I can assure you that a much larger cohort of employees are vastly more effective. No commute alone is a MASSIVE gain.
There are pros and cons with office work and WFH, and some people prefer one over the other. A full remote arrangement isn't for everyone, despite how the overwhelming number of introverts on HackerNews paint it as the objectively the best way going forward for all companies.
The community is divided on divisive issues. It's as simple as that.
I'm also a bit put off by the "it's so great not having a commute" people. Commuting does suck, but they voluntarily signed up for it. Meanwhile those that chose tiny apartments near their offices didn't sign up for spending all day in cramped quarters trying to work from a couch.
They literally did. I don't see any difference between choosing living an hour from work or choosing living in a cramped up flat near work.
Hacker news is no more pro work from home then people IRL I see.
And division among people I know in person is not introvert/extrovert at all. It is more about living arrangement and family. Single people living alone want to go to work. Those who have family and expect their partners to do all childcare, prefer to go to work and socialize with colleagues after work. Those who have kids and want to be present fathers or have partners with equally important work want to work from home.
My point is this: If you have to be effective working remotely you will be effective working remotely.
It's also possible that wfh was beneficial in the short term, with projects already mostly planned and the benefits of in-person collaboration continuing via inertia, but will be detrimental long term. Maybe. I don't know.
And that is the big kicker to me: too many unknowns to definitively say one way or the other.
Might be. Depends on the company too.
That's not to say you don't make good points, I just can't imagine your points outweighing what I perceive as more heavily influencing factors.
I work for an international American SW company in Czechia. We have a big office there, but for the first ~8 years there (since 2006), I was the only person working with a team of Americans, or only with a teammate, because they "outsourced" work to us. It was more annoying than WfH today, I remember all the really incomprehensible phone calls (no reliable video, only screensharing), making sure I get everything I need done in the morning so I could batch the questions for afternoon due to time zones, etc. And yet, my bosses were happy about my performance (more than they are today).
(It's interesting when I think about it now, IMHO constant communication can have downsides, too. There is something about having a half day where it's only you who has to solve a problem, and no one can help, you will learn a lot.)
OTOH, I was never a big fan of work from home, but I tried it now and I found it more pleasant with almost no downside. It's very similar to how I used to work in the era of "outsourcing", actually it's much easier.
To sum up, outsourcing was efficient but individual WfH isn't? Gimme a break, of course it's propaganda.
This is a huge one for me and anyone more productive in the morning, I'm no longer wasting an hour of my most productive time just getting to work. Then you've got the extra 2 hours a day to relax and get various things done that also make me more productive.