There are many considerations that organizations have, that they will never articulate to their employees because they are either orthogonal or to some degree opposed to these employees' interests.
As a notable example, it's much easier for employees to hop between remote jobs. Forcing you into a physical location is a way to lock you into the job: you socialize and make friends at work, you buy a house close to work, you build an entire life around work.
No employer will tell their employees "let's all get back to the office so you will find it harder to leave your role even if we underpay and overwork you."
A slightly more sympathetic concern: remote work makes a manager's job harder. Said job still does get done either way; but it's the difference between a manager being able to goof off for most of the day and end up finding out everything they need to know anyway through simple off-hand questions whenever someone walks by; vs. needing to actively arrange high-scheduling-overhead Zoom meetings + actively probe one's reports on Slack for relevant updates.
There’s always a shortage of good X whether it’s devs, doctors or managers. The ones that already struggling in the office aren’t going to have a better time in a wfh env.
Reminds me of something I had noticed: There are a lot of occupations that previously (sometimes long ago) required a good bit of expertise and a good bit of thinking that nowadays have been placed under managers who took the thinking (and very often fake the experience doing the work they plan or have outdated experience)
For some barely logical reason the more complicated work and the higher salary came with a kind of military authority position that use to be reserved for the level above or (longer ago) didn't exist.
This gets interesting where management tasks, like all other tasks, need to be optimized. If it is the same person doing both the tasks and the planning optimization happens naturally. A is compared to B, one goes over the advantages and disadvantages of either and makes a choice.
But now the manager has to chose between his own comfort and/or the effort he has to make and that of his underlings and the actual productivity. I don't think we need numbers to know what most would chose when the options are themselves or others. Its a damn hard choice to make objectively.
But the thing is, didn't we get these big brain high salary guys to make everyone under them work more efficiently? I think comfort in a job makes the largest contribution to productivity out of all factors. At one end of the scale people just start walking off at the other you get the [rare] unimaginable performance only seen in people who love what they are doing.
WFH is going to make management that much harder but also more valuable. If one is not excited about that the job seems to have evolved beyond capabilities.
What more do we need than the employee himself stating: "I cant do the work like this" in a context where we know others are doing it with great success.
Video chat is like the way PDF tries to replicate the paper office. I'm sure people are already building parsers for video chat and failing to match organized exchanges.
I imagine some kind of analogy with using whatsapp as a bug tracker. Surely it would kinda work to some extend? You would be able to find things you know are in the log but if you don't know it is there it is going to be a huge waste of time. If the person filling the ticket has the tools to make that extra inch of effort it saves the person on the other end of it a mile of scrolling.
A water cooler is designed to provide cups of water. It is only suppose to do one thing and it does it well.
Not forcing me to come to work and being able to work from anywhere in the US is one of the major reasons for me keeping my job.
I refinanced last year to a 15 year mortgage planning for this to be our “forever home”. I woke up one morning and I asked my wife did she want to move to one of the tax free states. We can save $12K a year and try some place different for a few years.
As a notable example, it's much easier for employees to hop between remote jobs. Forcing you into a physical location is a way to lock you into the job: you socialize and make friends at work, you buy a house close to work, you build an entire life around work.
No employer will tell their employees "let's all get back to the office so you will find it harder to leave your role even if we underpay and overwork you."