My guess is: it doesn't really matter for established companies, because the market isn't actually that competitive. It matters for startups, with the advantag

My guess is: it doesn't really matter for established companies, because the market isn't actually that competitive. It matters for startups, with the advantage going to in-person (office or apartment) work. Tomorrow's startups become the established companies of the next decade, so eventually the pendulum will swing back toward office work, with lots of executives convinced it brings higher productivity. It's really because of path dependence, though, and not because of any intrinsic merits. The dirty secret of capitalism is that companies become successful based on what customers do, not what owners or executives or employees do. A product or service basically just has to work, just enough that the transaction still happens. The amount of money the company makes depends on how many customers it has and how much it charges each one, not on how good its product is, so long as the product is "good enough". When the company is young and scrambling to take the market, then maybe effort and efficiency matters, so that you can go from "not good enough" to "good enough" faster than anyone else. But once you're already way past "good enough", you can fire 75% of the company and you'll still continue collecting money until the market changes enough that your product is no longer "good enough".