I wonder what the real-world stats for different professions
are as to employees preferring work from home vs at the office.
I do know many workers who do not want to work at home.
The office was a break from the screaming kids and / or
no AC / or have a home that is just not practical as an office /
or just prefer a clean break between what is work / office
and what is home.
Plus, a lot of people behave differently when they are dressed
up professionally for work.
Again, the distinction between home and work is valuable for some.
We have somewhere between 100 - 300 years of experience having people
working at the office. We know a lot about how that works / or doesn't.
Working from home full time at scale is not yet studied to the extent
we can draw real conclusions from it.
A couple of years is far too short.
So it is an experiment.
Personally, I prefer to work from home, but I am not so sure
I will be able to long term.
My prediction is that working from the office will become increasingly
common over time with some professions going back to the office short
term and other longer term.
And some companies will prefer fully remote.
I am not sure what the breakdown will be in 50 years.
Mostly I do remote work from a coworking facility. This is liberating for me in much the same way as work from home, but has none of the downsides you mention. The article keeps returning to the term "flexibility" which occurs 22 times. It seems the experiments underway are more varied and complex than a simple work from home test run that breaks sharply away from hundreds of years of experience.
I wonder what the real-world stats for different professions are as to employees preferring work from home vs at the office.
I do know many workers who do not want to work at home. The office was a break from the screaming kids and / or no AC / or have a home that is just not practical as an office / or just prefer a clean break between what is work / office and what is home.
Plus, a lot of people behave differently when they are dressed up professionally for work. Again, the distinction between home and work is valuable for some.
We have somewhere between 100 - 300 years of experience having people working at the office. We know a lot about how that works / or doesn't.
Working from home full time at scale is not yet studied to the extent we can draw real conclusions from it.
A couple of years is far too short. So it is an experiment.
Personally, I prefer to work from home, but I am not so sure I will be able to long term.
My prediction is that working from the office will become increasingly common over time with some professions going back to the office short term and other longer term.
And some companies will prefer fully remote.
I am not sure what the breakdown will be in 50 years.