I have worked from home for 16 out of 22 years of my professional working life. Some people can hack it, some people can't. My first job out of college was WFH because the company I worked for had an office that was full. I spent the first 2 weeks at my boss's house (one of the founders of the company). After that we used Lotus Sametime (think corporate instant messaging for you youngins).

After that job I spent a couple of years working in offices. It was absolutely helpful in some ways (I worked and learned from smarter people (MIT, Dartmouth grads, etc) and less productive in others (employer tried to work us 100+ hours per week for months on end). Looking at the code you wrote at 3am the next morning and wondering what the hell you all were thinking (pair programming) was eye-opening.

I am so much more productive at home and more importantly I'm happier. Sure, it's nice to see people I work with a few times per year. But the fact is we're distributed all over the country (and the world for that matter). My neighbor works at IBM. She's been forced back to the office where she spends her day on Zoom calls. It's madness.

Shame on companies who use RTO and AI to disguise layoffs. Fuck these companies. Man-up and just say you want to save money.