The case for in-office work has never been stronger. This may seem surprising, given that many businesses have operated remotely or in hybrid models for more than five years. The initial excitement about remote work stemmed largely from its immediate conveniences and the individual flexibility it offered employees. Over time, however, its long-term challenges for businesses—such as diminished collaboration, weaker organizational culture, and barriers to innovation—have become increasingly evident. Even employees are expressing their concerns.

But to truly understand how remote work has evolved, and assess what has worked and what hasn’t, we need to start by telling a story of profound disruption and eventual reinvention. Consider the experiences of Silicon Valley companies such as Apple, Google, and Meta, the leading pioneers in the tech industry and, in turn, a model of sorts for companies elsewhere.

Google in particular became the top choice of college graduates as a place to work around the world, even in countries where it has no operations. It wasn’t just a company; it was considered by many to be a dream job. What most of us knew best about Google was its remarkable office environment, its vibrant campus life, and the perks of being there, from fabulous food and snacks to massages, yoga classes, video games, nap stations, and more.

The fact that it had such terrific offices had a purpose: to keep employees there, something that other companies copied. The goal wasn’t longer hours per se. Google wanted employees to spend that time in the office rather than working from home, and the justification was that interactions with one another sparked new ideas and innovations that were incredibly valuable to the company.¹ Other companies followed the same pattern.

Then came the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to state and local government requirements to shut down offices, and initiated a global experiment in trying to conduct office work from home. By the time restrictions were lifted, the social media company then known as Twitter announced that its employees didn’t have to return to the office. By 2021, virtually every other major tech company announced the same policy. Not only could you work from home, but companies no longer cared where your home was located. The subsidies some of them paid so you could afford to live near the office (and therefore spend more time there) were gone.

Yet in May 2021, Google announced a slightly more modest plan where 20% of employees could work from home permanently, and another 20% could work remotely if they were close to a series of Google locations around the world. The remaining 60% could work someplace other than their office two days a week; for four weeks out of the year—not counting vacations—they could work anywhere in the world.²

To truly understand how remote work has evolved, and to assess what has worked and what hasn’t, we need to start by telling a story of profound disruption and eventual reinvention.

This was a breathtaking break, not just from their view that keeping employees together as much as possible was crucial to company success, but also to the general corporate idea of a 9–5 work life. There was a collective intake of breath: We really can work anywhere? That was followed by a flood of stories about how well the new arrangement was working. Those who were less informed about actual office work thought the appeal of remote work was mainly to cut commuting time, which, as we will see later, didn’t significantly reduce actual driving. The real advantages seemed to come from elsewhere, mainly employees’ control over their time and the ability to relax without being watched by bosses and peers.

It wasn’t that long after these announcements, though, that we started to see a subtle walking back of some of those work-anywhere promises, beginning in Silicon Valley with the new practice of cutting your pay if you moved to what employers guessed was the market wage in your new location (always less than Silicon Valley). One year later, employers began to set rules around remote work, specifying that you were expected to be back in the office at least a few days per week. That’s where the ubiquitous “hybrid” term came from. A year later, those rules tightened, and enforcing them became more serious. By 2023, we started hearing stories about employers requiring employees to return to the office.

Google tightened its policy, mandating three days in the office, tracking attendance, and informing employees that not being present in the office would affect their performance appraisals. Additionally, employees who had already received approval for remote work would now have that status reevaluated.³ Any fully remote job required permission from senior management. “Our offices are where you’ll be most connected to Google’s community,” highlighted Google’s chief people officer in an internal memo to encourage staff to come into the office.⁴

In 2024, large companies in tech on the West Coast, and finance on the East Coast, where remote work was concentrated, tightened their policies further. Some of them basically pulled the plug on that remote work experiment altogether. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt famously criticized the company’s remote work policies, saying it had decided that work-life balance was more important than winning.⁵ Company leaders drew a new line, asking employees with fully remote jobs to shift to hybrid, and noted that remote work would continue only if productivity was maintained.⁶

It’s difficult to think of many examples since the pandemic began where companies have moved toward greater remote work. There’s little doubt that the trend has been to tighten policies to bring workers back to the office.

The reality here is that remote work policies have been in flux since the pandemic began. Yes, these companies still have some remote work now, more than five years later, so it’s easy to claim that remote work appears to be “here to stay.” Yet it’s difficult to think of many examples since the pandemic began where companies have moved toward greater remote work, and there’s little doubt that the trend has been to tighten the policies to bring workers back to the office. Even when the requirements to be in the office haven’t changed, employers are enforcing them more aggressively.

The information we have on the state of play with remote work isn’t great: We’re inundated with quick, one-sided surveys conducted mainly by vendors with a vested interest in presenting one side of the story or another, asking respondents for their opinions. We attempt to sort out the evidence here, which suggests modest declines in the extent of remote work, but larger declines in how it’s defined.

What’s clear is that employees generally appreciate the option to work from home, although this isn’t the case for everyone. For some, such as new entrants, it might not be beneficial to their careers, even if they prefer it. On the other hand, employers have grown increasingly ambivalent about it, and in most cases they hold all the power.

 A simple solution for employers is to bring employees back to the office. But this has become impossible for many companies that have shrunk their office space to the point where only a few employees can be back at any one time. The fact that a great many employees see remote work as established also means that taking it away now could lead to huge problems, even if they fall short of employees quitting.

For employers who can’t or don’t want to bring employees back to the office, we highlight the changes that need to be made to existing management practices to replicate the shared experiences, informal interactions, and trust that are created by working together and that foster trust, cooperation, and improved performance. These changes aren’t easy to make, so we must approach this challenge with open eyes.

Excerpted from In Praise of the Office: The Limits to Hybrid and Remote Work, by Peter Cappelli and Ranya Nehmeh (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025). Reprinted by permission.

Footnotes

1. Stabile, Susan J. “Google Benefits or Google’s Benefit?” J. Bus. & Tech. L. 97, 2008.

2. Mickle, Tripp. “Google says a fifth of workers will be remote workers.” Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2021.

3. Elias, Jennifer. “Google’s return-to-office crackdown gets backlash from some employees: ‘Check my work, not my badge.’” CNBC, June 13, 2023.

4. Aten, Jason. “Google’s Threat to Punish Employees Who Don’t Return to the Office is the 1 Thing No Company Should Ever Do.” Inc. June 13, 2023.

5. Royle, Orianna Rosa. “Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt apologizes for remote-work rant against old employer.” Fortune, Aug. 15, 2024.

6. Elias, Jennifer. “Google to crack down on office attendance, asks remote workers to reconsider.” CNBC, June 7, 2023.

Published Sept. 30, 2025, by Knowledge @ Wharton.