Maybe.

At the stage in life that I am at, I can work anywhere. However, I can't imagine what it would be like to be a newly qualified lawyer "working from home." Being able to walk down a corridor and speaking to other colleagues is invaluable. Having to call them or, worse still, WebEx them, just wouldn't be the same. I am confident the same applies to accounting, engineering and lots of other occupations too.

I am willing to bet that the exodus from office buildings will not be as total as some believe.

It won't be total. There is definitely value in having people work in offices or cities and there are people who don't have suitable home environments. However, perhaps through more flexible working protocols office space can be reduced be some signifcant %.

I drove into the office today as my car is getting fixed nearby. I am spending my day having Teams meetings (teams as in virtual, like Zoom) with people WFH. What's the point in coming into the office if all you do is turn on your webcam and headset to talk to people? Makes zero sense. May as well stay at home and keep my dog company.

Even before the pandemic, it wasn't unheard of for multiple people in the same building to join a call on Webex from their desks rather than getting together in one meeting room. Easier to multitask that way you see!

We're hybrid working both here and at head office in London. For me, practically, I seldom go into the office here as the people I deal with are not located here. So I might as well do that teams call at home. What is going to be interesting is the return to business travel - which is gradually happening. I would typically travel to head office for a specific reason and then fill up my week with other meetings and seeing people while I was in town. Nowadays I'll specifically have to ask people to come in to meet with me as otherwise I'll have travelled to the UK to attend a teams call with them from their homes!

Did you buy a sandwich?

It's funny you say that, we do have a cafeteria onsite and as I forgot to bring food, I will be buying a cooked lunch. Something I haven't done in 2 years!

Pre-COVID here where I work, everyone was squashed into the same meeting room. No one had webcams or the tech to join remotely if you were in the same building. I kinda miss those in person meetings if I'm honest.

What about the banter, the friendships, after work drinkies, office romance? Who will the wayward have affairs with?

My daughter and her husband largely work from home. I suppose they're not "newly qualified" but they've been lawyers for less than 10 years. It doesn't seem to have hurt his career. In her case it's hard to say as she's taken mat leave and that will have been a set back.

I can recall joining the odd meeting via whatever it was before we used Zoom. The main reason was that meeting rooms were a precious resource and so you usually ended up with one of the small ones, which the entire team could not fit into, and thus joining remotely was the only option.

The team did actually have an in-person lunch last week, and if I had not been elsewhere I would have gone along, as seeing people in person would have been nice. I think we're going to have a couple of other in person things in the near future so that should make up for missing that one. We've decided that we're going to be remote only for the foreseeable future, bar any company mandatory in-person stuff, which is likely to be pretty rare. We can go in if we want to, so say a couple of us want to collaborate on something in person, so that's good.

An ex-wife asked me, quite pointedly, if this wasn't the worst aspect of working from home for me. The truth is that computer departments aren't like that anymore. Lately though, I've been on a secondment to Corporate Finance where, oh my, it's 1985 all over again.

I did go to an IT leaving party on Friday, quite a few attendees are now sick with the covid (not the same crowd as mentioned above) and an unvaccinated Karen is screeching that whoever brought the germs should have declared them upon arrival. <sigh>

Maybe tires and haircuts weren't the best examples and i guess in a world where we all cut our own hair (ladies take note) perhaps staying in is for the best. So to the tires. Are you saying that there are no vehicles on the road? Are you suggesting that nobody needs tire services? Obviously not so therefore tire mechanics are necessary if only to keep the stay at homers supplied with goods that they order. So no need for anyone to go to a shop therefore shops are a thing of the past and so are the people that work in them and then there's the companies that own these massive commercial buildings, more of which i see going up locally this year, these are surplus to requirements because nobody needs a store or an office. The knock on effect of thinking that the majority can work from home and to hell with the rest is mind boggling. The huge traffic queues locally that seem to have gotten worse since the snowbirds returned from Arizona or wherever is testament to the fact that people are not staying at home and we are not seeing a majority work from home strategy here and of course as a tourist town people on the ground are what its all about

Well quite. If no one uses these white elephants life is better for everyone except tyre retailers and property speculators; less pollution, less stress, less road rage. Mobile barbers ply their trade in electric vans with the clippers powered wirelessly from the van motor. No more standing around wondering wtf the CIBC/RBC/Citi/etc. didn't put up the money to have sufficient lifts.

Fully agree. I work in engineering as a mechanical designer, working at home makes my life a lot more difficult... sometimes I am in a meeting I am swtiching between 3-4 drawings on the screen tryng to explain my intentions, or building on someone elses idea, it gets very confusing, in normal times an impromtu sketch would materialise, can't do that anymore, its very hard to get your point accross over a teams meeting.

Added to this people just don't communicate and share information like they would in the office. I started my new job in the middle of all this work at home crap, ....I had to learn systems and software from home.... huge struggle, 14 months later, I still don't feel part of a design team...its the most solitary job I have ever done, I haven't gotten to know my colleagues, like I would normally, no morning personal chats over a coffee, getting to know each other etc, as result communication has suffered, and that really s key...that walk accross the office every day... where you would regulary exchange information with colleagues has gone... the assistance you would give has gone, the assistance you would receive has gone.

I hope we do get back to the office in some regular format again even if its a hybrid.... its vital to the job I do.

I call that "learning by osmosis" and I agree it has really suffered by being out of the office. However, we adapt, and I for one hope I'm never in an office full-time again. Hybrid suits me just fine.