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I don't know if scientists are studying this - given recent trends they ought to be. But if experience counts, then yeah, there is. I've done a lot of work remotely, in person and on teams where some people were remote and others colocated. If you have a hard problem and you need to apply several brains to it, then you can't beat working together in person. Two or three people in a room with their laptops, a table, a whiteboard, a couch and a door that closes. It's miraculous. In person meetings are really good for getting everybody on the same page. You develop a shared vision, build relationships, and create group cohesion that can really improve everybody's productivity. It's very good for kicking off a new company, project, cultural shift or what have you. Once you've established that group identity, you don't need to be in-person all the time. Remote work is fine for day-to-day product development and operations. It usually allows people to concentrate better than open-plan offices. But that's not improved collaboration, it's improved individual productivity. And note that I didn't say in-person meetings are better than remote meetings in general. Typically that's not collaboration either, it's coordination. All of which is to say that if you're precise and narrow in your definitions, yeah, there's pretty hard evidence that in-person collaboration is better. But remote is fine for most tech work, and probably an even higher portion of general white-collar work. I'm glad that people are refusing to move, because that will help us develop a better model for remote work - a true distributed organization rather than "just like the office, but on zoom". At a societal level, we really really need this to work, and I think we should be willing to accept a small, medium-term hit to productivity while we figure it out. |