They're not non-existent, I work with a few myself. But generally I've found that they're single, live by themselves, and enjoy the social interactions of meeting coworkers in person. (Of course, there will be exceptions to this).
As an example, right now I am living and working in Amsterdam. My commute is 10 minutes by bike or 25min walk. I generally prefer to work in the office since I like the free exercise, context switch, and my office is also nice. However if my commute was longer than 60 mins, and in a car or public transport, I would want to work remotely.
Great, but it's a pretty isolating idea that you should spend all your time with the same few people. It's nice and healthy to context-switch and spend some time around different people.
Lunch? After work? 1 on 1s walking around the block and seeing this cool cafe that closes at 2pm?
That’s just not possible to do in most friend groups
I don’t even like coworkers but can acknowledge this easily
There isn’t anything wrong with planning and coordinating, it is simply not spontaneous and has no similarity in energy expenditure and availability
Or is that too much planning for you?
That does sound nice. All of my in office jobs were sitting at my desk staring at a computer for 8 hours. No one was walking around the block. :-) But that was over ten years ago.
And I'm very much RTO crew! Who is calm about it because of exactly that conditionality on current circumstances.
And before anyone asks, yes, happily married, kids at home, excellent home office, healthy social life.
I've been part-time remote since ~2012, full-time since 2016. I've recently taken a hybrid role. I really, really enjoy going into the office twice a week these days. The change of scenery is helping my brain. Plus, my kids preschool/daycare is equidistant from our home and the office, so it's not actually adding any measurable commuting time to my life. My daily commute is ~40 minutes in total regardless of where I sit my ass down to work.
I'm fortunate that my life is set up this way but I know from going into the office twice a week for months now that I'm not alone, most of my colleagues are in similar situations.
That said, I'd be perfectly happy to go fully remote as well. Wouldn't come to my mind to advocate that others to have to go to the office, just because I enjoy it once in a while.
To clarify my marital status is single but that has nothing to do with my relationship status
Also I live in nice and connected parts of town and prioritize short commutes, ideally walkable and bikeable