As a little background, the job that I had before this one was with a company that was 100% remote. One of the reasons why I switched jobs was because I wanted somewhere to go (beyond my guest bedroom) for work. Before the pandemic, my organization required multiple levels of approval in order to work from home. Since then, they require multiple levels of approval (and a training session) to work from the office. I don't see that changing before widespread distribution of a vaccine. I really want the option to work from the office (at least occasionally). This whole thing has really reset everyone's expectations of the viability of work from home. I don't expect my organization to just say "nobody needs to ever come back", though.
In general, I think that it really depends on how much the organization trusts their employees and how much they have invested in their corporate campus. If the company put $50mil into their campus over the past few years, I'm guessing that they will be more apt to say that "physical proximity is required for unit cohesion". ;)
Backend generalist. 10+ years coding professionally. Enjoys coming up with nuanced and thoughtful solutions to complex, thorny and ugly problems in old systems.
As a little background, the job that I had before this one was with a company that was 100% remote. One of the reasons why I switched jobs was because I wanted somewhere to go (beyond my guest bedroom) for work. Before the pandemic, my organization required multiple levels of approval in order to work from home. Since then, they require multiple levels of approval (and a training session) to work from the office. I don't see that changing before widespread distribution of a vaccine. I really want the option to work from the office (at least occasionally). This whole thing has really reset everyone's expectations of the viability of work from home. I don't expect my organization to just say "nobody needs to ever come back", though.
In general, I think that it really depends on how much the organization trusts their employees and how much they have invested in their corporate campus. If the company put $50mil into their campus over the past few years, I'm guessing that they will be more apt to say that "physical proximity is required for unit cohesion". ;)
It's not a tech company, but your last paragraph reminds me of REI's planned sale of its newly constructed and unoccupied headquarters earlier this year. I was surprised by that (having read past articles about the headquarters).