The reason is simple. If you are remote at an organization that isn't fully remote, it is quite apparent that you are basically a "second-class citizen" unless a large effort is made to include you in things. It's not as simple as saying that everyone should work how it works for them. If you have a large enough mass of people who are colocated, it has real impacts on remote workers.

(The converse is that if you push everyone to work in a way that accomodates remote workers, you probably deprive a lot of the people who prefer to be in the office of some of what they like about being in the office. I do think that the things that enable remote work -- documenting decisions, having good channels of communication and documenting things, etc. -- are beneficial for companies in the long run anyway, though.)

I think remote work is most strongly preferred by very experienced individual contributors. It is not the best setting for many people learning the ropes and it is an absolute crap for me as a people manager and I do not mean “I want to see your behind in the seat” style of management.

When I was an individual contributor and the work was very well specified, well contained, and known, remote work was a breeze.

Teaching new and junior employees is a constant struggle, something very critical is missing in remote work. It could be that people are wired better to learn face to face or there is a significant non-verbal component.

Managing people as in - getting them organized and synchronized is also a challenge. There is an immense value of getting everyone into the same room. I am not surprised articles points out that managers bear the brunt.

Well you are making it seem like how well remote work depends on the type of work, which while must be true to an extant, is besides the point the parent was trying to make: that it depends more on the type of person. I agree with the parent, as I have seen some of my colleagues flourish, and others flounder in the current environment. We all have similar tasks, the difference is the individual.

I’ve only ever been a people manager in a remote only world, but I’ve also successfully ramped up plenty new hires, most of home have been more successful than those who started on in person teams in the same cohort.

I suspect the biggest issue to overcome was ensuring new hires have lots of time carved out for them across the team and ensuring they take advantage of it. When you can go physically knock on someones door you are harder to ignore then an IM or channel message, and it is more natural. Getting the team culture to be responsive to new members took deliberate work, but now it seems to be self perpetuating.

As for coordination, deliberate use of process and tooling helps a lot, but it remains challenging. We seem to get good value from all extra the formal meetings the article mentions, but there is still difficulty making sure everyone is on the same page at the detail level.

Agreed. I have experienced the same/opposite. I LOVE working from home and for years before covid was adamantly told "get used to working in the office"

Difference people have different circumstances/preferences.