The Carpool CEO: The Day LinkedIn Decided I Hate Remote Work

A few weeks ago, I posted a photo of someone working from Starbucks. Within a few hours, it had more than 55,000 views and over 100 comments. Then I deleted it. You could unintentionally see the person's face, and no amount of LinkedIn engagement is worth invading someone's privacy. But before I took it down, something unexpected happened.

A surprising number of people concluded that I was anti-remote work. Which was news to me, since I've spent the last decade building a company around the idea that people shouldn't have to commute to a headquarters every day.

For the record, I am not anti-remote work. I’m very pro-remote work. But I'm also not pro-spending eight hours in Starbucks next to someone ordering their fourth shaken espresso of the day while you're presenting a quarterly forecast. Both things can be true.

The funny part is that the debate was never really about working from Starbucks. It was about work at large. More specifically, it was about the fact that we're still trying to figure out what work is supposed to look like now.

The False Choice

Somewhere along the way, we've convinced ourselves that there are only two options for professionals:

• Work from home
• Work from an office

Pick a side and defend it aggressively. Maybe even argue with strangers on LinkedIn about it. But that binary doesn’t work. Most people's lives don't actually fit cleanly into just one of those options.

Take me for example. As CEO of Workbar, I don't work from a headquarters. (In fact, Workbar doesn't even have one.) Instead, I work from Workbar locations across Greater Boston throughout the week. One day, I might work from Downtown Boston. Another, you’ll find me working from the suburbs. I have worked from conference rooms, coworking spaces, and occasionally even my parked car.

But that’s only a snapshot. I've also taken calls from ski lodges and reviewed budgets from school parking lots. Answered emails from lacrosse tournaments and closed deals from places that would make most workplace consultants deeply uncomfortable. If anyone is carrying the remote work flag, it's me. I live remote work.

Which is why I found the reaction to that Starbucks photo so interesting. People immediately assumed that if I questioned one version of flexible work, I must be advocating for the opposite extreme. But that's never been what I believe.

Remote Work Doesn't Mean Working From Home

This is where I think the conversation gets stuck. Remote work does not mean working from home. Remote work means having the flexibility to work where you are most productive. Sometimes that's home. Sometimes it's a corporate office. Sometimes it's a coworking space. Sometimes it's a conference room. Sometimes it's a coffee shop.

When I became a parent, I became increasingly aware of how many talented people were being forced to make unnecessary tradeoffs such as long commutes and rigid schedules. For caregivers, parents, and especially women, those tradeoffs often become career-limiting. I don't think they should have to be. My mission has never been to convince people to work from coworking spaces (although everyone should). My mission is to create places where people can work close to where they live and play, without working from home being the only option. That's a very different thing.

The point is that people should have options—which is the entire reason Workbar exists.

What the Starbucks Debate Really Revealed

The reason the post resonated wasn't because of Starbucks. It resonated because millions of people are living in the messy middle where they're not fully remote or fully in office. They're piecing together a work life that fits around school pickups, client meetings, team gatherings, sports schedules, doctor's appointments, and everything else that comes with being a working professional.

Now coffee shops are offices, cars are phone booths, and kitchen tables are headquarters. But none of this existed at scale ten years ago. We're living through one of the biggest workplace shifts in modern history, and we're still trying to figure out what that means. That's why conversations about remote work turn into a debate where people feel they need to pick a side—we’re arguing about how work should fit into our lives.

What Workbar Actually Believes

People often assume that return-to-office mandates are bad for Workbar. They're not at all. In fact, many of our members work for companies that have traditional office headquarters. But the reality is that most people don't want to spend five days a week in a corporate office or five days a week working from home. The sweet spot is somewhere in between.

Maybe they go into headquarters one or two days a week for team meetings, collaboration, and culture. Maybe they work from a Workbar location one or two days a week because it's close to home, productive, and free from household distractions. Maybe they work from home, a coffee shop, or wherever life takes them for the remaining days.

That's what modern work actually looks like—flexible. Most people want access to multiple workplaces and the flexibility to choose the right one based on what they need to accomplish that day. That's why I've never viewed headquarters, remote work, and coworking as competitors. They're all part of the same modern-day work ecosystem.

When we take sides in the debate between work from home vs. work from an office, we’re choosing between two bad options. At Workbar, we believe there is a better way to approach the future of work. We're building for the reality that work is no longer tied to a single location or a single working style.

The future of work isn't working at home or office headquarters. And it's probably not a dual-monitor setup in the corner of Starbucks either. The future of work is having options—and it's an entirely different way of thinking about work altogether.