JA

For company leaders: when coming into the office pays off, and when it does not

Here is what this post covers:

Introduction

To be honest, coming into the office is not really my thing.

For me, these are the costs of going in:

  • The commute eats up time and energy
  • I get tense, my shoulders stiffen, and my thinking gets rigid
  • Conversations around me make it hard to focus

More companies have been calling people back to the office lately. Since going in comes with costs like these, it helps when it is clear in which situations people are expected to come in. That makes it much easier for employees to accept.

That said, there are situations where the benefits of the office clearly outweigh the costs. In this post I want to lay out what those situations are, from the point of view of someone doing development work on the ground.

Development has two phases: deciding and building

Development roughly splits into two phases.

  • The decision phase: team members align on requirements and design direction
  • The building phase: each person focuses on implementing a spec that is already settled

Remote work has the advantage in the building phase. With no commute, it is easier to carve out long blocks of focus time, and nobody’s conversation gets in the way.

In the decision phase, being in person has the advantage. Remotely, there tends to be a gap between asking a question and getting an answer, and the back-and-forth stalls. (This framing draws on a note post by Yuta Okada.)

The early stage of a project is when the decision phase takes up the most time. That is when going into the office is worth the most.

A real example: the STORES development camp

From February to April 2025, STORES, Inc. had everyone come into the office to build toward the release of a new plan. Looking back, they summed up the biggest benefit as “an environment where you can have the conversation you need, when you need it.”

They also note, though, that what matters is psychological distance more than physical distance, and that an always-on voice channel can get you close to the same effect. The office is one means among several.

Why online is not quite enough

You might think: “Google Meet keeps the chat log, so isn’t online good enough?”

But a chat log only keeps the words that were said. It does not keep facial expressions, tone of voice, or the sense that someone does not look quite convinced.

A study by the Online Communication Association, a Japanese general incorporated association, found that turning video off in web meetings made it take longer to reach agreement and lowered the quality of decisions. When opinions split, what people say is not enough to go on, and they rely on cues like the other person’s expression.

If simply not seeing faces makes that much difference, the gap between online meetings and talking in the same room is likely even larger.

How to split the two

To get the most out of the office, I think it works best to set a time frame.

  • In the early stage (from requirements through agreeing on the design), come into the office intensively
  • Once the spec is settled, go back to mostly remote
  • For each office day, make it clear what is supposed to be decided that day

Wrap-up

The value of the office is not constant. It is large when a team is deciding something together and small when each person is heads-down building.

The commute fatigue and difficulty focusing I listed at the start remain real downsides during the building phase. When setting an office policy, deciding when and for what people come in makes it easier to get the benefits. Rather than choosing between “everyone in every day” and “fully remote,” switching according to the phase seems like the most reasonable approach to me.

References