I've pondered the same exact thing. I've had jobs where my superiors could see my immediate impact and it was still impossible to take a reduced salary to have a 3/4 day week-- "it wouldn't be fair to everyone else" or "we'd like to have you here every day" even after my disclosing that there weren't really 40 hours of productive tasks I could do each week after automating most of my day to day. I've tried both with companies offering lower salaries with positions I'm wildly overqualified for and roles where they seemed interested but couldn't match my prior salary-- neither has worked across multiple attempts. Negotiating 1-2 days/week remote was easier than less hours for less money.

From discussing with coworkers from former jobs, the people that I worked with who most want to return to office (& force their reports back, too) are those who focused on politics over productivity. Some people work better in office, some better remote. Why not actually evaluate on a case by case basis or worker's preference instead of only management's preference?

Maybe this "working less" undertone of remote should be taken seriously, from both sides of the argument.

As you say, it's nearly impossible to negotiate for less working hours. The only real possibility I see is freelancing/contracting, and the best bet is taking some months off (or a sabattical) - not working less days per week.

With high salaries in IT naturally there came perks like flexible hours. This meant that nobody really checks if you work 8, 7, or 6 hours in a day anymore. Of course, if you'd consistently come in say for ~4h a day, then there would be trouble because Jerry over there clocks in his 8h and that wouldn't be fair.

Now with remote work, the "hours worked" are mostly invisible and barely guessable by your peers and managers.

The bottom line, personally, is that we want to work less time. I take a salary that is lower than FAANG in a remote startup, but I and my peers work less hours, yet our boss is happy.

If I could work for 4h/d (or 3 days/week) at some corp, in office, I would do it. But that's just not gonna happen right now. And here is my hot take: I think that big corps are just too successful in squeezing out so much time from their employees, especially with the american mindset of "working hard" / crazy 80+h weeks.