The benefits of remote work go disproportionately to workers, while the detriments seem to fall toward managers. Since it's managers deciding whether to hire remote or on-site, it's not that surprising that they act in their own interest and hire on-site, even if it's more expensive.

My manager has repeatedly encouraged us to work from home, because we're space constrained (loud), but I have absolutely no desire to do so... why would I want to bring work in to my own home? If the business is fine with my productivity hit, so am I.

Would you be willing to "split the difference" on your commute if they allowed working at home? Instead of driving 2 hours a day, you'd work an extra hour every day?

Maybe if it was structured like this then it would be more win/win.

> Is it possible that we're missing something in this? And that there might be more to this than companies being unwilling to try remote workers?

If open-plan offices are any hint, it's that actual knowledge worker productivity (let alone well-being) is pretty low on the list of things managers look for.

> I know my own experiences with working remotely and having remote colleagues have upon occasion been other than an unalloyed positive.

Sure but the same can be said of office work.

I recently moved to low cost city for job. Though we still have cubes but now there are about 40% smaller and walls are lower than last workplace. So in effect it is quite louder for work. However manager cabins are now twice as larger than before.

At the same time management has cracked down on any work from home requests. So somehow management does not care about individual productivity. As long as a crappy HP laptop is hooked on to 2 monitors every developer is good to go.

> knowledge worker productivity (let alone well-being) is pretty low on the list of things managers look for.

Alternatively, leadership has decided the price of lower density seating is not worth the increased productivity. Realizing there was no expectation of working at 100% significantly improved my well-being.