There is a definite mental aspect for most WFH folks to having a space that is dedicated to work. I'm not unique in saying this, but the way I put it is "If you work from anywhere in your house, then you're always at work."
And that, from mental load standpoint, is not healthy for most folks.
For most people, I'd reckon they are never at work.
There is a reason we know that remote learning is horrible for most people compared to in-classroom. We proved this decisively during COVID.
There is zero reason to believe that most folks magically change overnight from being incapable of remote learning to being highly capable remote workers. It's just not believable.
I hired remote workers in the 90's. It was a small fraction of the total candidate base that could successfully self-motivate and have the discipline to become high performers in such an environment over the long haul. Most of my interviewing and candidate vetting had to do with the remote aspect vs. technical skillset. Luckily around that time is when open source became a huge thing, so those projects presented a pool of pre-vetted candidates to hire out of. The rest of the candidate pool was a total crapshoot.
Remote working has become easier and the tooling and technology much better. But from where I'm standing - many folks do not take it seriously. Simple stuff like having backup Internet is a filtering question for me even today.
“Simple stuff like having backup Internet” that sounds expensive. Who has room to back up the entire Internet?
Personally on the 0.2 days a year I have to worry about it, I just head to the coffee shop. Or you know … take a couple hours off (shock!).
Also I’ve spent literally decades working with very highly productive people exclusively remotely. None of us find this odd. Not sure why you have that level of suspicion/distrust. Granted, things have changed a lot since the 90s.
On some days I wor from home but need to be present and the sun is out. So I take my laptop outside and work from there. I cannot do this with a desktop. Wouldn‘t the workaholic just stay inside and miss out?
Sometimes I'll just pop into a meeting from my phone and walk around. That said , I do have a laptop but only because I go to the office every so often . Otherwise, I work exclusively from my home office because that's where my home desktop computer is and I control everything on my work computer from there.
There's a lot of value in camera-on, but for some meetings, I love being camera off, nowhere near my computer, somewhere else in the house, watering plants or sweeping the floor. Sometimes it actually has me MORE engaged with the verbal aspect of the meeting, listening better, speaking better, because there's less distraction from Slack and Hacker News...
I'm much more attentive in some meetings when my hands aren't on the keyboard. For particularly important meetings I'll get out my knitting so that I can be close by while having something that's not failing unit tests occupying my hands
Off now, but historically even at camera on companies I'd do whatever and just hold my phone when convenient for me or just shove the meeting in my pocket if I need my hands.
Obviously depends on your team culture, but try it :)
And that, from mental load standpoint, is not healthy for most folks.