If WFH is going to be the future, then there should be uptime requirements with associated penalties so that someone is as available as they would be in the office. Software development is a team sport, you don't get to walk off the field whenever you feel like it just because you're home.
lol what are they doing? Staring at the ceiling? What makes them always available in the office and not always available at home? How is this still a thing being discussed? Perhaps, at home, they are actually able to get some work done.
Again, this is my office. I'm sure there are some offices where people legitimately aren't doing much of anything at home. Statistically, that just has to be true. Maybe this is the wrong company?
I remember, way back in like 2012? 2015? Not sure when exactly, but we visited the office of a contractor we were working with, and they had a flatscreen on a stand in a public area with their lead developer on webcam, working from home. I don't know how everyone gets so utterly myopic that they forget you can just login to a videoconference (or IRC in the olden days) and just be available for these "quick chats" Bonus, if you need uninterrupted deep focus time, you can turn it off at your end.
And email, did we suddenly conveniently forget about that? LKML and countless other FLOSS mailing lists are proof positive that 100% remote can indeed build any scale of software.
Some of the most widely used software in the world (e.g. Linux) was developed without any such developer “uptime” requirements, with developers scattered around the planet, working on what they wanted, when they wanted.
This is obviously a very different thing than running a for-profit business. But there are countless examples of companies embracing the necessities of remote work to great success: GitHub, Automattic, Kinsta, Namecheap, Basecamp, GitLab, YNAB, Zapier, etc.
Maybe when we walk off the field and we're home, we can focus in peace on our work and be more productive?
No guarantee people will be at their office desk either to be frank. They could be hiding in the toilet, loitering at the water cooler, out on smoke break, getting coffee, ... etc.
Which goes back to the principle that WFH is more beneficial for senior devs than juniors. If you lack the knowledge or authority to work independently for extended periods, then instead of everyone being on the same objective schedule the junior people are forced onto whenever the senior people want to work, and more specifically when they want to be available to answer questions that only they can answer. It's like only being able to do homework during a professor's office hours.
Also, software dev doesn't actually need a team, and, as the "key players" tend to go WFH more and more, the teams become worse and worse value.
This ends with the decline of "team managers" and "filler players".