[intergalplan]

I truly think class-anxiety will make the freer kinds of WFH fairly uncommon over time, if it persists on a large scale at all, the more savvy managers get to it. I'm seeing non-programmer, bog-standard office drone friends get their work done in a couple hours and have the rest of the day basically to themselves (though no fault of their own, as they've sought more work in the past and found no-one to give it to them, and just happen to be way more efficient than some of their peers). They did the same in the office, but they weren't free there. I don't think managers will like mere office drones, or even huge numbers of programmers (just office drones they have to pay more, while resenting it every day, really), gaining those kinds of privileges, which ordinarily aren't available to such a degree even for middle managers.

I expect work spyware and spying services to be a booming market, even more than it has been. :-(

[dougmwne]

The relationship between employer and employee is founded on control and power. The employer is absolutely going to claw back as much of that power as possible post-pandemic. More spyware is a possibility. Even more likely is that most roles will switch back to on-site because control over the physical bodies of others is the most primal kind of power. One WFH insight I've had is that at home you are able to control your physical comfort to a much greater degree. You don't have to dress like they tell you, you have control of the thermostat, your chair, desk, keyboard, mouse, monitor, noise environment, air quality, odors, food, lighting, body position, and so on. This is an enormous bodily freedom and it won't be continued to be given without fighting for it. People go on about the social benefits of work, though I think back to Maslow's Hierarchy and that the social is less important if your office is noisy, freezing and your chair is causing severe back pain.

After 7 years of remote work, the times I have spent a few weeks or months back in an office have been an enormous shock. You always feel what you are currently missing most strongly, so I suspect once most people get back into the office, the enormous lack of freedom will weigh more heavily than they could have realized before experiencing it.