A better way to work

We’ve all heard that 5 days in the office is something nearly nobody wants. At least at Sonder, 98% of our non-field employees want the flexibility to at times work from anywhere. Some daring companies are going remote first, but most revert to a 2-3 days in the office "for in person collaboration". We believe that this hybrid model is misguided – at least for Sonder – and that there's a better way to work that doesn't force out those who value time in the office, nor refuses to accommodate those who love to work from anywhere.

Problems with the hybrid model

Multiple offices. Any company that scales ends up having multiple offices. Where there's a big pool of talent, costs are easily 2x what they are elsewhere. And where there's not enough talent to scale, there’s no choice but to eventually add offices in other cities (let's assume you're not lowering the bar). As a result, Sonder now has <15% of our employees in San Francisco, our HQ. The rest of our team is spread across hubs in Montreal, Denver, Dallas, London, Amsterdam and many other cities. With a team spread out across multiple cities, in-person collaboration a few days a week will look more like a few people in a conference room with a few others dialing in.

Can’t silo offices. To have true in-person collaboration without anyone dialing in, there's a belief that it's possible to have highly autonomous teams operate out of individual offices for in-person collaboration. But quickly those people end up crammed in conference rooms for nearly every meeting, when inevitably one or more people from another team/office has to dial in. And that's a best case scenario. In practice, when multiple offices or remote opportunities are open, it's too tempting to hire someone located in another city when a high-quality referral comes in. Upward and lateral movement becomes severely constrained as they often require relocation to another city. In the end, unless you operate in deep silos (practically impossible), meetings across teams happen and they will require Zoom.

Smaller talent pool. If you’re committing only to hire in cities where you have offices, you’re reducing your talent pool by a wide margin. Not only does it take longer to fill positions when you only hire in cities where you have an office, it becomes overwhelmingly difficult not to lower the bar as teams are under pressure and are forced to make offers to Bs or even Cs. Another answer is to pay significantly above market – but if your competition decides to be geography agnostic and can bring better talent at a lower cost, odds are stacked against you.

Losing most of the benefits of working from home. Forcing employees to come in on specific days is painful to those who live further away from the office and would prefer not to come in on those days. The freedom to work from other cities remotely for part of the year or on extended trips is hampered. It becomes impossible to fully benefit from the freedom that working from home provides?– whether that be the capacity to do a quick workout over lunch, benefit from a quiet work environment, picking up kids from school, or a variety of eclectic examples shared to us by our team such as regularly giving medication to a sick dog.?

More office space. How those in-person collaboration days will work is puzzling to me. It seems like everyone will have to go in on the same days because teams need to collaborate with other teams. And as we covered, those meetings will have to involve teammates dialing in. Thus the need to operate and maintain a fully sized office with a lot more conference rooms than pre-covid because those fewer days will be more concentrated in meetings than the traditional 5 day a week model. More square footage for 2-3 days a week changes the ROI equation of an office. In practice, I think what will happen is that a bunch of meetings will happen during the work from home days, because pretty much every meeting will require Zoom anyway.

The myth of in person collaboration. “In person collaboration” only works if you have one office (thus a high cost market), and it will have to be larger to accommodate more meetings (and thus conference rooms) on fewer days. But even if you’re willing to fork those formidable expenses, I don’t believe in the superiority of in-person collaboration. With the right tech stack – which could be as simple as Google Docs, Asana and Zoom, you can run creative and high impact sessions virtually. Look no further than empirical data: the last 18 months, with no preparation, have led to as much if not more company formation, launches and innovation than had been seen in the 18 months prior to the pandemic. What you cannot do well on Zoom is human connection, and that has been a real loss and the deficit has been accumulating. And while there can be some connection at the office in person, there’s a better way to build trust, relationships and connection among colleagues.

Work Choice

Today we’re announcing a better way to work, which we’ve labeled “Work Choice”. The concept is simple. Work in an office if you want to – we’ll provide them in many cities. Work from home if you want to, or from a Sonder in Mexico City for a month, or Barcelona, or Miami. I for example spent 9 months working productively from over 20 Sonders in 10 countries since March 2020. Work 5 days a week from home for the winter in Montreal, and in the office 3 times a week during the summer. It’s up to you. Just focus on delivering your commitments and hitting your goals.

To foster connection, we’ll be holding frequent offsites in Sonder cities. That way our team can frequently experience the product, meet in person for a few days and get to build real bonds over breakfast, dinner, inspiring sessions and team building activities. Our view is that this is much better and intentional than water cooler talk. But those who do want to see faces during the day and grab lunch with colleagues will be able to do so in any hub office, every day if they like.

More freedom. We know that there’s no one size fits all, for a whole host of reasons. Some people prefer working from home or from the office or from anywhere. We don’t pretend to know what’s right for each individual. Giving each individual the freedom to choose means happier employees, but also ensures that our management system focuses on the right things: delivery of roadmaps and accomplishment of OKRs, whether you’re in the office 5 days a week or never.

The largest pool of candidates. We can recruit from many of our hub offices, and even remote employees so long as they’re willing to work during our meeting hours and travel to an offsite up to once per quarter.

Lower costs. We can tap into geographies where costs are more reasonable, and don’t have to maintain huge offices for everyone – rather our offices will be smaller given that we don’t force people to come in on the same days to meet in person.

Better connection. Through frequent offsites that are intentional and focused on people getting to build better bonds with their colleagues and get inspired.

I’d like to thank our teams for tirelessly working on this solution. We couldn’t be more excited to roll it out! If this sounds like the kind of company you’d thrive in, check out our open positions – we’ve got hundreds of roles to choose from wherever you are.?