>Too many developers think they are working alone, while in fact they are part of a team and they would be better off working closer to that team.
Sounds like you think software development is like one of those stock photos with 8 people smiling and high-fiving around a whiteboard. Devs are (mostly) nerds. Nerds have been collaborating in the online world for decades. They somehow managed to achieve things and build genuine friendships without ever being crammed into an open office - crazy but true. Everytime I hear someone say/suggest "dev needs to happen in person", all I can picture is a PHB.
I really, strongly believe that if devs were building genuine friendships with their team mates remotely, there would be no RTO. I have only ever seen the opposite: people are distancing from each other more than ever. Aren’t we in a “loneliness epidemic”?
The first thing to know about genuine friendships is that they usually don't form when forced. Sticking 6 devs from different cultures, generations and seniorities in a room and saying "ok be friends now" is wishful thinking, the kind of simplistic shit you usually get out of management. To think that RTO is a solution to this is naive, sorry to be blunt. It has far more to do with who you hire. Lazy/incompetent management would prefer the easier RTO mandate, as usual.
You can only incentivize the behaviour you want. It can’t be forced. RTO does do this in a stronger way than fully remote, in second-order ways. Simplistic as it might be, if those are the only tools available, those are the ones that will be used. It’s been five years since the pandemic now and a better way hasn’t been found yet.
In the end it's all about friction, communicating IRL is much easier and less constrained. You can make online work but you have to adjust your expectations of how much time something takes and optimise for a split between focus time and comms, which you don't have to worry too much in IRL, that works but you have to adjust your expectations of how many people are working together and how long it takes to cooperate and adjust course. So I guess you better find a team that makes this mindset work?
The main pet peeve I have is with the hybrid approach of having a single person remote where you have a constant battle of negotiating interactions between folks who hate interruptions and those who hate scheduling a meeting for a 10-minute chat.
Also taking a junior stance, a lot of us learned by just being around senior devs, when you just started you don't even know what you don't know, and learning by osmosis is huge.
Sounds like you think software development is like one of those stock photos with 8 people smiling and high-fiving around a whiteboard. Devs are (mostly) nerds. Nerds have been collaborating in the online world for decades. They somehow managed to achieve things and build genuine friendships without ever being crammed into an open office - crazy but true. Everytime I hear someone say/suggest "dev needs to happen in person", all I can picture is a PHB.