[Yizahi]

Did you or anyone else has actually observe any such processes? I mean employees A and B meeting at any place which is not a workplace or any of them (because meeting at workplace means one of the pair has come specifically to another, and that is mostly equivalent to calling that person by phone, on full remote) and there spontaneously talked about work topics generating previously unheard idea useful for the company?

If the and answer is yes, then what was the rate of such encounters per number of employees?

And finally - honestly answer yourself - does this minuscule probability worth the ~30 full awake days in every years of life, of every employee? (2 hours commute per 250 days in a year, then divide by 16 awake hours per day) For me the answer is obvious - it is not even remotely equal in value to such a gigantic time waste. If that super brainstorming even real at all. Personally I've never observed this.

[blub]

I don’t think about this at all in terms of numbers.

Home office nudges towards isolation and lack of physical activity, while the office nudges towards interaction, moving at least a little bit and face to face interactions. No matter the outliers, the latter are considered universally good.

I’ve noticed that when I am in the office I usually have nice conversations with colleagues at lunch, that are good for my well-being. Sometimes we discuss interesting news from work, or their projects or other technical topics. We’re not Bell Labs of decades ago so the impact is obviously not large, but it exists.

My commute is 15m by bike. Even so I don’t look forward to going to the office because of various factors, but I do usually enjoy it when I’m there.

[PawgerZ]

> Home office nudges towards isolation and lack of physical activity

You say this as if it's a fact, but with an extra 1-3 hours of my day freed up, it's a lot easier to get into the gym or visit my friends and family. Personally, I was more active and less isolated when I worked from home.

[Yizahi]

I like talking to colleagues in person too, it just doesn't worth 1 month of my life per year. And 1 hour commute was really a median, we had people taking longer commute. Even for me if there was any rain/snow/accident on the route it would jump to 1.5h or more. And that is inside the city, I'm not even mentioning people who commute from the suburbs. 15 min is a really privileged option. Also even if someone wins in the commute lottery, it most likely doesn't transfer to the next job and commute would be much worse.