[anotherrandom]

What makes you think this?

I haven't observed any advantages to an office beyond overexposing the company to real estate (not really an advantage) - there is nothing I could do in person that I haven't been able to do faster in MS Teams (and better - now I have a written record and recording of everything). Another advantage of remote is that nobody ruins my train of thought by tapping me on the shoulder and asking stupid questions like "hey did you get that email." Best of all, no stupid pressure to go to lunch with anyone

[sour-taste]

I think the reality is some people do better remote, some better in office. There's no one size fits all solution. I hated my time working from home, but it sounds like you enjoy it. There's no perfect solution for companies here except to cater to individual preferences, or mandate one at the risk of angering some employees

[ajmurmann]

There is one an individual might find works better for them. Another tractor is cost add employee market. I have a much bigger talent pool to choose from when hiring remote and I can recruite from much cheaper locations.

Of course teams work better in person. So many factors that impact that though.

[dtech]

Very little people are advocating that WFH doesn't work better for focus work of clear and specced tasks.

However, in my experience that is maybe 30-90% of software engineering, depending on environment, role and seniority. There are lots of relevant activities that are more challenging remotely, such as 1-on-1 mentoring, pairing for debugging or programming, or designing and collaborating a project or interface across-teams. Maybe you are "lucky" enough to never have to bother with that.

[ProZsolt]

> 1-on-1 mentoring, pairing for debugging or programming

I find these quite easy or even better remote. I just fire up a screen share or even better a Visual Studio Live Share and both of us can see the same thing while we have our own developer environment.

[throwaway5959]

Take this from someone who works effectively fully remote except for a couple days a month that I go into the office: Believe it or not, some people like their coworkers and want to eat lunch with them. Humans have been hanging out with each other since (checks math) the beginning.

[sokoloff]

I think brainstorming, discovery, and discussion type of tasks work much better in-person, maybe 5-10x better (driven in part by a small percentage that are thousands of times better).

Delivery works great remotely, probably better for me and many.

[ProZsolt]

If you want to mimic the in–office fast paced decision making then yes in–person works better.

If you adopt a written RFC based slower decision making where people have time to fully articulate their thoughts and have time to respond to those comments then it not worst, just different.

If the house is burning and we need to come up with a solution now the first works way better. There is a reason why the military have war rooms. But for long term changes the second can be as good if not better.

[kcplate]

I love WFH (and probably will not ever go back to the office), my team would all also say the same thing. Individually we will all tell you we are more productive. However, I know for a fact that my team as a whole is less productive now than pre-pandemic when we were 90%+ in office.

I also know other teams in our organization in the same boat. Sooner or later leadership is going to realize it and the gravy train will end.