People love working remotely

There's a difference between being distracted at home and being distracted at the office. If you're getting distracted at the office, you're still doing your job. It might even specifically be your job description to be distracted. If you get distracted all day at work and get nothing scheduled done, then you still did your job. If you get distracted half the day at home (still less than a full day of distractions at the office,) then you have a major problem which is entirely your fault.

> I have a little room that I use as my office, homelab, and to home a few other hobbies.

That you have a spare room is entirely my point. That's a luxury that not everyone has. If you don't have this, then you are at a disadvantage for being successful with remote work. A workplace is a sort of equalizer, though certainly not perfect. Rich or poor, all you have to do to work at McDonald's is show up. The workplace provides everything else. Sure, your employer may provide allowances for your home setup, but not all will do that and they certainly can't create a spare room in your house. The closest they can get is to pay for a co-working space.

> Of your examples of "lost communication," none of those are things I feel I would be missing out on and I've never had issues communicating with my coworkers remotely.

It's undisputable that you lose information with remote communication vs face to face communication. We communicate with body language and emotion which doesn't carry over well even in a video feed. People are more willing to share certain things in different modes of communication. Some people don't like to use messaging at all. Remote work is still "good enough" but you do lose information. Losing information doesn't necessarily create "issues communicating with my coworkers remotely" but it does have an adverse effect.

Most comments here are "remote work is great, but"... That's ignoring the inevitability of technologies. This time it's different. Working from home was the norm for centuries, then the industrial revolution happened, and then the internet happened. Nowadays, way too many people don't work from home, for no good reason. As software keeps on eating everything, remote work will cause major disruptions in the way we live, the places we live and our lifestyles. For those of us that learned to work remotely, it is an irreversible change (and polls show that too). Lifestyle adapts to work, not the other way around. As such, we should be thinking about ways in which societies and lifestyles will switch from the 9-5/mon-fri, to something that is very asynchronous yet vibrant and fulfilling. Going back to the office just a dumb desperate solution, considering you are adding back commute time, office politics, useless distractions etc etc. Communication tools are already too good to be ignored. (Also, remote work is an onramp to freelancing/consulting/whatever. Because, if you can work remotely for one employer, why not work for another?)

Most of the complaints such as isolation and disconnection are because society has not adapted to remote working rather than the merits of RW itself. Imagine a world where everyone whose job allows it works remotely. That 's basically the majority of workers[1]. Imagine the change in the pace of life and thousands of people feeling as lonely as you. The precipitous fall of real estate prices as commercial properties become vacant. The empty roads that don't need more than one lane. PEople reconnecting with their neighbors by spending a lot more time in physical proximity. Preschools and even schools becoming obsolete and replaced with home/small group schooling. Our current lifestyles are hostile to remote work. We don't want to return to the closed societies of small villages, but we also want to make working at home humane. We should be able to work on this problem and i look forward to the things that people will invent in the next few years. Changes like this have happened before

1. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4187653/7825806/IMG+...

IRC for whoever is live + good email lists + discipline on wiki|docs + good PM/ticket communications is faster and more reliable than anything in person. Non-remote is a productivity disadvantage to people who need fast communication. A team of people online can say more with no interupt-crosstalk that cripples in-person "collaboration".

The same thing happens in email chains as well.

A good meeting lead can make sure they get everyone's input in a face to face without necessarily putting them on the spot. Sadly those are few and far in between.

I worked with one and they were excellent meetings. They got ideas out, and predicted possible issues better than any other meetings I've been part of.

Sounds like you could try one of my favorite strategies from the same source:

'When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible - never less than five'