[hwoolery]

"a few more remote friendly companies". Respectfully disagree - the market will make this decision, and now that employees have all tasted the benefit, they are going to work for companies that give them that freedom. On top of that, most companies have seen equal or greater productivity (no commute, fewer sick days, etc), and will at least downsize their real estate for cost savings. There's little argument to make people come back to an office if there is no obvious benefit.

[ska]

There are some pretty strong assertions in your comment that I'm not convinced we actually know the answer too yet. I've seen senior people talking about "manageable productivity drops" more than "no difference", or "even better" but of course sampling bias applies.

But also, there is a potential semantic difficulty. By remote friendly I am thinking about "open to hiring a single person in a different city/country", not "employees that don't come into the office much".

I would draw a distinction between those, and I'm not convinced we'll see a huge shift in the former.