Hybrid work is being hailed as the ultimate solution, but in reality, it’s a half-baked attempt to please everyone, ending up pleasing no one. It combines the worst parts of office life—commutes, rigid schedules—with the downsides of remote work—fragmented communication, and isolation.
The result? A workforce that’s neither here nor there, struggling with mixed signals and inconsistent policies. True collaboration and innovation suffer when some team members are left out of impromptu brainstorming sessions, and company culture becomes a distant memory.
It’s time to stop pretending hybrid work is the perfect middle ground. We need to commit—either go fully remote with robust systems for collaboration and culture or fully return to the office to reignite that in-person synergy. Half measures aren’t cutting it.

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Hybrid work is often seen as a compromise but ends up combining the worst aspects of both office life and remote working. It leads to struggles with fragmented communication, mixed signals, and a decline in collaboration and company culture. The argument is made for choosing a dedicated approach—either fully remote with strong collaboration systems or fully in-office to foster in-person synergy, as half measures aren’t effective.

There are 50 shades of hybrid work, and they are all the worst of all worlds

This is all (likely) anecdotal.
Where I work, some people have the option to go into an office, but I and several other devs (all of the product and QA teams) are fully remote by way of not living in the right State. That being said, your “downsides” to remote work are all moot. I have no “fragmented communication” issues nor do I feel “isolated.” I do, however, feel like I get a lot more done during the day and I don’t have to waste an hour-plus on the road with a commute.
All that to say, what you think are problems are basically just problems at the place(s) you work. There are ways to fix or deal with most of those problems. Except traffic, you can’t do much about that.

Here in Norway it has basically destroyed all chances of actual remote work. Whenever I go onto the biggest job board “Finn” in this country, I’m lucky to see a single listing with “full remote” in the development section.
Truly sad for us who actually prefer complete remote work.

Sorry, but this is a really cold take. Hybrid work lets you stay personally connected while also taking advantage of new technology that massively improves the remote work experience. This is pretty clear to anyone who has tried it with an open mind.

Honestly, hybrid work is a cop-out. It’s like trying to mix oil and water - it just doesn’t blend. You either go all-in on remote and build a solid async culture or embrace the office life and make the most of those serendipitous moments. This in-between stuff just leads to mediocre collaboration and a whole lot of frustration. Pick a lane and own it, rather than trying to please everyone and ending up pleasing no one.

The only reason people experience lower delivery rate while working 100% remotely is due to the fact that managers are not skilled enough to build environment that allows great communication and collaboration for their teams.
People vary with their interpersonal skills and not all great engineers know how to communicate most efficiently, that is why they exceled working face to face in the office.
15 minutes daily meeting because “we work in scrum” is not the place to achieve peek collaboration.
I fully agree that hybrid work is the worst option, and personally I live to far from civilization to commute to work. I am grateful that I work with professionals who can communicate and collaborate online, but it is not universal across the teams in my company, thus we have a lot of team struggling to deliver.
From personal experience, forcing these struggling teams to the office did not yield great results, because people who did not want to talk to each other online, did not want to talk to each other face to face as well.