I’ve found working from home lonely and isolating, and am badly missing the structure of getting up, showered and going into an office!
For people at a certain stage of life, I’m sure working from home is great, but have some empathy for those of us it sucks for.
Nobody seems to discuss this, but yeah for me working from home means working from my bedroom, the only room I can really work in in my small shared apartment. It definitely affects my productivity.
On the other hand, I've basically stopped getting sick. Open office plans are very bad for certain types of people, and not just those who struggle with distraction, so still a net positive for me
I know what you're talking about though, my wife has friends that are wfh now and that, along with the general isolation of the pandemic, is having a serious effect on them.
I think when this is over there will be various compromises that will probably not work out very well. If WFH works for you then it's great, if it doesn't then it's miserable. There's not a lot of middle ground.
a good compromise leaves everybody mad. - Calvin and Hobbes
Non-pandemic remote work gives you more time to socialize out and about with friends and family, travel (and maybe even work there), and do all sorts of fun things to relax and recharge that we can't really do right now because of the pandemic.
I'm pro-WFH/anti-RTO simply because I want us all to have the choice. Before the pandemic it was all office, during the pandemic it's all remote, and now it feels like the pendulum is swinging all the way back to all office, instead of landing in the middle ground of individual choice.