Why do so many people want us back in the office?

Keep in mind it wasn’t “I want to be there 8 hours a day, Monday through Friday”. But they definitely wanted the option to work from an office for part of the work week, at a minimum.

This doesn’t surprise me in the least.

What used to be going to work in the morning became exercise. Then, when it was end of day, we went outside. I have kids which made it making more sense. But you can go outside for walk or read book outside etc. The point is that you leave room and do something that causes mental switch.

In my anecdotal experience it is good to strongly encourage video use. Well before the pandemic, I noticed that our colleagues in Hyderabad were far more involved and engaged when we made it nearly a requirement that everyone on the call turned on video. Especially once you've visited in person at least once so you have a little bit of a personal connection, video can help preserve some of that. Disembodied voices on zoom calls are the worst thing ever.

I see it in abundance in every single discussion here and elsewhere - people who hate commute but for whatever bad/stupid reason ended up far far away and were wasting hours every day on it suddenly have extra time and its great. These people keep praising current state as the best invention since fire. Most companies aren't organized around that last time I checked.

Maybe its a very US thing and true there on really massive scale. But here in Europe its not like that, not that much at least. Most folks commute 20-50 minutes. That is for 2nd biggest city in the country, smaller are more effective.

There are massive issues right now. Physical fitness is rapidly declining. People are going less out, less sun exposure. Amount of mental issues is understandably shooting through the roof (saw some firures about 5x increase in some cases). Economy is going down the toilet, some parts of it will crash very hard, possibly unrecoverably in current generation. These are effects that will be around for very long time even if we have 100% cure for covid tomorrow for 1 cent per dose.

Plus what parent wrote is absolutely, 100% true - I see people tired from constant conf calls and full remote. Mailboxes are exploding, it becomes hard to track emails even few weeks old. Brainstormings are mostly gone, people became more robot-like. Whatever you gain from not commuting from that middle of nowhere you live in means nothing compared to all this. For companies and for economies.

I am absolutely, 100% against full-time WFH in an expensive, low-quality(no sound/thermal insulation) Bay Area apartment without a dedicated workspace.

> if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world

I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it.

One final point is that anyone looking to judge my WFH productivity better take into account the endless procession of major disasters taking place outside my window. WFH in a pandemic with looting and massive wildfires is not the same as WFH in a 'normal' year.