Almost anyone who works from home is legitimately on the way to replacement because almost all of it can now be done by bots. They excluded themselves from the "human" part of it, and now it became critical.

That logic doesn't really make sense. If the bot can do your job then it doesn't matter if you're in the office or not. If anything, there is greater incentive to remove the in-office folks since offices are expensive.

Then we're cooked, I guess, my entire department is remote, as is most of the rest of our 5000 employees. Even before covid it was relatively common to have remote employees, but now it's more common than employees in offices.

The human part of it doesn't always mean physical presence. It means bringing creativity, judgement, ethics, collaboration, etc etc. All this can be done remotely of course.

What fundamental principles would allow replacing remote workers, that wouldn't also allow replacing office workers?

Lots of people go into the office and do everything on the laptop, including meetings. Useless.

I think this sums up the management-owner fantasy/middle-management fear:

Once they can tell the computer/slave what to do, what'll they need us for?

My advice is to relax: If there's no work, whatever companies remain better paying so much taxes that everybody can live like their council/town mayor/president, or the humans will be literally eating the rich.

Just try to love where you live and be good friends with your neighbours when it happens, and don't be one of the last people working/defending work.

In any event, I suspect AI could be still a long way off of that, despite the fact quite suddenly a lot more human beings can tell a computer what to do. You might feel differently, but I promise your job isn't representative of "most" people who work from home: You have no idea what the demographics of at-home workers are.

The fact that my job happens on a computer, and thus can be done in the office or from home with a VPN connection back to the office, says absolutely nothing about the capability of automating my role out of existence. Unless of course you're unskilled middle management and your whole position is just talking to people, in which case yeah I could see you being on the chopping block.

Shrug. Maybe. Not everyone requires constant social validation. Likewise, not everyone needs to be incessantly bothered by others. I get that bosses feel threatened, but that is no reason to panic.

Nope.

Remote work, at an employer that embraces their employees, has resulted in excellent results instead of meandering around the office trying to bs your way through office politics.

Remote work highlights merit and office work highlights time and social integration. Both can get promotions, and I've of gotten promotions from both, but I think the former is healthier

Right now, companies prioritize profit above all else. One would hope that we could legislate a mechanism to reward companies by number of employees employed. A billion-dollar one-man company isn’t very useful to anyone. A struggling 100,000 headcount company props up a huge section of the economy. One might envision tax increases and then tax breaks based on non-contractor headcount.