It does feel like there's been a big over-correction towards on-site --- or at least the places that want remote haven't felt the need to hire much. What's driving it? I don't get it: now that we have AI for everything, wouldn't real-time collaboration on code matter even less than it did before?
Yeah, and the rise of AI and the huge volumes of code it can create means there is more of a need to collaborate with other areas of the business on what to actually build.
I suspect it's more that few people, even at "AI" companies, understand how AI works or how to apply it. In an environment of such uncertainty, a certain class of person feels safer physically sharing a room with his colleagues: this person can "read the room" and exhibit "taste" by aligning his opinions with some emerging consensus, picking up on tiny social cues to keep himself on track.
In a remote environment, by contrast, these social signals aren't as strong. Our room-taster is forced into object-level arguments. He might be revealed as ignorant. By the same token, if a company is remote, it needs some established workflow to make progress. Workflow means words written down somewhere. Writing means accountability. Safer to just vibe.
In case it's not clear, remote work is beneficial: it forces a company to develop a level of rigor that helps it interface better with reality.
Every alleged "collaboration" efficiency the in-person model produces comes at the cost of enlarging a pile of accumulating social-technology debt incurred by substituting vibing, room-reading, and charisma for writing, debate, and accountability.
That might be the right tradeoff for some organizations (e.g. you can access to wider talent pool by having hybrid teams), but it is also within the prerogative of an org to bet otherwise.
