I'll take the controversial position and say that RTO (with a semi-flexible hybrid option for sudden appointments) is the best outcome. Some context; during th

I'll take the controversial position and say that RTO (with a semi-flexible hybrid option for sudden appointments) is the best outcome. Some context; during the pandemic, everyone suddenly had to do WFH, including uni studies. In my case, I did both an internship and my studies, so my main exposure to WFH is through this lens. WFH as a mandate policy ended when I got an actual job. The main concerns when it comes to WFH I experienced are as follows: 1. Lack of commute means no hard checks on work-life separation. Commute sucks. It's also a period for your brain to turn off any association you still have with work, a period in which you're unreachable by anyone and in general helps you vent off the day's stress. It's also way too easy to overwork yourself without commute when you don't have to go home on time. With commute, there's a clear endpoint because the next bus is otherwise in an hour. 2. Complete collapse of social interactions. "Get friends" isn't so easy when most third spaces are unavailable (amped up by COVID as a "worst scenario" since they had to close, but they're declining on the whole), you've got introverted tendencies and in general your culture is becoming much more distant in terms of the barrier between "acquainted" and "friend" with casual interactions. Most people get their social interactions in a day from work and unless you're either living with family or friends, WFH won't change that. It just makes people depressed from what I can tell, something which statistics back up (although people who are hard on WFH usually try to blame this on other worldly ills, post-COVID measured a notable spike in mental issues and one that's somewhat settling now that RTO is a thing). 3. Productivity collapse and lack of oversight. Lack of oversight if you have a job with clear requirements, clear goals and clear means to achieve it is great. It completely fucking sucks if you're a junior or need to actively test and check up with other people in the office to see if something fits to desired spec/need to talk about why something doesn't logically fit spec. Email, Slack and Teams have a degree of formality in them that a simple "hey, can you look at this for a sec" when someone walks past your desk doesn't have. Especially during my internship, I noticed this problem as the lack of oversight kinda started to spin out of control after a while due to changing bosses and mediocre rapport with other employees at the company. Never unsolvable, but absolutely not good and I do have concerns with how well training up juniors into seniors (a basic part of career growth as you become experienced with the ins and outs of your job and learn what works) is going to go when direct interactions with seniors (who can rapidly answer institutional knowledge questions or know the "core tools" from the back of their head) are as low as they are with WFH.