The Office is Dying. Its Time to Rethink How We Work.
Over the past year, many places have returned to something approximating a prepandemic normal. Restaurants are filling up again. Airports and hotels are packed. Even movie theaters have made a comeback. But that hasn\u2019t been the case for the office. Only about a third of office workers are back in the office full time. And that isn\u2019t likely to change dramatically any time soon: Recent surveys asked executives about the share of their workers who would be back in the office five days a week in the future. In 2021 the response was 50 percent; now it\u2019s down to 20 percent.\n\nBut the alternatives \u2014 remote and hybrid work \u2014 come with their own problems. In many cases, remote work has become synonymous with meeting fatigue, the collapse of work-life balance, overwhelming amounts of email and Slack messages and awkward attempts at social connection. And hybrid work setups often represent what some have called the worst of both work worlds: long commutes to half-empty offices, just to sit on Zoom calls all day.\n\nThat leaves office workers in what feels like a work purgatory: The office is dying, but a new, viable model of work has yet to be born. And that liminal space raises all sorts of new questions: What is the office actually for? What will the postoffice future of work look like? And if the future of work means working from home in some capacity, how do we make that future better for everyone involved?\n\n\n\nThose questions are at the center of Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel\u2019s book, \u201cOut of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working From Home.\u201d Petersen is a longtime culture writer who writes the newsletter Culture Study; Warzel is a veteran technology reporter who writes the newsletter Galaxy Brain for The Atlantic. In \u201cOut of Office\u201d they argue that the core problem with current remote and hybrid work setups is this: Workers have left the physical office, but they have taken the broken culture of the office with them. The result is widespread dysfunction but also immense opportunity: If we take this moment to rethink not only where we work but also how we work, then the possibilities are endless. \n\nMentioned:\n\u201cThe Case Against Loving Your Job\u201d by The Ezra Klein Show\n\u201cStop. Breathe. We Can\u2019t Keep Working Like This\u201d by The Ezra Klein Show\n\u201cThink Bigger About Remote Work\u201d by Adam Ozimek\n\u201cI\u2019m Worried About Chicago\u201d by Matthew Yglesias\n"The Nowhere Office" by Julia Hobsbawm\n\n\nBook Recommendations:\nIn the Age of the Smart Machine by Shoshana Zuboff\nThe Myth of the Paperless Office by Abigail J. Sellen and Richard H. R. Harper\nLiquidated by Karen Ho\nEssential Labor by Angela Garbes\n\nThis episode is guest hosted by Rog\xe9 Karma, the senior editor for \u201cThe Ezra Klein Show.\u201d Rog\xe9 has been with the show since July 2019, when it was based at Vox. He works closely with Ezra on everything related to the show, from editing to interview prep to guest selection. At Vox, he also wrote articles and conducted interviews on topics ranging from policing and racial justice to democracy reform and the coronavirus.\n\nThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.\n\nYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of \u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\u201d at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.\n\n\u200b\u200b\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\u201d is produced by Annie Galvin and Rog\xe9 Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski, Nicholas Bloom, Adam Ozimek, Julia Hobsbawm and Sheela Subramanian.