Someone help me out here. Most incredibly smart people I know and even most of you here on HN, we basically grew up on discord, irc,etc... I hate to make myself look bad but if my IRL social skills and sociability is 3/10, remotely it is at least 7/10. Are there really a lot of high caliber people who somehow spent time to develop IRL social and communication skills?
My theory is that people who are now in their 40s or older can't figure out how to work remotely, especially as managers. There are people that talk to me in private message when I work remotely and then there are those that only engage with me in person, that's why I theorized that. They need to train people explicitly and show them how they unconsciously avoid engaging with others remotely.
Also, my coworkers that like to brown-nose the most and they are social butterflies that are very attentive to managers and respond socially to their every needs get the most recognition but really smart full-WFH guys that are getting so much quality work done basically don't exist in the eyes of management. It is a travesty, I specifically chose this field because your technical skills are rewarded, and that was my strength.
I am not an extremist, a balanced approach is what I advocate for. If you can't manage people remotely, you can't manage people. For regular employees, they should let people WFH based on performance and partially (bad performance=3days office, good=1day office). If that isn't viable then at least let it be at the discretion of managers instead of company wide.
I also theorize that founders are very social people and they especially typically can't figure out remote management.