[ashtonkem]

But for what benefit? Will the office be full sized (forfeiting the cost savings to the business), or will teams have to negotiate which days they’re supposed to come in (forfeiting a large amount of the team building benefits).

It just seems like a lot more work and hassle than being fully colocated or fully remote.

[ghaff]

Teams schedule conference rooms. Even fully remote, teams will presumably get together physically a few times a year. Whether you're "fully remote" (and maybe have to fly to a get-together) or schedule weekly/biweekly office time will be a function of how a team/company wants to operate.

[ashtonkem]

There’s a huge difference between a few times a year and once every 1-2 weeks, both on the company and the employee. At once a quarter we can just rent a coworking space and fly in, but at once a week everyone needs to live within ~90min of the office and the company needs to maintain some level of excess office capacity in order to seat these workers 1x a week.

To my eye remote 4x a week forfeits most of the benefits of full remote purely for the sake of a vestigial habit. It seems superior to me that either the team either goes full remote, or reverts to a “remote work when errands require it” arrangement.

[ghaff]

I don't necessarily disagree and, in fact, you're describing the way that my broader group is organized albeit with some subset of people normally going into an office.

That said, there are plenty of people who want to go into an office semi-regularly and, if you tell them they're going to be 100% remote--even if financial arrangements are made to subsidize a co-working space in some manner--they're probably not going to like it and will probably leave for a more office-friendly company.

[petra]

If "onmce a week office" becomes a thing, i could see a model where a few companies share a single office.