Everyone seems to forget the most important factor in this whole debate: we aren't in a "mass social experiment in working from home", we're in a "mass social experiment in working in isolation during a pandemic".
They're very much not the same thing, for a whole host of reasons.
Just a few examples of how they differ:
* higher stress from living through a pandemic (and everything around it) gives us reason to set ourselves up to reduce stress in ways that normally might be unnecessary.
* having no alternative to working from home makes it easier to ignore the downsides, because it's not a downside when there's no alternative without it
* childcare / care responsibilities means many of our home lives are totally different right now from normal, so not even comparable to normal
* consistent working from home by everyone (on a given team) tends to be more inclusive because ignoring remote people means ignoring everyone so we work hard not to do it. It's much easier to accidentally get lazy about ensuring inclusivity when at least some people are in the office (and I've seen this first-hand pre-COVID, never maliciously).
* no alternative for many employers means they accept any (if any) productivity losses of work from home because it is that or else lose all productivity (which is obviously worse for business)
To be clear, I'm not arguing remote work will/won't stick in the future. I'm just arguing that nearly all of this debate is moot right now, because most people are basing it on an "experiment" with far too many variables different from the reality of remote work during a normal world.
Just a few examples of how they differ:
* higher stress from living through a pandemic (and everything around it) gives us reason to set ourselves up to reduce stress in ways that normally might be unnecessary.
* having no alternative to working from home makes it easier to ignore the downsides, because it's not a downside when there's no alternative without it
* childcare / care responsibilities means many of our home lives are totally different right now from normal, so not even comparable to normal
* consistent working from home by everyone (on a given team) tends to be more inclusive because ignoring remote people means ignoring everyone so we work hard not to do it. It's much easier to accidentally get lazy about ensuring inclusivity when at least some people are in the office (and I've seen this first-hand pre-COVID, never maliciously).
* no alternative for many employers means they accept any (if any) productivity losses of work from home because it is that or else lose all productivity (which is obviously worse for business)
To be clear, I'm not arguing remote work will/won't stick in the future. I'm just arguing that nearly all of this debate is moot right now, because most people are basing it on an "experiment" with far too many variables different from the reality of remote work during a normal world.