The crazy thing is the pandemic still wasn't long enough to teach companies how to work remote or hybrid. I literally forwarded a list of 10 best-reviewed books, articles, etc about remote working to my org's leadership, and I don't think they read any of them. They certainly never changed the way they work. We still spend upwards of 25% of our time in meetings with no agenda to talk about coming up with a plan to start working. We still don't document needed information, we just bug people on Slack for the same information over and over. In-person people are still "huddling" around a laptop that nobody on remote can hear.

I'm not aware of any empirical evidence that working in person is better for productivity. But what it does do is make 50% of the people feel happier - the people who want to escape their home-family to be with their work-family. In this sense I totally understand why management is forcing people to come into the office: it's because management just likes in-person, and they don't want to learn how to work hybrid or remote-first if they keep the office.

I think there continues to be a competitive advantage for remote-first companies. They can be more productive, have a global pool of talent to choose from, and potentially lower overhead. I think we're going to see incumbents remain in-person while disruptive companies will be increasingly remote-first.