Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead
Managers are getting a pretty bad rap in these threads, and maybe (or maybe not) in BigCo’s that’s reasonable, but I run a tiny shop and I’ve asked my team to come to the office as often as possible, despite the fact that half of us have been working together for years - and we get on just fine online.<p>The reason is that the other half of the team haven’t got this experience; they are young and relatively inexperienced, and I want them to see how we work, how we solve problems, how their peers communicate and how we think about different aspects of the business.  I want to be able to jump on the whiteboard at a moments notice and maybe pull in a couple of others, while other people in the office can also listen in. This is every bit as important to the professional growth of our juniors as it is to my new business. If the sales guy and I are having a discussion and the junior front end developer hears us, he gets a sense of how we work that he’ll never get if the meeting is held in PMs on Slack or Discord.<p>I have no problem with WFH in principle, but my position is, if you are able to come in, then come in. If you have kids or other commitments then fine, work from home a couple of days a week. But by default, it’s better for everyone if you’re in the office.<p>I know this doesn’t work for all companies, but its not like this policy is poorly considered or arbitrary. I guess my company is going to attract people who prefer this mode of operation, and I know other companies are WFH first. But there are reasons for why we do what we do.