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Same lunch thing over here. I do enjoy meeting my team for lunch. But it's not any easier for me to get work done in the office and the theoretical face to face collaboration doesn't quite seem to happen. We've offices in a bunch of countries anyways and are pretty distributed in my project.

I'm an engineering manager and some of my fellow managers seem to feel very strongly about wanting people to come to the office despite 2+ years of evidence that we can work remotely. It's tough because everyone is different. Some people might benefit from the ritual of coming into the office, the additional social connections, and to some degree the peer pressure. Some people are very effective working from home. Some people live close by, some people live far away.

We have a lot of space in our offices and lots of meeting rooms so no real noise issues or feeling cramped. If I had my own space with a door and a 5 minute commute then I'd probably go more often but I have neither...

Hard to say where we go from here. I do think having the team in physical proximity has advantages for collaboration. But the other pieces to take advantage of that have to be in place as well. I've done some of my best work while working physically closing with others but I've also had some of the worst distraction heavy environments where I got little done. As long as companies are just optimizing for cost per employee then maybe they should just sell their office buildings...

So recognisable. In our office everyone is on international teams so everyone is side by side on different calls. It's a mess.

It was like this before covid but our company took advantage to reduce the number of floors and make all the office space hotdesks. So now I sit beside colleagues I don't even know and it's even harder to talk about noise.

Yeah, 75% of my team on the current and previous projects are in other parts of the US. We just had a massive reorg to make it more flexible to assign free people to projects around the world.

The CEO and senior VP's have said that we work better when we can see each other in person. At other companies I have really enjoyed brainstorming in a conference room around a white board or solving problems together.

But after this reorg we are going to have even LESS projects together as a local team. My response to my immediate manager was "Sure but then assign people to projects from the same office." It makes no sense to say "come in to work together" and then put us on even MORE remote projects.

A few of the managers also have people working on the project in Israel and India. The managers are constantly on the phone including 7am and 9pm meetings for the foreign offices. I'm glad I don't have to do that but why tell them to come in the office? They are already disrupting their personal lives for the company with those meeting times but it does make sense to make it convenient for the people in India when there are 10 people from India and only one from the US on the call.

I'm glad they are paying us well but the logic of this is idiotic.

I sometimes think that some Managers, and even primary founders, have such ungratifing gratifying social lives outside of work; They need the social bonding, and drama, that goes on in certain work settings

Kinda like my last girlfriend. I honestly felt if she didn't have an office to go to, and couldn't boss around someone beneath her in the organization around, gossip, and socialize; she couldn't sleep well.

Yea, if she couldn't make someone at work miserable--what's the point of it all?

She didn't even care about the money, it was an ego thing that I will never understand. That Bad Boss attitude who get things done. That, "Dam I'm good!" attitude.

This is not about her gender. I have met more than a few guys with the same flaw. I just didn't go home with them. I've had way to many bosses that loved the office "family".

I don't know how many times I heard we are a family here. Under my breath--I mutter, ya the Manson Family.

I get the social part, but why make everone miserable by dragging them into the office, especially if things get done at home?

I usually liked all by co-workers, and even enjoyed their company outside of work. I was single though.

Covid proved many positions could could be done at home.

If I had the power, I would offer financial benefits to companies that kept employees home.

Working from home, if you can do it, should be celebrated.

And I won't even get started on the rediculious commutes we did for the past 100 plus years. I've know guys who commuted 3-4 hours a day.

If global warming is a problem wouldn't those in power want us at home instead of driving. But dude--we have electric cars? Most of us won't be able to afford one for years, and even then. Most electricity is still not carbon neutral.

> don't know how many times I heard we are a family here.

Depending on my mood, my response to this sort of nonsense is one of either:

"All the more reason to have as few of us as possible in the same place."

"Ah, family-- the people in your life most likely to molest you."

I'm great at parties.

Competition for social status is the fuel that propels so many people's lives.

Acting rudely, just because you can, is something people struggle all their lives to achieve.

I just think Darwinian tribalism is the natural status quo of human beings.

Well thought out, altruistic, social structures, are almost the exception.

I had a comment in the same vein two weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31155366