[AndyJames]

I work for a big, old-timey, international company. The current policy is WFH or from the office, whatever you like. Some managers have rules that their team members have to show up at the office 1-4 times a month. Our office can hold about 400 employees and this is about the number of employees that could technically commute every day. To my knowledge, there are about 20 people who commute to work daily. No one else is going there unless they have to. It's a very nice, freshly renovated office, with a lot of green plants inside, free coffee, height adjustable desks, ergonomic chairs, relaxation zones, lockers (so you don't have to take your stuff to work every day), etc. located in the city center that is well connected via buses. trams and subway. You can even drive a car to work if you want. And still given that option only about 5% of employees decided to work there daily. People like you exist and their needs have to be filled however most people, if given a chance they'll prefer WFH.

[robertlagrant]

I think this is a possible conclusion you could draw, but not the only one. The value of going to the office is the other people. If no one's there, then it's the same as working from home (you need Zoom for all your calls, even if half of you are next to each other) so if more than about 5% of people are remote, it semi-forces everyone else to be, even if they'd prefer to be working with people as a local team.

[AndyJames]

Maybe that would bump the people willing to go to the office by another 5-10% but every once in a while we have days when multiple teams happen to be in the office on the same day, and at least half of the desks are occupied. Despite having half of the office dedicated as "the focus zone", most people don't really work or like to work on those days. There are much more meetings, and casual chit-chat but an actual output of "work products" is close to none.

[robertlagrant]

> There are much more meetings, and casual chit-chat but an actual output of "work products" is close to none.

To me that implies that something that is fairly needed is missing by being remote. I think being a distributed factory outputting "work products" might be a net negative, but I could be wrong.

[geraldwhen]

I’ve worked on international teams my whole career. bigco will never hire everyone in the same spot to save money.

It’s zoom no matter what.

[robertlagrant]

I've done that a lot as well, but that's not traditionally been seen as the best way to accomplish work as a team. It's just so much cheaper it's worth the pain.