Earlier quoted context omitted.
Especially since the pandemic showed that remote work mostly works.
Is there any evidence WFH doesn't work? I've only ever seen WFH being awesome for everything.
Especially since most rank-and-file employees seem to prefer WFH, we can assume that the push back to the office isn't a boondoggle for them. Just the opposite.
Companies are competing fiercely for labour. Wages in the tech sector are really high compared to the rest of the economy. Offering the option of WFH is a major draw for many people. There's not much regulatory intervention either way (and if anything it's in the direction of making offices more cumbersome to run). Office space also costs a lot of money to lease or buy and to run.
So there's lots and lots of market pressure on companies to figure out how to make WFH work.
Just like moving from artisanal workshops to factories required major re-organisations of how work is done, and how companies also needed to re-organise their white collar work to really reap the rewards of moving from paper shuffling to Word/Outlook/Excel jockeying, I expect WFH to be no different.
Not all production of physical goods moved to factories. I expect at least some in-office work to remain.
I don't know to what extent existing companies will be able to fully capitalise on WFH, and to what extent this will need newly founded companies.
(From my personal experience, I can tell you that everyone in a team being remote seems to work well enough, but if you are the only guy working from home in timezone X and the rest of the team is mostly working from the office in timezone X-6, that doesn't work so well.
But that's a much more extreme case than what most employees are asking to keep.)
In any case, because of all the factors I outlined in the third paragraph, I expect WFH vs in-office work to shake out in a fairly free market way over the next few years.