I agree this is a good counter argument. If many people are remote (or potentially even just a few) then you may lose the advantages of working in the office (e

I agree this is a good counter argument. If many people are remote (or potentially even just a few) then you may lose the advantages of working in the office (e.g. spontaneity, easy ‘point at the screen’ or ‘just speak like a human being’ communication that doesn’t need to be intermediated by inevitably broken technology, avoiding some of the futile attempts at recreating an office environment remotely, etc). The counter to that is then that lots of the ways one must deal with remote workers (e.g. more better written communication, getting tools to attempt to recreate some of the interactions that were previously in-person remotely, although the best-in-class tool is usually still terrible only people sometimes don’t say it because they don’t realise we ought to want tools that don’t suck) are good improvements to in-office working. And having people remote isn’t so different from having multiple offices (and is perhaps better than different offices separated by large time differences) although being beholden to whatever Internet connection someone can get and chooses to pay for in the place they choose to work can be frustrating and the quality of communication hardware/software is frankly abysmal. Certainly there is something to be said for companies that try to take remote seriously (eg stack overflow had private offices which recreated some of the quiet and isolation and communication requirements of remote work within the office). But a lot of companies basically had their hands forced by the ’rona and I think significant culture changes are required to more thoroughly embrace and accommodate remote or hybrid work.