[Drofmab]

Re the WFH conversation - the pendulum has swung to WFH, it will gradually swing back, of course. But I cannot imagine it fully swinging back to its previous position - having people schlep into downtown cores simply to sit in cubicles doing work that they could do elsewhere makes little sense (aside from optics, or weak management).

Yes - there are absolutely roles and industries where being physically together is either necessary, or makes a lot of sense (creative functions like art, design, brand, marketing, etc) - but does that mean 100% of the time, or regularly coming in, or coming in for specific functions?

There are also plenty of roles - large swaths of the federal government, for example - where the workforce is geographically distributed across the country or world. The people they share a physical office environment with may not work on the same teams, or even within the same division/department.

Managers who think they need to see their cubicle-based employees to 'manage' their performance are simply bad at their job. Their employees shouldn't have to go back to the office to compensate for inept managers... but we know this will be a reason that a portion of these people end up working in an office again - weak managers.

Over the past decade (with about 10 different managers), I've only had one who was in the same province as me. Similar for the teams I've managed over that period - vast majority were based in other parts of Canada (90%). I like being in an office, with people I've come to know - but it's more social than it is necessary to get my job (or that of my team) done.

Prov gov't will end up back in offices for optics, not because they need to be there (just as the prov govt mandated huge groups of employees who were fully-enabled to work remotely back to the office during the summer & fall of 2020... until the govt was unable to suppress the stories about outbreaks in provincial buildings, and their hand was forced).

What I'm saying is that I expect the pendulum to swing back... but there will be a lot of people who end up full-time WFH (or, they're at least given the option to maintain WFH FT, PT, or return to the office).