My company transitioned to full remote during the pandemic, so we don’t really have an “office” to go back to.

There are lots of pros and cons with remote vs. hybrid vs. in-office, but for me at least, the pros of remote work far outweigh the negatives. In a perfect world, I’d love to have one or maybe two days in-office for collaboration and to feel a sense of connection, but the key thing would be to get everyone on the team there on the same day. And it’s a challenging proposition for a business to maintain a space that only gets used 2 out of 7 days.

That being said, my role and industry gives me a front-row seat regarding remote work trends. On that, I can say:

• Fucking nobody wants to go back to an office full-time. Talent preference for remote roles is higher now than it was during peak pandemic.
• The proportion of remote jobs has been gradually trending down since its peak at June 2022, but still represents the majority of jobs we’re placing for.
• As the number of remote jobs are decreasing, the number of applications they’re receiving is increasing. Which makes sense since there’s more competition.
• The inverse is true for in-office jobs. We’re getting more of those, and fewer people are applying to them.

Like anything with supply and demand, I think that working remote is becoming an incentive/benefit that companies are offering. They’re aware that folks will take less money to work remotely. On the other hand, companies offering only in-office jobs are somewhat deluded in the fact that they believe they can offer similar compensation to remote roles, restrict their talent pool to a limited geography, and somehow hope to compete for the same top-tier talent. I will say that because of that decreased competition, it provides more opportunity for talent willing to accept in-office work.