It goes without saying that everyone's situation is different, both at home and with their employers.

I work in London for a tech company. Prior to the lockdown we mostly worked out of a very nice office in the square mile. Lots of dedicated meeting rooms and breakout spaces with good sound isolation, good Herman Miller chairs, automatic standing desks, excellent coffee machine.

* All video conferencing software is terrible

We use a combination of Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Both have the same problems. For one-to-many meetings it is passable, but anything involving group discussion breaks down quickly. There is just enough latency that you can't talk with multiple people without stepping over each other. A year and a bit in and people still talk with mute enabled, or forget to mute themselves while not talking. Conversations that would take minutes in real life take an order of magnitude longer.

Everyone I work with has given up on video calling, so it's become glorified conference calling. I'm half Italian, having to talk without using my hands is like only being able to communicate with morse code. It's so low bandwidth, communicating anything with nuance just becomes frustrating.

* Meetings for everything

This is calming down a bit, but my company seems to love sync-up meetings. I think I've had more meetings in the first year of lockdown than I did in the proceeding two years of working from the office. Because outlook prefers 15 minute intervals for scheduling, everyone overbooks the time they need for meetings 'just in case'.

* Being pulled into meetings without any notice

This used to happen in the office, but at least you'd see it coming. Now people have figured out you can invite people into an existing meeting, such that they get no warning whatsoever. Good meetings never start with "Joe Somebody is calling you from a group chat".

* Despite the meetings everyone is more siloed than ever

Having everyone work from home has made it easier for teams to become isolated from each other, only communicating by Jira and poor video conference meetings [in emergencies]. I almost never get to casually talk to anyone from the rest of the company, which is really isolating. I don't feel like I work with anyone outside of my immediate team anymore. I've seen this sentiment echoed by my colleagues.

* I miss going to the pub with my colleagues

This is half caused by lockdown, but the other half is everyone working from home. I used to run into people from other teams at the pub all the time. Nowadays everything needs to be booked, scheduled, and planned out which means no spontaneity. My immediate team have a weekly pub night zoom call, but we can't expand it to include other people as you can only really have one conversation at a time.

* Not having to commute is great

I really hate commuting, so this has been great for me.

* My home workspace is a mixed bag

I finally have a decent chair at home, but don't have the space for a good desk. My partner works in the same room as me, a few meters away, and so I still have to wear headphones all day. The best situation is where I have a set of tasks to work through. Sadly my work is not usually that straightforward.

* No family or friends nearby

This is mostly my own fault, I did move halfway around the world as an adult. If the last six years in London has taught me anything, making friends outside of work is very hard. Part of the problem is you're unlikely to live near anyone you meet. London (like Sydney) is a very large city. In the before time socialising with my colleagues was enough for me, but I feel like that avenue will be permanently closed if we all keep working from home.

* More scope for hobbies

I've taken up wildlife rehabilitation in my spare time, which I would never have been able to do while working from the office. It's not so much time consuming as it needs regular intervals of time throughout the day. I can easily feed an animal while attending a meeting now, or take little breaks through the day to take care of things.