It depends on what you have been doing the past two years, especially around the lockdowns. I've used the time to set up an extremely nice home office in our bi

It depends on what you have been doing the past two years, especially around the lockdowns. I've used the time to set up an extremely nice home office in our big now-renovated apartment. It is nice here. Any regular office would be a downgrade from that. Driving to the office in a car is bad for the environment (particulate matter causes allergies and sometimes cancer), it wastes everyone's time and it makes the cities worse. Detach a little from your individual situation and see how weird it was to commute to a far-away city and building and then usually use ssh to log in to servers that are usually not in that building/state in the first place. (And if you use public transportation, you can get coronavirus again for no reason) >Have I been under some weird form of Stockholm Syndrom where I actually enjoyed something that was pure torture to most? It's not about it being torture. It's about priorities. How and where you want to spend your days. We are mortal--that's what the past two years made crystal clear. Very mortal. >And finally, I feel no one else is realizing that they are happily hacking away at the amazingly well-paid branch they're sitting on. As soon as a company's IT department is practically fully remote, why should they page a German wage for someone who is a face on a screen, when they can pay a fraction for that same face broadcasted from a few hundred kilometers further east or south? German is hardly used in business context here anyway and lower-wage countries within ±3 hours timezones abound. It goes both ways. You can also work for companies for world-competitive rates. I have zero reason to fear someone from an eastern country catching up to my 20 year career and 10 year university education. You should change your mindset on this unfounded fear of being replaced by a cheaper worker. You are presumably a software engineer. Capable software engineers are one of the most well-paid and sought-after professions in the world; seniors are earning way more than doctors now. >I know that "the office" is a bad place for a lot of people. There may be product managers that ignore the noise-cancelling headphone stop-sign Yep. Also, open-plan offices/buildings which make you unable to focus on anything. > I absolutely do get that for some people (fresh parents, people living at home to take care of their parents etc.) remote work is a real blessing. For most senior engineers, remote work is a real blessing. Also, if you do remote work, make sure that the company actually knows how to do remote work. Lots of companies are learning resistant and of course remote work sucks if they still want you to work synchronously, their video chat sucks or is non-existant, their VPN doesn't work half the time and they leadership suddenly disappeared at the beginning of 2021.