Remote has been an option for many people in tech, even before the covid situation. Most people regularly took work from home days or had regularly scheduled work from home days, at least once or twice a week. Some people spent months in remote situations, working from second homes during ski season or vacation spots.

But, there was a belief amongst all management that they had to have a central place for everyone to gather and do business.

Now, Covid forced the remote issue on many companies. Many companies are crunching numbers on remote work productivity and leasing expensive square footage in expensive cities.

Some decided remote is costing too much in productivity and requiring people to come into the office. Others are finding out that productivity drop is much smaller than expected and office space cost savings are fully justified in going full remote.

This will take at least couple of years to fully shake out and see what the remote situation looks like in the future. One interesting side effect of companies going fully remote is that office space costs will likely drop and change the calculations again, convincing many companies to gradually bring people back to central office.