I love people and the energy and connection found at the office, yet my company has just gone all-in on a remote-first workplace model. After years of resisting it, I got on board because the way work happens has changed. I realized that to build the company we need to become, we needed to adapt.
I haven’t stopped believing in the value of people being together, so what shifted for me? Driving to an off-campus appointment in the middle of the day, I saw Silicon Valley traffic so backed up that I realized employees were already restructuring their workdays around commutes.
I’ve noticed people arriving around 10:00 am and leaving around 2:30 pm to avoid traffic, while also trying to manage personal and work commitments. When I got back to my office after my appointment, the parking lot was sparse. When I left, there was not much traffic. I asked myself: “Why can’t we get people to stay and actually build connections?” It was clear to me that the office model we had been using was not necessarily improving productivity or employee experience.
The decision to pivot to remote-first was not anti-office; it was a recognition that the old rhythm of office work no longer matched the rhythm of employees’ lives or the needs of the business. We’re also in the process of radically rethinking our next chapter, we have a flatter and leaner organizational structure, and we are on our way to becoming an AI-native company.
I have always believed that if you want people to trust you as a leader, and work smarter and faster for your company, you need to listen to them. People’s lives have changed since COVID, when remote work first really took hold, and they are not going to go back to the old way of working in the office. So we changed.
BEYOND THE HYBRID TUG OF WAR
The 2026 workplace market is not moving uniformly in one direction. Many employers are tightening office requirements, but hybrid remains dominant. Cisco’s 2025 Global Hybrid Work Study showed a global trend toward increased office work, yet 63% of respondents said they’d take a pay cut for the choice to work remotely more of the time.
I believe the question every leader should ask is whether the company’s workplace model helps people do their best work. For me, the answer to that question had become harder to ignore. About half of our workforce was already remote. The other half was expected to come into offices if they lived within a 45-mile radius of our two flagship locations in Draper, Utah or San Jose, California.
We were effectively trying to manage three different realities—the Draper office, the San Jose office, and the remote team. It created an awkward divide where people near a campus felt forced to commute, while others weren’t. It wasn’t fair, and it certainly wasn’t the best way to get our work done.
We needed a clearer, more consistent model built around flexibility, accountability, and intentional connection. For any company to thrive in the AI era, you have to be honest about what’s working.
3 QUESTIONS EVERY LEADER SHOULD BE ASKING
I keep coming back to a few fundamental questions.
- Are we prioritizing seats or meaningful results? Physical presence can be valuable, but it’s not the same as connection or impact. If employees are coming to the office only to sit in on video calls, the company might not be getting the value it expects from office time. If some employees are spending several hours a day commuting, you can give back that time to help make them more productive at work, and happier in their personal lives. Physical presence should not be a proxy for performance.
- How can we be intentional about connection? Remote-first does not mean remote-only. In-person time should be purposeful and designed to strengthen trust, alignment, and creativity. At BILL, local employees can still use offices in our smaller footprint for monthly company meetings, manager/team working sessions, or other deliberate connection points. We plan to bring the entire company together once a year, likely for a beginning-of-year kickoff.
- Does the work model address the competition for talent? Remote-first supports and broadens access to talent and enables a more flexible, modern operating model. You can recruit anywhere rather than being constrained by local hiring markets.
I still believe connection matters. For me, the broadest lesson is that as leaders we need to be willing to revisit assumptions. This shift is different from pandemic-era remote work. It’s intentional, and not a temporary state.
René Lacerte is CEO and founder of Bill.