[pjmlp]

And the worse of all, is that in most cases the work is exactly the same, and there is no collaboration on the office, because the team is geographically distributed anyway, so the only thing changing are the location of the video calls, and with whom to chat during coffee breaks.

[olex]

This is a thing I've been constantly bringing up with our company. I _do_ think that local collaboration in the office is vastly more effective than remotely, _but_ only given that the entire team is co-located.

As soon as there are any remote members involved, the local collaboration benefits are lost, and a mixed team becomes less effective than a fully-remote one - because few offices offer the necessary space and equipment for large groups of people to participate in remote / hybrid meetings and work groups effectively (most / almost all existing conference room equipment is complete junk). Unfortunately, fully co-located teams appear to be a thing of the past, and as you say, mandates aren't going to help here.

[oytis]

But it's absolutely essential that you chat with HR and sales people at the coffee machine!

[exitb]

Exactly, before covid, I don't think I ever saw any serious efforts to shuffle team assignments to have them more geographically segregated. But now it's all about in-person collaboration for some reason.