A class of response I don't really see in responses here so far is that if the supposed benefits of WFO were supposed to be that high-bandwidth collaboration re

A class of response I don't really see in responses here so far is that if the supposed benefits of WFO were supposed to be that high-bandwidth collaboration requires face-to-face interaction ... for a lot of companies that ship sailed a long time ago, prior to the pandemic. Mid-sized and large companies _frequently_ have projects that involve people that would previously have been in different offices. In my last in-office job, it was already the norm that most meetings of importance were a Zoom call between at least two conference rooms anyways. We _already_ had to be able to form working relationships with people we didn't see in person regularly or almost ever, brainstorm and whiteboard over zoom, slack to ask someone a question, etc etc. There were long periods when I would go to my office and the immediate team I worked with would be entirely in other cities, and so all my collaboration was remote. In that context, insisting that people zoom from the office in their metro area isn't about actual productivity -- it's theater. It's putting on the performance of showing up, not because it helps you work better, but because being seen daily in passing by the SVP you report up to might be marginally better for your career. With WFH (or more pointedly, work from a room I have sole control over), collaboration has one less hurdle. Before, I needed Zoom + a conference room at each participating office. Now I just need Zoom. Ad-hoc huddles no longer need to start with searching for empty rooms. Scheduled meetings don't start late because the prior meeting in that room ran slightly long, and conversations which go longer than scheduled are no longer interrupted by needing to vacate one room and find a different one.