> As for myself, I do prefer the adhoc discussion of issues, brain storming and silly what-ifs during coffee breaks et cetera. I'm much more in the zone in this environment.
You prefer to chat with your colleagues during work, and you work well collaboratively with interruptions, but you can't envisage that other people have both different personal preferences, and different skillsets. Instead you accuse them of slacking off.
I can, but as said, I think they are rare.
> Instead you accuse them of slacking off.
I transparently stated the numbers where I got my anecdotal evidence from. I could go into detail of how and what individuals did or didn't do, but I don't see how that helps. Either take my word for it or you don't believe it anyways. And again, in my sample WFH folks were a minority, the majority was rather indifferent, and some preferred the office like me.
Sounds like slacking off to me.
I highly recommend reading Quiet.
I'm lucky enough to have found a team entirely composed of introverts. It's fully remote, and it's the most productive team I've ever been on. We have the most comprehensive test suite I've ever seen, the fastest rate of deployment, the fewest prod incidents, and I'm finally able to stay focused for a whole day without being interrupted for meaningless chit-chat.
That your team hired people who can't be trusted to self-manage is not a reflection on remote work, it's a reflection on your hiring process.
This reads as though you called about half of the people here liars.
If you didn't mean to imply that most of the people here arguing for WFH are really trying to preserve their chance to slack off, I would read back over your post and consider changing your language, because it's pretty obvious that most people who read it took it that way. You can't blame other people for misinterpreting you when that misinterpretation is the most common way to read what you wrote. :)
There a lot of jobs like that. Phone customer service comes to mind as well.
Now, there are jobs that can't be remote ( butcher for one ), but we shouldn't pretend its just development that benefits from remote.
As for myself, I do prefer the adhoc discussion of issues, brain storming and silly what-ifs during coffee breaks et cetera. I'm much more in the zone in this environment.
there isn't a single colleague in my department (~30 people) who preferred WFH where I feel they were more productive, or even on par. Quite the opposite, those who exclusively stayed at home when working completely lost touch, gave vague updates and excuses about what they're working on and what current problems are. When they returned to office (we've three mandatory days at the office now), it really showed how disconnected they were from all the process and changes that happened over the last two years. And I mostly don't have to care, I'm not responsible for these people, except for one instance my work doesn't even directly depend on them, but I can absolutely see why an employer wants to get everyone back into office. It's not worth keeping WFH up if for every one of those few who actually benefit from it, there are five others who you basically now need ten times the effort to make sure they di their hours and don't just bullshit you in endless video conferences with flaky connections and parrots going mad in the background and whatnot.