The pandemic changed where millions of people work, and businesses are still trying to decide what the office should look like now. Some companies have called employees back to the workplace while others have stayed remote, but most have landed somewhere in the middle. The share of companies using hybrid work, where employees split their time between home and the office, grew from 20 percent in 2023 to 42 percent in 2025. On paper, hybrid offers the best of both worlds: workers get flexibility without giving up face-to-face time with coworkers. But new research suggests that compromise is not always so simple. Workers have to switch between two ways of working, and companies have to manage teams that are not always in the same place.

Researchers at Drake University followed employees at three large financial services companies that chose different paths: office, remote, or hybrid. Over time, workers became more satisfied with all three choices, but feelings about hybrid work were much more likely to change. Half of the workers who preferred hybrid in 2022 had changed their minds by 2025. Some came to prefer the office, while others wanted to work fully remote. Researchers found that constantly switching between home and office can make it harder to settle into a routine. Hybrid can also lose some of its appeal when employees commute to the office only to spend the day on video calls, or when coworkers choose different office days and barely see each other anyway.

Dropbox has made an unusual choice as hybrid work spreads: it has gone all in on remote work. The technology company has been “virtual-first” since 2020 and says it has met its financial goals under the model. Most employees work remotely, and Dropbox has changed how it operates to make that work. Much of its communication happens in writing, meetings are limited to shared four-hour periods, and managers focus on whether employees meet their goals rather than whether they are sitting in an office. The approach comes with tradeoffs. Dropbox says remote work can make relationships harder to build, so employees come together at least four times a year. For Dropbox, making remote work successful has meant changing how the company works, not just where employees work.

Questions:

  1. What are some of the benefits and drawbacks of hybrid work?

  2. Do you think more companies should imitate Dropbox’s fully remote workplace? Why or why not?