> I don’t think there is any need to defend in person work.

There is a need to defend it though. I've already seen several businesses claim that remote work is "the future". Personally, I feel that remote work has been very detrimental to my mental health and I hate it. I don't want that future. It feels very unhealthy.

For me, the isolation of the pandemic was detrimental to mental health but the remote work has been incredibly positive.

Is it possible that these two circumstances are overlapping in your case?

Do you miss the commute and sitting in an office (on-location work) or do you miss speaking with people (socialization)?

I miss speaking with people about work in the easy way of leaning over and asking a question (hey, do you remember the name of that function to does ___?) etc. Sure I can ask on slack but it's not the same.

I mis-conversations being unscheduled

And I miss socialize "with coworkers". We're working on the same project. That socializing helps know what's going one, what each other is doing, what problems we are running into. It gives up empathy for each other tasks etc. Reading about it in various forms of online databases doesn't come close.

I had structured my life so that I could walk to work every day, so the short commute was actually some very welcome exercise.

I miss having lunch with coworkers the most. There's some natural bonding and trust building that happened over lunch, talking about random things, both work and not work related. This is very hard and possibly impossible to replicate with remote work.

With remote work, meetings are scheduled for a reason. Meeting just to "hang out" feels weird. Multi-user meetings with more than a few people also feel off because everyone is interrupting each other, you can't have multiple threads of conversation. Talking on slack, you usually can't tell how the person is feeling. The tone is lost. I've found communication is generally much poorer.

After 1.5 years, I tried working in office yesterday. The experience was horrible. Work conditions were inferior when compared to my home. Going to office and back home feels very inefficient and harmful to the environment.

No thanks for offices.

There are probably quite a few organizations that support in-person work. You probably should seek them out (and vice-versa). You just shouldn't assume they're the default any longer.

I think there is a difference between defending in person work, and defending going back to exactly how it was before.

I'm back to the office most days of the week although I don't have to. Big difference being that there are no longer implicit or explicit expectations what hours of the day one is there, I can just stay at home to work on something or wait for a delivery, due to only a part of staff being there any given day it is more spacious and pretty much as quiet as at home, etc.

I actually have a separate room in my apartment I could convert into an office, but I don't want to, since I would have zero use for it outside work hours and prefer to use it for things I actually want to do at home. Sure I could move out of the big, expensive city into a more spacious home, but then I wouldn't live where I want to live.

I don't think there needs or should be a default, and I don't want to go back. Companies should just choose whatever model of working they prefer and see what talent they can attract. Maybe in person work becomes niche. That's fine for me. But i'm honestly getting a bit tired of the "why would you want to socialize with co-workers, don't you have real friends?", you now often get if you mention you personally favor a hybrid model.