Microsoft joined the group of companies permanently allowing their employees to work from home at least some of the time. Also in this group, to varying degrees, are Twitter, Slack and Facebook, all responding to the greater flexibility employees have discovered since Covid forced remote work on everyone.
Still, despite the apparent momentum in favor of permanent remote work, it’s worth being a little skeptical. For one thing, some executives and managers complain that productivity is suffering, as this Wall Street Journal article noted last month. Meanwhile, plenty of money is still going into office towers and campuses. Microsoft, for example, is in the middle of a major revamp of its campus in Redmond, Wash. Similarly, walk around midtown Manhattan right now and you can’t miss the construction work underway on numerous buildings—even as completed offices nearby sit nearly empty.
