As an introvert myself, I think I totally get your take on this.

But I've also been the only remote member of an otherwise in-person team. It was a truly terrible experience (as many others have written). I fear that the policy you're suggesting would make everything better for those in the office (the extroverts) and worse for those working remotely (the introverts).

I have been in that position before, and with certain groups it has been difficult. My, perhaps optimistic, hope is that post-COVID even those that return to the office will be more understanding for the challenges of those that are remote, it is an experience we have all lived now.

Frankly there's not much I dislike more than having to be in the office. I'd take the risk any day of the week.

FWIW I'm definitely an introvert and I can't wait to get back in the office. I don't want to have to talk to people all day but I really want some actual meatspace interaction. Being locked up for a year with two small children and only my wife as the other adult to talk to has not been good for my mental health.

Maybe there are different types of introverts. The pandemic has been by far and away the best time in my adult life, even when I only spent time at home with my partner. As long as I can spend time with her I'm happy never seeing another human.

Is this perhaps a COVID specific issue? Even during COVID I've kept in touch with a group of friends, albeit smaller. I still have the chance to go get a coffee or head to the gym, but I get to decide what those interactions are now.

Because it is one or the other. If office-first people are allowed to regain preeminence in a company, then that company will be back to abusing engineers by sitting them in hot-desk open office situations next to shouting salespeople in short order.

As an IC and an extrovert, I also never want to return to the office. I crushed a ton of hard work this year that I would have been incredibly distracted from by in-office activities otherwise.

Because you’ll miss out on in person discussions, not be in sync as a result, then leave because of communication issues.

Mixed working is the hardest to get right I think

This already happens in-person and is another example of why most of the problems people point out about working remotely are just problems with poor communication or workflow at a company. Working remotely isn't inherently more or less effective.

You're advocating for a position as "a guy in a room" [0], and we've all been taught how dangerous and harmful that person ends up being for an organization that's trying to ship good software on time.

What you're asking for is, frankly, not reasonable. You want to be left alone to code, and that is simply not how software development works anymore (and arguably it never worked that way).

    [0] - https://blog.codinghorror.com/dont-go-dark/

Nonsense. When I'm coding I want to be left alone to code. Often I need to talk to people as well, and I can do this very effectively over Slack, video meetings and screen sharing. I work on a team that was mostly in-office before COVID but I was one of a handful of remote people. Everyone was able to collaborate effectively when needed. Prior to that I've also been in the opposite situation where I worked in the office with teammates who were remote. It's really not that hard.

There's a vast pool of people to hire that don't need this special treatment, and can produce quality code on time as well. How are you going to compete with them?

It's the other way around. How are you going to compete with remote-friendly employers if even FAANG benefits aren't good enough to interest me in their non-remote openings?

I don't think I've said anything negative about remote working, I've cautioned against the, "just leave me alone" attitude that seems to come with the desire to be remote.

And for what it's worth, any company you can trick into just leaving you alone won't be a good company to work for in the long term, because since they're not shipping quality software on time, it's very unclear what it is they'd instead be valued for.

The original poster you replied to expressed a desire to "never go back to the office". That's a personal preference and a totally reasonable position. By bringing up Atwood's post out of nowhere, you're building a strawman.

It'd only technically be a strawman if I were arguing that working from home was bad. It's probably a non sequitur, if anything, but the specific person I'm replying to had made comments elsewhere in the thread that create additional context.

Honestly, I think my mistake was replying to you at all, since you don't have all of the context.

Not sure what you mean by “special treatment”. I’m well compensated for the work that I do, and remote positions are not exactly hard to find these days.

> You're advocating for a position as "a guy in a room"

No they aren't. They just said they want to WFH.

I think some additional context is probably necessary to understand my response:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27465169