Yeah, I agree. Allowing WFH is not a trivial thing for a company. My impression is that many don't allow it out of risk aversion ("nobody got fired for not allowing people to work remotely"?).
As a tangent, I wonder a project with such "productivity-reducing communication cost" for (even partial) WFH looks like. Honest question, because so far I've never worked in one. I ask because the very idea of it goes against what I consider a properly organized programming project.
On the design meetings of the projects I worked in, I always pushed for figuring out appropriate architecture to minimize required communication between people. We decomposed the problems until we were able to identify isolated areas of the project and design interfaces between them, and then we coded them in isolation, with occasional exchanges for adjusting the design (interfaces, in particular) when things changed, like they always do.
As a tangent, I wonder a project with such "productivity-reducing communication cost" for (even partial) WFH looks like. Honest question, because so far I've never worked in one. I ask because the very idea of it goes against what I consider a properly organized programming project.
On the design meetings of the projects I worked in, I always pushed for figuring out appropriate architecture to minimize required communication between people. We decomposed the problems until we were able to identify isolated areas of the project and design interfaces between them, and then we coded them in isolation, with occasional exchanges for adjusting the design (interfaces, in particular) when things changed, like they always do.