I've been working from home for the last nine years, running my own business. All of my contractors and employees work remotely. In one instance, I've yet to meet the person I hired physically (I knew them from a previous job of course -- they are not strangers.) I absolutely love remoote. So much less BS. My employees do their thing and I do mine and we're satisfied at the end of the day if we meet each others expectations. I don't care when, how and where they work or who else they are working for. It took a little bit of planning and setup.

We mostly communicate asynchronously. There is no expectation that a slack message will be answered in realtime. Before the pandemic, we used to meetup onece a month for lunch or a day out (no work) just to get to know each other.

I am also careful about sharing sensitive information that could hurt the business if misused. I assume that my employees have outside business interests and take the appropriate precautions. But for the most part these are precautions one should take anyway, remote or not.

It's a tiny business, so it really doesn't need a lot of control or supervision and I'm happy not to have to supervise if I don't have to. To me having to actively managec (and god forbid -- micromanage) an employee is a red flag -- I hired the wrong person.

The article is right the real reason people want their employees to work from the office is control -- ironically a misguided sense of control.