Also someone who misses the office, although my ratio is more like 4 in, 1 out.
I think society is seeing an explosion currently in people who have never had the opportunity to work remotely, and who are now doing so for the first time. I feel like many of these people are maybe not thinking about how they will feel if their job is still remote 5 years from now.
Work is where a huge amount of social interaction occurs for adults, and we have now almost nullified that. To some people, that's like a gift from the heavens. But I can't help but feel that after a number of years of this, people will start to miss things they never thought they would. Running into people in the halls, group lunches with coworkers, sticking around after a meeting to catch up with such-and-such. These sort of spontaneous, unplanned interactions are what add variety to a life that can otherwise slide into monotony. Besides this, rates of self-reported loneliness among American adults have been skyrocketing the past decade or so, due to effects of the internet and social media. I don't see how removing the main remaining source of our in-person socialization is going to improve our collective psychologies.
I think like open office plans, we are going to see a lot of companies adopt this for cost reasons, and in five years we are going to see pushback as studies come out showing how collectively damaging forced remote work can be. It's fine if you are someone who chooses the lifestyle, but I think forcing it on people is going to end poorly.
But maybe that's just my preference speaking.