Thanks for sharing it. This is something that I noticed. Office Working and University are very good opportunities to become more social and have a dosis of interaction. Choosing their own hobbies while sounds easy, is something that we keeping postponing.

Too many peoples social and professional lives are entwined. They aren't meant to be the same thing.

Have you heard of the phrase "never mix business with pleasure"? It isn't about sexual harassment policies. It's general life advice, meant to save you from becoming a recluse who loses all of his friends if he loses his job or whose work suffers because he's paying attention to something other than the bottom line.

For your own mental health, I'd work on making some friends outside of the office. No matter HOW cool they are at the office.

My social life took a hit as well when I switched to remote work. I'm too comfortable being alone.

When I worked at office I had to get out of my comfort zone and socialize a bit with colleagues, chit chat, going for launch together, and in the retrospect it was nice to get small daily doze of social interactions.

I sometimes miss going to the office, hybrid thing (2-3 days in the office) would be probably ideal.

I don't make friends on the workplace, never will, had once but it was a mistake. Therefore I enjoy the sterility of remote work more than in person work.

The whole point of work is that someone pays you money, so you donate your time. How exactly and what amount of time, that is the contract you negotiate with your employer. Office time is just one negotiation point.

Personally I would never work as an employee to begin with, unless I were in serious financial distress. I would rather be a poor entrepreneur/freelancer than wealthy salaried employee. And office isn't really the factor, but other things, like freedom. But people have different preferences.

Shareholders do not care about workers' lives. Make stock price go up.

Obviously in practice, this isn't always true, but in general, each employee should output more than their pay, or they wouldn't be there. As an example, Exxon Mobile supposedly has profits of $899,000/employee [1]. Their average pay is probably significantly lower than that, but let's say it's $300k, so a 20% boost in productivity increases profit per employee by $180k. An increase of 50% in salary (and I don't think it takes that much to get people to work in an office) costs them $150k.

[1] https://www.lifehealth.com/top-25-us-companies-ranked-by-pro...

As a small employer in European country, I'm mostly worried about the problem cases. What if someone gets seriously difficult? Like stops working at all. Firing in US is much cheaper and legally easier than in Europe, there I would have less to worry about.

Also one time we had remote employee, that was committing fraud towards the customers.

It’s not productivity, it’s instilling norms in juniors.

And it also seems to be a very US focussed thing. Which is to say that here in Holland WFH is popular too, but it seems to be less of an issue (and less of a hill to die on for some, as it seems in the US). Of course there are differences. It depends on what kind of work you do, how far your office is from your home, how much value you put on "coffee corner banter". This nuance is lacking from most articles I read on this subject.

I work for a professional service firm (disclaimer: none of the big 4 or resellers etc. )and every time this subject comes up with candidates I say:

1. It depends on the customer, but you follow their rules. 2. In practice it's always possible to WFH a few days a week, but never assume this. 3. The more senior you become, the more human interaction and interpersonal skills are key. I am not convinced any Teams/Zoom/Webex (pick your poison) screen can replace this. 4. We try to get our employees a job less than a 1 hour commute from home. Again, this is Holland: a tiny piece of mostly reclaimed land

Summary: it depends on role, customer and assignment.

We never have someone leave because they're unhappy with the WFH policy, we do have some candidates that didn't sign with us due to this policy, but that's perfectly fine. It's a free marketplace and IT staff is in high demand, so if you're qualified, there's a ways work.

Because it' still a highly contentious issue. It's as if you asked a hundred years ago, "Why are these free Saturday/40hour-work week so popular"? It is an enormous power struggle, and it can only be won through determination.

The WFH crowd has plenty of time to write think pieces.

Even long term commercial leases do expire. A lot of companies aren’t renewing underutilized and maybe getting smaller/cheaper space to replace it—or not.

I think you're not accounting for momentum. Amazon can act irrationally for decades before they get out-competed.

> And if businesses are acting irrationally?

That seems to be the most plausible answer. Businesses are led by people and acting irrationally even when not financially beneficial isn't out of the realm of reality.

Businesses in the same industry already suffer from a herd mentality, doing the opposite thing that others are doing is risky, most leaders will choose less risk. It becomes dominoes, one leader from a benchmark company makes a hard to quantify wrong decision, another will follow, the side-effects will take a few years to crop up and by then almost the whole industry will have followed suit.

That’s great! You won’t find a single person who likes to WFH who wants to stop you from going to the office. The rest of us like to keep the movement alive and keep people thinking about how productive some people are when they don’t have to spend 2 hours a day risking their lives in a commute and contributing even more to global warming for no real increase in productivity from them, and for some an actual decline in productivity and severe reduction in quality of life.

Are you talking about a 5 people company where those people are your friends?

I own 33% of my company.

I can't say I "love" the idea of having an office, let alone spending more than five days a week in one.

I bought one and only one Amazon share. Hence as per your "solution", I own part of the company.

Explain how that makes me love 5+ days in the office. Btw, it's so cool how you put that +. Not just 5 weekdays, but also weekends.

He admits that he's biased -and angry.

That said, HR policies (both ones we like, and ones we hate) tend to be "one size fits all" policies. They don't adjust for individuals. There's reasons for that; usually, legal reasons.

Individual jobs require individual approaches. If I'm a bench tech, running a rack of $40,000 analyzers that I share with other techs, I probably need to be in the office. If I'm running tests on an Internet connectivity layer, maybe not so much.

Also, different people work better, in different contexts. Some folks can't muster the personal discipline to work out of their living room (or their home environment is not friendly to their work). That doesn't mean that they need to RTO, but they should find some solution. I know someone that actually rents a desk in a local accelerator, and goes there, five days a week, for a remote job.

I have a good friend that just accepted a position at Amazon. They are paying him a lot more than his previous employer. He's really good at what he does. Their offer was not charity. He came on board as a remote employee. He lives out East on Long Island, and the Amazon office is in Midtown Manhattan. That's at least a two-hour commute, each way. He has a new kid, and is currently weighing his options. That paycheck is making the choice difficult, but he's coming face-to-face with the things he will need to give up, for that paycheck.

> informal "water cooler chat" which is missing at working from home scenarios.

I have a lot of that. Actually, in each company I worked for, I made sure we have a channel for informal communication, it is a work life changer.

Most people, even so called introverts, sometimes like to communicate, and they need to have a way to do so, and this must be done in a way that doesn't disturb others etc. This can be a slack channel, a weekly "coffee online" with your teammates, or even pre-daily informal discussion on any topic. Otherwise, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy which Bezos apparently doesn't care about.

Pretty sure multiple studies have shown that "water cooler innovation" is more or less a myth.

In fact, with things like slack and Discord, there's far more conversations happening when employees stay at their desks.

Depends on the company and atmosphere it fosters. In our, watercooler/kitchenette is just empty chat, very rarely long term beneficial to company unless you meet just the person you need right now, but then they don't sit far in any case.

One thing that office is irreplaceable in (again, depending on company and atmosphere) is getting some stuff done from people not directly on projects but with crucial responsibilities/access.

If I am physically there, I just go to their desk, and either sit behind them till they have time or we agree to do it within 1 or 2 hours. Now I am few months fully at home due to breaking both legs while paragliding, and some of those folks take 2 weeks of chasing, meetings etc. to get their 5-minute max shit done. While 50-folks project is blocked by them. Maddening.

Yeah what is the utility of those chance encounters and how often do people get actual water.

This feels a bit like rose tinted glasses.

It also removes petty sleights, sexual harassment, and political maneuvering.

The problem is when you are wfh and there are still people in the office who get more visibility from management simply by being in eye sight.

I’m not sure what social engagement companies can/should offer to remote workers aside from the occasional offsite. At least to my way of thinking, Zoom happy hours weren’t worth a lot.

Adults are supposed to have friends outside of their homes who they do not work with and are not related to. The problem isn't with WFH, it's with society.

It also makes switching jobs lower cost. If I just change where I log in and I don't know anyone I work with who cares.

By work do you mean the 4 hours a day of utterly valueless uncompensated time commuting to and from, and preparing for my long day sharing a toilet with people who don't believe in deodorant or vaccines? If so you're right. I do less work.

I do have to sacrifice the super valuable experience of joining zoom calls from a loud non-private cubicle to appease a middle managers ego and artificially inflate the local real estate market though.