Constantly talking to your colleagues degrades the work quality, if anything. I don't need to hear rumors about our manager's ex to be able to work on projects

Your point is actually what makes remote work so much more effective. When you work in an office, you get used to things working by chance - people seeing what others are doing, talking about it on coffee breaks and so on. When everybody is working remotely, you quickly realize that those things that happened by chance were actually a lot more important than it might seem at first - and then you can do the dumb thing and go back to having it happen by chance, or you can change your processes to ensure that everyone who may have anything to say about what you're doing, know that you're doing it.

Do you actually do work or are you one of those middle-men that add dubious value?

And, like, do you think I can read my coworker's screen from across the room and be like "Ah yes, that is TransferProjectView.py. I should tell him that I am also planning on touching that file"?

And adults can learn to explicitly communicate. It's not impossible. You just type into the box.

I haven't been in an office since 2020, but the 15 years prior that I spent numerous offices taught me that much of corporate life is spent dealing with office politics instead of accomplishing anything meaningful.

Those "water cooler conversations" that executives are so keen on are mostly spent shootin' the breeze or complaining about how Bob from marketing is a fucking moron.

Turns out when people step out for a break or head to the water cooler, they don't want to talk about work. Shocking, I know.

I learned that I could never concentrate in the office over other people's conversations, that the boss could and would interrupt me with trivial matters every few minutes regardless of what I'm working on, that Steve on my right was more concerned to be seen working when sick than to prevent others getting sick, that colleagues will always shout out questions they could answer themselves in a few seconds, thus prompting an hour of random chat, that Steve was always sick, and that Steve was the noisiest eater in the world of the most garlicy food in the world, which made him gassy, that the boss's assessment of my productivity was chiefly based on hours visibly spent suffering Steve, that Steve considers shopping online to be a social activity, and that the boss can detect headphones going on your head and music starting from 50 feet away and instantly be behind you with a burning question that doesn't make any sense. Working at home has been more productive for us all, except that the boss and Steve don't seem to know that Teams offers chat channels other than "General".

I miss casually bumping into people and chatting, but not because it ever helped with the work.

Downside: Many companies use open-plan offices, which means it's too busy to concentrate. So everyone wears noise-cancelling headphones in order to be able to work at all.

The only time I actually felt that being present was a benefit was in a company that had one from for every two people.

The most brilliant ideas happen on the toilet or in the shower. Naturally- we should poop and bathe with our coworkers.

I miss so many meetings when I'm in the office.

I talk with someone away from my desk and meetings happen without me (doesn't happen at home, no one there to talk to)

I make a coffee, in the office kitchen, and don't notice the ding on my computer (doesn't happen at home as the kitchen is near the study)

Last time I had to be in the office was to support new staff, so the missed meetings were due to talking to the new staff (but mostly about Minecraft)

I know I'm more productive at home, I'm pretty sure all the programmers are happier at home due to the lesser noise

I think when I was in the office with a colocated team we had some efficiencies, particularly in collaboration while planning a piece of work that doesn't work nearly as well online, but my workplace is distributed across three timezones so we don't get to be colocated with our teams, so there's no productive talk to offset the recreational talk

Right, so my 3 hour round trip doesn't cut into that?

Found the C-Suite.

What ever value you get from chance conversations will overwhelmed by people spending significantly less time actually working.