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by infotainment 821 days ago
Completely agree; I think an argument can be made that there are a lot of benefits to in-person interaction. Most anti-RTO arguments I’ve seen boil down to “I don’t like my commute” which has less to do with RTO and more to do with America’s lack of meaningful transportation infrastructure.
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janosdebugs 821 days ago
I believe, most of the companies that we hear instituting an RTO mandate have distributed teams, so that in-person interaction wouldn't manifest in these cases. Also, I live in a country with very meaningful transportation infrastructure, I still wouldn't want to spend 1.5-2 hours every day crammed into said infrastructure at rush hour for no good reason. Buying a car would have saved me 30 minutes tops and I find it irresponsible when public transport is available.

Thankfully, I no longer work for a company that mandates in-office work and even the telco (!) I used to work for had unlimited home office even before the pandemic, which worked beautifully and saved them lots of money.

Having an office to go to helps the more socially inclined employees, but doesn't boost productivity uniformly, especially when everyone is on calls all day anyway.

Just like home office, full in-office work needs a very special setup to be truly effective and given global hiring, may be harder to achieve that a remote culture.

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infotainment 821 days ago
> I believe, most of the companies that we hear instituting an RTO mandate have distributed teams, so that in-person interaction wouldn't manifest in these cases.

I agree that RTO makes no sense if you’re going to spend your entire day in calls. That said, I would actually go a bit further, and argue that distributed teams themselves are a bad idea for that reason.

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janosdebugs 821 days ago
That then becomes a hiring problem as that's limiting it to one geographic area. If it falls out of favor in 5 or 10 years, it's really hard to move the company. I've seen effective remote teams, but it requires a high degree of independence from everyone. Typically, it's also much harder for people early in their careers.
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