I still haven’t decided where I want to fall on those trade-offs but I think being somewhere that embraces remote but tries its best to get everyone together as often as possible might be the best trade-off.
If there's an option for either, I personally will be opting to go back to the office. This is primarily out of a concern that I'll be less likely to be promoted if I stay remote. There's some evidence [1][2] that this is the case, and it's just not worth risking despite my enjoyment of remote work.
[1]https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/orsc.2018.1265
[2]https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...
- You can choose to work from the place you like, regardless of the local IT market.
- Commute. Nuff said.
- Having your own schedule is magic. Waking up early in morning and doing all important work till noon/lunch is my goal now.
- Boring things suddenly become awesome. Imagine, you work at a really boring enterprise with low load, but the pay you like. You still have to sit 9-5 and watch youtube. Let's move stuff remotely. Do your chores in a couple of hours and your day is done!
- Socializing: being remote encourages to go out to meetups and find your real friends. And you still can visit coworking spaces.
This made me think, why are knowledge workers still tied to the same standard as the traditional factory worker. Inputs are not as connected to outputs with knowledge work as they are with assembly lines etc.
The only thing I could see is the big corp HR people saying that I need to come in. Then it might get tough.