One thing that frustrates me about RTO being framed as necessary for productivity and collaboration is that, at least at my own company, leadership hasn't tried to advance beyond basic remote collaboration techniques since 2020. By that I mean, although we introduced multiple
realtime collaboration tools (excellent video chat, screenshare, and whiteboarding software), we haven't invested in asynchronous ways of working at all, namely teaching people how to effectively communicate and make decisions over written communications.
And that's a real shame considering that we've always had a substantial offshore workforce, and collaborating with them has always been frustrating and unproductive for both sides. Lots of emails where each side is talking past the other, only to be resolved by a 10-minute video call that is unfortunately taking place in the early morning for one party and late at night for the other. In fact, I don't fully understand why offshoring didn't create the pressure to improve async work a lot earlier, even though the labor was very cheap and you can pretty much always find someone who will put up with those miserable hours.
