I didnt read all 13 pages of this thread but I read the first five and the last two…
One thing that I didnt hear mention of was that many companies saw an increase in productivity…
Why? Because most of us only have X hours in a day to devoted to work. If I have to get up and get ready that is time given to the company. I have to commute… again time given to the company… For me the maximum at work day I could give was 9 hours. I was commuting to Irvine from north county. So all said and done… about 11.5 hours a day went to the company.
If I now can remote… I can give 10 hours to the company and I get 1.5 hours back… Win Win.
That is an exchange that people want in tech.
There is a good portion of us that had to go into the work. Your bench engineers that have 100K in equipment to work with had to go in. There was no remoting for that but many could do design work from home or even remote into our equipment.
Remoting is here to stay because productivity went up. If companies see a decline then people will be called back.
