It's a bit of a clickbaity article, but I do agree with this part:

> Those micro-interactions—stopping to chat in the kitchen, taking a quick walk for coffee, or eating lunch with others—are impossible to replicate when working from home. These moments, while small, feel meaningful to me.

You can schedule coffee chats, etc., but in my experience, it's nigh impossible to make room for these kinds of interactions remotely. The only time this sort of things happens is when I'm pairing with someone, and once we're done - or before we start - we just hang out and shoot the shit for awhile. But this almost exclusively happens with people I already know well; it doesn't give much room to meet new people or establish any relationship outside of your team.

At a fully remote startup I once worked at, they intentionally cultivated connections by having a randomizer pair employees up for 30 minute blocks of "getting to know you" time.

That seems so forced. I would absolutely hate this, and would find a way to weasel out of it.

Chatting with someone at the coffee machine or whatever, where either person can walk away is one thing; Mandatory Pair Bonding Time sounds vile.

Yes - being able to choose to pursue or discourage professional or personal relationships with coworkers allows for healthier interpersonal boundaries, both implicit and explicit.

These I-talk-with-people-for-a-living perspectives on return-to-office are exactly why I have never wanted to be in an office setting. I get why the author wants to be in the office; he thrives on social interaction.

Sometimes I'm seventeen levels deep in the debugger, the complete application state in my head, all the what-ifs and then-whats neatly in focus... and a coworker starts interrogating me about the game last night... Those moments of social interaction sour me right quick fast in a hurry.

That's about an hour of productivity lost right there, and now my motivation to start this work again is well below freezing.

I'm willing to go to the office one day a week. That's it, no more. Not now, not ever again.

Article itself actually hates rto, and the author found > 60% - that's 3 days a week - untenable.

The author actually found three days a week to be the sweet spot that worked best for them, and four on occasion.

> For me, that means being in the office three or four days a week. Three is my baseline; fewer than that, and I start missing out on the energy and focus I mentioned earlier. Occasionally, I’ll add an extra day if I need more face-to-face time with teammates or fewer distractions at home.