In one of my shortest HR screening interviews ever, I was asked if I'm interested in remaining remote, to which I responded "I'd be potentially open to a hybrid option leaning towards remote". The interviewer said "For full transparency, we do have a mandated 3 days a week in-office policy, would that work for you?" and I said (really trying to be optimistic and giving them the benefit of the doubt) "Well, I suppose it would depend on why that policy exists, is there specific necessity for it?" to which she rattled off the standard nonsense that most companies do, amounting to approximately "It's just the way we work for collaboration purposes, we have a beautiful office here in town, and we're a startup that's been going since 2021" (strange time to start a RTO company) etc...

Trying to find even the slightest bit of positivity in that, I responded with "In that case, I'd have further questions, such as what is the physical office space like? If it just the entire company in a giant open-office with everyone chatting away and so on, I have zero interest in moving forward with that." and she said "Yes, that's pretty much exactly what it's like, so in that respect we can probably stop here", and I agreed and wished her well in her journey. Quite comical.

I'm not going to drive myself into another depression and burnout cycle while trying to do technical work in a physical space there's really no reason to be, while trying to ignore the stupid distractions and mouth sounds of sales people and managers around me.