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When I was in my longest contract I travelled interstate every month for time in the office. I think it's really helpful, although I love work from home
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I'm an employer (and also still programmer myself) and I want my employees to be at the office at least about half of the time.
Working from home isn't an issue, and this week and next week I have someone working three days at home and one in the office.
Fact is, when he's at home he's less likely to contact me for any questions he has, he'll spend hours figuring it out while in the office he asks me after about fifteen to thirty minutes.
We also use the office time for briefings on projects, status updates, other questions he might have, music interchange, a walk in the nearby forest and sometimes drinks and snacks.
Granted, most of these things can be done digitally trough Teams, and we sometimes do, but there's simply no substitution for seeing face to face.
Let's put it this way, would you only see your family and friends digitally?
You wouldn't, because seeing people online just doesn't build the same kind of familiarity and trust as seeing someone in real life.
And now you're saying "well, there are these people I work with eight hours a day, and we need to get stuff done, but there's no reason to ever see them in real life."
That just sounds like crazy and highly unproductive to me.
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Today is my 'office day'. Once a month I cone in for meetings with my boss, the PM and the CEO.
Both the PM and CEO have already called off, there's a bit of dodgy weather today, and my direct boss is looking shakey.
I'd go home but I'm interviewing this afternoon and there's no way I'm leaving that to HR, they could hire anybody!
veni bibi saltavi
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You bring up two good use cases - 1) the person whose self-discipline is not strong enough to make them as productive at home as at the office. 2) You also mention this employee tends to work on solving a problem on his own too long before reaching out for help.
My practice as a dev manager (one I learned from a Dev Manager I had years earlier) was with new hires, that they worked in office 5 days a week the first month. That aided with learning how we worked, and fitting in. After the first month, if the new hire showed he or she could manage their time, reached out for help when needed, self-starter, etc., then I went to in-office two days a week for a month to two months. That allowed me to track at-home versus in-office performance. Once I could see the new hire was as productive and reliable at-home as on-site, then 100% remote was allowed.
Beyond that, I would have a mandatory in-office day at least once a quarter.
One of the benefits of having a 100% remote team is being able to widen the number of potential candidates to the entire US, raising my entrance standards, and not be limited to just local.
The downside is it requires more of my time to monitor productivity and correct any deficiencies. But that is part of my job when leading and managing a team. Having done it, I know it works.
But if your approach works for you, your company, and your employees, why change it?
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I haven't been in the office for over a year now. Before that, once or twice a month.
I don't want to travel 3 to 4 hours a day to work 6 or 7 hours.
I don't need to see my colleagues in real life.
When I went to the office, I looked at the schedule and chose a day that most of them where not there.
And Covid is still very much around. At this moment 2 of my colleagues are off sick with covid. 
And I am very vulnerable for covid. The doctor said to me 'if you get Covid, it probably will kill you'
I am much more productive when I don't have to interact with other people.
B.T.W.
I haven't seen my family in real life for over 3 years now. We call or WhatsApp each other.
And seeing friends digitally saves me beer. 
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JohaViss61 wrote: The doctor said to me 'if you get Covid, it probably will kill you'
Well, thank your lucky stars for the jab and all the boosters then, right? RIGHT??
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2 weeks ago I got my 8th Covid jab.
Really painful this one.
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I've had a coworker like you, lived about a two hour drive from the office.
Nice guy, but no one knew what he was doing and vice versa.
He retired last year and his employer simply ditched his clients because no one wanted to work with his code (old VB6 and even dBase software).
It's very hard to manage people like you if everyone else is in the office.
But why work for a company that's so far away?
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It's a compromise between my job and my wife's job.
We are living roughly in the middle.
And the houses around my workplace are unaffordable. (Starting at £800.000 and up)
Luckily my code is reviewed whenever I make a change. And my contributions are with the latest frameworks (NET 6 and 7, Blazor, Azure)
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Sander Rossel wrote: It's very hard to manage people like you if everyone else is in the office.
I'm fortunate enough that my company has adopted a work-from-home policy, and everybody has now been doing it for 15+ years. Well, and new recruits.
So ultimately we're all managed the same, at least in the sense that we know everyone's remote. We have (short) daily calls at 9:00am, discuss who's been working on what, whether someone's stuck on something, the plan for the day, etc. Then we make ourselves available to others (via IM/voice/video) during core office hours, and everyone's pretty happy.
I could certainly see that not working as well if there was a group at the office, vs another group being remote. Unless those at the office worked as if they were also working individually.
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I've managed teams with 100% remote developers. The manner and process of management is different than hybrid or 100% in-office, but it is doable without too much effort. The inter-personal benefits of being in-office can be almost all replicated with 100% remote developers with a little thought. Remember, 100% remote teams were used successfully long before COVID.
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hmm yea - if my family and friends were like some of the people I have had to work with, I would only see them digitally and maybe not all if I had any say in it.
Buckrogerz
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I find Hybrid to be the best option if done properly. On the other hand it is the most complicated to do it well.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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What are the benefits you see in hybrid over 100% remote?
Thanks
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As others in the thread have told, it is easier to interact socially in presence, non verbal communication (i.e. body language) is way too important to be always avoided. If you want to really connect to people, you better meet them for real.
If the conmute is not so long I think getting out of home helps to keep things separated. I notice that I can disconnect better when I am in the office and have to drive back home, than finishing my work day, getting out of my office room and having the kids waiting for me in the corridor.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Good points. If you were managing some 100% remote workers on your team, how would you go about compensating for the benefits you mentioned, so the in-office developers and the 100% remote developers gained as much of that benefit as possible?
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If going to office is not possible (you said 100% remote), I would try to introduce one or two weekly "informal" meetings of 15 to 30 minutes, so that people can catch up in personal matters and build a bit team feeling / keeping them "up to date" and in the most similar "wave length" as possible, despite the distance.
Additionally I would introduce some rules for the online meetings like:
- Connect the webcam but unmute the mic if you have nothing to say. This way you can still have some of the non verbal information in sight (although way more difficult to filter it up as the panels are too small to get all the details) but less interruptions due to background sounds or things like that. You can see if the people are "paying attention" or doing bullshit during the meeting (I know, people can disconnect the brain in presence meetings too). You trigger a bit that people gets dressed "properly" with activated cams, what for me is important too to activate the "working mode" in the brain...
For the people in presence if they all sit in the same room and there are people online....
- There is a "hand microphone" and only the one with it speaks, there is nothing worse that one micro in the middle of the table and people talking simultaneously. Use more webcams in the room, one directed to the group and one to possible analog mediums like flipcharts. At least one person paying attention to the online member list to see if there are questions in chat or hands up waiting for the opportunity to talk...
If I were a boss and I started with the hybrid constellation, I would very probably find other points to improve the experience with time and experience.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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MSBassSinger wrote: Being in-office ensures the person is working.
I can't recall seeing any company require back to work where it did not seem obvious that this was the reason.
They might do some hand waving about the rest of it but this is the reason.
Even more obvious when companies have been using an offshore workforce for years.
-----------------------------
This is somewhat similar to the claims that the 'open desk' policy where there are no offices, no cubes and even no assigned desk leads to 'creativity'.
In contrast the only study I have ever seen showed that actual offices (not cubes) lead to a measurable increase in work product.
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Don't underestimate the Power of Schadenfreude.
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Yes, for some. Requires discipline/work ethic.
Time is the differentiation of eternity devised by man to measure the passage of human events.
- Manly P. Hall
Mark
Just another cog in the wheel
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I pretty much liked going to office to do my work. Way less distractions than I'd get at home. Also, I was a firmware engineer so I had quiet a bit of hardware I had to have to do my job (scopes, jtags, modems, TTY, etc). Heck, when my company went to the open office scheme I was able to keep my office because of the amount of hardware I need to do my job. Plus a fair amount of the equipment was noisy.
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I work with a group of 20 people in 3 main teams.
100% remote during COVID I only knew what 2 or 3 of my closer teammates was doing day to day.
We now work hybrid with an all-in-office or all-at-home approach. I prefer this approach.
There is a lot more spontaneous communication. You can peek in on a coworker and judge their level of concentration before you decide to interrupt them.
In-person discussions work a lot better than a laggy group video meeting. We plan discussion meetings for in-office days.
Since we can work remotely, people with the “sniffles” or even a low fever will self quarantine and work remotely. Work an extra day or two from home with a case of the sniffles and you can create a 4-5 day quarantine buffer with our current schedule, without losing productivity.
Pre-COVID, people with sniffles would choose to come into the office more often than not even though we had reasonable remote access available pre-COVID.
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englebart wrote: In-person discussions work a lot better than a laggy group video meeting
Do you think an employer that uses 100% remote, would be wise to ensure high speed Internet for their 100% remote workers? I had a couple of employers that did that, and it helped. Back in the late 1990s, the employer paid for ISDN, and later, some employers gave a fixed dollar stipend to help pay for high speed Internet at home. Of course, the employer had to beef up Internet speed in the office to handle the multiple remote connections used in meetings.
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We have very good connectivity in the office. There is a lag even with MB bandwidth. I am often on remote meetings where half the meeting attendees are sitting within ten feet of me so I hear the lag.
Improving the bandwidth will not relocate the servers managing the meeting.
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I see. So the communication is handled by internal network servers, not external/cloud services, then. I think you are right for your office's setup.
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