Nearly 40% of software engineers will only work remotely

The consistent response I have gotten from managers is that more or less - people fake work sitting in their homes or work multiple jobs, and we collaborate better when we are sitting in an office. They use this as a force function to pull employees back into the office.

I call BS on all of these. Employees faking work - your hiring problem. Employees working multiple jobs - again your problem, keep them occupied with meaningful work, if not bring in legality to protect your IP or whatever. AFAIK no one working multiple jobs are revealing IPs.

In person collaboration - There may be some truth to this. High profile decisions are best taken in person, that being said during covid almost all decisions were done on Zoom not just for a week or so but for 2 years. Isn't that proof enough that even government level decisions can be done on Zoom ?

Design discussions are best done on Miro/Google docs than on the whiteboard. Multiple people can collaborate efficiently on Miro, especially with an iPad. Not only this, every voice is heard instead of just 2-3 folks standing at a whiteboard and driving discussions.

So many tools that make even pair programming or production debugging a breeze.

I can pretty much negate every argument that mandates in person office presence.

What I really vouch for is in person collaboration events once or twice a month where everyone comes together for a couple of days and hash out key issues and have a totally unstructured time for collaboration.

And of course, have an office for those who want to come in to collaborate. Not everyone has a spacious home, people like to hang out with co-workers during lunch etc. However make it mandatory that all group meetings will be done on zoom, in order to provide equal participation opportunity to remote workers. These hybrid meetings with a few people in a room and a few on zoom are a total disaster.

You have an 'ideal' office (if there were such a thing) though, it's not really the comparison anyone means, or what's generally realistic.

Your sort of office is the sort of thing that for most people is more attainable if they do work remotely, and then rent a space near home, or build/convert a shed/garage/outbuilding.

Your happiness working from the office is also quite tied to your employer, I'd assume (I don't know Sweden or what's normal though), which is obviously either limiting or means you might find yourself back in the 'will only work remotely' camp when looking for a new job.

My workplace requires us to come in a few days a week. I don't like it, but I don't dislike it enough to quit.

I don't get value out of being in the office. I'm an introvert. I come in, dump my laptop on the table in the dull open space office, put my noise cancelling headphones on, then do the same exact thing I do at home. I do the watercooler banter on Slack.

My coworkers are fine with remote work. My manager outright admits that he would have let the team stay remote if he wasn't getting prodded by HR, who are of course enforcing corporate's diktat.

And that brings us to the problem.

Corporate.

Corporate wants everyone back in the office and they're insane about it.

Every unoccupied screen now has some lines about how cool being back in the office is.

Every company-wide meeting has a 10 minute speech about how we should finally get back together and collaborate.

There is total disregard for people's actual circumstances.

They keep telling us this policy is for our own good, that we can work better this way, but a FAQ document had a question on it about those who collaborate with people in other regions and even with all the HR-speak flowery words the answer basically was: we don't care, deal with it and come to the office.

An executive at a corporate-wide meeting outright BRAGGED about being sick with COVID and lying about it so he could attend a company function in person at the height of the pandemic.

The obsession is genuinely uncomfortable at this point.

I actually like the office and don’t like working from home. It’s the commute that makes me work remotely.

I start my shower 15 minutes before work and am online and productive. Going into the office adds on at least an hour and all the intangibles with it (gas, drycleaning, food, etc).

And childcare is so possible with remote work and much more difficult with commuting.

If I could teleport instantaneously to my office I would choose it in a heartbeat.

If you do not have childcare you can not work... from home or otherwise

and trust me your co-workers will notice and be annoyed by having to pick up the slack