We had an example at our office several years ago where employee X was a great worker, nothing to say about that, that was having his own "working" rhythm (e.g., until late at night, mornings off, etc.), and was coming to the office only from time to time, just because the manager was really pushing hard, or for certain office events.
This spread and people started to ask - can I work from home?
-> only 1 day
Why? X does more than 1 day, and sometimes X is not available when I need.
... as a manager you can only "yes, but ..." that much. At a certain point people (who I would like to remind everyone again and again: most of the time are people with a high college degree, used to read books, papers, and do things, not 3 years old kids) connect the dots and say "alright, it's time to go". And before they go, they let the entire apple tree rot to hell. If that doesn't happen it might be because this spreads and goes to high management that asks the manager "WTF are you doing?"
That's when either more rights come in equally for everyone, or ... they need to let go of their best employee, or they need to find a compromise. Just having the nicely protected "best" employee is never a good strategy. Eventually people get pissed off and leave, and if they don't, congrats, you have just made the "non-best" employees even less motivated and less productive.
This was so before COVID. If you are good and productive you can often negotiate WFH like any other benefit.
Honestly it seems like it’s part of a tech career trajectory. Once you are very established and your skills are built up there are several tracks available to you. Two of those are WFH specialist or 5-10X experienced dev and WFH consultant.
The cube farm grind is something you go through to get your skills and network up.
I have seen the same in other knowledge areas: corporate law, finance, some types of editing and design, accounting, etc. WFH becomes one of the options at more senior levels.
The other reason it’s a more senior option is that senior people are seen as better able to self direct and thus requiring less micromanagement.
That seems to be true in my case, the first decade of my career was spent in cube farms and cramped offices. I learned a lot and made a few networks, and now I’m at a fortunate point where most jobs are available to me with a phone call if my current job sucks. Especiallly when I’m asked to RTO.
Pre-covid my entire team was office and I was the only remote. Without wanting to brag, it's factual: my Drupal knowledge made it worth for them to keep this up. Post-covid my entire team is scattered to the winds. You couldn't get them to come to the office because almost no one is within the same metro as the office.
