This is a really good take. I have some experience with it though I'm not a C-Suite person. Over my 15 years of software engineering I've always had a job that had flexibility to let me work the way I wanted. Some offices and some buildings were worse than others but in general I was always able to set my hours, work from home or from a random place (i.e. coffee shop, park, mall, whatever) as I saw fit.

There were always times I needed to be present in person and I never scoffed at those. What I found recently, is employers are trying to shift from one extreme (fully remote) to the other. I hope we land back in the middle because I'm happiest when no one tells me what to do. I want to be treated like an adult and measured on merit and performance, not physical attendance.