If an alien was reading many of the comments here, before they knew much about the world, they’d probably first believe that working from office is this new fangled idea that had never existed before.

Once they were shocked to learn that until 2019 office work was the norm, they’d probably expect to see massive improvements in employee health, satisfaction, productivity, reduced commuter miles, reduced emissions, children with better mental health, children doing better in school, etc.

Imagine their shock when they find that none of those are true, and in fact, some of those metrics have actually gone the other way.

This isn’t to suggest remote work cannot be helpful. Maybe things would have been far worse otherwise. But (a) it’s very hard to see in the data, and (b) remote work proponents need to stop sounding like the world disnt exist before 2020 and/or as if everyone was just miserable and life was basically impossible at the time.