I find the discussion around "remote work" mostly uninformative. What kind of work? The idea that remote work either is, or is not, productive has a hidden as

I find the discussion around "remote work" mostly uninformative. What kind of work? The idea that remote work either is, or is not, productive has a hidden assumption that this is independent of the kind of work. I don't mean just that some kinds of work are impossible to do remotely (at present, anyway); I'm talking about differences among those jobs that can be done remotely. It's also so clearly dependent on things like the person's situation at home. Are they part of a two-adult, three-kid young family living in a 1,000 sq. ft home during the summer vacation when everyone is at home all day? Or is it a bachelor(ette) living alone? Is it a veteran who has been doing this kind of work for a decade or three, or someone just starting their career? All of these things matter, a lot. Which would suggest that the best person to be able to predict whether or not working remotely is a good idea, would be that person, and also that the boss should be measuring productivity for that person, and judging accordingly. Some will choose to come in to an office, and others will not, and when layoffs come (and they always come eventually) the person who was working from home had better have been one of the more productive, or they will discover that laying off someone who works remotely is just easier for the boss to do than laying off someone who is in the office every day. That's not nice, but it's the way the real world is, and these studies of productivity of remote work (taken as a large mostly undifferentiated mass) are not very informative about that.