[hipster duck]

I joined my current company in summer 2020, so I've only worked with them since the pandemic began. We're currently all WFH, but we had the opportunity to go back into the office in the summer and fall. The procedures were strict: you had to sign an attestation form and take a picture of a negative rapid test that you took prior to each entry; you also had to book a hotdesk from an approved list of desks that were spaced apart. Once inside the office, you had to wear a mask everywhere except your desk and the lunchroom.

Despite this, I was very happy to go into work. I'm much more productive in an in-person office environment. I remember my coworker and I solved a problem on the whiteboard in 5 minutes that had been plaguing her for weeks. It was also refreshing to just have casual, over-the-shoulder conversations and to show results as I worked, rather than to have those brutal online meetings where everybody and their uncle is invited to solve a simple task.

On the other hand, I did appreciate the flexibility of a WFH environment. I have a toddler and we have another child on the way, so I basically have no personal time, and very little time to do many household errands. It was kind of refreshing, especially in the summer, to set my status to "busy", cancel any non-essential meetings and blow off work for hours to go on a bike ride, or cook dinner. My impression about WFH is that productivity is way down, but the essential things are still completed so managers look the other way. I have direct reports and I basically insinuated to them that I didn't care when they worked as long as they got their tasks done and didn't miss meetings scheduled by someone higher than me.

So, it's been a double-edged sword: on one hand, I think we have a more honest appraisal of work-life balance and a realization by a lot of people that we don't need to waste time in an office doing pointless busy work, but at the same time there's a realization that an office environment wasn't just the drudgery of a commute - it was a special place with camaraderie and a more collaborative environment in which to do work.

When things all go back to normal, my hope is that I work in the office three days a week, during which I'll get most of my work out of the way, and my WFH days are ones where I just answer Teams messages on my phone from wherever I happen to be.