I'm curious as to what you base this statement on. Game theory is modeling of strategic interaction between two or more players in a situation containing set rules and outcomes. Did you create the actual model? Is there an insight you mind sharing?
it depends what their goals are. having worked in-office and remote for the same company, it's way easier to get shit done in the office. at least if you're reasonably extroverted/persuasive/bold. there are so many times I was able to walk up to someone's desk and spend ten minutes to save multiple weeks of protocol and runaround. partly because it's easier to apply pressure, but also partly because communicating face-to-face is so much higher bandwidth. but if you're remote you're easier to ignore, and a lot of office workers are very good at ignoring people who want to create more work for them
but the flip side is it's way easier for remote workers to fade into the background and hardly do anything. a skilled developer can emulate a mediocre developer while working a fraction of the hours. a skilled manipulator can "work" a fraction of the hours managing expectations and barely produce much of anything. plenty of people will figure out how to automate their jobs and just never tell anyone
there's this idea that remote will benefit introvert/aspie types because it's so word-focused. you have few face-to-face conversations but you write tons and tons. but really, apsie types will produce reams of literal-minded descriptive and often very helpful documentation and discussion, while people-people types will manipulate their image to appear very legibly valuable and come out ahead more often than not
my honest opinion for awhile is that remote is going to a massive efficieny drain on big tech companies and startups doing stuff that's easy to phone in like webdev/saas/whatever, such that if you founded a small committed colo team you could probably outcompete them in whatever domain you want even without any special edge
Let's ignore how you interrupting someone cost them potentially hours of productivity.
I agree face-to-face is higher bandwidth for easy/simple topics. "Bob, what's the mainframe password" is easier shouted than written, and the reply likewise (assuming Bob knows it by heart).
It gets tricky when the topic is complicated or when Bob is distracted and confused. You might get a half-assed dismissive and incomplete answer (which you may or may not notice), or it might take Bob much longer to figure the answer out than if you had messaged it to him.
The quality of your communication depends on many factors, and your perception may not necessarily match reality.
there were more than a few times when the schedule slipped by months because someone outside the project delayed something by weeks. those kinds of issues I never had when I was in the office because I could get what we needed through force of personality. but outside, you have to go through process, and process is inefficient
seasoned remote workers might counter the org was dysfunctional (a charge I will not deny, hence why I left) but they don't have solutions other than more process. because remote depersonalizes work interactions, they have to layer on policies and documents. it's fundamentally a bureaucratizing force
Similar to the studies with brainstorming where people doing it in a group come up with fewer and less diverse ideas than people brainstorming individually and collating the results.
There is no inherent advantage to "working in person." Lower trust or communication or higher friction are not inherent to working remotely, they are the product of poor and overconfident management (at least in tech, given our forum here) and can be seen in any number of environments. You can replace "working in person" with various other specious truisms like "having an organized workspace" or "having weekly status meetings" or "using agile methodologies" and the two sentences above will be likewise banal and true only in specific instances.
Most technology work can be done remotely, and I'd argue should be done both remotely and asynchronously (many companies recently forced to do the remote piece are still are holding dearly to 9-5 and constant meetings), unless there are specific use cases that require more in person synchronous efforts (and to be sure this is the case in some cases, especially when specific hardware must be used for instance). The perception that there is something "better" about 9-5 in-office work is more a product of tradition and resistant over-management than inherent advantages to either setup.
I really miss whiteboard sessions and and being able to chat without lag.
I wish there was a way I could make a bet that 100% remote will NOT become the norm. Given how contrarian this opinion seems to be, surely there must be some way to profit if I am right?
I think it's pretty obvious that 100% will not become the norm. But maybe 50% for some types of jobs? And some number of smaller companies will go 100%? Those seem plausible.
And that presents a long term problem.
The reality is that there is a real advantage in working in person. Whether it’s increased trust, communication, or lower friction. We could see it pre-COVID in a he fact that there are barely any successful remote offices (let alone individuals).
This means that employees would see advantages to coming to work, and those that don’t would fare worse in promo and productivity on average, bringing the equilibrium state back to the office.