I also work from home for several extended periods of time, while during others I need to be on site one or two days a week (sometimes it’s nice, sometimes it’s a drag to be on site).

I have to say, while I can work a 100% of the time from home, the nice parts of being on site is to get to know more personally the people I meet. I don’t deny the fact that this be successfully done remotely too, but I believe as humans we need social connections. Yes, we can make friends online (which can carry over IRL and I know that personally) and yes you can meet your partner online too, but it always felt (at least to me) that if you meet others in person, you accelerate the connection.

I mean, I had a fairly bad time in high school, but I had the time of my life on college and met most of my friends then. I’m not sure I’d have made as many friends if it had all been online.

Also, as someone wrote in another post today (but I can’t remember where so I can’t link it, sorry), sometimes people (perhaps new hires fresh out of college) are not experienced enough to know when to be vocal and object to flaws in a project and in person meeting can be a boon to acquire that skill.

It’s a tricky subject, since it’s not that WFH or doing things online prevents normal life evolutions, but perhaps can make them more scarce or slow, while in person events can precipitate them.

I agree that companies forcing things is not the way to go, but somehow it feels like doing things entirely online should happen more later in life, when you’re settled and not before when you need to learn and make connections who you’ll want to meet in person too.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk