As usual, it’s the tech sector leading the back-to-office trend.

A few weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg told 3,000 Irish Meta staff that remote work is turning out to be less productive for some workers than others.

This wasn’t supposed to be the future, as we understood it from the last three years.

Working life was supposed to become an à la carte menu to suit our location tastes. It could be blissful teleworking from your home study, overlooking your garden as the magnolias came into bloom, or popping into the city to mix some facetime with a nice Greek salad. For anyone who wanted it, the morning commute was to be replaced by an extra 30 minutes in bed, followed by breakfast with the kids.

So what’s happening? What’s changing the minds of businesses? Why is the tech sector, in particular, cooling on the idea?

And where will that leave those of us who have become fond of our comfy home-working set-ups?

To understand the shift in sentiment toward remote working, you have to listen to how the world’s most ruthlessly ambitious companies when it comes to productivity now talk about it.

Mark Zuckerberg told staff last month that the company now believes it is “easier to build trust in person and that those relationships help us work more effectively... In-person time helps build relationships and get more done.”

Ouch.

Apple’s Tim Cook and Google’s Sundar Pichai never really had much doubt about it in the first place: both companies made it clear early on in the pandemic that they regard being in the office as the scenario where the best, most creative, most productive work is done.

It seems that they’re not alone.

A US Department of Labour report two weeks ago showed that the number of US businesses that now have significant remote working practices has shrunk from 40pc to 27pc in just a year.

“Employers have begun pushing harder to get staff to work on-site more often, as recession fears prompt an increased emphasis on worker productivity,” was how the Wall Street Journal reported this.

The pullback into offices could put a lot more importance on one of Ireland’s newest laws. The Oireachtas just passed a bill that obliges employers to consider requests for remote working from employees. Frustratingly, it hasn’t spelled out much of the exact criteria by which you’re allowed to claim your remote working privilege. Instead, it will be up to the Workplace Relations Commission to draw up a ‘code of practice’ for employers to observe for such requests.

But it could be a lifeline for those who restructured their lives around working from their conservatory, study or box room (or village co-working hub if they moved to a rural area) and just don’t want to face a long commute into the city or moving to a smaller home to be closer to the office.

Yet it won’t change the overall dynamic, which now looks like something of a reversal of recent trends. If the most ambitious, most productive companies are vocally prioritising in-person working, you can bet that the vast majority of hungry young employees will turn up to offices each day.

Those who battle to keep logging in from their outer suburban semi-Ds could, unless they have extra talents, struggle to get the same recognition, promotions and lucrative moves. Laws to protect them will only go so far, particularly if (or when) the economy encounters a nasty recession.

It looks like all of those trendy new offices with their exposed brick and fancy coffee machines shouldn’t quite be written off yet.