First off, I come from a blue-collar background, and actually enjoy building and repairing physical things, though I hate getting under vehicles. So if you enjoy that kind of work, then remember it because working on increasingly abstract systems can (at least for me) feel increasingly pointless.
I'll say that in person work has the highest bandwidth for collaboration. You're correct that all the work is done between ears, but in large, complex systems, that means multiple peoples' ears. I'm introverted on a level that most people find weird, but when I need to solve a problem that crosses domains in the systems I work on, typing text into a chat client is painfully slow. I want to get everyone involved on a call. What is best is when we're all together at our desks with access to whiteboards; I loathe trying to whiteboard on screens.
There are also management pressures that people chafe against. If your manager just wants to see butts in seats because they want to survey their domain and feel powerful, that is indeed a good reason to reject RTO. But I think good leaders do understand the power of in-person collaboration and can try and ecourage it while also balancing the benefits of remote work. I see this at my current place - our CEO has made it clear that she would like to see people back but has never created any sort of mandate. But some people have returned to hybrid schedules on their own because they find some collaboration helpful. In fact one of the developers and I have made some good progress on goals that have been stalled out for a long time since he started coming in once a week.
Interestingly I also see it in friends who are purely remote; they work for companies that do not have a presence in our town. They've actually started joining co-working spaces in order to get out of the house and get some sense of comraderie.
First off, I come from a blue-collar background, and actually enjoy building and repairing physical things, though I hate getting under vehicles. So if you enjoy that kind of work, then remember it because working on increasingly abstract systems can (at least for me) feel increasingly pointless.
I'll say that in person work has the highest bandwidth for collaboration. You're correct that all the work is done between ears, but in large, complex systems, that means multiple peoples' ears. I'm introverted on a level that most people find weird, but when I need to solve a problem that crosses domains in the systems I work on, typing text into a chat client is painfully slow. I want to get everyone involved on a call. What is best is when we're all together at our desks with access to whiteboards; I loathe trying to whiteboard on screens.
There are also management pressures that people chafe against. If your manager just wants to see butts in seats because they want to survey their domain and feel powerful, that is indeed a good reason to reject RTO. But I think good leaders do understand the power of in-person collaboration and can try and ecourage it while also balancing the benefits of remote work. I see this at my current place - our CEO has made it clear that she would like to see people back but has never created any sort of mandate. But some people have returned to hybrid schedules on their own because they find some collaboration helpful. In fact one of the developers and I have made some good progress on goals that have been stalled out for a long time since he started coming in once a week.
Interestingly I also see it in friends who are purely remote; they work for companies that do not have a presence in our town. They've actually started joining co-working spaces in order to get out of the house and get some sense of comraderie.