- prior to the pandemic and the surge in remote work, people were already talking about how offices are set up in a way which can be unnecessarily miserable, but crams more people in the same space, minimizing real estate cost per head.
- but even though in my city, there's now a giant glut of vacant commercial office space, I've yet to see a single company make the pitch: we'll give you a private office if you come in to work face to face.
- things become clearer if we frame this using a term with some history: working conditions. White-collar workers that have never unionized are now pushing for greater control of their working conditions. A partial list of grievances has been a subject of public discussion for years. Some employers are willing to deal with remote work as a bundled solution to multiple issues, but so far I've seen no employers who are willing to meaningfully compromise on what the office looks like.