronous issue tracker makes me have to remember what happened, have to write down whatever I remember, deal with not being able to get my stories done while this is happening, instead of being able to look it up and have it in writing along with other people not available at the time to discuss or leave notes and changes on.

[closeparen]

I agree, it is very bad to do things synchronously and in formal meetings that could have been async and offline. That's another reason to resent remote work. Number of meetings, duration of meetings, size of attendee lists, and % of calendar covered in meetings are all way up since the transition to remote. There's a meme on HN that remote means written async communication, but the objective measured reality at my company is the opposite.

[ornornor]

Exactly, why should we allow someone else to make their problem our problem?