[nazgul17]

I feel like you're putting words in someone else's mouth. Maybe you are not responding to OP but, in your mind, to an ex-colleague that did so in a different venue than this forum?

In a forum like this, stating your preference is just that: stating your preference.

If you were talking with your manager and stated your preference, you'd be stating your preference and, between the lines, asking to make it happen for yourself.

If you were talking with your manager and stated your preference and specified the reason is because you prefer working around people, only then, between the lines, you'd be asking to make it happen for your whole team.

[array_key_first]

I agree, the preferences don't do anything unless used as a collective. But from the point of view of comparing the viewpoints, they're not apples to apples, because one requires the cooperation of other people. WFH isn't actually 'from home', it's from not-office-with-everyone-else. So if you just want to work in an office, then WFH is perfect for you. Arguably even better than working in the one and only office, because you get to choose the office.

But the buried lede so to speak is that RTO has literally nothing to do with the office. The office is just an empty box that happens to exist somewhere.

So the level of control for each preference is wildly different, and they can't just be compared like that. One is naturally 'closed', and the other naturally 'open'. That, to me, does speak to the intrinsic value of each preference.