“I have mixed feelings about this and see it as a complicated, nuanced situation. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Given my workplace culture, I don’t need to go in [to the office] daily. I also need a few weekly work-from-home days for elder care, uninterrupted thinking, errands, etc. Meanwhile, my team prefers working from home 100% of the time, because they’ve moved out of the Bay Area, want to avoid the long commute, are very introverted, have critical family care needs, and/or take care of young children. I understand where they’re coming from, so we decided to go remote. We hit our targets, because we’d already benefited from working in person for three years. We’ve built trust, open and transparent lines of communication, and a shared focus. We have each others’ backs.

Still, while many people have proven that they can get stuff done while working 100% remotely, there are trade-offs. I have benefitted, yet also feel burdened and held back, by going fully remote. In exchange for flexibility, I am challenged with networking in a large enterprise company to find new opportunities and strengthen my brand. As a people leader, it is more challenging to complete projects when people are MIA. This is a whole other discussion, but for the newly minted college grads who grew up on their mobile devices: How do they learn how to navigate the corporate world? How do they learn how to collaborate with others?”

“I’m pretty disappointed in what’s happening in my sphere. Extroverted leaders prefer to have people on site and don’t acknowledge how we introverts also kicked ass during the pandemic. My most important pre-pandemic meetings were with collaborators across the country to begin with, so it’s confusing and frustrating to see people look down on remote work now—when it’s always been a necessity in our organization.”

“What worries me, as an ‘elder Millennial,’ is seeing some Gen X and Boomers wholly dismissing the benefits and use cases for remote work—painting it and workers who choose it with a broad brush as inferior, lazy, and uncommitted. I especially worry when I hear senior women say that folks who choose to work from home are essentially opting out of opportunities to advance. I am afraid we will recreate the inequities we’ve spent so long saying we want to fix.

I think it’s important to have the self-awareness and courage to be able to say, ‘I prefer to work in person, partially because it is more comfortable and easier for me. At the same time, I care enough about my team and the future of this organization to put in the effort to understand why others want or need to work remotely.’ Obviously, this sentiment works in reverse, too. But at present, I’m seeing folks with more structural and institutional power generally preferring in-person work and imposing that preference on others, whether explicitly or implicitly. It’s important to ask ourselves why and how we can flex to include others with different perspectives, needs, and experiences.”

“I started a new role at a new company mid-pandemic. It’s a lot harder to build a connection and network over Zoom, but I love the flexibility of a hybrid schedule. Lately, I want to go into the office more in order to connect more (and dress up!), but I’m also at a point in my life where I can swing that. Five years ago? No way. Flexibility of location and mindset are key.”

“It’s such an interesting issue and so hard to solve, especially across different career paths. Because everyone has different ideas about what makes an optimal, or even viable, workplace—and the old ways have experienced an overhaul, it’s hard to know where to even begin the conversation. There are so many variables to consider.

In my workplace, it’s pretty much a free-for-all. Some people come in every day; others, never. We have a fully hybrid office now, as we’ve downsized from the enormous space we used to occupy. Some of us who don’t come in daily share an office and alternate days. But then, if you want to come in on a different day, you are a little bit lost. We lawyers like offices with doors! We are kind of conventional on the whole and have never had communal work spaces, like my husband and his colleagues in the start-up world do.

Working from home is obviously great when I want to extend my trip to wherever, but I also have this feeling like, ‘I didn’t really sign up for this.’ I like to be with people and put on a nice suit. I like to get my coffee and walk around downtown. I don’t really see the current situation as my personal future, if this is the way it’s going to be. In fact, I have considered changing careers and entering a field where I am pretty much assured personal contact for precisely that reason. But this is so personal! How do we standardize something like this?”