The thing is that there is no arrangement that works for everyone. Sure, those who just want a physical office space instead of their home will probably be ok collaborating remotely, but the others want to collaborate in person, and that requires everyone to be at the same place. Flexible conditions which make everyone happy is going to the office to spend large amount of time on video calls in cramped call booth - nothing too happy about that, whichever side of the debate you're on.

I don't understand why this argument (which is a popular one) makes sense. It's symmetrical. RTO folks want their colleagues in the office. WFH folks don't want to not have to do this. It would be obviously absurd if I criticized WFH on the basis that its proponents are trying to force their preferences on others.

I think RTO folks tend to care more for everyone on the team to be in the office at least part of the time, whereas WFH folks tend to care less if their team colleagues are in the office or also WFH. So I don’t think it’s quite symmetrical. It’s better if the split is outside team boundaries, or between different companies.

WFH works better for everyone.

It reduces commute time.

- This saves environmental and energy costs - It increases worker productivity because now they commute time is recovered - Commute time was not accounted for in contracts, and was a cost of doing business. It is no longer the case.

- Coordination costs are said to have increased. Data is missing for this. - - Coordination activities are achievable online, so it is not a failure state. Competitive firms will adapt and thrive. - Less money is spent on rent, Especially in high rent locations. This means that more money is available for R&D, or to give to shareholders - Rent Money is now distributed across geographies - and will favor regions with lower costs of living. This spreads talent and wealth broadly, increasing chances for entrepreneurship and new businesses to flourish in those locations

WFH was considered infeasible. COVID showed us it was. It’s is good economics to make sure that this is spread and encouraged.

Increasing the economic pie makes us all better off. Going against this rule removes any basis for firms to exist. Like Democracy, firms and markets are the better amongst bad alternatives.

If we stop caring about the economic reasoning, then firm no longer possess a need to exist.

It’s difficult if you have teams split between WFH and RTO though. The compromise is for all team members to be in the office at least some days per week, or else to just have RTO companies vs. WFH companies. I agree that everyone should be able to choose their preferred mode of working, but you can’t just arbitrarily mix people with different modes and expect that to cause no issues.

That's not a compromise, that's RTO.

Also, I've been in this industry for 17 years. Malwarebytes (VP), Vicarious (VP), Rad AI (VP), Explosion AI, Aptible, and now Comcast. Every one of those companies except Vicarious had a remote or hybrid culture, and it's worked great for all of them. You absolutely can "arbitrarily mix people with different modes" as long as you have good management.

Yep. And mind you "flexible" here means fully remote. None of that 3 days at office BS.