I’m a manager at a FAANG company—-resigning in a few weeks!—-and I previously small startup that was distributed (though we had an office too). So I’ve seen the good and bad of both remote work and in-person offices, and at opposite ends of the company size scale.

I’ll possibly start another company at some point, and here’s a remote work policy I’ve thinking about:

- Employees live wherever they want

- People need to commit to being reachable a certain number of hours per day, overlapping with a selected USA time zone

- Company maintains an office in an accessible-but-affordable location capable of housing the entire company at one time

- Require in-person attendance for one week every X weeks — where X might be small early in the company’s life (like 4, so one week/month) when iteration must be fast and X might be higher (like one week every 6, 8 or 12 weeks) in later stages.

- The in-person attendance week would be for the whole company, and everyone would be there at the same time. The selected week would be announced with sufficient advance notice so people can plan their lives

- Provide limited in-office perks, instead focusing on wellbeing subsidies for gyms, outdoor activities, and other self-care, etc that can be used anywhere

- Provide a per-day stipend to *every employee in the company* for each day that the whole company is required to be in office. For example if in a month there are 5 “in office days”, maybe everyone gets $100-150/day = $500-750 added to their pay check. No expensing for the travel beyond the stipend

- No location-based pay adjustments, just market rate for remote roles (including attractive to Bay Area/NYC talent)

Reasoning:

- Work that gets done is the important measure. How it gets done is the employee's choice.

- The stipend aligns company incentives with employee incentives -- more days in office costs the company more

- Try to not favor either local or remote employees with pay, perks, etc

- Reason for stipend instead of expensing: level the playing field for location; if an employee wants to live close to the office and save the money, that’s their choice. If they want to live in a hard-to-get-to location but pay more for travel, that’s also their choice.

This is based on my beliefs that:
- Full in-office is too limiting — we all know that much work can be done from home much of the time, people want to live in different places, etc. I certainly enjoy the flexibility myself

- Fully remote all the time does reduce iteration speed and collaboration that’s crucial for innovation (especially in an early stage company). There’s still no substitute for a whiteboarding session. It also does reduce social bonding, team culture, etc. But that doesn't mean it needs to be every day. Periodic in-person sessions followed by a few weeks to "get stuff done" seems to balance the objectives.

- The “Hybrid” plans many companies propose (a few times in office per week) don’t make sense. They still force people to live near a particular office, within commuting distance, and with a routine that mostly looks like a full in-office one. And even if the days are synchronized, these policies still seem more like “butts in seats” pseudo-management than actively trying to promote collaboration with an intentional goal of getting stuff done

I'm still thinking on this; any feedback would be welcome