...and if they can offload their lives from a place where a shitty plywood shotgun shack in Fremont goes for a million five to a place where a 40-acre ranch goes for $500k, what harm is done? You are grossly overestimating the empathy of the tech industry. Lean'n'mean is celebrated by everyone who read Reed Hastings' book, or met anyone who read Reed Hastings' book."Hang on a sec... if we just eliminate offices so people work from home, we can cut our real estate costs by 90%, and offload the costs of internet connection, desks, Aeron chairs, ping-pong tables, beanbags, and bespoke Kombucha bars onto the employees, and move those costs off our books!"
It's also way easier to fire someone when you just need to send them an email and disable their Active Directory login, rather than having to meet them in person, and escort them out of the building with security...
Yeah, my post came across more negative than I intended ... like I was proposing WFH as a lose-win situation, rather than a potential win-win for everyone involved. And I do work IN the tech industry. And have been fired twice. My most recent job (before this one) I was fired from. I've also been on the deciding end of who needs to be fired, and have been in those conversations more times than I wanted to. And these are all things that actually happen. In the tech industry. Today(-ish).
And anywhere else with a few layers of management to hide behind while making decisions.You are grossly overestimating the empathy of the tech industry