Speaking as someone who's been working from home since 2015 (self-employed), I can say that doing it in a pandemic is totally different to how it was before.
On average I'd been getting out to various offices or co-working spaces, depending on the job, one day a week, with the rest at home. For me it was bliss because I find most offices incredibly distracting and annoying - I can't concentrate outside of having my own separate room to work in, and I can't think I've ever worked in an office where that kind of luxury was for anyone other than the very top of the food chain. I also saved shitloads that otherwise would've gone on commuting, and through tax deductions for whatever I couldn't blag from various clients, which means my home office equipment - computer, monitor, chair, technologically and ergonomically - is far superior than I'd get in most offices. I think we're going to get a pretty substantial DIY+home renovation boom off the back of everyone being stuck at home, too, which will suck up a lot of those savings. I certainly found myself unable to avoid confronting long-term issues (like replacing a damaged floor in my living room) when I was seeing it so much every day.
Of course, seeing and working with people IRL has no digital substitute, but I never felt like I couldn't do that before lockdowns. Same for socialising. I'd still be able to get to the pub at six to see people - being able to head there at lunch and spend all afternoon there beforehand was even better. I love being able to make my hours what I want, and usually settle on 11-7, which fits with my night owl habits more comfortably. And, overall, it's just so much less stressful. Work became a thing that worked for me, as much as I worked for it.
All that is good and well, however, but what I've seen and heard from friends and people on social media are exactly the teething problems that I struggled with when I first made the switch, compounded by the pandemic. Not lease the space issue. If I didn't have a spare bedroom that I could have converted into an office, I don't think I'd be quite so smug about it. Neither if I couldn't afford/wasn't being given equipment that was comfortable and reliable - I spent the first couple of years with just a laptop and it sucked, my back was killing me. It also took a fair bit of time to develop the mental routine of switching between "work" and "home" modes at the end of each day, which is maybe one of the most crucial aspects of all. I had a project for a while where I was working simultaneously with Brits in the morning and Americans in the evening, and even though I was meant to only be working afternoons, when everyone was online at the same time, inevitably I found my hours drifting earlier and later simultaneously as I had colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic pulling on me. Considering how crucial in-person collaboration and comradeship is for people to be able to collectively resist being taken advantage of by bosses, I do worry about whether this might made workplace exploitation even more endemic (especially combined with the ever-growing gig economy).
And then a big issue over everything here is that, as per usual, the debate being kicked off at the political level - and in the media - is divorced from the reality of work in many jobs, where working remotely might only be at best a partial possibility. Reflective of a political and media class which tends to be drawn from high-level services sectors which mostly involve typing into a computer, a task which can be done just as easily in central London as central Mongolia. But at least I think most people recognise that it's a case of flexibility, rather than a binary choice between two extremes, even if it doesn't feel like it when Boris and Sunak talk shite.
