That could be, although the difference between vacation time and remote work is that any loss in productivity/value with remote work is either nil or hard to ca

That could be, although the difference between vacation time and remote work is that any loss in productivity/value with remote work is either nil or hard to calculate. Vacation time is different in that it's clearly time that the employer has to pay for work to not be done. So the optimist in me thinks that tech employers will have difficulty credibly taking employees that have performed well as remote workers and coercing them to come into the office, which doesn't really provide a clear benefit.