[swordsmith]

> I seem to recall Xerox Parc was designed to foster serendipitous meetings between departments.

This has been a common argument about returning to office, especially for R&D jobs. But in my experience in corp R&D, people are so busy in meetings/running between conference rooms, there isn't even enough time to get their actual work done, let alone do free-form discussion. ICs end up using the after-work hours to do most of their work.

WFH actually solves that -- people can stay longer for meetings near the end of the day because they are already home, and don't need to beat the traffic.