> I miss when WFH wasn't a religious war and was just about whether you could deliver enough that no one missed you so you wouldn't get called out for slacking.

Well, if you're slacking you can be fired, it doesn't matter if you work from home or from the office.

Not exactly easy to fire someone (even with reason) in some EU countries due to (in some cases very needed) regulation.

This is very true. I have known people truly shit at their jobs. They've done things I would assume to be the final nail in the coffin - and some how they just trundle along frustrating everyone around them. WFH and you can easily get away with under performing by 25-50% in countries with strong protections for employees.

The point is that when you're not slacking, no one should care. But now they do care because its a war.

It's only "war" because people's ego is tied up in their work because they make it their identity, and WFH challenges that, very similar to people who brag about 60-100 work weeks like it is a badge of pride. Some work to live, others live to work, and there is a whole lot of inefficiency to be squeezed out that is hard to squeeze out because of the lizard brain [1] [2].

It would be great if it wasn't a war, just measure output or equivalent objective measures, but like religion (which wars have also been fought over), belief systems die hard. Mental models are rigid, emotional health is not always available to everyone, and so on. Loss of third spaces doesn't help, and your cohort of workers who demand in office time because that is the only socialization they get (or those who are fleeing their home life by going to work) also contribute to the friction.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law

An interesting point, I think I can add that those who know have no need of nice offices, dresses, titles on business cards and so on to "show their identity", while those who do not need them to fill the void. And that's might be a nice "large raw measure" of those who need to fill the void, so they like the office, and those who not. It's an imperfect measure of course because on both sides some are on the opposite classification but it still work in the mean.

Similarly someone who do work less at home typically is someone who can't be productive anyway, who sell his/her own time/presence but not much competence, again that's not always true but I'm pretty confident it's true in the mean.

However the real war is not about being remote or in person, but live in cities vs live outside, because with WFH as the way to work for all eligible jobs the big of real estate go bankrupts quickly, similarly many bit tech service player like Uber, Just Eat and so on, together with the cloud+mobile model. The rest is marginal.

Some do like the office because they have tough familiar situations and being "separated" for a significant part of the day means for them have a way to keep their family, witch sounds good for them, but IMVHO it's just a way to torture themselves more, some other do like the office simply because they can't afford a good home and they have a better setup in the office, again it's not a good thing to have IMVHO but all such examples are marginal.

WFH is not a "religious" war. For many people it's definitely a huge battle but for workers' rights, the same we had to do for the 8-hour day 100 years ago. When people realized they don't have to be packed like animals every day in order to do their work, they revolted. So yes, it is a full-scale war, but has nothing to do with religion or some dogmas, just realizing the absurdity of the pre-pandemic situation (especially in open-plan office spaces).

More flexibility should be a workers right. But WFH 5-days a week - I'm not sure about that. I was previously an ardent remote worker and did so on a hybrid basis pre-Covid. These days I'm not so sure it's the best thing. I know so many people not working for half the day. And their results show it and their colleagues suffer for it. But in countries where we have strong protections against being fired, getting rid of people for underperforming by 25% isn't easy. Certain people need the 'threat' of eyes on them in an office. Personally, I work harder in that environment. I don't particularly want to go back to it, but I can't deny it would be good for the company. There are also many who work much better at home - so it's not a simple problem. It needs to be decided team by team, company by company, and maybe even individual by individual.

> These days I'm not so sure it's the best thing. I know so many people not working for half the day. And their results show it and their colleagues suffer for it.

WFH really doesn't change this that much. I remember offices where half the people were fucking around on Facebook at their office workstations, pretty much all day when they weren't in meetings. Or talking about Sportsball in the break room.

Depends on the office. But in the office it can be controlled to a large extent. Personally, in an open office I never viewed social media, news, etc on my work computer. At home I do it all the time. But yeah depends highly on the office setup and culture.

The war actually is not much about being packed in the office, but being packed in dense cities to be nearby the office, that's the real point IMVHO of the RTO push: if all jobs doable from remote get done from home people doing them will spread and as a results services will spread as well creating a new-old-distributed economy, witch is a very good economy for the people, for SME, ... but not for big players.

If you live on mountains you do not use Uber for trips, you do not buy ready made food via Just Eat and so on. Big of real estate discovering that no one want big glass coated, hyper energivore towers but nice homes and homes are private business there is no much slack to bribe the public and craft big money affairs, in the end spread people OWN something so the 2030 "you'll own nothing" agenda fails. The rent-all, all is a service model fails.

Those who really want the RTO do not care at all about the office, but the surrounding. If people realize that things will change faster.