It seems to me that almost everyone prefers having the ability to work from home at some times and work remotely at other times. Also, there are clearly preferences around this, such that a given person might prefer one of the other more (or most) of the time.

Taking this into account, along with the undeniable time and energy benefits of remote work, I think companies should start preparing for, allowing and offering remote work. It should become normalized, so that people who want to work from home on some days should be able to.

Importantly though, I don't think it makes sense for most companies to try to completely switch to remote work. Eventually, I think this will lead to a stable equilibrium of some significant percentage of people working from home and a significant percentage coming to work, on a given day. Except for companies which deliberately want to be remote-only, I doubt it would ever result in no one coming to the office.

This seems like a win-win. It reduces the burden of commuting for those that do not want it or cannot manage it on a given day, it gives people more free time, it lessens energy expenditure, but there's still an office to come to and socialize, interact directly and do immediate in-person business, just with a bit less people than usual.

In all fairness, unless teams coordinate, what often tends to happen is people come into the office haphazardly based on what they're doing and whether they have a reason to want to stay home that day. And then, once in the office, none of the other people they want to see are there.

I know this has happened with me and others I know. I wouldn't mind going into the office a day or two per week if it were useful but between travel and people working from home and people who aren't in the same office, there won't be a lot of people I work with circulating around if I do. So I don't bother.

But we're a pretty remote friendly company in general--although the degree to which people who have an office come in varies by team.