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> Some people have long commutes and wfh is great This is exactly my situation, it takes me two hours of commute per day to get in the office, and the housing

• TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  The office model is based on the factory model, which was constrained by the need to have people, machinery, and raw materials in the same location. Offices don't require that. All the soft benefits - water cooler chats, and so on - are balanced by disbenefits of expensive commutes and even more expensive real estate. So the experience becomes a lot more individual. Some people are happy, others aren't. Since most corps care more about productivity and costs than happiness, the final decision will be made by the cost savings. If productivity drops by (maybe) 20% while costs drop by (maybe) 50%, it's likely wfh will become much more of a thing. Some corps are already giving up on centralised office space - either permanently, or in the hope they can run remote for a year or two and renegotiate much lower rents and/or ownerships costs then. Of course this assumes the (maybe) 20% productivity costs won't be cumulative. But given the insane costs of office space, I suspect we'll see a lot of corps trying the experiment and attempting to make the best of it. So IMO anyone who is expecting things to go back to "normal" soon is going to be waiting at least a couple of years, and possibly forever - and should make plans accordingly. This applies equally to everyone, from CEOs to interns to freelancers.