I recently argued that return-to-office mandates aren’t really about productivity; they’re about control. Ironically, my article published smack-dab in the middle of a September inflection point of increasing office time requirements, a phenomenon Owl Labs dubbed “hybrid creep.” 

And now, perhaps shockingly, I’ve started a new job with a team that (gasp!) has an office. When I wrote my argument against RTO, I had no inkling that I would soon be back in an office (part-time) myself. I am now basically in a live experiment. So far, it’s changed how I feel about the idea of going into an office. It hasn’t changed my view on RTO.

My new team has a completely flexible work-location approach. There is an office, and we can come in if we want to. But there’s no requirement or badge-swiping. 

Those of us who are local also collaborate daily with colleagues in drastically different time zones—Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) and Asia Pacific (APAC). So our overall team is distributed enough that in-person work can’t be our organizing religion. That makes my current situation a fascinating window into what happens when people are free to optimize their work model to their life needs, versus an imposed framework of what a workday is mandated to look like.

I’m seeing that when location is genuinely a choice, people start building rituals.

There’s a weekly team meeting for which many people choose to be in the office. There are social opportunities like an annual holiday party and happy........

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