Imagine if it was a plan properly designed and implemented? All this bullshit of RTO is getting old for me exactly because of this point, nothing was done in what would be even close to the optimal way for working remotely and things are still going ok...
Those parts ought to be disregarded for any kind of lessons-learned from this, as far as the broader viability of WFH. 2020 through early 2021, at the very least, had some strong confounding factors going on which, one hopes, will not be common in the future.
I definitely feel, and observe, a noticeable decrease in productivity and speed of execution compared to where my org was a few years ago. I know others have noticed it too, including management.
On top of all that, companies are expected to run leaner than before because now that the bubble is over, apparently everyone remembered that having a sane balance sheet and making a profit are things that matter. So now we want per-worker productivity to increase because we can't hire as many people.
The basic social contract of work has not changed. Tech workers have better pay and benefits than almost anyone else, and we should not be whiny about this. Most workers in other fields had to return to the office too.
So, if it’s bad for some, let’s make it bad for everyone? What kind of reasoning is that? FFS, we should be making progress, not the opposite!
Working from an office is not some kind of dystopia. Quite a few people prefer it to other arrangements. Having a pandemic that forced people to work from home for a year or two does not change the fundamental reality of human social interactions.
Did it go fine because it was massive?