Work & Economy

Does ‘work from anywhere’ really work?

Sy Boles

Harvard Staff Writer

December 9, 2025

1 min read

Take our research-based quiz to test your knowledge of office culture trends

In the years since the cataclysmic shift in office culture triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, companies of all sizes have continued to redesign their workforces for a new era. In his book “The World Is Your Office: How Work from Anywhere Boosts Talent, Productivity, and Innovation,” Prithwiraj Choudhury, former Lumry Family Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, advocates for more than working from home. He’s a proponent of working from anywhere, or WFA, going beyond a hybrid model to allow for a truly global workforce. We asked Choudhury to help us develop the following quiz based on his research.

Step 1 of 9

11%

1. What percent of working Americans work from home for some or all the time?

3%

11.5%

16.6%

21.6%

2. According to 2021 research, on average, how big a pay cut are employees willing to take in exchange for the option to work remotely at least part of the week?

4%

7%

9%

12%

3. Only white-collar jobs can be remote. True or false?

True

False

4. How much of the time should teams spend gathering to benefit from brainstorming, mentorship, and culture-building, according to Choudhury’s research?

5%

10%

25%

50%

5. To bring together its remote workforce, Cisco created a program where employees could gather in one place for months-long “workcations.” What did it call the program?

Tokyomad

Dublink

Venywhere

Lisbonline

6. GitLab, the fully remote software-as-a-service company, uses what primary strategy to overcome the challenges of not being able to walk over and tap a colleague on the shoulder with a question?

Knowledge codification

Top-down decision-making

Radical independence

Skillsharing

7. What benefits do companies get from a fully remote workforce that they miss out on with a hybrid model?

Reduced real estate costs

Access to a global hiring pool

Increased worker productivity

All of the above

8. Which of the following is not a benefit of West Virginia’s incentive program to attract remote workers?

$12,000 to relocate there for at least two years

Additional tax credits for student loan payments

Up to $2,500 worth of outdoor activities like whitewater rafting and downhill skiing

Access to a coworking space

9. Which of the following was true of “virtual water coolers” set up at one major investment bank to help remote summer interns get face time with the higher-ups?

Interns were more likely to receive job offers

Interns were more likely to receive job offers, but only if they shared the same gender and ethnicity as the managers

The interns didn’t show up

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