Why are most engineering companies opposed to remote work, even though much of the communication happens virtually? I have minimal on-site interaction with other teams. I believe that as long as you stay on top of your tasks and meet deadlines, working from home should not be an issue. So, what is the problem?

I agree with you. Unfortunately, your story is like everybody else’s and the Cs don’t give a damn. They say it’s about improving culture / productivity but RTO has done the exact opposite.

1. Engineering firms are generally stubborn and tend to adapt to change very slowly. So the "traditional" model of how an office should run is going to be choice #1.
2. As a Civil Engineer, we do lose opportunity time quite often when folks are not in office. There are many times there are just random opportunity moments, "Oh look, Jason is here, let's get his opinion. I don't care how strong one's online collaboration is, you can't recreate those moments. And often times those moments generate inspiration or creativity because of the dynamics.
3. Despite there being an amazing array of collaboration tools, there is a certain element of team that is lost when everyone is remote. In my firm, there is a strong sense of team and it shows in how we operate and with our deliverables.

My first job out of college (2020) was a remote position that I held for 3.5 years and I hated it. I felt incredibly limited in what I was able to learn on the job as well as limited in what aspects of engineering I had access too. Furthermore, communication was horrible across the board and for the most part I felt left out and kinda forgotten. Meetings of any size were always clunky because everything was over teams/skype and screen share was always super jittery and laggy, along with that 2 second voice delay. Also, having to interrupt your (and your coworkers) entire workflow to call someone to ask a question really put a damper on my interest to actually reach out and ask questions because I always felt like a nuisance.

Add on top of that that, despite working remote, I was forced to adopt the standard “9-5” work day hours, so one of the largest perks of working remote of that flexible work schedule was taken off the board, and, the company felt that they could pay me less because I worked remote and therefore didn’t have travel expenses and all.

Oh, and, staring at a computer screen for 8 hour straight because there were no interruptions like having to get up and go to meetings and such also really sucked.

Overall, I left that position in search of an in-person position because, as an engineer, I feel like in-person collaboration is just easier and better. Less is lost in communication, there’s more opportunity to get involved in different areas of opportunity simply because you have a chance to quite literally bump into someone who does something else and hear about it. Furthermore, it opens up opportunities to actually be a little bit more “hand on” with whatever you’re designing/developing. Working remote, it was easy to lose track of scale, so being able to go and physically look at whatever you’re working on, in my opinion, is a MAJOR advantage

Unfortunately there are too many out of date managers who are unable to manage by output or are afraid that as the majority of studies during the Covid lockdowns showed increased productivity people may start to work out that they aren't bringing a value to the company commensurate with their salary.

From direct observation, the quality of work is MEASURABLY poorer when done remotely. My role is to test products as they develop. The remote-work attitude I find is that 'I got my tasks done and they are perfect'... on paper. It takes weeks rather than hours to convince 1st line and middle managers that things are NOT perfect and their deadlines are at risk. And several very good collaborative engineers in the office became middle-performers to poor performers when moved to remote work.

Engineering is a team sport. We are paid to not only do our work but to collaborate, aid, and pitch in with others' work when needed. Working remotely removes most of that value.

We are also tasked to teach new engineers and learn from more seasoned ones. That does not seem to happen remotely either.

If you want to work remotely, then realize you are LESS valuable as an engineer. I expect to see companies paying that way.

Thing is, senior leadership makes these policies, and based on their mindset, they mainly add value by being in front of their teams. Whether popular or not, it's definitely easier to manage a team that are all sat in one office vs remote. Hybrid flexible work is the sweet spot for me.

We should stop fooling ourselves. The people loudly demanding RTO are those who go to work/office to be social or feel that people only work when they are watched. We will have to patiently wait for their time to come to an end.

I've worked as a design engineering consultant in civil engineering for over 20 years. No, I'm not a boomer.

Design engineering is very much an apprenticeship. You learn from your mentor. How many of you honestly learned how to design a watermain at school, review shop drawings, specify backfill, etc in college?

So much of what you learn as an entry-level engineer is through osmosis. You may be stuck so you look over your cube to find someone to help. It's not like that when you are working alone at home.

You may know your job and be able to work from home, but it is at the cost of training the next generation. I'm seeing it over and over again across the board at consulting firms. The art of design engineering is getting lost and it's very worrisome.

They need you in person to make sure they interruption for reasons not related to your tasks so that by the end of the day you don't go home on time because you did not finish what you were supposed to finish. Once everyone is gone you can complete your work and go home. Which will be much lated now because you checked traffic and it is a nightmare so you might as well a couple of extra hours doing some of tomorrow's work instead of being stuck in traffic. Meanwhile, you boss has been home for the past two hours. Meanwhile, your kids went to bed without seeing you the entire day because you left home before they got up to go to school since you want to be extra early to get ahead of schedule and make it home early to spend time with the family. So, that's why they want you at the office.

The answer is simple: So companies can watch you closely and feel control over you. This is usually because of out of touch management who fail to adapt to the times so they want everybody else in the office being miserable with them. Then they gaslight you by telling you that it is actually better for you even if you prefer to work from home and are more productive because of less distractions. My company just announced that they are bringing more people back to the office, not me yet, but I will now be looking for more completely remote jobs from now on.

The "Problem" is that middle management wants to micromanage...no other reason. They feel if you can't have all your flock in a fenced area..they can not control them....sadly many companies saw that remote works DOES provide a more healthy workforce...but without the false sense of control....remote work is NOT what they want....

From my experience when it comes to manufacturing and there are problems on the floor you need to be there to see the issues and evaluate in real time. Yes some stuff can be done from home but if you need to evaluate what is going on you need to be there. We had one problematic part and the engineer was out of state and he had to be flown in to help with the issues. He didn't get it until he was on site and even then the issue was not fully resolved.

From my own experience, I've learned about 50 times as much from impromptu conversations with co-workers at the coffee pot or in the breakroom than I did in any formal training class.
It isn't that the training wasn't wasn't good, it was. But training can't give you the real world experience or help you rephrase an email to get better impact. Casual conversations and learning from your peers can.
Nothing beats human contact for learning how to communicate with people and how to get things done.

Unfortunately most modern facilities are gold or platinum rated for energy/heat efficiency and honestly require a heat load (often human occupancy) to keep warm these days. That and employers are locked into long term lease contracts and absolutely need on site bodies to justify and offset the cost. 20-30 years from now remote will become an industry standard but for today you're just going to keep coming in.

Traditional, insecure, lazy don’t upgrade managers are still in many companies. The higher they are, the less probability they will upgrade their tech knowledge to understand what’s happening on the ground.

Cuz it’s a bunch of boomers running these companies

I don’t think they are…. Any specific industry you are thinking about? Like defense may need to be in office because of closed networks.

As someone who became a manager during WFH (had been technical on the team before) I felt we did fine developing a comradery with minimal in person time. It required more effort on my part with group hang out sessions and more 1:1 time with my folks but it was worth the effort.
This is one place I feel being a woman in engineering really helped as I have had to spend more time on the soft skills to get anything done all the way along.

The primary reason is that they have big, built-out offices that are being paid for monthly and not enough staff in the seats. And with enough buddies on Wall Street, there's this unspoken obligation to keep commercial real estate afloat.

Some of it is control. 90% of our company communications are in Teams to save a record, even people in cubes beside each other will message that way, effectively being remote. People cannot separate the optics of an empty office and apparent lack of control or knowledge of what someone is doing right that instant. For companies where output/production is the final product, they are additionally shortsighted.