> People just have different preferences.
I'm always surprised how HN treats WFH as _obviously_ superior and desirable in every way, to the point where OP is claiming these mega corps may collapse if they ask their employees to come into the office.
I'm always surprised how HN treats WFH as _obviously_ superior and desirable in every way, to the point where OP is claiming these mega corps may collapse if they ask their employees to come into the office.
Those places are all commuting hellscapes, so there's almost no scenario where you wouldn't do WFH if you could. My dad did the Queens-Manhattan bus/subway/express subway/walk treadmill for most of his career -- not fun.
I live in a small city with a 6 minute commute, my preference for WFH varies by weather (I mostly work outside) and whether my wife blocks my car in the driveway. Overall, I like both -- WFH has advantages for focused tasks, but I tend to work longer hours. Interacting with colleagues in person is much more productive in an office setting, and it's easier on my family. It's tough for my 8 year old to not be able to talk to dad when he gets home from school.
These kinds of things are just really hard to generalize.
But you can look at data like stuff from the Census Bureau and see detailed comparisons of commute times in different locales that give you a sense of the variation.
From what I've seen, people aren't advocating for strict fully-remote work, but rather flexibility for teams within larger companies to decide what works for them and what remote hiring policies makes sense within those teams, rather than having strict guidelines passed down from executives indiscriminately.
For many, going into the office is their preference because everyone is required to go into the office.
For a while I may be the only person going into the office on my team, which defeats the whole point. I want to be in the office because I work better when my team is around in person.
That's pretty much why I said that allowing remote work isn't unambiguously the best choice. There's negatives to every arrangement, and your scenario is one of the negatives to allowing remote work. Personally, I don't think it's enough of negative to counteract the positives, but it's enough that it's worth having the discussion.