>Training yourself to work a solid 8 hours at the office without distraction should allow you to leap over others who've gotten lazy sitting at home.

What in the corporate HR flyer is this?

"We think you need a hallmonitor to actually work, also you'll appreciate that we give you one"

I returned to office years ago. I need the ability to move hardware between employees with less than a day turnaround. But you will never convince me for a second that loosing my private office was an improvement.

My experience is that working in an office is _much_ worse for distraction. Even if you're lucky enough not to be in open plan, the shoulder taps and quick chats easily demolish any chance of focus for me. At home I can knuckle down for a few hours and deal with something complex easily.

This is definitely not true universally.

The highest earners I know are self-employed or own small businesses and were 'alone' for most of their career. This includes a craftsman who owns small machine shops for boat parts, a high-end coach and a hairstylist who provides staffing for modeling/concerts. Absolutely none of them are 'office' personnel.

I do enjoy the social aspect of the office but I find that motivation comes from within.

You've got the basic sketch right here. Better focus than the competition is indeed an advantage. Working hard to focus in an office environment - noise cancelling headphones, people walking around, suboptimal coffee and so forth - is however not better than carefully setting up a home office. It's not a remotely safe bet that the people working from home are being lazy.

I think this is heavily life-and-career-stage dependent IMO.

If you're young, early career, and don't have dependents, you should absolutely prioritize in-office.

Otherwise, the calculus varies.

This reads like something Amazons PR team came up with. “Train yourself to work a solid 8 hours a day” what are you even talking about? Remote workers do this now and aren’t lazy. The assumptions you have are conpletely out of touch with reality and insulting.

I highly recommend anyone especially early in their careers go into a real office where you'll see your immediate co-workers on a daily basis. That said, I don't want to go in :)

> Being able to focus more than your peers will give you a leg up on the competition

Which is why i WFH. Office is literally the worst possible environment for focus.

> less lonely

Some of us prefer to PICK friends, not have them chosen for us

> facetime with important people at work for more opportunity

I refuse to work at a place where promotions work like this

This is a soft layoff not some BS productivity hack. They've also kneecapped comp.

Not sure why you got downvoted for this. There's a lot of common sense in your comment. The hate against RTO is real.