I am a solutions architect for one of the cloud providers. Pre-COVID, in-person meetings were the vast majority - and most were me travelling to the customer. W

I am a solutions architect for one of the cloud providers. Pre-COVID, in-person meetings were the vast majority - and most were me travelling to the customer. While, often, that was a walk or Uber across the centre of town - it also, all too often, was getting on a plane for like a 1-2hr meeting. So, what happens from here with my job has the added complexity of "will the customer both be in the office AND want me to visit them". In some cases customers have been in the office but they have banned anybody external from coming in. In others some of the staff are there but then some aren't - and so since some will be on VC anyway it is almost better for me to VC with them to ensure an equal experience. And, actually, I have found the more senior/tenured somebody technical at the customer is the more likely it is that they'll be the ones WFH and on the VC - with the more junior in the office - and so properly catering to the remote staff is usually the better call. Our office was VERY open plan with staff jammed in like sardines with no assigned desks (we have lockers) and was designed to be a stop-over between customer site visits. So much so that they had to limit capacity at 50% with COVID to give people a bit of space between each other. And so, ultimately whether I can work from home is dependent on what the customers want - as going to our office and taking back-to-back VC calls in open plan is kind of dumb. Before this last lockdown in Australia I was going in one day a week to have lunch & coffees & beers with my colleages - as I did miss that. The internal stuff. But one day a week was really enough for that as long as all the people who I wanted to hang out with standardised on the same day of the week. I am not really sure which way it'll go. Will customers be in a big hurry for me to go to them - especially if it means I am on a plane of potentially infected people, get in a Uber and take it right into their office? As much as I do miss the magic that sometimes happens when everybody gathers around a whiteboard - I really hope not... Speaking of that - I am surprised how a couple years into this the remote collaboration/whiteboarding stuff really hasn't improved. We all should have iPads with Apple Pencils and be able to get close-is to that in-person white boarding by now?