I don't think anyone on HN has a crystal ball, but...
My guess is yes, the tech industry will largely be back in offices by the end of 2022, for a very simple reason: most of the tech giants have returned to working in-office or announced that they will be returning in the near future. Twitter is the notable exception, but of course if Elon's takeover goes through, they will no longer be. The rest of the tech industry largely copies whatever MANGA does, for better or for worse. Remote jobs and fully-remote companies will still exist, but they will be notable because they're unusual.
Sure but those returns have been delayed, not canceled in favour of a perma-remote policy. I don't think moving to Sioux Falls as an Amazon or Apple employee would work out 6-12 months from now.
At Amazon return to office is now up to middlemanagement some entire orgs are officially ok with full remote indefinitely. Outside these orgs some individuals can work from different locations on the same team. It's not quite clear what the average steady state will look like, but with a lot of internal hiring at Amazon, I would imagine things would gradually tend towards being fairly flexible
My guess is yes, the tech industry will largely be back in offices by the end of 2022, for a very simple reason: most of the tech giants have returned to working in-office or announced that they will be returning in the near future. Twitter is the notable exception, but of course if Elon's takeover goes through, they will no longer be. The rest of the tech industry largely copies whatever MANGA does, for better or for worse. Remote jobs and fully-remote companies will still exist, but they will be notable because they're unusual.