My company is complete work from home. The issue is that people can't imagine coworkers talking to each other and being friends while working remotely.

I spend half of most days in spontaneous voice chats with coworkers where we have these exact same moments. Spontaneous discussions leading to ideas that change the way we do things.

It's not exclusive to being in an office. You just need to adapt to a new work style.

But that means the great idea moments are during unproductive times. People at the office must be allowed to be unproductive. If there is strict no talking and no coffee breaks allowed and strict clocking in because time is money there isn't much innovative benefit to being in the office.

Sounds like a small company you work at with tight nit group.

In the states, a good portion of jobs out there are soulless corporate jobs with predefined work. It’s just a grind.

Let’s be honest. If I discovered good ideas at a soulless corp, I wouldn’t be using those ideas at soulless corp.

I have tons of spontaneous calls all day on teams when remote. These moments still happen and don't require an office. These companies that fail to adapt will be left in the dust.

I miss coffee breaks.

But the kind of bad managers who insist on a RTO are also the kind who don't understand it's the break time, stupid.

All the people I'd want to talk with over coffee left before I did.

I mean, people shit talk on discord all the time

I agree, but wouldn't underestimate meetings. People say that you're losing productivity, but IME the largest losses of productivity are caused by working on the wrong things, because of too little communication. Sometimes it's things that are not needed anymore, sometimes it's just aspects of the feature which are not important (e.g. overengineering) because of lack of context.

I'm not saying all meetings are always needed, but in larger organizations the sync between people and teams is very important.

Ideas don't come from a coffee break, that's superstitious nonsense.

That said, working from home has so far saved me a lot of both time and money. This is a thing to consider as an employee when considering who to work for (or if your boss takes it away, if you still want to work there after essentially having a benefit revoked unilateraly).

Public transit pass. Actual time for transit which for me was around 90 minutes a day (7.5 hours a week!), more complex lunch logistics (time or money), etc.

A quieter workplace, no need to book rarely available rooms to take calls/meetings. There were upsides.

My first remote job had almost no issues at all. We already knew each other and we still took time to discuss issues via calls. New job not so much. We tend to be pressed for time so only focus on obvious "work" and then works suffers because of a lack of communication/common vision.