As he put it, the people who worked with the door closed got more work done in the short term, but in the long run had fewer serendipitous strokes of brilliance.
A lot of it depends on what type of work you're doing. If there's a lot of cross communication...office is WAY better. If it's "slap on the headphones and go full code monkey" it doesn't really make a difference where you are.
I work full-time remote. Previously I worked full-time onsite.
The onsite:remote benefits directly matches up to the work:life ratio. I get benefits to my life that onsiters don't get, and vice versa. It's a personal choice.
How big? Back when I worked in a big company, most of the people I dealt with were not in my office. Heck, many were not even in the same country. This was also before good, ubiquitous video chat, so most communication was over email or phone.
Fair point. It's about 100K employees across the globe, but I'm in the largest site. And you're right, it makes a difference. Even at this site there are multiple locations in the city, and there are differences even between different locations within the city (e.g. one location had a lot more talks by external speakers).
It's easy to see all the useful things I would have missed out on if I worked remotely. Examples:
- Networking: Serendipity plays a bigger role than anything else. And you get a lot less of it the fewer people you interact with. Simply bumping into people at the cafe is quite valuable.
- Career coaching: Lots of classes, talks, invited speakers, etc. Some can be done remotely, but roughly half require you to be live.
Also: Going to work makes it easier to leave work there when you come home.