I do agree some roles. e.g. sales, have to be done in office. If you want to snooze someone over dinner a remote call is a poor shadow of an option. Less certa

I do agree some roles. e.g. sales, have to be done in office. If you want to snooze someone over dinner a remote call is a poor shadow of an option. Less certain about roles that are generally technical. The strongest claim for in-office work, collaboration, is mostly a well solved problem for at least software, possible simple administration that just relies on some collaborative spreadsheets. Sitting everyone in a stuffy boardroom all staring at the same boring spreadsheet is likely to cause stress and mental fatigue, not increased collaboration. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7889069/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7889069/ This is a well known effect. Even large "interactive" meetings in remote settings can be counter productive - of course not all meetings are bad and one key to being an excellent manager is picking the right people for the right meetings, but the idea that your "top performers" objectively speaking will be the ones experiencing the most stress is seriously suspect. What is more likely is some combination of workers who either "do well" in high stress environments, usually implying they are healthy and have some effective stress management techniques and as such are recognized as top performers compared to those unable to effectively manage their stress, or those in mainly technical areas have not yet experienced (somehow) the benefits of less stressful remote-work environments. E.g. parents or partners in cramped personal quarters being more distracted compared to e.g. a private office space. Finally, for those workers that have an active job component where they must e.g. be on site for customer testing or perhaps they are a technical liason, some hybrid approach may work better - in office for resources which are cost prohibitive to simulate or when their role requires them to interact in an another capacity e.g. as a technician, security guard, or triage such as a front desk. There is also the case where "top performers" are leeching off their colleagues e.g. where they can "get more done" because they can interrogate and corral others but where others are mostly experiencing productivity hits as a result of the constant interruption.