Well, except the fact that you lose out on spontaneous meeting points like someone heading to the kitchen while you're heading somewhere else and suddenly one of you remembers this one thing and a conversation happens in the hallway.
Bell Labs is a famous example where it seems to have played a role (together with the people working there of course, and other variables).
> But just as important was the culture of collaboration that the company fostered. The leaders of Bell Labs understood that physical proximity could spark innovation, and they designed its facilities to bring experts together in both deliberate and unexpected ways.
> At Bell Labs’ headquarters complex in suburban Murray Hill, New Jersey, all of the laboratory spaces connected to a single, vast corridor, longer than two football fields. Great minds were bound to cross paths there, leading inevitably to spontaneous and meaningful interactions. As author Jon Gertner writes in The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, “a physicist on his way to lunch in the cafeteria was like a magnet rolling past iron filings.” Throughout the labs, employees were instructed to work with their doors open, the better to promote the free flow of ideas.
Nope. Mark your coffee breaks in software like you do in Slack, then your avatar can just be standing in the coffee room or company cafe and people will be jogged there.
It's exactly the same. You can have the avatars doing anything you want, there is no difference.
Want them to do a pass by every desk in the office when they go to the kitchen, or bathroom? Possible. Want to turn that option off to get down to work? Possible.
Guess it depends on what you think is frequently, maybe once or twice a year when working in a office setting. Always happened at small companies, and usually what was sparked in the conversation had a big impact on what the company worked on.
So for the off chance that once in 6 months you have a conversation in person that "sparks something" everyone has to suffer commutes and all the other crap that comes with WFO?
No, I think people should be able to make a choice between working in a office vs working remote, which considering how many jobs are remote nowadays, you can kind of already do.
I'm not saying all companies should work in a office, I'm just sharing my viewpoint from someone who prefers in office compared to remotely.
