Nearly 40% of software engineers will only work remotely

However, some things of note:

1) My "Office" (not home) is not an "Open Office", it's a place where I can reasonably sit in peace and have control of my surroundings (this is something not afforded to most people in offices, and something that work from home provides)

2) I do not have children at home, which is a pro and a con of working remotely. Being able to look after your offspring is great! I have it on good authority though that kids are distraction machines.

3) My Commute is a 10 minute walk through a sparsely populated city in southern Sweden with no heavy trafficways (or even mild trafficways by North American standards)

So even though my home office setup is dedicated, clean, & spacious, I do quite enjoy going to the office at the moment.

My meandering point is that: everyone has different life situations, the office has to be a better place to be than home if you want people to come to it and it needs to be accessible too; it can't be the case that you force people to sit in traffic for 2 hours each day to get to a place where their senses are assaulted all day.

On the whole, gathering around a whiteboard is fantastic and casual conversations over coffee can really help smooth over accidental communication gaps that exist in every organisation. (and, also help create some more positive interactions with colleagues than the relatively normal situation of calling on people only when they need to do something). I can't imagine needing to be in the same place 5 days per week to get the same benefit though.

[0]: https://blog.dijit.sh/how-to-survive-an-open-office

A colleague of mine prefers going to the office because at home he's constantly distracted by kids.

Another has literally injured himself due working from his kitchen in a bad position for a year. It's worse than RSI. He had to rehabilitate for half a year just to get back to 95% health, and even now whenever he concentrates for too long the pain comes back.

One might say, "well they should arrange a suitable setup then". Not everyone has a home that's large enough. Besides, my experience is that most people don't have the discipline or will to do this properly, and as an employer you have to more or less force this upon employees (not even "recommend" is good enough).

In the Netherlands, if employees — even office employees — injure themselves, then the employer is obliged to take care of them for max 2 years, even if the injury was not directly caused by the employer.

I feel that software engineering isn’t a one size fits all and its up to you to chase the work environment you enjoy the most.