I was always very vocal about remote work for tech people.

For engineering work, remote made a lot of sense:

  • No travelling time
  • Less office distraction
  • More focused work
  • Better deep thinking time

A developer sitting alone with headphones for 4 hours could sometimes produce more output than spending the entire day in meetings.

But I think AI is changing this dynamic completely.

Earlier, the biggest bottleneck in software engineering was writing code.

Now AI is writing a large part of the code.

The developer’s role is slowly shifting towards:

  • Planning
  • Architecture
  • Product thinking
  • Reviewing AI-generated output
  • Coordination
  • Faster decision-making

And this changes how teams work.

In an office environment:

  • A developer discusses an idea with product
  • Another engineer overhears it and gives feedback instantly
  • Someone opens a laptop and tests the idea immediately
  • Iteration happens in real time

Instead of:

  • Scheduling meetings
  • Waiting on Slack replies
  • Long async discussions

The communication latency becomes very low.

And I think in the AI era, speed of iteration will matter more than speed of coding.

In-person collaboration is naturally optimized for fast iteration.

AI reduced the coding bottleneck.

Now it is exposing the collaboration bottleneck.

Earlier:

Better coder = more output

Now:

Better communication + faster decisions = more output

The office may not come back because companies want control.

It may come back because collaboration became the new bottleneck.