Games

That's why I said this:

Build a team based on trust and let the team decide their office schedule.

It seems your team was not put together with the intention of working in an office, so it would not make sense to require your team to come to the office.

My team has decided that in-office work is valuable, so we only hire locally or pay to relocate people. We do have four full remote team members, and those exist because of extenuating circumstances (two need to work with customers in their region, and two have legal/family obligations), and we fly them out every few months at company expense (e.g. for project kickoff meetings). But the rest of our 20-ish people live locally.

We have two other teams in two different time zones (one in Europe, one in Asia; we're in the US) that are part of the overall team, and they meet in their respective regions. We do remote sync calls with them, but otherwise they are independent.

If your work doesn't benefit from in-office collaboration, there's no reason to come into an office. Ours does, so we do. But at the end of the day, it should be the team that decides, not management.

The thing is, our office work policy comes from our team, not management. In fact, our company policy is 3 days in office, but we, as a team, decided we're less productive with that policy (we tried it for a month) and our VP overrode company policy for us.

Some people come in every day, some work full remote (due to extenuating circumstances), but most come in 2 days/week. If we're sick, need to be home (e.g. having a handyman come fix stuff), or need to be out of town for an extended time, we stay home. In fact, one coworker has been full remote for a few months because her dog is prone to having seizures and she needs to be present to help reduce harm until she can find a treatment that helps. It's a non-issue.

The expectation is just that, as much as possible, come in on the two days the team has agreed on so collaboration can happen. Most of the team does that most of the time, and when we can't, we just leave a note. Likewise, if we need to go to an appointment, leave a note that you'll be out for an hour or two and take care of it.

It's a super flexible and bottom-up policy, and it works really well. The important thing is that it's a team decision. I think it has resulted in us liking spending time together, so we periodically do team activities outside of work (funded by the company of course), and nobody is obligated to attend (but most do).

team level decision

Exactly. The main difference between my office and Rockstar in the article is that ours was a bottom up decision, whereas Rockstar's was a top down one.

In fact, our company policy is 3 days in office, but our team tried it and decided we're less productive that way, so our VP overrode company policy to go back to 2 days. We're not expected to come in if we need to stay for some reason (e.g. waiting on furniture delivery or the car isn't working). In fact, one coworker hasn't come to the office for months because her dog is prone to seizures and she needs to be there to intervene so he doesn't hurt himself. Several of my coworkers are immigrants and work remotely for a month or more at a time when they go back to their home country. I've done the same when I visit family out of state. Some coworkers come in every day because they get distracted at home.

It's a totally nontoxic atmosphere where everyone is treated like adults. Our current policy came from a team vote where most voted for 2 days in office, so that's what we do. And as long as people don't abuse the flexibility, there's no reason for it to change, and in my 3-ish years working here, I've only had to have one conversation about the in-office policy (my coworker was working from home due to their car being in the shop, but after a month it was becoming abuse of the policy; a gentle reminder later and it hasn't been a problem since).

I think (at least in tech) we are seeing a brain drain where companies with strong RTO mandates can neither retain nor attract talent. Remote-first companies should be at a big advantage. Time will tell if it matters.