[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.