> The results show working from home does not lead to society ending, rather things like cleaner air.
Results also show lower productivity of fully-remote teams, especially when more than half of your team is new, people haven't ramped up on complex codebases and haven't made good bonds with their colleagues.
Microsoft showed the opposite. (Microsoft employee here). We were more productive by every common software dev measure when working from home. That's why Satya has been calling other CEOs out on their rather misguided need to "get the employees back in the office". It's a management problem (bad management) - not an employee problem. Focus on outcomes and create an environment that enables teams to achieve them...including ones with new hires and junior folks. It's possible. It just takes some (gasp) work. By managers.
The results were so mixed, but it also occurred during a global pandemic with massive child caretaking and education disruption so YMMV. All it shows is that people will [ab]use data to prove whatever point they set out to prove.
Ultimately WFH is more economically efficient for worker and employer, so it is up to the employer to prove to shareholders why they should be spending tons of money on in-office aside from "because this is how we've always done it."
Probably because management considered remote onboarding as a temporary thing that would be over in three weeks for the past three years, instead of the new normal that would require more thought to how to onboard remotely effectively. There's been plenty of companies that were mainly remote long before the pandemic as well. Even in government sometimes employees working on sensitive info get a scif installed in their basement. If it didn't work people wouldn't do it. Sometimes its nice to also think about the personal benefits to the employee to their life outside of the work, versus the companies absolute bottom line all the time.
Given that we are barely coming out of pandemic, I don't think we have had enough stabilization yet to conduct meaningful studies. I have started compiling research on similar topics. Initial thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34673235
Results also show lower productivity of fully-remote teams, especially when more than half of your team is new, people haven't ramped up on complex codebases and haven't made good bonds with their colleagues.