There are some workers who are more productive at WFH, some who are equally productive in either setting (but prefer WFH for personal reasons), and some who are less productive at WFH. Ideally everybody should just do what they're best at. If you're productive at home, work from home. If you're most productive at work, go into the office. Everybody's happy.
So where's the problem? It's that among the group that is most productive at the office, some of them still prefer to work at home where they fall prey to distractions and their output suffers. And rather than just coach those people appropriately, management finds it easier to just try and make everyone come in.
Which points to an even larger problem. That some managers are struggling with how to do their jobs in the WFH environment. And rather than acknowledge that they are the source of their own troubles, it's easier to pretend that the business is unmanageable remotely and everybody needs to come in.
That's exactly my point! I find it ridiculous that CEO's think they somehow have to create the same policy for everyone, as if giving people a choice was somehow a taboo. We've come a long way realizing self-organizing teams work better than micromanaged ones etc., I wonder how long it will take PHBs to understand that giving people a choice is not just good for them but it's overly beneficial to the whole company.
Unfortunately I think this is kind of a cope the remote people on the team use to feel ok about it (I've been that person quite a bit). But the people having coffee and lunch together more regularly just do form closer bonds and that matters. I don't think it matters as much as a lot of executives want everyone to believe it does, and I think remote work has giant benefits that aren't obviously or always or even usually overcome by "face time", but it's not not a real thing.
But we met on a planned company trip (with the excuse of a Vegas trade show, we went and met one week early) and that helped immensely with bonding and team building.
If I manage a remote team, I'll push for a similar team bonding exercise whenever possible.
It doesn't have to be crappy; I spent several years as one of the remote participants in a team like that, and it was one of the high points of my career. We made heavy use of instant messaging, and we met up in person for a week every quarter. People kept in touch well enough.
If you or some subset of your workforce has a suboptimal home situation, look at arranging individual coworking spaces. Everyone can shorten their commute by picking whichever space is conveniently located. You also sidestep the challenges of having some team members collocates while others are remote.
The parent poster simply said “Once you’ve tasted the fruits of WFH and you like the taste, you’ll never go back.”
And the reply was essentially “to each their own but my WFH experience was different “ and you’re ready to jump down their throat with accusations of lack of solidarity.
"Hey, we have this problem." "To each their own but it doesn't affect me!"
Why waste your breath to say this?
Employers taking the posters point into consideration may mean that they’re a remote first company, but they also provide coworking passes for people that appreciate not working from home.
In the same way that pre-covid management monoculture was “WFH could never work”, the monoculture now risks being dominated by people who have dedicated home offices who seemingly can’t empathise with people who appreciate commuting somewhere, feigning outrage at anyone who could dare suggest that there are multiple perspectives.
e: rewording
The issue is that companies are forcing people into offices. Nobody forces anyone into WFH (as a trend).
It a mute point, that people like different work environments or that different tasks might require different environments.
I prefer my small kid make a ruckus and than 50 phones ringing and shit talking and crap going on in the super open office place.
Glad my company saw the tide of times and switched to full WFH with office just a meeting space.
Don't want to be bothered by a baby then go back to the office.
They were giving another perspective, not forcing anyone to do anything.