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The way we work has sadly been broken for a long time. I think around '16 and '17 we were getting closer to 10-20% remote. Obviously only about 47% of jobs even CAN be remote. The geopolitics of '16, when Trump beat a legacy brand, did embolden some male managers to think they could just go apes*** on their preferred rules, and I think that backslid remote. There's some Wharton stuff from early 2017 about how a lot of male managers just become more rude, hierarchy-obsessed, etc. after DT won. That's a small chunk of it. I think COVID showed that companies could be productive (at least fiscally) with a large majority of people in "their jammies," but managers are desperately missing the element of control, and the warm body management approach where they can emerge from their office and say "You there, do this task for me!" That's where the rubber is meeting the road currently.

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