It seems insane. I work in digitalisation in Denmark, as a developer, so I can do everything from home. We’re running at 50% as our country is slowly coming back from a lockdown, but those 50% go to the people who actually need to be at the office, so I’m in no way a priority.

I wonder what management will do with the COVID data though. Our productivity is through the roof, but they’ve just spent several hundred millions building a new open office city hall because open offices were all the rage. Must be a tough pill to swallow that all those money were wasted because people work better from home where there are far less distractions.

My partner’s company just had their most profitable quarter in company history, when everyone but some bare bones staff was working at home, and they’re still debating whether or not to bring everyone back into the office.

At a certain point you have to recognize that it’s not about being safe or rational. It’s about bosses making sure they can hold power over employees.

They probably realise a home based workforce needs fewer bosses.

Why do you think that? If anything, managers can help better connect a more distributed workforce. (And those connections are one of the definite downsides of everyone being remote.)

Because if you have competent people, managers don't need to do much, we just coordinate ourselves to achieve our goals and our boss asks us from time to time if everything is going OK.

The catch is, it takes a good manager to hire and keep good employees that can self coordinate effortlessly.

Does working remotely or from the office factor into that somehow?

I think its less that "remote workers need fewer bosses" and more that "remote work is illustrating that the number of bosses we have is not necessary"

Many of them just don't have things to do when everyone is remote, and yet the work is still getting done.

yes, it's washing away the illusion that the meetings that middle managers spend 90% of their days in provide any sort of value to anyone

Because code can replace remote management in a far more efficient system

What does your partner's company do? Is working from home directly and immediately attributable to the profits last quarter?

It is attributable. I don’t like to share too many personal details, but they work in a business that benefits from new demand driven by the pandemic.

Public transit can benefit everyone, including people who don’t take public transit. This is an analogous scenario except with severe health implications.