There should be some colloqualisms around this to recognize that there are valid positions across the spectrum. I'm a hardcore WFH'er, an introvert with a dedicated office in a beautiful spot in the woods and no colleagues at my work location which is a 45 minute commute each way.

On the other hand I work with extroverted young folks that are sitting on the edge of their bed all day in a stuffy bedroom with one window so they can work from the top of their dresser in an apartment with three other roommates.

Not to mention that some roles requiring tight focused interaction (such as mine) benefit greatly from in person meeting.

Ideally, for me, I'd be in office two days a week (and no more). I'm much more productive on my technical tasks at home.

I like to think that different places serve different purposes for me. When I think of the woods I think of a place to relax, connect with nature and to take my mind off of work. To make that my workplace where I am introducing the stresses of workplace challenges or even the occasional work crisis, only serves to corrupt that space and my connection to it.

Disclaimer: I realize not everyone would share that point of view (and clearly having an office in the woods is working well for you), but that's my perspective on it.

Maintaining productivity in the typical office comes at huge personal and professional costs for others, and I'm kinda frustrated that this situation hasn't resulted in more empathy from fans of the office (because, you would think that having been forced into a suboptimal work situation, they'd understand more how much that sucks).

Honestly, yes, thanks for saying this. I literally had to move, I lost roommates that are now close friends but it's not the same. My monthly expenses are up even considering I don't commute, and I'm cooking/blending so it's not that, just the rent and stuff I had to buy. I held up for a year but when I saw it was going to be another year I had to pull the trigger and move to a bigger place.

I'm chill and think I respect the "WFH forever" crowd a lot. I just would love to be able to have my home office be for my hobbies again and it was hard to even mention this at work without someone aggressively jumping on me because I'm a shill for the big tech executive caste that wants us all "trapped" in the office again. I changed employers recently because of this to a company that has more of an office culture.

Question (I'm not being facetious; I actually wonder this) - Why do companies (and some workers) seem to believe that to have a great office culture people must be trapped there?

This is one of the sticking points in this discussion, I think.

(Leaving aside the issue of long commutes.) Why do people's actual hours sitting at the desk need to policed?

In my experience, policing desk hours doesn't do much for software engineering and most creative fields. Sometimes it is necessary though, if someone is checked out and lying about getting stuff done or being able to hit a milestone if they are just forced to sit and policed they will get stuff done but otherwise they will not. I find this latter case to be the exception. People with this attitude are already toxic when being policed, I think with WFH there's going to be a multiplier for their toxicity.

I think in a great office culture people are going to the office because they want to, or because they are more productive there. In my experience this is what will happen once a bunch of people are already at the office and remote people can't catch up or feel left behind on some stuff. Also on meetings when there's like four or five people on a room the people on videoconference just can't work at the same level and it's very hard to accommodate for them.

I think it's ok if some companies don't want to go back to the office, but I just think colocated teams perform better. I'd rather be on the teams that perform better. I think maybe for a giant like Google letting everyone go home is not a bad idea, but if you want a tiger team to skunkworks something up for you I think WFH won't cut it. Maybe a few days a week or every other week if you need to a lot of alone work, but not all the time.

>> destroyed life/work balance etc.

This is what the 75min/direction commute to SF would do to me

Remote work doesn't mean you have to literally work from home. Before the pandemic, I worked remotely, but rarely from my actual home.