All across the United States, the leaders at large tech companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook are engaged in a delicate dance with thousands of employees who have recently become convinced that physically commuting to an office every day is an empty and unacceptable demand from their employers.

Workers are even pointing to how effective they were when fully remote and using that to question why they have to keep living in the expensive cities where these offices are located.

Some tech leaders (like Twitter's Jack Dorsey) agreed, or at least they saw the writing on the wall.

Notably, Yahoo!—then known as one of the most remote-friendly large tech companies—changed course in the early 2010s under the leadership of then-CEO Marissa Mayer, who mandated that a vast fleet of remote workers had to relocate and show up at their assigned desks.

Companies like Google or Twitter would let employees work from home periodically as the need arose (for example, to take care of a sick child or even for the occasional mental health day).

Remote work was a privilege, not a right, and employees usually could not relocate out of daily commuting range from the cities where these companies were based.

As housing prices skyrocketed and traffic worsened in cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Austin—and as economic inequalities worsened in those places as a result—prominent commentators still occasionally penned op-eds that essentially said, "Gee, maybe some of these problems would be lessened if business leaders were more open to remote work." But the most radical vision of the remote-work movement nonetheless seemed dead in the water.

Companies whose leaders long claimed remote work would never function were left with no other options.

Between the threat of future pandemics in crowded cities and insane housing prices in tech hubs, a lot of workers recently began to make plans to evacuate from places like the Bay Area for cheaper, greener pastures—but with the hope that they could keep their high-paying jobs.

The threats may be legitimate because some other tech companies (like Twitter) have taken a much more permissive approach.

A few Apple employees wrote another letter arguing for a compromise: more lenient remote-work policies in exchange for a system wherein employees in cities with lower costs of living would accept proportionally lower salaries.

And even in companies that haven't yet announced any vaccination requirement, like Apple, employees are being asked to fill out surveys disclosing their vaccination status.

Others like Microsoft are still pushing to get workers back at their desks, despite the new developments, though they might change course again in the near future.

Every workplace is handling things differently, and whether the fully remote dream actually becomes a reality at some of these companies or not, long-time remote-work prophesiers are right about one thing: the old ways aren't going to cut it anymore, and tech is never going to be the same again.