The remote-work wars are largely over by 2025, but not everywhere. The pandemic era of white-collar workers logging on from home and staying there all week ended in 2024, as bosses decided to call them back in to work as many as five days a week. (Amazon was a notable company leading the charge, while Elon Musk famously said remote workers were “pretending” to do their jobs.) But commercial real estate giant JLL found something new in its September 2025 report on the future of hybrid work: a new remote renegade workplace archetype.
This is not the disengaged quiet quitters of the pandemic era, nor is it a staunch traditionalist. This is what JLL called empowered “non-compliers”: high-value, highly skilled employees who simply ignore office attendance rules when it suits them—and they have the leverage to get away with it.
