People have different preferences, but I will never, ever, ever again in my life voluntarily commute hours every day in standstill traffic to a bland, lifeless corporate hellhole of an office to have disinterested polite banter with random people I have nothing in common with to do a job that is entirely based around sitting at my computer. Not when I can work comfortably in the peaceful surroundings of my own home office, decorated and set up exactly how a I want, or even at a local coffee shop (or halfway across the country while visiting family for a month), eat lunch with my wife, walk our dog mid-day, and spend my mornings and evenings peacefully getting household stuff done and relaxing.
The improvement to my quality of life that remote work has produced is so monumental that it's hard to even envision how I coped most days before.
This is good, but also many people do not have comfortable and peaceful homes with nice offices, partners, dogs, etc and basically never leaving their apartment or room in their apartment is a nightmare and socially isolating in a profound way.
True. Then again, maybe masking that problem with some relief from daily commutes to work is not really a great solution. Recent layoffs in the industry were a good reminder for me that it's easy to be overly emotionally tied to your work.
I think we just have to accept that some people like an office, depending on the office, the commute, their job, their personality, phase of life, and current circumstances.
I totally agree and everyone should be able to work in their preferred way. I'm very wary of any efforts to entice more people back into offices, though, as it's absolutely not being driven by a desire to offer more flexibility.
I'll be dragged kicking and screaming back into an office, and would only ever consider an in-person role as a stopgap measure while I job hunt.
That's fine, I think clearly the labor market is shifting toward people demanding more WFH.
I just also think its fine for a company to say "look, the way we work is [remote/office], and if you want to work a different way find a different company if that's a deal-breaker".
thats why god invented coffeeshops, libraries, coworking spaces. hell, my local Uni offers free wifi for guests for up to an hour, so I've gotten planted in some of their buildings and knocked out simple tasks
The improvement to my quality of life that remote work has produced is so monumental that it's hard to even envision how I coped most days before.