And this creates a bad dichotomy. If half team is remote and other has is in office it creates a really unbalanced interaction pattern.

I agree with both perspectives and not sure what I prefer but do think the team should be consistent (all remote or all in person). I don't want to have standup with 8 engineers in person and 1 engineer remote on VC.

Can you imagine a football team half remote / half on the field? It can be only one or the other (when they all play it coop via a game console). And yes, the specifics of our work is different (software development happens in the mind) but the underlying principles of human communication are the same. Fully remote communication works but worse than on-site unless you are outsourced or one of the 1k employees where they measure your productivity by the lines of committed code. Seriously, this road of thinking popularised by the latter type of employees because they are the majority I am afraid.

>Can you imagine a football team half remote / half on the field?

On gameday several members of the coaching staff for football teams are in skyboxes in the stadium removed from the players and coaches on the field. That is because they prefer to have an aerial view that allows them to see the game better. It works better for them and therefore it works better for the team. Your analogy doesn't provide the obvious answer you think it does.

Yes, working for a remote-only environment is vastly different from mixed. I don't know how companies are going to handle this without committing significant effort to making sure remote workers are kept in the loop.

An interesting question that's still TBD is how well companies can operate with a significant in-office team and remote team. I think this past 18 months has proven that fully remote can work, but it may be the case that a 50/50 remote/office split is significantly harder to manage.

Anecdotally, my company had an office team and a remote team split about 50/50 before and unrelated to COVID, and it was tricky. We don't have a lot of meetings, but when we did, it was hard to have a physical group in a conference room with a remote group on a screen. We solved that by effectively going fully remote for meetings that involved remote employees - everyone who was physically in the office would connect to a video call at their individual desks. I was personally fine with it, but some people definitely prefer (and work better in) that physical conference room setting.

All of that to say, the way one person works might be a forcing factor for others, even if they don't intend for it to be. Tricky problem.

If I'm in a meeting of any size, I'm dealing with people spread over offices and remote across North America and Europe anyway.

>We solved that by effectively going fully remote for meetings that involved remote employees

Yes, this is the process that teams within my extended team mostly follow.

I've been in physical/remote meeting splits. It's not really that hard. The trick is having everyone sign into the meeting with their own PC.

Yes, thank you for clarifying this. Let everyone work in the way that's best for them.