The Absurdity of the Return-to-Office Movement::The return-to-office demands make little sense from an overall economic perspective, while working parents, in particular, benefit from not having to waste time commuting to an office, writes Peter Bergen.
A lot of people don’t like to drive 2 or 3 hours in a day for that 15 minutes around the whiteboard when you can instead do an hour inefficiently in an online meeting and still get ahead in terms of times spent on work.
It adds up when you have a lot of meetings where you need to do that. Also 2 to 3 hour commute is insane. And I’m not suggesting office work needs to be 5 days a week. Also the type of work really makes a difference as well. I’m also not sure wfh is more efficient. In the in office days meeting room availability dictated the number of meetings you could have a day. Virtual has created meeting hell for me at times.
That never stopped people having meetings. Before virtual you had good ol’ teleconference and you were on the phone the entire day. You also had clients wanting a meeting or the company office in a different city/state/country/continent that wanted to discuss things so you travelled multiple hours for a one hour meeting in some cases. Fun times.
Time management and the ability to say no remain important, in office or work from home.
A 2 to 3 hour commute (1 1/2 hours both ways) is unfortunately given the traffic situation and general suburban sprawl structure of the US not insane at all here. It is considered a long commute, but not super far out of the ordinary.