As we head into summer, companies everywhere are beginning to finalize their plans for bringing employees back to the office. Some technologists will return to their office desks full time; others will have a hybrid schedule (i.e., some days in the office, some days working remotely), and still others will work remotely full time. 

Which category do you fall in? Take our quiz below; we’ll display the results in a future article:

Over the past few months, surveys have shown that technologists often prefer a hybrid schedule to the alternatives. For example, one survey by Blind, which anonymously queries technologists about a range of issues, found that 43 percent wanted to work from home three days per week, and 20 percent wanted to work from home two days per week; contrast that with the 23 percent who wanted to work from home full time, and the 5 percent who wanted to head into the office every day of the week. 

Then you have Dice’s Tech Sentiment Report, which showed that, in the second quarter of 2021, some 85 percent of technologists found the prospect of hybrid work anywhere from somewhat to extremely desirable, slightly ahead of the 80 percent who preferred full-time (100 percent) remote work to some degree. In what some may regard as a surprising twist, younger technologists (i.e., those between 18 and 34 years old) have expressed a desire to work in a physical office, which gives them access to mentoring and career advice, as well as the chance to bond in-person with co-workers. 

That’s good news to companies that want things to return to an “office-centric culture” in the post-pandemic era; but managers can’t ignore that employees overwhelmingly want to work from home at least some of the time.