One big issue is that more experienced employees will be the ones to choose work-from-home as their default, while the newer employees seeking to learn the ropes will opt to come to the office.
Perhaps a solution is to somehow formalize some of these implicit knowledge transfer mechanisms in the workplace. Explicitly assign mentors to new employees, etc.. But I just don't see how it could possibly compare to a normal working environment if I have to do it all from home.
Some other complications:
> A lot of the benefit of in-person work is asymmetric (I benefit more from casual conversations with my manager than he does).
> I learn a lot by observing my coworkers interact. Remote work makes this very difficult, because it's not really possible to "overhear" workplace conversations, or to casually drop in on water-cooler chat. It's also not really possible to have brief side conversations in a team-wide zoom call, which is one valuable aspect of in-person communication.
> New grads tend to live in small apartments rather than a house in the suburbs with a spacious home office. I started my first full-time job remotely this week and I'm working from my dining table. Since school is out, I can hear my upstairs neighbors' children playing throughout most of the work day.
