WHY white collared office workers ever went to "an office" before the pandemic when they can easily do their jobs at home via internet?

Question

you can do conferences, and meetings via internet now? how long has been this way? why companies wanted to still pay their workers to go to an office building? for what? how depends on jobs?

Update:

I mean if you live in a city especially,,,,why spend an hour driving in traffic to go to an office building downtown?

Answer 1

Favourite answer

Well let just say that a lot of firms will be looking at the cost of their office space and realising that it's not a necessary expense.

And that ain't a good thing for property developers and landlords. 

Answer 2

The standard office was a holdover from the pre digital days. One suspects that might change for certain jobs. But most businesses claim work is less effective from home. So we'll see. 

Answer 3

I think the companies they work for really don't like them working from home, because they have no way of monitoring what they are doing.

Answer 4

Because their company tells them where to work. 

Answer 5

We weren't allowed to care about our carbon emissions or out time or our safety.

Answer 6

I did work from home while I was with Lockheed Martin back in 1990 to 1996.  In fact I was able to do classified work using a very sophisticated rolling security system that changed the password randomly throughout the day.  I had a device that changed the password in sync with the computer I logged into.  

Understand, this was before the Internet as we know it.  It was simply file transfers and such using file transfer protocols (FTP).  But the Internet did begin to appear in that same time frame.  In fact I wrote my first web page using HTTP as there were no such things as web building apps.

Answer 7

A person who works at home is not available to the manager.  All you have to do is turn off the phone or close the laptop.  And who is going to answer an email when they're in the bathroom or having lunch.

Answer 8

Advancements in technology. Eventually pretty much everything will be automated.

Answer 9

The Internet did not exist in its present form.

Wives want husbands out of the house on weekdays, so they can get something done.

Men like to hang out with comrades, especially at lunchtime and coffee breaks.

Answer 10

nothing beats face to face meetings