Aside from the "I need to see you working" aspect, which reflects not only on bosses but also investors (have to justify that schweet loft in SOMA that's costin

Aside from the "I need to see you working" aspect, which reflects not only on bosses but also investors (have to justify that schweet loft in SOMA that's costing an arm and a leg), there's also the concern of IP leakage- code can be copied by a competitor, server access can be gained, and sensitive company activities are harder to keep under wraps. Doesn't matter that these are probably just as if not more likely to come from the office itself than from a remote worker. I think in the end it comes down to access; if the server barfs or the CEO wants to know why X is X and not Y, they highly value that in-person access, dispatchable in seconds rather than hours or days. They want a living, breathing being to do XYZ to. Employee productivity takes a backseat to pointy-haired-boss productivity (and that of their cousin, pointy-haired-investor), and since the employee isn't signing the checks.. I think it'd make an excellent thought experiment, particularly with bay area rents being what they are, to try to launch a company where all staff must reside in the same structure but don't have to work from there (or are even expressly forbidden from doing much work there). Instead of "you have to work here, where you sleep isn't our problem" it could be "you have to sleep here, where you work isn't our problem". Employees' rents tend to drive company's cash burn far more than meets the eye (An $800/mo. bedroom, plus 50% for state & fed income taxes, plus ~25% for payroll taxes, ends up socking a business' bottom line for almost $20k, when the business could spend half that directly for the same effect), and an employee will get far more use out of a bed than a desk (since the desk can be their lap, coffee shop, public park, outside, etc.). Why won't freelancers work from the office? 1) The office is 1,000 miles away and you have ties to where you live now 2) The office is in a country you don't qualify to work in There are philosophical reasons why some freelancers choose to be freelancers, but I think most choose the role because it's the only one possible given where they live.