I've also seen some pandemic data that individual unit productivity suffered, but was more than made up by the fact people worked longer because they did not have to endure the commute:
It probably also depends on the job function, software developers are likely more productive when they can work uninterrupted. WFH does not guarantee that, however, if you have young kids at home or a small apartment without a dedicated home office. I suspect companies will start offering perks like being able to "WFH" not from actual home but from a WeWork-like space that is a shorter commute from your residence.
Some company cultures are clearly more congenial to remote working than others, and those companies will have a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining talent. Automattic (makers of WordPress) sold their underutilized SF office because no one was coming in anyway. Culture eats strategy for breakfast and I'm sure it's hard to impossible for a behemoth like Amazon to turn its culture around to be remote-first, even if they wanted to. Still, it would be useful for researchers to do proper studies on how to make this work. Making WFH more widespread would improve workforce participation, specially for women or caregivers when the population is aging, and thus benefit the economy as a whole.
Here is one data point:
https://steveblank.com/2023/02/14/startups-that-have-employe...
I've also seen some pandemic data that individual unit productivity suffered, but was more than made up by the fact people worked longer because they did not have to endure the commute:
https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/finding/work-from-home-prod...
It probably also depends on the job function, software developers are likely more productive when they can work uninterrupted. WFH does not guarantee that, however, if you have young kids at home or a small apartment without a dedicated home office. I suspect companies will start offering perks like being able to "WFH" not from actual home but from a WeWork-like space that is a shorter commute from your residence.
Some company cultures are clearly more congenial to remote working than others, and those companies will have a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining talent. Automattic (makers of WordPress) sold their underutilized SF office because no one was coming in anyway. Culture eats strategy for breakfast and I'm sure it's hard to impossible for a behemoth like Amazon to turn its culture around to be remote-first, even if they wanted to. Still, it would be useful for researchers to do proper studies on how to make this work. Making WFH more widespread would improve workforce participation, specially for women or caregivers when the population is aging, and thus benefit the economy as a whole.