Why are people in their own cubicles video conferencing and chatting to others in the same office? Because its convenient and saves time, you on-site proponent hypocrites.<p>If cost isn&#x27;t the significant factor to being remote then time and convenience sure is. I have two or three extra hours of productivity not driving into the office (no round trip), settling into a cubicle, chit chatting, picking where to go to lunch and of course avoiding tension headaches and sleepiness from sitting in traffic. I also have time to work out that I didn&#x27;t before. I&#x27;m more balanced in my life. I&#x27;m 10 years and going strong remote as a programmer&#x2F;consultant with tons of energy and free time to do what I want while being highly paid. My wife is at home with me along with my kids and the most driving we do is your typical errands. Cost for me is much lower as we only need one car and I can write off office space in my house.<p>I have a hypothesis about these studies showing that onsite is better aside from being the business culture propaganda it is: People are generally social creatures and find communication most effective in presence as it strengthens learning via increased dopamine response (reward system), however, the outliers in the bell curve don&#x27;t need this type of stimulation, in fact it may make them less effective.<p>Several remote workers I&#x27;ve met over the years along with myself simply don&#x27;t need that and find video, chat, docs and email more effective in communicating over in-person meetings on whiteboards. As a programmer, I care more about the idea being presented or discussed than the people themselves. I find I personally work much more effectively in my own space and I know the remote teams I&#x27;ve worked with find a similar experience. This is probably the outlier which is why these studies find it more effective to the contrary. It depends on the type of person and that type of person not needing social feedback in-person is more rare. I would say I receive less dopamine overall or find the in-person experience less pleasant because of all the extra overhead (time) needed just to start the day. I simply hate inefficiency and see having to go in as very annoying, it reduces the social benefit to being pointless in my case.<p>Don&#x27;t get me wrong, I seem very far from a nerd in person and am very successful socially in general with men and women. I&#x27;m the type of guy that tells jokes and has the zinger comebacks always on the tip of my tongue, can get everyone laughing and can communicate very well. The thing is I don&#x27;t even miss any of this as I can do this on video anyway daily. It is a choice for me to come to the office or not and I simply don&#x27;t choose to 99% of the time.<p>I am even thinking the bell curve outliers are starting to move toward the center as older people die off and technology becomes more &quot;real&quot;.