Comment by _cs2017_
I noticed:
1) A lot of informal (i.e., not in a scheduled meeting) chats are more valuable than meetings. They are much more rare when people WFH.
2) Many folks tend to be more distracted when WFH. TLs don't have a perfect vision into whether someone spent 4 hours on a bug (or a design doc) or 2 hours on the bug / design doc and 2 hours on online shopping / playing with kids.
It's quite confusing to me that none of the comments I saw in this thread don't discuss those factors (I'd be fine if people mentioned them and explained why they are not too important).
Obviously there are also factors in favor of WFH: commute costs, personal satisfaction (which may indirectly improve productivity and/or retention of the best people), noise in the workplace, lack of meeting rooms, etc. But it's far from obvious to me if, on balance, WFH or RTO works better for building a successful company.
I definitely agree with you about (1), though this can be somewhat mitigated by having a good culture of agreeing to hop into impromptu video calls.
(2) feels weird to me; if the work is getting done, is there an issue? Does it matter if I spend 4 hours or 2 hours on a design doc, if the result is a good design doc?