Productivity is way up, long overdue standardization is in place, and more than half of the daily work while I was in the office was with others at different firms anyway.
No one comes by the desk with asinine requests. People have learned to write full sentences and put together real packages instead of half-assing it and wasting time with in-person meetings.
One huge positive is being able to avoid all the minefields in the office. I don't have to worry about triggering some snowflake who should have never been hired to begin with. I can share things in a web meeting that I'd never say publicly in the office (hence productivity being way up) - nothing offensive - just cold business truths that you can't share publicly.
I guess my husband’s company was ahead of the curve. He’s been working remotely for years. There are times when he has to travel to the job site to solve problems that arise that can’t be handled remotely. In those instances, he hops on a plane (most of the time...it’s rarely across town, but sometimes that does happen), and then he has to spend the night at a hotel, which sometimes sounds like vacation, but even that gets old. He has figured out how to balance things, so that he’s home more than he travels out of town now. Having been in this business for 30 years, he is starting to train younger folks to do what he does. Retirement beckons in a few years. I just hope Joe doesn’t screw that up for him.