Is this purely a US phenomenon? I don't see this much at all from people who live here t(the UK), but we're really starting to feel the effects of social media censorship hit hard, and I know a lot of people are really angry about Big Tech pushing their own moralistic world view on our country.
I would guess a sizable fraction is regional policy, legal and marketing teams. The whole point of Uber is to operate everywhere and you simply can't run all of that in Silicon Valley without access to local knowledge. Not to mention the incredible bloat that comes from building in market-specific features across the whole planet.
Ah, well, I'm not exactly a proponent of lockdown in the first place, but the big difference is Covid spreads faster. it's already a social norm to stay away from grandparents when the flu rolls around.
I was lucky to be in your position only months before the pandemic (though I never went to college), so I built up a reasonable set of friends before WFH (both at work and outside of work).
The biggest factor in your decision should be ease of meeting new people, imo. Cities were already bad for this in the first place, but I view them as the "least worst" option. Try leverage your existing network if you know anybody where you're moving to, because they're going to be in the same position. Hacker meetups, game jams, industry conferences or other hobbies work really well too -- though you might want to avoid being in the tech bubble because I'm totally stuck inside it.
Once you've got a few friends, you can leverage their social network to meet new people and explore new hobbies and stuff.
WFH does mean you can more easily keep in touch with college friends. Me and a few buddies have a Discord server where we co-work and we also have something similar within my company (where it's easier to not worry about leaking secret stuff). This has been one of the few things that's kept me sane over the last year.
Edit: Happy to share more if you've got something specific in mind.
What I mean is that WFH employees will still demand perks, just of a different nature (maybe higher salaries). As long as the market dynamics we have today stick, employers will still be spending money on perks.
Just as employers can now access remote employees anywhere in the world, employees can access any company hiring remote.
You call it time theft, I call it work life balance.
If I'm struggling with a problem, sitting on my ass for 5 hours is not going to make the solution come quicker. Going for a walk, playing video games, or calling somebody are a great way to recharge, and as long as I'm not blocking anybody or producing worse output, it's a net plus over time for productivity.
In return, I'm happy to throw in a few extra hours in the evening or over the weekend if I suddenly have a breakthrough, but I'm doing that on my terms.
The team cohesion part can be a real issue, but defaulting to asynchronous communication can really help here.
When I commuted to work, I was already in the centre of a huge city with lots of social opportunities after work (with friends who are nearby in other jobs). If I wanted to socialise daily it's likely I'd be doing something akin to a work commute anyway. That's partly why I enjoyed going out to work in the first place.
I live in the UK - very few places in London will have the space for a separate home office + space for family. It will get incredibly expensive if we all need to buy more space (and I'm not having my office setup in my living room forever).
Very few companies have on-site gyms, snacks and child care. These are competitive advantages, and as long as top-tier SWEs are a sellers market, these businesses will have no choice but to spend money to attract talent.
The cost of those things is a drop in the ocean compared to salaries anyway.