Don’t email 3-4x. Just write a chat message and send ab VC invite. Works immediately in 90% of all cases and allows direct communication without disturbing all the coworkers around you in an office.

There has been enough study on the subject that for jobs that lend themselves to the work from home model, it absolutely does increase productivity.

I do think there should be an option to work in office for those who can't work from home for personal reasons.

I agree but only if your team is in the same office. Nowadays people are working with teams based around the world and if your entire team is working remotely then there's not much point to being in the office.

I agree to an extent, but while I'm not going to speak for everyone as my situation is unique, my role is as an individual contributor, and my role requires absolutely 0 teamwork. I have a set of tasks that need to be done by EOD, and so does the rest of my team. We don't collaborate at all. When we were in office, the only benefit was we all sat together, so you could ask a team member for assistance if you got stuck on a unique issue.

During Covid, they redid our office. There are no assigned seats anymore. So when they do ask us to come in, I work at a random desk by myself. It's absolutely stupid. I'm wasting gas and time driving to the office just to make an appearance to stroke management's ego so they can physically see me in person.

It's way easier to get someone's attention in office

Exactly. Most employees aren't just sitting around waiting for someone to get their attention. They're already actively working. And when that work is interrupted, it's a distraction, and productivity goes down.

Even the mental context switching between the tasks is costly in terms of time lost. Most people can't just instantly jump back to the original task at the same level of productivity.

E-mail is not, nor was it ever, something for immediate response. Don't e-mail people if you want one, you're doing it wrong.