Tech company office planning has seemed to be neurotic even before the pandemic and WFH-then-RTO-or-hybrid-or-... policies really came into play. And you'd thin

Tech company office planning has seemed to be neurotic even before the pandemic and WFH-then-RTO-or-hybrid-or-... policies really came into play. And you'd think that the office planning would step back and think "hmm, how can we adjust our office plans to account for how working policies have changed", but instead, it seems all they've changed is how they are justifying their changes. As someone who came into work full-time post-pandemic because it turns out that living in a 1-bedroom apartment doesn't give you effective home office space to work from home, I was consistently aghast at how much the office planners were fully "oh, we're going to make your office environment much less conducive to work because no one coming to the office to actually work" (and then the return-to-office mandate comes in...). What hasn't helped has been the most notable change from pre- to post-pandemic: no one takes meetings in a conference room anymore. As I'm typing this, I'm getting half of another meeting thanks to someone sitting two cubicles behind me.