---
title: "Modern software organizations need zero square meters of office per employee"
description: "I have heard a hypothesis that due to increased amounts of empty real estate and the huge increase of open jobs in the software industry we need to buy/rent tech hubs and office spaces ASAP."
author: "Faris Zacina"
published: 2021-11-19T17:48:32.218Z
updated: 2021-11-19T17:48:32.218Z
url: https://fariszacina.com/modern-software-workers-need-zero-square-meters-in-the-office
tags: ["Future of Work"]
---

# Modern software organizations need zero square meters of office per employee

> I have heard a hypothesis that due to increased amounts of empty real estate and the huge increase of open jobs in the software industry we need to buy/rent tech hubs and office spaces ASAP.

I have heard a hypothesis that due to increased amounts of empty real estate and the huge increase of open jobs in the software industry we need to buy/rent tech hubs and office spaces ASAP.

Supposedly, we need to buy/rent physical space upfront to address the surge of new jobs and the growth of personnel that is coming after the pandemic!

The guy that said the above said that the “standard” is to have 6–10 square meters per employee in the office.

Of course, this narrative is based on the idea that the office is still needed after the pandemic. It’s the “back to work” idea, or should I say “back to the office” idea in action.

Should we run and buy/rent 10 square meters of office space per person immediately?

My standpoint on this is pretty blunt —** the modern software worker needs zero square meters of space in the office.**

The office is completely optional for modern software organizations, with a few exceptions that are temporary in nature, mostly because of education, tooling issues, or specific jobs that still need physical space (e.g. hardware support jobs, etc.)

This is also why we are actually reducing the office space per employee at my company — slowly going towards zero.

The remote model works just fine in 95-99% of the cases, which is good enough.

I will elaborate on reasons why the office could be useful, but not essential in my future posts. It’s nice to have it (if you can afford it), but many companies in the future will choose not to have an office at all.

**We have sufficient proof that companies operated successfully without an office during the pandemic. The initial experiment succeeded.**

Have we observed flaws in the process? Yes.

Are the remote work tools perfect? No.

Can we use insights and learnings from the mass remote work experiment to improve how we work remotely? Yes.

We need to evolve the remote-only and remote-first models and make the office very optional for everyone while increasing knowledge, improving the tools and processes of remote work.

Embrace remote. The trend is your friend.

…

***Disclaimer****: The text above contains my personal opinions aimed to spark interesting conversations and to learn from others that have similar or opposing thoughts and opinions in a civilized debate.*

*I would like to hear from you in the comments!*

*Originally published on [Medium](https://medium.com/@FarisZacina/modern-software-workers-need-zero-square-meters-in-the-office-3f058bee759).*