Right. We're only really dealing with the population of employees who strongly prefer working from home.
That's likely disproportionately employees who have families (hence a commute), so skew older and more senior. These employees will take the secret sauce they learned over many years at Amazon and spread it to startups and other orgs.
Anecdata, the younger people in my team are reacting worse than the more senior ones. Senior / more tenured their response has been: "well, this is how it was for the past 20 years before COVID". While the juniors are the ones who dislike the idea of long commutes, less WLB (no more quick errands during work) etc.
I struggled with the wording there and got it wrong.
I didn't intend to imply incompetence or anything negative.
Some folks have made choices to commit to things and take up responsibilities requiring stable, location-based employment.
"Couldn't get jobs" should be taken to encompass anyone that is subject to labor market friction of any sort.
Oh, come on. There're people that like working in the office. It's unfair to label them as "the ones who couldn't get jobs elsewhere".