- Executives work in a way that genuinely does probably reward or even require in person interaction. A lot of their job is "intangible" human connection-building stuff with other executives, shareholders, investors, manufacturers, etc. And because of the way executives are selected, a lot of these people haven't worked a "normal" job in decades or sometimes ever. They mistakenly think everyone else's work is, or should be, more like theirs is.

- Ego shit: from executive down to middle management a significant amount of the "reward" of the job is prestige, in the form of authority and control over other workers. Seeing "their" workers all lined up in the office is a visceral experience of this prestige and they don't want to give it up.

- Some significant fraction of middle management is genuinely not necessary or beneficial, but is essentially skimmed off the productivity of the lower workers and presented upwards as managerial competence. And especially, this isn't evenly distributed: maybe all managers do it a little, inadvertently or through bureaucratic structure, but some managers are almost exclusively this. Their actual career is at stake because it makes clear who is doing the work, and prevents them from intercepting it to take credit.

And then finally my own view on it is exposed in the disgusting euphemism "labor discipline." White collar pay went up during the pandemic. WFH is incredibly better for the quality of life of many workers, with few or no downsides. We are realizing we don't have to live and work the way we have been, things can be better for us at no one's expense. We are getting uppity and need to be reminded who is really in control of our lives.

This is definitely a real phenomenon. "Subordination", the product of having subordinates, is a sort of hidden compensation to some people.

> And then finally my own view on it is exposed in the disgusting euphemism "labor discipline." White collar pay went up during the pandemic. WFH is incredibly better for the quality of life of many workers, with few or no downsides. We are realizing we don't have to live and work the way we have been, things can be better for us at no one's expense. We are getting uppity and need to be reminded who is really in control of our lives.

Amen. There's a certain type of boss who thinks that employee happiness is a sign they're not being whipped enough, and that whipping them will increase productivity; these people also treat it as an axiom, and are immune to evidence about productivity.

And in my experience there is a minority of people, also developers, who really enjoy working at the office, or don't do well at home.

Good managers would be busy figuring out what their people actually need to thrive and know that it is not the same for everybody.

In this case, I really hope forward thinking companies will destroy the competition and scoop up all the displeased talent that is forced to return to the office. Insofar as we have a free market, the problem will then sort itself out anyway, even though the road to get there might be ugly.

The best sales people I've ever worked with basically never showed up at the office other than to print off contracts and drop off signed ones. Most of their day was spent meeting with people in person. Rarely they were on phone calls.

I guess if you're trying to land clients in other states or other countries, you're probably at the office but you're not socializing with your coworkers..

I think for many executives it's so "intangible" as to be worthless bordering on detrimental ;)

Assuming they are doing anything by doing this, they need to be in person to do it. I'm with you though I don't think very much of value is taking place up there.

Ah the old "middle manager man in the middle" attack.

Which makes one wonder who the people who kept posting on here how much they missed the office and wished we'd go back to the office during the pandemic actually were.

I actually enjoy interacting with my coworkers, but the time I would enjoy spending with them outside of work, I instead have to spend on the road.

For me, WFH has made giving my kids a great childhood just substantially easier. We’re not constantly in a rush to get the mandatory stuff for the day out of the way, so we can spend more time with rec activities or just having fun.

We’re also not beholden to terrible schedules. As an example, the range of swimming lessons times we can handle basically opened up drastically. The range of afterschool activities we can manage as equally opened up. Where previously it was soccer, now we’ve been able to try a bunch of things and let them land on what they like.

I also believe there are those for whom this is not enough and they really do need more time around people than can be obtained outside of work, but there are solutions for these people as well (ex co-working spaces)

It's very common for neophyte founders to get and office (and business cards) as their first order of business, because in their mind the artifice of being "in-charge" is the actual motivation behind moving into leadership.

When I meet someone new around my neighborhood, I usually don't offer information about my employment, but if they ask, I tell them I work in computers from home. 100% of the responses I get are approximately "Wow, that's amazing," "you are so blessed/lucky," "our boss dragged us all back in," and "are you guys hiring?" and exactly 0% say "Aww, sorry to hear that... you must really miss the office/your commute."

The world of employees is more than just HN userbase. Don't take the narative here as being universal. In my groups of people, most prefer working in the office the majority of the time than at home. They are not on HN.

I guess this might be true, but I do not have any numbers to validate this.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

HR, in general, is not a reliable source on anything other than what the company for whom they work wants you, as a potentially unreliable production input, to believe in order to keep you maximally aligned with the interests of the corporate owners as relayed through management.

Enthusiastic extroverts who needed face to face interaction to stay happy. The pandemic limited their social options and they longed for the amount of in person interactions they had when working from the office.

Easily distractable people unable to set up a distraction free environment at home who got stressed because their productivity suffered. I thought I was going to be one of these people because I had a pre-school aged child who was also stuck at home but it didn't end up being that much of a problem for me thanks to my wife being very proactive and able to juggle her school schedule to when I was available to parent. Some of my co-workers privately admitted that they couldn't focus on work when their hobbies and house-chores were so close at hand.

Those who had issues in their home environment that caused them grief and they relied on the office as an escape rather than fixing their problem. These were the people who got divorced or broke leases at the beginning of the pandemic as they were unable to live 24/7 with the people they had been able to deal with as long as they had 40+ hours of break from them every week previously.

The other side of the coin is that solo work - e.g. slinging code - is a lot easier to get done at home with fewer distractions.

All that said, if my choice is between the extremes of mandatory RTA and full-time WFH, I pick full-time WFH ten times out of ten.

Of my current direct reports, I have 2 folks who couldn't wait to get back to the office full time, a number of folks (including me) who go to the office maybe 1-2 days of the week, and the rest never come to an office. My office folks go in because they like a firm separation between work and home and like seeing their friends in person. Same with us casual office types; I go in because there's conversations that move faster to better outcomes when had face to face. Exactly how are we wrong? Why do you care?

And while I know you won't believe this, but the middle managers job hasn't changed: all the bullshit they had to deal with so you don't is still there.

Your arguments about “me” will always fall on deaf ears at your company. They don’t care about “me”, they care about “us”.

Same as saying that you need to argue why a pay raise is good for your company. I mean, it mostly doesn't. All it does is that it makes the employees happier.