Scientists have been studying remote work for four years and have reached a very clear conclusion: “Working from home makes us thrive”
cross-posted from: https://lemmings.world/post/35783610
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Comments131cross-posted from: https://lemmings.world/post/35783610
Time to repeat my topical story.
I worked for a startup that prided itself on being "data driven". They'd talk about how other startups were doing stupid things because they followed their feelings instead of data.
One day in one of those all hands meetings, the CEO was taking questions. Someone said, "Studies are showing that four day work weeks are more effective on like every metric. Can we look into that?"
The CEO said "No, we're not doing that ". Didn't read the linked studies. Didn't entertain it at all. His mind was made up, and the data was irrelevant.
Because he doesn't really care about data. He cares about feeling smart and irreverent. He cares about being seen as a cool disruptive startup guy who's going to grind his way to success.
The dishonesty makes me want to puke.
But you know what also makes me sick? All the sycophantic boot lickers that would gather round and tell him his every idea was great. The people who would work unpaid long hours to "get shit done". Bunch of fucking wormtongues who would sell out their coworkers for crumbs.
Maybe he was a real person once who really did care about data. But by the time I met him, he was an empty suit
Lol, did we work at the same place?
"Empty suits" it's the realest statement.
I resigned my position because I couldn't take it anymore. I told leadership that I refuse to use my skills and talents for those who I do not respect, and they responded by saying that there was a lot of money on the line.
They can fucking keep it. Fucking ghouls.
That's exactly it.
When they said that there's a lot of money on the line they meant for themselves since they were partners.
They offered to share some of it with me in the shape of a very generous 3% contingent salary increase, which would come with strings attached like everything they ever offered me.
I've been learning to grow veggies, cook dry beans, and bake bread since money is tight after I resigned, and my partner and I are way happier because I'm not as stressed out from dealing with sociopaths and morons at work all day long.
You just reminded me of a similar incident at a company I worked at. Larger than a startup, but still not huge. Same situation where it was a question at an all hands, the response from the CTO was simply that he had not seen that data and immediately moved on.
Funny thing was, the guy that asked the question wasn't even adding about a 32 hour work week, he just wanted to option to do 4 10s over 5 8s but they moved on from his question so fast they never gave him a chance to clarify.
They know this. A schismed individual is a compliant employee.
I've been studying managers for much longer, and I've reached a very clear conclusion: they don't care.
Managers are playing the game. Rules vary from company to company but are broadly similar.
Take credit for your subordinates work as if you did it.
Make sure you have enough scapegoats to cover the fuckups.
Does anyone have a link to the actual study? The article doesn't seem to have it.
I'm having a tough time finding it. I found this citation from an article that appeared to reference the same four year study.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0248008
And to be clear, that study does not have those conclusions:
What? You don't automatically trust "The Editorial Team's" assertion at the bottom that "This article is based on verified sources and supported by editorial technologies" is valid? I mean they linked to a few other articles - the fact they're only ones on their own site shouldn't matter...
🙄 "Trust me, bro!"
I got it from this totally legit article.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/work-life-balance/after-four-years-observing-telework-researchers-came-to-one-clear-conclusion-working-from-home-really-does-make-us-happier/ar-AA1HL99S
I know it's legit because it has a picture of a Man Working At Home With A Laptop, Wearing A Shirt.
And nothing else!
Yeah I'm a researcher in the field that studies stuff like this and it's infuriating that there is no citation for this. I can probably find it but it's just horrible "journalism" to have no citation to the subject of your article.
I haven't looked extensively, but for the past ten minutes I've not been able to find any article. About 20 different news stories to say the same thing, but none of them actually link a peer reviewed published article.
When you have to conduct a literature review just to find the results of one study there is something deeply wrong
Sleep. Precious beautiful sleep. I can roll out of bed, rip a huge wet fart, log into Teams, pretend to care for 5 minutes, go right back to sleep (and still be able to smell that fart, thankfully), take a long nap, get up to take a big smooth dump, then put in the same 3 hours of actual work I'd do at the office, then play Sokoban all afternoon. All the while reducing resource usage.
This is the UBI/leisure society I was promised as a kid.
If you spend most of your day getting to and from work, then pretending to be busy at the office, you don't have time to think or be a threat to the billionaires by starting your own competing company/product.
You paint a beautiful, utopian picture of how life could be.
Nope. Never mind I nearly shoved a bundle of iron rods into a co-workers head in a moment of anger. If it were not for that bit of self-control, and pulling back I was mid-swing, well yeah. Very safe.
I find it really weird that companies would want to pay the enormous cost of maintaining huge buildings full of people, that don't actually need to be there, in person. That just seems like a huge waste of money.
Partly because people that control large companies that lease large office buildings have a lot of money to lose if office space were devalued as much as it should be.
Large commercial office spaces are one of the more historically stable investments that banks have money tied up in. The WFH shift of covid was a massive threat to those portfolios and freaked people out
This is the answer. And the C levels renting from these spaces are absolutely invested in the companies that lease the space.
I've seen it even more incestuous as well. CEO buys building for kids and lets other C levels get in on it. The company rents a space. Everyone at C level agrees it's the best space because they can get a sweetheart deal on rent for the company. Company pays for space, money flows back to C Suite and CEO doesn't have to pay for kids' lifestyles anymore.
There's a very nice office building like that down from me, except it's CEOs cousin or nephew or something. It came out when they started pushing for RTO as soon as they could.
Must be nice getting C level salary, a little extra in your bonus for getting a sweetheart rental deal, and passive income from being a partial owner of the building your company rents from.
Control freaks are afraid of not getting the full attention of their employees - especially the "overemployed" crowd holding down multiple jobs simultaneously while working from home.
The money isn't the whole point. It's also about control and emotions. Management wants to feel a way and they'll pay for it. And/or make you pay for it
Sunk cost fallacy
Working in an office for 8 hours a day costs me an additional hour getting ready and commuting to to work, an hour away from home for lunch, an hour commuting back home and unwinding after work, turning 8 hours of paid labor into 11 hours of doing shit for other people.
Working at home claws back 15 hours a week.
It’s also how I got into a head on collision when some oblivious guy who pulled out in a left turn with oncoming headlights (me) driving straight in the lane. Close to home like most crashes are statistically, had I not been made to drive down to the office building then the rental car and repairs would never have been needed. There are costs everywhere that can be factored into this.
As well as 15-20 more hours that you don't really work while at the office, and you have to actively disguise as work-related activity. Add that to your prep time, and you've clawed back 30+ hours of time.
You could get that second job you need to survive!
Of course. Saving an hour of meaningless commute every day is a huge positive change.
God I'd love it if my commute were only an hour.
It's 90-minutes each way if traffic cooperates. I put about 30k miles on my car in a given year.
My back was injured so they let me work from home yesterday, and other than the pain it was magical. I also got SOOO much done.
This is the wild thing, most people work better at home but no no, must be in office and have performance reviews...
In my case, I work for a municipality and I legitimately do need to be in the office to meet with citizens, attend public hearings, etc. abut I think they could come up with a schedule where I work remote on Mondays and Fridays or something. It would also make those days "no meeting days" so I could catch up on my actual job.
We get raked over the coals for how long development review takes, but then every developer wants to meet with us for an hour every week, so instead of reviewing plans we're attending meetings 25 hours a week where they're bitching at us for how long it takes us to review their plans.
You're managing 25 developers?! That's way too many IMO!
Not software development. Municipal development.
I work in the planning/ building department. We review and permit developments.
The developers aren't my staff, they're applicants who want to build something and we have to review it for drainage, engineering, building code, lighting, environmental impact, septic/sewer, etc.
Aah okay that clears it up, cheers!
Okay, here's some unsolicited advice from an IT manager. Please take with a heap of salt.
25 hours is too many for 1:1 weekly meetings unless that's your whole job description. That leaves 15 hours for overhead, project management, team meetings, leadership meetings, scrum-of-scrums, town halls, mentorship, breaking ties on MRs, performance reviews, etc. At that scale, and assuming you have other responsibilities, 1:1's really should be monthly, optional 3/4 of the time, or cut back to 15 minutes unless there's an ask for more time. Also: ya gotta delegate those plan reviews if you can. With a labor pool that size, you probably have at least a few seniors or principals that can take it on.
Also, with 25 direct reports you're practically a Director without any supporting management under you. It's entirely possible that you're being underpaid, especially if this arrangement pushes you into overtime (more than 40hrs a week) a lot.
Not software development. Municipal development.
I work in the planning/building department. We review and permit developments.
The developers aren't my staff, they're applicants who want to build something and we have to review it for drainage, engineering, building code, lighting, environmental impact, septic/sewer, etc.
Advancing tech was sold as a way to make all our lives better. Here is an instance of tech making our lives better, but instead companies dismiss it because the real purpose of tech for the capital class is control.
I bet they aren't going to make the AIs come into the office.
You mean we had a worldwide event that proved to us that an incredible technology that allows us to work remotely could actually be used to work remotely, then our overlords chose to ignore that and now studies are proving what we already knew was true, is true?
Neat.
It is 0850. I start at 0900. I am still in bed.
Working from home is great.
Its amazing but only because the alternative is so horrible, we really, really appreciate working from home.
I think its also having a strong effect om how we are as people. Office culture changes people, into scared little humans who self censor themselves to fit in, and use language they think makes them sound professional.
Its a waste of life. We are originals. We are unique personalities. Not clones, not resources to exploit.
If humanity survives capitalism, and its a big if, we will look back at this and wonder what we were thinking.
If we survive this, it will be because we all gained class consciousness, in which case we won’t have to wonder, we will know what we were thinking, and why.
Could’ve just asked.
Mostly US companies
It is seeping into Canada as well. Not a lot of fully remote jobs. A lot of forced hybrid (usually 3 days).
Also here in Denmark. Novo Nordisk just reimplemented 5 required office days per week.
I love the way any article which says remote work is good still has to use the word, "surprisingly" as often as possible. Nobody is surprised.
So much of this is just slop for the White Collar hogs. You're not "Working from Home" as a retail employee or a grease monkey or a machinist. They spilled a thousand bytes to tell you what you already know "surprisingly", but I don't see word one in there about paid sick leave or vacation time.
Did the web site swap in a completely unrelated story about how swimming is good exercise for people over 55?
LOLWTF it also swapped it for me
It's probably just another clone of this clone of a clone of a ....
https://www.greatplacetowork.com/resources/blog/remote-work-productivity-study-finds-surprising-reality-2-year-study
I say Robispiere did nothing wrong!
It's an article by white collar workers for white collar workers.
Nothing in here about guaranteed sick leave or child care or the absence of functional mass transit to get around town. We bury it all under the "well, if you worked from home, your boss just wouldn't notice you were puking your guts out while juggling a toddler with your Jeep in the shop" rug.
FFS, they don't even cite their sources. It's just "scientists" and "experts" with a final
at the end. What research? Which university? Who authored it? Where's the fucking white paper, you cowards?
This isn't science, its clickbait.
CEOs: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Like they GAF. They've got the money & politicians in their pockets, so inconvenient truths are easily trodden over.
Which is why the ruling class has decided we can't have it...
Me with ADHD who can't do shit from home, hiding in the back corner of the open space.
Isn't diversity neat? My ADHD pulls a gun on me if I get within 30 meters of an office.
Work mode activated ?
Working from home also proved that the "middle-manager" was at best, a part-time job, maybe not necessary at all.
Easily replacable by AI
IMO It's still useful to have an actual human in the loop who is up to date on what a bunch of people are doing, to help coordinate as well as deflect ad hocs
This has been correct for all of human history. I’m not sure why anyone would have assumed the invention of the cubicle would have changed this.
Their attempts to manipulate the gene pool and turn us into veal calves doesn’t seem to be going well…
It’s the shareholders who own our government that make money off commercial real estate that want everyone back at work. Shareholders don’t give a fuck about your wellbeing. They’re literally looting our government, destroying any and all global safety nets and installing facism worldwide quite publicly.
That's the part these chuckle-head RTO folks willfully ignore. In a virtual environment you have to lead differently, and since they're never the ones who are wrong it must be everyone else who is broken.
With the right leadership and support mechanisms virtual work absolutely can raise all boats. But that means you have to be willing to change. And open-mindedness is not typically an attribute selected for in corporate senior leaders.
B-b-but I was told big tech companies love disruption!
All about balance. Working from home is such an improvement from past times. Face to face contact with your peers should not be underestimated though - very valuable.
It's bad enough having to hear my colleagues in teams meetings, I don't see why I have to smell them too.
This simply means that your local culture is flawed. Where I am, everyone looks and smells beautiful.
While this sounds intuitive, I've crunched side-by-side with a coworker (literally couch-coop, sshing into pods to solve a production issue), and then having also done the same over Discord with screen sharing, I can confidently say that once you actually embrace remote there is no marked tangible advantage to in person.
Other than it's easier to recruit for a union push on company time because people are constantly jawing, rather than doing their job when in person.
Are you painting the whole picture here?
First thing that comes to my mind is: You have met the person, thus connected, then worked together remotely.
That is a physical presence. How much physical presence is required for a good working relationship differs from individual to ~; having personally experienced a coworker is invaluable in my opinion.
The second paragraph does not resonate with me, I am from across the pond. To each their own!
I think it really does come down to individuals. Neither approach is going to work for everyone.
Not to oversimplify, but I think a big component is that extraverts feel more connected in person, whereas introverts will thrive when they can more easily regulate draining social encounters.
It largely depends on if you can afford to have a room dedicated as your home office.
Working/relaxing cannot happen in the same space. Our brains are not wired to do such a dramatic difference in mental activity in the same location. That's also why bedrooms should be used for sleeping and fucking ONLY. Once you start reading/scrolling in bed, your brain makes that connection, "Oh, I'm in bed, I should doomscroll for the next 3 hours" instead of "Oh, I'm in bed. I should sleep."
As someone who currently sleeps, works, and relaxes in the same room these absolutes you're throwing out come off as hilarious. I've literally always lived in a room with both my bed and my computer, always worked and gamed from my computer, always slept within a couple of meters of my desk chair and computer.
You absolutely can work, relax, and sleep in the same space.
Does that mean I prefer that? Could I gain some meaningful benefits from having more spaces to dedicate to certain tasks? Absolutely. And the moment we tax the ultra-wealthy out of existence and therefore make housing affordable again, I'll make those rooms.
But working from home is not reliant on a square ft/m metric that the home must pass, nor how those spaces are organized or themed. I think saying it does only hurts my ability to stay at home, which is better for the environment, the economy, my productivity, and most importantly my life and mental health.
Sounds made up bro.
Is this linked wrong? The article is about swimming for health not WFH.
oddly, the link goes to the right article, then the site redirects to the swimming article,
here it is on another site
https://evidencenetwork.ca/remote-work-increases-happiness-4-year-study-findings/
edit: it's someone elses take, looking for original
edit2: OK, the original article is from 2020, there are updartes in 2024.
This page does a better job covering the the couple of gallup polls and some of the criteria listed
https://www.greatplacetowork.com/resources/blog/remote-work-productivity-study-finds-surprising-reality-2-year-study
though the site is sus to me :)
AI article and website
But then how will they make money renting out the office space?
Who they gonna rent it to when the other companies are trying to do the same?
Every time this comes up i tell my personal and data driven experience as a middle manager in a company, and every time people trash me, but i keep saying it.
IT FUCKING DEPENDS!
From purely data point of view (note: this is from my place of work) workers whose work is purely executing more or less the same duties every day had their productivity have a nose dive when working long stretches from home. Also their works quality got worse. Its easy to reinforce bad habits whitout even noticing it, if the feedback comes from email and and not straight from the supervisor.
BUT with jobs like coders or artists where the job is more open ended instead of monotous labor there was no ill effects.
Then on the other side communication has gotten much slower with the people working from outside office. Where i used to just walk to the other room and ask something from my collegue i now need to message them in our internal and hope they notice it. Getting answers for questions have turned from 5 minute thing to 10-40 minute things.
Also from the point of more inventive things on my work we have lost a lot of changes to brainstorm ideas. No more throwing ideas around during lunch or coffee breaks
Those rude shoulder-tap interruptions may have only taken you 5 minutes, but they ruined half an hour of productivity to the person you were interrupting. This is the whole reason people can be more productive at home without annoying bosses blathering at them.
Yeah every programmer I know loves not being exposed to the manager who just "has a question" or just want to "check in".
Nah. Coders get slack messages. Only exception is if something is truly fucked and it needs to be fixed asap and for some strange reason i notice it before they do. Mosty happens when they push from test to production.
We have biweekly check ins with code team and thats enough.
Anyone in focus on anything will have 20m ruined at minimum by your 5m interruption. It doesn't have to be coders. Your 5m interruption is one big reason a lot of people love wfh.
The immediate interruption is good for management, but bad for the company overall.
That's why we still have Jira/email.
Critical importance: slack/in person
Can wait but important: high importance email, P1 Jira
Not important: Low impotance email, P2 Jira
Thanks for typing out my thought about this. /a SW dev.
I have WfH for about twenty five years now and I will say the same thing I always say when this type of comment pops up, if people do not want to talk to you for some reason they will not respond as its a lot easier to hide on email/IM than an office situation. If you finding that people are hiding from you, then that's as much a you problem as anything else for not directly addressing it.
I actually find it considerably easier to get hold of someone via IM than any other method short of direct dialing them as I can reach them in meetings or away from their desk or even in another country entirely, its only if they are intentionally ignoring you it does not work. If the person is presenting in a meeting or otherwise legitimately incommunicado then they aren't going to respond F2F or IM anyway.
Not measuring output volume or quality consistently is a widespread problem for businesses, regardless of location of the employee. Consistent and accurate measurement is the only way to be sure you are getting the results you are expecting, for coding that means code reviews not commit counts, 360 feedback, and so on. If you are feeding back, and someones ignoring that, guess what, its also a you problem for not building in consequences and follow ups. It also applies just as much in an office situation as it does remote.
The article does have this caveat.
Though I will say your argument is still centered around being productive and effective for the company (make money for the company), the article specifically centers around an individual's well-being (sleep, family life etc.). So not the same metrics.
Other articles and research I've seen that did center on productivity did conclude that yes, it depends.
How about the workers' wellbeing? Is that ever considered?
Out of curiosity, can you describe, with a bit more detail, the kind of work that was repetitive and became worse?
Customer service and sales support. The work is on the basic channels. Phone, email and chat and its pretty much allways some variation of few same questions or complaints.
Both customer satisfaction and work effiency started to get worse the longer the lockdown went.
By the way we dont have mandatory office days. Everybody can work from home if they want. The split is now pretty much 60/40 with bigger part working from the office. (I think big part is because it has kindergarden and its in place with good public transport) During summer when parents want to stay at home looking after the kids or when bank holidays make broken week most of the people stay home.
Whatever it was the people doing it deserve a more brain-stimulating job. If things are repetetive in a desk job, chances are that a lot can be automated.
In the field of organizational psychology (which research like this is typically done by), the phrase "it depends" is used so often among scientists that it's a running gag at this point
That's an administration problem. Sure people are busy, in meetings or at lunch. But if someone is always 40m away from answering a work slack/chat they're a candidate for replacement.
You understand wrong.
I message somebody --> they take ten minutes to answer, with question --> im doing something else, it takes me few minutes to finish or risking losing my tough then i answer --> maybe with good luck they answer right back, but most likely it takes few minutes again.
In the office i could have talked to the person and resolve the thing faster.
Easy fix.. slack message asking for a huddle and giving a brief synopsis of the issue, just what your opening remark would have been in person, but including how urgent this is. Person gets back to you as soon as it demands and they are able. If you're in the middle of something when they get back to you, that's just what you were doing to them by interrupting when they were busy already.
For us, we use slack huddles when there will be too much back and forth. 30 second audio call, supports screen sharing.
Yeah we use huddles too. But its not like it always clear when this things is going to be involved or not.
Hey, I have a question, you have time for a quick huddle?
Almost never does anyone say no.
middle managers are useless anyway
How about those of us who can’t due to the nature of our jobs?
You... uh... exist I guess? I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
Well, if you get to work out there in nature then you're already winning! 🤪
I work in a windowless lab
If you're working at home on weekends, it doesn't sound like you're leaving work at work.
That sounds like a "you" problem. I just hit the shutdown button on my laptop at 17:00 and close the lid, and boom I've left work and magically instantaneously transported to my home.
Work ... on .... weekends?
I think your problem is that you're a workaholic.
You are just a rare exception. Don't push it on the rest of us
Simple solution is to have a designated home office work space, and work only there.
than local govts wont get any revenue from commuting and businesses, and ceos wont be able to be control freaks and lord of thier subjects.
The only advantage to me being in the office is that I get free access to the gym.
Whereas I have a home gym I invested in over 10 years ago, so wfh means I go to the gym during the day instead of at night.
If I was working again I'd rather work at the office. I wouldn't be productive working at home. I need accountability. Not everyone likes working from home
That's fine if it's your choice, but there are a number of various reasons working from home may be better for other people.
I had the same assumption about myself before 2020. Turns out I'm way less distracted at home because I control the things that would distract me. So I'm much more productive. Was actually a huge surprise to me.
that is true, my 2 bros are in tech and they are usually are at thier desks at all times anyways. remotely in public is probably to distracting. its the reverse if your studying a subject though, like as a student. home is too distracting, even writing resumes and cover letters too.
Why do you even care? You don't get paid more if you are productive.
I don't get this mentality but ok.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia
Personally I take my time in the office and really hustle remotely. Want to make sure the metrics show its better for me to be home. Honestly though I would love to have an office I could walk to.
And the richies grab the scientists by the mouth and go, "Shutfuckup! Shutfuckup!".
Working from home sucks. Yeah I said it.
I'm a software engineer, and yes, there are days that working from home really does help with concentration and focus on a particular project, but unless you're a contractor, tasked with "build this and come back when it's finished", building anything is typically a collaborative process. You know what sucks for collaboration? Working from home.
There are no tools that can sufficiently replace what the office offers: interaction, chance conversation, camaraderie and socialising with the people with whom you're trying to build The Thing. It's why people still go to actual conferences and no one cares about gigantic Zoom calls masquerading as real interaction. Slack sucks, Jira sucks, Teams suuuuuuucks. They'll do in a pinch, but they'll never offer real collaboration. For that, you still have to be in the same building.
That's not to say that offering remote work isn't great. There are people who work best in isolation, but that's not all of us. I'd argue that it isn't even most of us, and headlines like this "working from home makes us thrive" aren't helping. They're objectively bullshit. Having been in software development for 25 years, I can categorically state that the more remote the team I've been in, the less organised, the more disjointed and disconnected it is.
And don't get me started on the whole "overemployment" trend, where people try to hold down two jobs by doing neither well at all. Yet another "perk" of remote work I guess.
Hard disagree. From my experience you can perfectly collaborate from a distance, it's mostly a matter of organizing around it. Of course it can vary on the type of work, so I would think that the better answer is "it depends".
Yet in your comment you declare that it sucks and mostly does not work as a general rule? I just want to say that your own experience, while relevant, does not necessarily apply to everyone. Maybe it sucks for you, maybe it sucks for most people you work with or talked with about that subject. But one experience, or even a group of experiences, do not make for a universal truth.
As somebody that has worked from home everyday since 2009, nothing beats in person collaboration. Not saying you need to be in the office everyday, but to truly collaborate and get input and open discussions an actual meet session is better.
You can see who is not onboard by body language, you can see who isn't paying attention and will miss key details, you get free conversation where a random comment provides a solution to something that wasn't on the agenda. And I say it as somebody that is 150% more productive at home.
Even in our own company employees often work siloed on collaborative projects, in person forces a discussion.
It works better for some people/orgs than others. My company worked in a Google Meet for 6 hours yesterday in a war room, cracking jokes, socializing, with most cameras off, mostly just voice chat and the occasional screen share. We got the job done, we had fun, and people came and went. The cool part was that we had different disciplines together that wouldn't sit together. Shit, we had people in 4 different time zones, not even all on the same continent.
Now it's the next day... do I want to do it again today? No. I'm an introvert and I'm all out of spoons. But the next thing? sure!
AND I saved 1.5 hours of commute and 60 miles of gas/tires/oil
Sounds like a 'you' problem or a team composition and role disparity issue.
We've been widely remote for 5 years now and the data continuously shows the benefits far outweigh the issues.
I personally love remote work and I get that it isn't ideal for some people. I need to read more studies to understand, but I do wonder if a lot of the benefit (in some cases) comes from enabling people to do time theft. Letting people work at their own pace, take breaks as needed, do some chores, avoid commuting- all leading to better overall quality of life, happiness, health, and therefore productivity. Could we get a lot of the same benefits by moving to a 5 or 6 hour work day?
I don't think work from home should ever be taken off the table since for myself (and many others, clearly) it helps improve focus, happiness, etc. But I think that if we stand to gain more from working in person with other concessions made them we should explore those.
I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the phrase "time theft", but I largely agree. The real benefit of hybrid work is flexibility, and I'd never want to take that away from anyone. I just object to the constant parroting of this lie that remote necessarily means more productive. I've never seen it, but I've seen many many cases of the opposite.
I don't know what kind of magical offices you've been working in, but my experience of offices have had none of those things. Interaction is almost exclusively sports-related. Chance conversation is basically just centered around "can you believe this guy?" Socializing actively avoids any discussion of The Thing or its building.
I'm glad you're having a good time in the office, but none of that stuff sounds like any office I've ever worked in. People would walk in, put their headphones on, sit at their desk for three and a half hours, and go get lunch.
I have a lot of trouble believing that's something that has ever actually happened in any meaningful amount. I remember seeing a few news stories about it, but they all came from dubious sources and sounded like they were written to capture the attention and suspicion of middle managers, but were light on any real evidence. I feel like most of the ones I've seen were about the same random guy who got caught basically right away and fired from both jobs.