Apple's director of machine learning resigns due to return to office work

Then you've got firms like Apple, Google and Microsoft with so much financial momentum they could lose half their employees tomorrow and their quarterly results would go massively up.

The cases where WFH matters are all the firms in the middle. Non tech firms, for example. Firms that are mature, but which don't mint money hand over fist.

I've worked from home for years and it works fine for me, but I also have a friend who's a senior tech exec at a non-tech firm. Sometimes he invites me round for BBQs on a workday, where he is "working" but no actual work gets done. Sometimes he naps in the afternoon. My brother is a tech executive at a software firm, his work consists of a few meetings a day and the rest of the time he chills, takes care of his kid or works on side projects.

For the employee? It's great. For the employer? Yes, you can view it purely transactionally, as in "we pay you for results" but in reality contracts aren't worded that way because it's impossible to write down in an understandable and conflict-free manner. So people are always being paid for time spent, and they then don't implement their side of the contract whilst expecting the firm to do theirs. It's tough, I don't know what the answer is, but to not see the employer's side of the story isn't right.

- remote work, for jobs eligible to such model, does need a paradigm shift, it's not sustainable trying mimicking the in-office model in a "virtual" world. I see almost no discussion about that, especially in work division, outcome measuring, hw&sw vs hosted platforms etc terms. IMVHO that's a hyper central point to mainstream WFH for all eligible jobs;

- remote work administrative aspects from beyond-borders (different tax systems, rules, TZs, ...) and "global wages" vs "local wages". Again that's HYPER important because before arriving to something established and well-run on scale enough to stabilize a new model we must expect tremendous backfires in revenues terms;

- hybrid mess handling where companies have offices, with gears etc and have to move stuff back&forth AS WORKERS to handle less people, but still some, in the office and some from remote;

- where to live, considering local services since we do not eat from remote do not have "virtual remote connections" etc, and how such areas can evolve in a reasonably short and mean timeframe because if we choose to relocate we choose typically with a certain care. Personally I choose few years before covid to leave a big city for a mountain area, served enough, near enough to the "civility" etc, I'm VERY happy of the choice even if I miss a significant slice of local in-person acculturated environment for discussions, interactions, surely social life is better here, but at a low cultural level, just parties, not much real technical, political, philosophical discussions aside are possible since simply there aren't enough mass of acculturated people nearby to do them. That's another central aspect: how can our demography can evolve if we are not all together at scale like before?

- how a remote-first society can be organized, at least a general idea.

Just see sabre rattling and crushing between two party, one for one against, is spectacle, but of no help.