Agreed. I think people don't realize how much WFH sucks for people who are not ICs (or don't care). Pre-pandemic, I was pointing my career in a management direction. I enjoyed both development work and managing and they both took advantage of different skill sets. However, in my mind, management had more upside in the long run, and if I was going to be going into an office every day anyway, might as well keep at it. So at the start of the pandemic I was doing remote management of a technical team. And all those negatives you mention started to add up. In the last few months I got a different job as a senior developer to take advantage of the unbelievable W/L balance of permanent WFH. I decided "being a developer remotely" >> "being a manager in the office" >> "being a developer in the office" >> "being a manager remotely".
On the other hand for my partner who is non-technical and squarely in management, WFH is an endless nightmare of virtual meetings with no breaks. Hard to read people, hard to get people engaged, nonstop pings preventing what little focus time she has left. She wants to get back to an office ASAP, and I don't blame her.
yeah it says that the person expressing it has worked with managers for years and years now and even the good ones' biggest value-add is just telling the bad ones to fuck off
those managers are great for a remote IC. makes my life easy so I can minimize my hours and increase my effectively hourly rate
They don't necessarily stop but they're...different, I would say. For one thing, if someone is grabbing your attention in the office for a "quick question", it's easy to make a clean break from that interaction and move on. Verbal communication is just more efficient, and it's obvious when you have a legitimate conflict and need to move on from the conversation (On my way out the door, to lunch, to a meeting, etc).
It's also harder to get multiple "quick questions" at the same time, because in office people see when you're physically occupied. And it could be just me, but WFH I've noticed there is more psychological pressure to respond quickly to chats. Don't want people to think you're lounging off! A red "busy" indicator can mean a lot of things, in contrast to someone physically seeing you in conversation with your laptop closed in a meeting room.
In theory you should enforce boundaries "I'll respond to all questions after this virtual meeting is over" or "I have a firm cut off at 5PM and will not respond after that". But that becomes tough when leadership, who should be setting expectations on this stuff, breaks it's own rules and multi-tasks during meetings or has unrealistic availability. Definitely a cultural thing that heavily depends on your exact role and the organization norms.
TL;DR For "Zoom calls and text messaging" are not a drop in replacement for physically talking to someone, especially for people who spend a lot of their day having many small, ad-hoc conversations.
On the other hand for my partner who is non-technical and squarely in management, WFH is an endless nightmare of virtual meetings with no breaks. Hard to read people, hard to get people engaged, nonstop pings preventing what little focus time she has left. She wants to get back to an office ASAP, and I don't blame her.