I do think there's something to be said for the long term culture effects remote work has. Maybe the current employees who used to work in the office are more efficient remote, but is the same true for new remote workers? What about in a few years when a large percentage of the employees may have never worked in the office at Google?
It's kinda crazy how different perspectives are... From what I hear:
Average employee: "I am just as productive (or even more productive) working from home than when I was at the office. This is totally sustainable."
Average Manager: "I've noticed a huge drop in productivity from my employees since they have been working from home. This is entirely unsustainable."
This is what I hear from friends in other occupations, not just software, but also from my friends in software too.
Of course, both can be true if just a small percentage of employees drop productivity immensely while everyone else's remains the same... But it's probably more likely that the employees are... not great at judging their personal productivity.
I just find the dichotomy fascinating. - I don't have a race in the horse as I never went remote.
> it's probably more likely that the employees are... not great at judging their productivity
At my company "let's get everyone stuffed back into the office asap because productivity" was mgmts slogan, but that position became pretty much indefensible after they announced that 2021 was literally the best year ever (highest revenue, highest revenue rise yoy absolute and %, largest increase in headcount, highest number of projects shipped, highest number of new projects etc.)
