Sure. More people always intend a thing then actually do it. But I think it's indicative of their feelings. What they will do is complain bitterly, and if they see an opportunity to go remote, they'll take it. That's a great incentive for managers to keep hiring remote.

Given if the alternative is that they can get a remote job elsewhere easily, why not?

I had been working remotely for a startup based in the bay area for a couple of years prior to the pandemic and living in a low COL area for a year of that experience.

I promise you it is much harder to find remote work than otherwise; even during a pandemic. I ended up relocating back to a high COL area because of this difficulty(among a few other things).

Once you realize you have to take a 50% pay cut to work anywhere else(or find another high paying remote job- good luck, everyone else wants one too!) remote work becomes a very tight, and scary leash.

There for sure will not be that many remote jobs.

If it's evident that being remote is just as effective or more why wouldn't most companies start catching the eyes of their potential candidates with that?

That's what it would take for work-from-home to organically catch on. Either the delta is obvious or it isn't.

The delta is pretty obvious, though. Companies that aren't in tech hubs no longer have to hire from a limited local talent pool, and companies that are in tech hubs can save on both office and salary expenses by hiring across the country. I've already seen local companies announce permanent hybrid models due to the former and large Silicon Valley unicorns like Coinbase announce permanent hybrid models due to the latter.

And speaking very anecdotally, where I work we've done plenty of surveys on WFH and the results were very clear: not allowing any kind of hybrid model would've become a retention disaster over time. The desire for at least some kind of flexibility post-pandemic was overwhelming.

TFA implies that most remote work will not be full-time remote. Therefore many of the same frictions of changing jobs now will still exist.

My guess is that there will be more full-time remote jobs. But I do expect that most of the tech jobs being discussed will still be attached to an office with a general expectation that teams get together semi-regularly. So long as it's only one day per week or less, that gives people a lot of flexibility in where they live but it does mean they probably can't move to a ski town.

That's a pretty big given.

Anecdotally, I have been shocked to see managers in my department not understanding attrition due to people in IT quitting because they are finding new fully remote jobs because they didn’t like the constant “when we plan to go back fully in the office”.