Do you have a ‘story’?

As someone who worked full time in the office for 24 years and has now worked full time from home for nearly 21 – always, in both periods, on the staff – I can see both sides of the argument. But I do think the sequence matters. I would have had no idea how to work for my employers if I had begun at home. Indeed, the entire concept of a newspaper then – and even, to a large extent, now – depends on its collective capacity to find, write and edit news fast. Much of that stimulus comes from being in the same building. On Monday, Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, wrote a longish letter to all employees about work methods. He praised his company’s ‘culture’, but asked whether it is best set up to ‘invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other’. He thinks it isn’t, partly because people are not in the office enough.