::: spoiler You sound like a Solarian

In The Naked Sun Isaac Asimov portrays a world focused on avoiding physical contact with other people. The Solarians interact with each other largely through technology. They live far from each other, spread out across a sparsely populated planet. People are taught from birth to avoid physical contact, and live on huge estates, either alone or with their spouse only. Face-to-face interaction (referred to in the book as "seeing") is seen as a repugnant chore. Communication takes place through technology unknown of off their world: holography, 3-D television. Communicating with each other in this fashion is referred to as "viewing", in contrast to "seeing", which is face-to-face. Communication is frequent, but it is "viewing" of a transmitted image. 1

We do this sometimes but just people who live near the city lol! I can't imagine doing a meet up where you had to fly somewhere and my company sure as hell would never pay for it!

Seeing everyone in person can be kind of fun because we can have a real conversation that's not being monitored... We mostly talk shit the whole time lol

Not to say that being in an office is better for everyone, and I think people should be able to freely choose a working style that fits them best. There are a few benefits of in person meetings and gathering, here are some I thought of.

A: To make sure You didn't outsource work assigned to you to someone in a foreign country for a fraction of your salary.

B: To bring up the whole team in one place to look at something, and/or socialize in a way you just can't over a virtual call.

C: To cross-communicate between departments more, and proactively avoid silos of information on multidisciplinary projects.

D: Meetings and calls can feel more transactional when done virtually than in person, there's less ability to talk about other stuff besides a brief bit of small talk at the beginning or end.

E: Extroverted people feel lonely with prolonged work from home just as much as introverted people get tired out from being around others for long.

F: A manager needs to get more than just a verbal answer on something. Someone can easily just say "yeah yeah everything's fine", but there's stuff with unspoken body language that can be gauged much better in an in-person conversation.

Would you rather do remote team building exercises regularly?

It helps with team building exercises that make you feel like a toddler.

I find personally it's easier and more relaxed to hang out in person. But that's with friends, so unless you're on close terms with everyone that does seem like a big hassle.

I wonder though where you meet up, and what you do. I can totally see myself wanting to do a meetup like that if it's somewhere fun, like a big city, and there's some events planned out.

I love seeing my team in person, it's happened twice since starting this job over a year ago, we get along well and always have a good time together. If they were in the same office as me I'd go in for team days if I could.

My life is lonely enough at home to want to isolate myself even more.

Over the past 4 years I've spent months at a time without seeing a single person. That's not healthy and I hate being alone. The biggest joy in my work life was always getting to hang out with other people because generally I'm very lonely.

Now I go to the office maybe once a week because I don't want to wake up more than 5min before stand up.

The benefit is that there's no practical benefit but they get mad when you point out that they're just making you come in to sate either your busy body co-workers being terminally extraverted to the point where even just going to the bar after work doesn't stroke them off hard enough, or to sate the middle manager's wanting to squeeze you for in office metrics so the higher-ups stop asking what in the fuck the middle managers even contribute when the best the workers do is the time when it's impossible for said middle managers to be metric squeezing them the entire day.

We like it

I find that a lot of getting to know your coworkers as individuals, and not simply "the person in charge of that account" depends on face to face communication.

When I'm working remotely, the moment a meeting ends, I'm outta there.

Pretty much the only IMs I send are strictly work related - there's not much water cooler talk, not much griping, because it's all recorded (or can be) when working remotely.

Edit: I'm so sorry I haven't responded in a while, I figured this post got buried because it never made it to my instance? Client? Idk, I'm still trying to figure it out. Than you all for the honesty, and I can understand some easily and other comments are just going to take me a minute to put myself in someone else's shoes. You all have helped me a lot.

I think its the older generation, boomers and above. They always need someone to talk to

Its nice to meet the team, start nornal conversations not necessarily bound by work.
Getting to know the people in a way video calls rarely can fscilitate.
BUT how often depends on the team, the distances, the company, and most importantly how often this happens.

I really like my WFH, but its not a full WFH job, so we meet for important events like sprint planning every few weeks.
But thats only 1-2 hours away and most of the commute is long distance train, so i can work that time and still get paid.
Its nice seeing the team and other people in the company i would have never seen, it could be a bit less for me, maybe once a month would be better..

I also think many people only have their work colleagues as contact and little real friends to meet with outside of work.. after all one is paid and theother time you have to maintain your life constantly.