> I wonder if being in the office is just simply more enjoyable for those with power and influence, while individual contributors (trying to get their work done) find they like it more at home?

Alternate take 1: If IC positions attract strongly introverted people, ICs as a cohort will naturally be less desirous of returning to the office than cohorts that require some ability to extrovert (such as management).

Alternate take 2: ICs are responsible for their tasks/goals. Managers are responsible for the tasks/goals of their managed individuals as well as the health of the team. People aren't machines. Managing people is not as simple as checking if they're completing sprints on time. Are they overworked? Underworked? Happy? Depressed? Engaged? Disinterested? These sorts of assessments are important yet can be hard to determine remotely.

If managing requires some amount of extroversion, and also the ability to not just measure that boxes have been checked but attest that boxes will continue to be checked in the future, it follows that managers likely are "more keen for a return to the office".

Managerial types who value interpersonal interactions definitely value being in the office. But I've noticed that a lot of individual contributors in the technology field are almost outright antisocial. Perhaps their days are so full of pointless emails and conference calls that they justifiably dread human interaction. If so, then these workplaces have much deeper issues with productivity and communication efficiency.

From personal experience, technical individual contributors tend to be much more introverted, and something like ADHD can make constant interruptions far worse than a mere inconvenience. Still, some of them come across as outright misanthropes for some reason.

Introversion is fine, and even introverted managers can do OK so long as they don't bite off more than they can chew. But you cannot manage people if you don't have basic interpersonal skills. In fact, it's helpful to be able to look someone in the eye and see how motivated they are.

Having people at least looking like they're hard at work must be highly gratifying to managers, because managers (as a whole) do a lot of things that make their employees unhappy, and have no measurable effect, or even a negative on productivity.

I've come to believe that a lot of what managers, from those immediately overseeing workers, to executive directors, do is pleasurable to them individually, but really has no business reason. That is, it's all about personal power and making their subordinates do work they don't want to do.

If my belief is true, managers will of course be in favor of a return-to-office even if there's no rational reason for that to happen.

The thing is, you have to produce results when you are remote. In an office, you can get by looking busy. I think the people who insist on going back to the office are the ones who are missing the stage on which they used to perform without actually doing real work.

in functional orgs, looking busy will catch up to you eventually, remote or otherwise.

I'm an IC and I'm way more productive in the office without the distractions of home. Also it's a lot easier to peek over to see if someone's busy or not before hitting them on chat to see if they're busy for a quick informal discussion. It's less of an event when you walk by the person every day.

Finding a way to reduce distractions is easier at work: it's a lot easier to change jobs than to change families :-)

I unfortunately agree with you.

I wish I was better at home than the office, but I am not.

Well, almost 40% of people who had an affair at work were owners or executives at the company, according to the fine folks at

https://2date4love.com/workplace-affairs-statistics/

And one in ten workers admit sleeping with their boss, according to

https://www.studyfinds.org/third-office-romances-involve-mar...

Perhaps managers are missing a very particular type of non-virtual interaction. Surprised this isn’t mentioned more in this era of #MeToo. And I’d imagine that would provide a very strong incentive for many managers to push RTO.

My experience matches yours and I've always thought it was due to trust. Leadership doesn't trust their team and have no idea if they're being productive or not. So they use "at desk not talking with head down" as a proxy.

That's a pretty cynical take. Everyone is trying to get their work done, it's more of a question of whether remote work makes that easier or harder.

- People whose productivity is based on regular social interaction will work faster face-to-face.

- People whose productivity is based on long periods of focus will work faster remotely.

Manager type roles, where interactions, communication and interpersonal relationships matter, unlike développement care about meeting physically.

What a shocker!

well leadership are, naturally, very people-heavy jobs, so it's much more likely that they would be more inclined to work together in person.