Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

I feel the same way.

I have been remote for over 10 years but prior to that, it was another 10 in an office.

That included an hour commute each way, random downtime and interruptions.

I honestly have no doubt I am more productive now, given that was "leave at 7 AM get home at 7 PM".

There is no way in any given day I am getting less work done in 12 hours than I was then.

I will never again go back to bumper-to-bumper traffic on the expressway again, even if we end up in a race-to-the-bottom on salaries. QoL is more important to me now.

I'm not going back to the office ever there's no need to.. the company I work for has experienced explosive growth since we went remote ..brought on and maintained 100 new hires.

If they try to force me I'll find something else!!

Cities are dying some cause of remote work but aren't we tired of the govt controlling our lives (Biden's remark of all remote workers must go back..ha lmao). Umm the solution is to innovate cities and offer programs for remote workers to come live there for three to six to 12 months ..have a startup that owns buildings in all cities for remote workers to live in and congregate as well let's them jump from town to town every many months. City living Innovation not more govt control/lame ideas is what is needed to spur the economies of cities and their future prosperity.

Are you sure they were doing more work while in office?

But regardless, I disagree with your premise. Software engineering, as a profession, is based largely on trust. This isn't a factory where you have to solder a set number of devices to meet your target numbers. This isn't an animation studio where you have to animate a certain number of director-approved frames ("footage") a week in order to meet your performance expectations.

In our field, the engineer largely decides on their own how much time a task should take, and the manager hopefully trusts their estimate. The *assumption* (and it's not spelled out in your employment contract because we're supposed to be professionals) is that a day of effort means a "full day" of 7-9 hours (or whatever, the precise number isn't the point).

So if I, as a manager, ask you, the developer, how long this feature will take to build out, and you tell me "5 days", well I think it's fair for me to expect you meant 5 "full" days. And because I trust you, I'm not going to look over your shoulder or try to pre-solve the problem you're working on -- I will ideally just trust that it takes you 5 days. And because I think highly of you, I will trust that the work takes a dedicated and fast-working developer 5 days to finish, and that's that.

If I find out that all along, you really were working only an hour a day, then I think it's fair for me to say: "What the actual fuck, you tell me these tasks require a week of effort but they really could have been done in one day, and the project could have been moving 5x faster than it has been."

But... the other option, I suppose, is for managers to decide by themselves how long each feature and bugfix should take, and not ask the developers or take their feedback, and then the manager can evaluate the developers' performance based on that. As a manager, I'll look at a task and say "I want this done in 1 day" and when you tell me "That's not possible, it will take at least a week" I'll just say "Too bad -- get to work". We don't want that.... do we?

It's unfortunate that companies and individuals, like yourself, can't respect the fact that others _are_ more effective remote and when they're not getting tapped on the shoulder by random colleagues.

As your GP comment pointed out remote vs in-office productivity likely breaks even. Companies should treat their employees like adults and let them work where they feel most productive and not cater to the preferences of upper-management or a desire to return to the status-quo.