> But I think the reason virtual collaboration only doesn’t work is because you need to meet people, socialize outside of work with the business lunches and din

> But I think the reason virtual collaboration only doesn’t work is because you need to meet people, socialize outside of work with the business lunches and dinners etc. And I'm saying there's more to it than that. A couple decades ago I worked on a collaborative mapping/whiteboarding/sketching for Cisco Telepresence rooms for military users. We managed to get pretty close to the bandwidth of in-person meetings: eye contact was slightly off and turn-taking still required more verbal structuring, but overall we were hitting our targets. After that I worked on digital collaboration tools for finance professionals and we found use cases where virtual collaboration was superior, cases where it was clearly deficient, and most fell into a fuzzy middle ground of "it depends". I haven't worked in CSCW for several years now, but still follow the research, and my understanding is that there are still tasks where remote work suffers, and not just for socialization. Every company is different, many only need high-bandwidth collaboration in large groups once a quarter, while someone in a research/design/startup might spend a couple hours a day in small collaborative meetings. Every company is different. And again, I acknowledge the many advantages of remote work for both employees and companies. Related to your point about remote workers being able to buy bigger houses in a lower cost of living area, my company has now been forced to pay at least 10-20% higher salaries for in-person hires compared to a similar caliber of remote hires, not to mention the costs of office space. Therefore, if you're not getting at least ~30% higher productivity out of being in person then it's probably a net loss, and there are many companies that are being irrational or deceitful about their RTO mandates. But I've also found remote work proponents overly dismissive of the downsides which makes it significantly harder for them to convince their companies and managers even in cases where remote work truly is a net benefit.