Not having a 90 minute commute each way has done wonders for my blood pressure. I do miss all the bars/restaurants all within walking distance from the office but I much prefer my home office.

I do not miss all the American Candy Stores within walking distance of my office.

If I do feel like sampling America's finest cuisine, I go to the world foods section at my local big supermarket, where it is much cheaper, and contains actual genuine American chemicals.

Saving a fortune on transport and childcare is a huge blessing also.

Personally I find hybrid suits me best, a couple of office days breaks the week up nicely and also helps to add structure. Having loads of meetings in the office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays leaves Mondays and Thursdays free for actually getting things done whilst sat at home in peace. Fridays are still Fridays :)

What I like best about it is finally feeling like I’m being treated like an adult and not a naughty school boy. I no longer need to be seen in the office to be trusted to do a good job, fantastic. I reward that by working harder and more productively than ever. As such I have very little time for those who bang on about returning to the office full time.

Being someone who suffers from anxiety, I prefer working from home. I'm a lot better than I used to be and comfortable where I am, despite the shit pay, so don't mind going into the office. It being a decent office and within walking distance helps but prefer working from home with the private bathroom and kitchen. Also save money making lunch rather than going to the shop each lunch when I'm in.

Also like being around my animals. Being at home with the dog is more enjoyable than being in the office.

I'm in a fully wfh job at the moment. While I prefer it to fully wfo, I think hybrid would fit me better. One or two days in the office, maybe, enough to build that social rapport. Fully wfh is quite isolating, I find.

The secret is to have a social life outside of work.

The secret is to have a social life outside of work

Having a social life in work is not mutually exclusive. Even as an autistic person, with the common misconception that we don't like any form of social contact, I find it hard if I never meet my colleagues. There are ad-hoc conversations that happen in the office that just don't happen virtually - plus I get to have conversations with other people from other teams which really helps with knowing what the rest fo the business is doing.

Maybe it's because I'm a left-pondian but as someone who has worked as a consultant for large corporations for over 2 decades I found it best to maintain a certain professional distance from all co-workers. I like to compartmentalize my life. Work life is work life, personal life is personal life and never the twain shall meet.

If someone were to invent a Star Trek-like transporter where my commute would be in seconds instead of 3 hours I would come into the office more often. As I stated, I do miss all the excellent eateries and drinkeries surrounding the office.

Beer icon because I really do miss the drinkeries!

"plus I get to have conversations with other people from other teams which really helps with knowing what the rest of the business is doing"

This. I've overheard and had myself so many conversations where someone from an unrelated team had the solution to a problem but this was only discovered by accident. When I was doing reporting (could have been work from home but that wasn't an option back then), since it didn't matter where I sat I asked for a desk in the middle of operations. It was quite educational listening to conversations about their process. At times I had a better idea of what new reports were needed than my manager(s) did.

But I do like work from home, too.

Hardly surprising someone with the handle "Joe Drunk" has a social life outside of work - and I'll bet I can guess what that social life revolves around!

As a consultant I used to fly to my gig Monday morning and return Thursday evening. I'd get them to set me up with a corporate apartment so all I had to bring was my laptop bag, and it was easy travel. Even traveling to Canada each week as easy (though that was a year before 9/11...) After the 2008 crash companies tightened their belt and so they didn't want to pay to fly me out every week. I was fine working from home 100% of the time, and once had a contract that lasted two years without ever traveling on site or meeting anyone involved.

I don't miss the airport hassles and flight cancellations, or getting up at 4:30am to make a 6am flight Monday morning, but I think something is lost if I've never met the people I'm working with. Maybe Zoom changes that (I retired from consulting around when covid hit, so I never did any video meetings) but I doubt it. There's something to be said for building up a personal rapport with someone, but that doesn't have to be done in person - there just has to be some unstructured time where you interact and can talk about non work related stuff to get to know each other (like at the start of a meeting before it gets going)

Some people hate that idea, and one of the reasons they like working from home is the lack of small talk with co workers, but I don't think you can build up that level of rapport if all you ever talk about are your assigned work tasks and where they mutally overlap.

I could not do a full home working job - as you say, quite isolating.

During Covid I didn't set foot in the office, or physically meet a colleague for 18 months - the site was restricted to production essential people only. While management went to great lengths to try and compensate, it really wasn't the same. I can actually say that (due to internal reorganisation) I joined a department, and left later (when it was made clear my post wasn't wanted), without having physically met any of my colleagues in 18 months !

Now I'm part of that political mandate desperately looking for policy based evidence to support it called 60% in office time. In our team we've been told to give it the ignoring it deserves and carry on doing what works best for us to get our jobs done. I go into the office regularly, and even if it wasn't mandated I'd still do it - but 3 days/week, some of my ex-forces colleagues who are more "forthright" have a suitable expression "FRO".

I last went into the office, for about 2 hours, over a year ago.

There's plans to meetup with colleagues at our new offices at the end of the month.

I work for a huge corporate with offices all over the world. The office I work from - or more accurately, where I had the option to work from, was sold.

It belonged to the company. They've recently leased a space 25 percent of the size, with a maximum of 140 seats.

The usual modern mix of meeting rooms, quiet spaces and all that guff.

I may start going in more often, because I really have got lazy over the last almost 4 years now!

I never realised just how much I walked when I was at the office!

The commute, however ... that always holds me back. It's a minimum of 45 minutes drive one-way, which isn't terrible - or wasn't considered terrible 4 years back.

Public transport? Forget it - over 2 hours each way.

I still struggle to comprehend how I managed to put up with over two decades of commuting in my career - having to be in the office every day, 9 to 5.

I couldn't do it anymore, no chance... well, ok, if push came to shove and being noticed at the office made the difference between having a job and not having one?

Things are looking interesting in not such a good way in the IT sector right about now...

Well, your guessed right. The number one bubble nation and their abbreviations which OF COURSE THE WHOLE WORLD KNOWS. "No one says Day Of Birth, they all say DOB".

NAM? Vietnam? All those movies and television series with "I've been in NAM"...

LATAM? Sounds like a cash terminal to me...

EMEA: OK, at least I know that one. But see, "Europe = Middle East" - WTF are are you combining such VERY different regions for? Oh, yes, many Americans put Germany near Moskow, off by only a thousand miles (literally, Berlin to Moskow = 1004 miles on a straight line). But I've also seen Americans putting Germany in the region of Riyadh, since the Suez canal somewhat resembles the Bodensee with its two arms pointing west.

APAC? Aircraft and Personnel Automated Clearance?

At least global average is clear.

I should give a course on how to collect down votes.

As someone who is not "office friendly", working from home 5 days a week has actually helped me to progress and be promoted within my field.

Prior to the forced adoption of remote working, I've either quit or been fired from every office based job I've had due to the in-house bullshit.

Lounge pants and flip-flops, can't beat it.

Fifteen years ago I wrote a book called [1]Treems for which the strap-line was At present we have social networking but not productive networking. That's like having the factory canteen without the factory. This was before Zoom and 'everyone has broadband'. The obvious conclusion for ROUTINE WORK is to keep the number of distant contacts to a minimum to make-up for limited bandwidth communications. It helps with clarity of focus and understanding what part everyone plays in the process.

But few contacts leads to lack of random stimulation, getting familiar with trends and social isolation.

How is the boss going to encourage, threaten shout or otherwise look like they're managing? This is why WFH is frowned on by poor managers. Oh dear my staff are leaving/ don't understand my orders/ push back on timescales and worst of all won't join my 'team building' chumminess... Obviously that's nothing to do with my skills, so it must be WFH which is depriving my ego of its daily sustenance.

A new understanding of the NON-ROUTINE WORK and accepting that it's more important to have the right sort of mentality in the right sort of job is required.

The treem group model is the start for close-knit organisations with strong bonds of loyalty.

The three-branch structure gives us a way to place people in that part of an organisation to which they are temperamentally suited.

Champions and Chiefs deal with maintaining the organisation and production respectively.

Distractions and dissatisfactions are diverted away from working groups by Moots and the Grumbler to avoid disrupting the work flow and harmony.

Research is needed into how people establish their identities and positions within the organisation.

When you're inside the mother-ship you can grumble about what might be important things but how do you do that when you're floating outside on a bit of string? (So that's why you need a grumblee who will accept the grumble and investigate how the organisation might address it.)

When you're sitting next to a square-peg in a round-hole then perhaps you can accommodate their weaknesses and build on their strengths. With less constant and less nuanced communications it is difficult to have the necessary trust, empathy and flexibility. (So that's why it is really important to recruit people with certain mind-sets into the right roles. Some people get a buzz from accurate administration without stress. Others have a buzz from being outward facing. Others are motivated by involved technical challenges. These three personality types are pretty-much exclusive. See the reference above for more.)

[1] https://vulpeculox.net/treems/index.htm

I have faster Internet at home, better chair, better snacks, better computer, more / bigger monitors, no line for the bathroom, no arguments over A/C temps, work in shorts and T-shirt and get a lot more done quicker.

> better computer

which you don't use for work, but for better things. At least I hope you do.

I run a small team of developers for a mid-sized ISV. Before COVID, working from home was a rare treat - mostly unattainable. My director hated people working from home and did his best to prevent it. Then came COVID and everyone worked from home for 6 months and productivity remained the same, or increased in some areas. Suddenly the director needed a good reason to get people back into the office and he couldn't think of one. It turns out that his main reason was so that he could survey his empire from his giant glass office doors. He also loved to wander around and tell terrible jokes, which people felt required to laugh at. That's mostly gone now - he does force hybrid working on his PA and a few others but the rest of us are essentially 5 days a week at home.

This is so perfect for me. For the first time I'm not ecstatic every Friday afternoon and depressed every Sunday evening. I only ever lose productivity from interacting with colleagues and I get enough social activity outside work. My introvert team of young developers all state a preference for it also. They have the option to visit the office whenever they like but choose not to. I don't think that is necessarily good for recent graduates. I see problems for young people who have only ever known working from home. They don't really understand the culture/structure/direction of the company. They aren't forced to learn how to deal with Tudor, who clips his toe nails at his desk, or the manager from the other department who thinks he can get them to work on his pet project ahead of time. They don't overhear the gossip, technical or personal. One member of my team, after two years in the job, is not known by any member of senior management. Great for not be asked to do extra work for another division, terrible for being seen as a rising star.

I hated working in the office full time but it taught me a lot about people and organisations and definitely helped me progress my career. I wouldn't ever go back to the office but I do worry that twenty-somethings are missing something. I hope that the world will develop a way for young people, who work from home, to get the benefits that working in an office gave without suffering the drudgery and Tudors of office life.