Its the worst of both worlds. The benefit of remote work is that it gives employees the flexibility to live where they want, and eliminates daily miseries like a commute, both of which the pandemic have proven to be massive priorities for employees. It opens up potential hires to anywhere in the country (or even world). It also allows you to focus on investing in software and practices aimed at maximizing remote effectiveness. You also can potentially greatly downsize or even eliminate a physical office.

In office work benefits are often said to include the socialization, and in particular "water-cooler talk" that is supposedly better for collaboration. When everyone is going to the office, the company can also invest into more extensive facitilites, including amenities that make being at the office more pleasant (a gym, catering, etc).

With hybrid, you are simultaneously eliminating the ability for employees to live somewhere where they don't need to commute to the office regularly. You also make it so that investing in remote-friendly tools, and office amenities, are both required and less beneficial than if you just picked one. And if "water-cooler talk" and in person collaboration really is that much more effective, then you are still reducing the capacity for that happening by 40+% or more by letting employees work from home 2 or more days a week.

I personally vastly prefer 100% remote, but I don't really see the point of hybrid if the company is going to insist on people coming back to the office. And in my case, it would literally be impossible since I (and many others who have been hired since the pandemic started) are hundreds of miles away from the office.

> And if "water-cooler talk" and in person collaboration really is that much more effective, then you are still reducing the capacity for that happening by 40+% or more by letting employees work from home 2 or more days a week.

Weird, you talked about the benefits of either side (remote or office) and then just completely dispelled one side of it (in office) as if. If each side has benefits, isn't it the "best of both worlds"?

> You also make it so that investing in remote-friendly tools, and office amenities, are both required and less beneficial than if you just picked one.

So this is the downside? The tooling investments you made are less beneficial?

> And in my case, it would literally be impossible since I (and many others who have been hired since the pandemic started) are hundreds of miles away from the office.

I think this is the crux. Companies that went fully remote during COVID and are now forcing any office time without considering the changes in people's personal living situations (e.g. "I moved to San Antonio and can't possibly commute to Dallas 3x a week"). I think that is a different, but related, issue entirely.

For me at least, hybrid (some days remote, some days at the office) makes impossible to live in Antwerp and to work for a company based in Amsterdam. Commute is, at best, 2h one way. Same about working for any other Dutch company that is not based on Antwerp. So, basically hybrid means "back to pre-COVID times" when it comes to the pool of companies I can apply to.