Office is good

Remote work is here, especially in IT. People are getting back to the offices around the world, but it has definitely become clear that work will never be back to the way it used to be three years ago. We've got hybrid work finally.

I work in the web development team, which works on a hybrid basis for a significant period of time, and know both the pros and cons of hybrid environments. My friend network is made up of people who used to work in offices and then rushed to the indie dev journey to work from home, and then started renting offices to avoid working from home. So, I have some experience to share about why the office is good and why remote work is an overvalued trend now.

The first reason is that people need people. It might seem that digital socialization can replace the natural feeling of being a part of society. But the truth is that video calls and slack chit chats never replace normal eye-to-eye conversation. Because digital channels never deliver the magic of normal talk in real life. It's a reason why remote workers like so much to appear at offline events or set up regular meet-ups around the world, just to get another dose of conversation in real life.

The second reason is that home is your special place where you might switch from work to your daily habits, take some rest, or just chill. Yes, in the short term, it might seem like everything you need is to turn off a laptop and get home again. But it works for only a very small number of people. The long-term game demonstrates that no real work occurs when you stay at home for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the distinction between work and home is lost. As a result, it is getting harder and harder to get work done at home and take a break from work at home.

The fake effectiveness paradigm of the modern world says it is useless to spend your time delivering your body from home to the office on a workday basis. However, I would consider this time to be another opportunity to interact with a real, rather than a virtual world. Accepting such an angle of view makes the time spent on arriving at the office a special adventure.

So, the office and time spent there are still good for interacting with colleagues and getting a feeling of being in the real world, not a digital prototype of it. And most people will be back at office work soon.