Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home

If you think you're working from home during the pandemic, Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen are here to tell you otherwise. What we're doing right now is something else, a jury-rigged compromise made under the duress of a national crisis that's satisfactory for neither the worker nor the employer. But they also see that the past few months have revealed that there may be another way to go to work on a more permanent basis, one that doesn't involve hellish daily commutes and the demands of jampacked work schedules that no longer make sense for our time. As a society we have talked for decades about flexible work arrangements, and, as the authors make clear, we may finally be at an inflection point where this becomes possible for almost everyone.

Out of Office combines groundbreaking reporting and the couple's first-person experiences after they made the decision to leave their desk jobs in New York City for Montana. They describe how workers and employers across America, and around the world, are finding new ways of working that make people happier and more productive, and companies more profitable. This is a book that aims to reshape our entire relationship to the office, and outline a path toward a new kind of work-life balance that can improve our lives and strengthen our communities.