[asoneth]

This is the crucial question.

Colocated employees clearly cost more in the form of office space. They can also command higher salaries than similarly-skilled remote workers because they constitute a significantly smaller labor pool.

Despite the counter-arguments in the article I do find it plausible colocated employees (ed: or maybe organizations) may be, on average, more productive.

But because there are so many confounding variables I think it'll take many years of evidence before we can empirically answer the question of whether the increase in productivity generally exceeds the costs of being in-person.

(For the record my guess is that it will be dependent on the industry and role. I think winner-take-all markets and roles like R&D and startup founders may be worth the added in-person tax, and everyone else will eventually be remote.)

[marvin]

This thread treats the question as if it has a single correct answer, but there's a pretty big probability it will vary between sectors, companies, employees and countries.