Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

If part of your people are there and part are not then you must necessarily adopt patterns and communication techniques fit for remote work. Your remote people wont be happy because they have to come in and your in office people wont be happy because many days less than half the staff will be there.

If you want to have enough space for most people to be there on some days you need almost as much space as full in office. You can't realistically hire anyone who lives more than a 30-60 minute commute and because you want to have access to a large desirable workforce your building is probably located somewhere expensive as well. A large chunk of the most desirable workers who want to work remote are forever off limits or if you do make exceptions you now have jealousy and drama.

Hybrid work is the answer to how can I have all the disadvantages of both styles and none of the advantages while not being shitty enough that all of either group leaves.

I started working in a hybrid setting and found remote so much better for learning compared to in-person where there's 30 people talking and distracting me from getting familiar with the work, how much hand holding do Juniors even need anyway? If anything having it be async is so much better since you'll have everything written down so you can reference it later whenever you need it, rather than listening to some senior blab off for half an hour about unimportant crap that just confuses you more.

If Juniors don't know to ask questions, that problem isn't solved by forcing them into the office and having someone peeking over their shoulder constantly (which can be daunting and detract heavily from any potential learning there could be had), you need to foster an environment where they're not afraid to reach out for help when they need it.

Also who wastes their lunch break talking about work? On whatever rare occasion I'm forced to go into the office, literally no one wants to discuss anything work-related (myself included) during lunch. People are talking about anything other than work, because duh. I've also never even seen these mythical watercoolers where people are apparently discussing life-altering breakthroughs all day every day that you hear about constantly, we do have a sink where people will chitchat about, again, literally anything other than work with others procrastinating though. This might be a US-specific thing I guess, but I've never in my life encountered anything even remotely like it in either Asia or the EU.

> ...and there is nothing to compensate for this.

I mean if you do literally nothing and just throw up your hands and say "welp, nothing can be done here, guess we all have to be sardines in a miserable can!" (aka the office) then sure, I guess there's nothing you can do. On the other hand you could invest time into properly documenting the project and the processes surrounding the project while setting up proper asynchronous channels and methods which ultimately benefits everyone, regardless if they're remote or not.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/one-way-...

Most workplaces aren't social clubs much less families. It doesn't make one a sod to pick their friends and family and their work for different reasons and be jealous with their free time. You should celebrate your great fortune and I'm certain work put in to have your life figured out so well.

Most of us settle if we are lucky for something that pays enough to live with a reasonable work life balance and would do well to guard our time to spend with real friends and family we pick rather than the folks who happen to work in the same profession.