It wasn't a "self own" unless you're taking the perspective of Covid. Remote work was forced onto sceptical employers due to shutdowns.
The industry suffers from fads and cargo-culting. Stealth diffuse offshoring is currently in, it's going to take a while for the downsides to percolate: I suspect will mostly boil down to jurisdiction impedance mismatches. What does it mean for employers if it is 1000x harder to extradite an employee to Delaware (or whatever jurisdiction is agreed to in their employment contract) if they clone their product from code? Without e-Verify, what are the chances that your remote employee is a North Korean unit, or working for your competitor? Boom times ahead for corporate intelligence - as well as the traditional kind. How many security teams and policies are geared to face Iran as an adversary? An unstated e-Verify benefit is free FBI COINTEL
There was and is a collective push to show remote work is just as effective as in-office. To the point of absurdity, where there were never any benefits to office work.
It was absolutely a self-own. People not understanding why they were being paid the salaries they were and how replaceable they might be.
It was more or less an entire workforce demanding that their job positions be opened up to global competition thinking there would be no negative long term outcomes from it. They effectively helped offshore their own jobs.
This is just starting - inertia is a thing, and it takes years to stand up competent local engineering teams in various countries. The past few years has simply been laying down the base infrastructure for what is starting to visibly happen today.
The industry suffers from fads and cargo-culting. Stealth diffuse offshoring is currently in, it's going to take a while for the downsides to percolate: I suspect will mostly boil down to jurisdiction impedance mismatches. What does it mean for employers if it is 1000x harder to extradite an employee to Delaware (or whatever jurisdiction is agreed to in their employment contract) if they clone their product from code? Without e-Verify, what are the chances that your remote employee is a North Korean unit, or working for your competitor? Boom times ahead for corporate intelligence - as well as the traditional kind. How many security teams and policies are geared to face Iran as an adversary? An unstated e-Verify benefit is free FBI COINTEL