My office spent 3 years during the pandemic telling us that the future of work was here and we’d probably never work in an office again.

We got rid of our office leases, sold off property, and then the CEO received some stern letters from business associations and bam! Just like that, all mention of the future of work and telework were deleted off our sites and everyone was forced to show up in office “2-3 times per week”.

Anyone who was given permission to move across the country were ordered to move back home (within 30 days) or face immediate termination.

Those that weren’t fired and didn’t quit are now crammed into random offices around the country to take MS Teams calls with their teammates. The whole org is falling apart.

I genuinely think this is one of the biggest reasons that there’s a push for people to return to office. A lot of CEOs and similar positions either feel embarrassed by how an empty office looks, or outright fear for their job. They think a bustling office simply looks better for their company, especially to outsiders.

Honestly, it probably does, but I don’t think it’s worth the cost. An utterly insane amount of time is wasted commuting. All that commuting also has environmental impact and basically means you’re paid less. How many skilled employees will those businesses lose to competitors that will allow working from home?

Nah, be honest with yourself, that’s not the reason.

1. The simple reality is that most people aren’t self-motivated enough to maintain the level of productivity at home that they maintain in the office.
2. Communication is more difficult.
3. Keeping an eye on your employees is easier when they’re literally within eyesight.
4. Training is easier when you have another person close by who can lead you through it.

It’s likely that, in the long-term, we’ll end up with a hybrid system, where those that prove themselves responsible enough to WFH, will get to WFH, while the rest will be back in offices, which is the exact same thing we had prior to Covid.

The companies I worked for let me WFH every day(aside from one weekly meeting) for years before Covid, but I routinely did 3x the work of other people, even as a junior developer.

The problem isn’t with the companies, the problem is human nature, we don’t want to work, so we use every opportunity to wiggle out of it, on average, at least.