As one who manages a remote team - substance doesn't come for free.
This sounds great as a dichotomy, but it is not - people who care aniut their work, and collaboration are rare to come across.
I'm one of those who are very productive working remotely, but not out of loyalty or some "ethics/morals". It's simply because, as an engineer, I seek efficiency, and remote work is efficient. I suffer from inefficiencies, rituals created to placate bipedal cattle, and senseless reactionary attitudes. We are few, I imagine, but we are also the cohort that innovates, at various levels and in various sectors, without whom I don't know how much the West could hold on, and this, indeed, is not free.
Today, with RTO, a social rift is forming between those who want to truly advance and those who merely muddle through, while the world moves forward. If this trend isn't reversed, the West, which has already lost so much, will lose what little remains and discover that its residual military strength amounts to little more than a Romans legio fantasma. At that point, the cost of "saving money" by not innovating will be so high that it will lead to bankruptcy.
> the West, which has already lost so much, will lose what little remains
The West already advanced a lot until 2020 by working from office. If anything, fully remote conditions are a death knell for software jobs in the rich parts of the world. Most of the SW jobs do not require special talent and can be done for a fraction of the cost from Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa or India.
The Bronze Age was characterised by bronze, which allowed for many advancements. But then we discovered iron, and those who chose it first massacred those who had remained with bronze. Bronze was no longer what had allowed for evolution; it had been surpassed.
This is my feeling and my point. These changes are obviously not that rapid; culture changes across generations, but they will happen, and those who are left bolted behind will not have the long and slow experimentation and refinement that allowed to master the new, and so they will simply be crushed. Software developed around the world matters little; quality software is so rare that only by working globally can we still create it. No single company, not even a single whole population, can truly do it on scale.
Hard disagree. Lots of otherwise talented people still have problems with written communication or other norms of remote work. They thrive in an office though.
Mere proof of that is a lot of startups which are still flocking to SF and mandating in-person presence 5 (or 7) days a week so that they can move fast.
I am against full RTO 5 days a week, because for focused tasks, WFH is way more productive. But hybrid is not entirely stupid. Sure, if 100% of your work is focused work (say SWE work for instance), anything other than full WFH is a loss to you. But unless you work 100% alone with nobody else, 100% optimal for you may not be 100% optimal for the project / product / organisation. And I’ve seen first hand how conflicts brew when people can’t just go in front of a white board and hash out differences in person
Tl;dr : it’s wayyyyyyyy more nuanced than “RTO is stupid you control freak”