My own assumption is that even though remote work will increase, it will remain marginal and not consume most of the IT jobs out there.
The simple reason being that the biggest IT/tech companies have invested heavily in land & buildings (think about how Apple and Facebook have built huge "campuses" - why they call the offices/building a campus, I don't know, but anyways ...) and they need to utilize those assets in order to avoid the "white elephant" problem.
Also, unlike "agile" software-development or on-demand hosting, they can't merely downscale their land & buildings as they would for their AWS clusters and they also can't sell these buildings, as they seem geared specifically towards the needs of their owners (it isn't just a regular old office-block).
So while some startups of the future will embrace a remote-first culture, the big tech companies and many other regular startups will continue along with the concept of a fixed-location and fixed-office well into the future.
The simple reason being that the biggest IT/tech companies have invested heavily in land & buildings (think about how Apple and Facebook have built huge "campuses" - why they call the offices/building a campus, I don't know, but anyways ...) and they need to utilize those assets in order to avoid the "white elephant" problem.
Also, unlike "agile" software-development or on-demand hosting, they can't merely downscale their land & buildings as they would for their AWS clusters and they also can't sell these buildings, as they seem geared specifically towards the needs of their owners (it isn't just a regular old office-block).
So while some startups of the future will embrace a remote-first culture, the big tech companies and many other regular startups will continue along with the concept of a fixed-location and fixed-office well into the future.