The only thing that changed is the power balance. It's still perfectly possible to get skilled workers into the office, they just have to want it.
I miss nice offices though. Before the whole let's stack people side by side on desks, rather than give them some nicer spaces with lots of room for deep thought. When I was working for HARC, we had a nice former industrial space near UCLA. I totally could go for that, but when the only way to get something semi-nice and private is to work at home, well, that is going to bias people.
Your employer rents a desk for you, you probably get to walk to work or at least enjoy a very short commute. You have people from other employers around you for the social aspect. Etc
I guess WeWork was a similar idea that shows now is not yet the time for this.
I still think it’d be great - reduced commuting miles / time wasted. Cheaper offices that are nicer (don’t like this co working space? Just book into a different one) etc etc
That's an advantage for you, though! Active desire to work in-office greatly reduces the amount of competition you're dealing with for jobs; all else equal, it should ~double your success rate.
If every neighborhood had at least one pub and if every pub had an upstairs co-working space, that would be amazing.
edit: ah, I realize now that I took the word "shops" to mean the colloquial "tech companies", but you probably meant brick-and-mortar retail stores that have been slow-killed by the internet
Anyways, it isn't a mystery why people want to work at home these days, and they don't really need to be in the office anyways considering how hard it is to get conference rooms to VC all the time with your partners across the country or world.
They don't grow on trees.