Something I realized is that I am not seeing Managers, Directors, and VPs moving.

Could be age / career related - VPs of big companies are usually experienced professionals, so they have strong(er) roots in the Bay Area, with kids in school.

But the number of management moving out is ZERO - at least anecdotally. Once we're allowed to go back to the office and they all go, how long until tech leads and architects also follow? Then "interns and junior employees should be at the office so it's easier to mentor", and then remote becomes something mid-level and seniors-who-plateaued or a CLM position. Which is fine, if you know the tradeoffs...

Such high ranking people whose employment proposition rests on their people skills have the most to lose with any kind of managerial innovation.

I've noticed this as well. If upper management isn't interested in working remote, it's going to be a struggle for ICs to get large companies to embrace it long-term. I see the acceptance of remote work by large companies as something that's going to decay post-COVID until we're back to where we were before.

I think even if you stipulate for purposes of discussion that a lot of companies in the tech space broadly and elsewhere are going to be more flexible in the future, that still leaves WFH/Remote to cover a lot of territory:

- WFH or in-office 2-3 days per week

- Office every Wednesday

- Team get-together once a month

- Remote in the same/adjacent time zone

- Remote anywhere you want that we can legally hire you (seems unlikely)

- Remote pay-adjusted (or not)

- Whether there is an office or not

In general, I expect the extreme cases will be fairly rare but pretty much every one of the scenarios (as well as whether they're mandatory or optional) will drive different decisions relative to 5-days a week in the office.