@richardesigns true...video calls are exhausting. Wonder if people would choose to commute to an office over working remotely for the long term though. A hybrid approach seems to be a possible outcome in the long term.

@richardesigns @exopaul @dhruv_bhatia great point, I've been thinking about that also. Humans are social animals and there's only so much distancing we can tolerate. The short-term trends are easier to point out here but the long term trend is the one I'm truly interested in. If we define what's currently happening as the trend of "distancing" and what happened prior to COVID as "normal" will the long-term situation be somewhere in the middle or skewed in a certain direction? In which direction and by how much?

@richardesigns @exopaul @dhruv_bhatia ok here is a theory. 1 day on, 4 days off. That is to say, 1 day in person to get all the meetings done and 4 days head down, delivering takes you to the end of the week. Probably suited to jobs where work needs to get delivered against a brief. This is my experience so couldn't theorise on other office roles such as support where I imagine synchronous communication is more relevant more of the time. If you had a shared office between five companies, they could each have a day each!

@richardesigns @exopaul @dhruv_bhatia That is a good thought about shared offices. They could almost work in the same way that a Hotel works, in that rooms and facilities could be booked by the day. It might offset a lot of the expenses of the building if several companies split the costs and could make use of them at their own times of need rather than full time. Just book time slots when you need the boardroom for presentations, interviews or meetings with customers, or a training room for staff training days, and have one reception desk for multiple companies that can answer general "at the door" enquiries or accept deliveries.

@abewinter so too many meetings caused due to remote work which will make it hard to book meetings? Will critical org functions like Sales stay somewhat remote too?

@abewinter @dhruv_bhatia anecdotally, the sales-focused people I talk to *love* remote work. They're psyched to travel again and see clients but they see zero reason to be in the office every day. They love video because it allows them to talk to more people more cheaply, but also recognize what alex danco calls 'positional scarcity' i.e. you can get more attention by being physically present. Sales will have a hybrid of remote meetings + client-site meeting, but won't be in a rush to return to their own office.