Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, who recently announced that employees can work from home forever, calls the office “anachronistic in shape” and “from a pre-digital era.”

• Brian Chesky recently announced that Airbnb will allow employees to work remotely forever without losing pay.

• In an interview for Time’s The Leadership Brief, the CEO said, “The office as we know it is finished.”

• He also explained why he thought the three-day office hybrid model was flawed.

For Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, working in the office is now a relic of the past.

In an interview for Time’s The Leadership Brief published on Sunday, Chesky said he believed the desktop was “an anachronistic form” that was “from a pre-digital era.” His comments came after Airbnb announced it would let employees work remotely forever without a pay cut, citing the opportunity to expand its talent pool and adding that the company had its most productive two-year streak in its history while working remotely.

“I think the office as we know it is over,” he told Time. “We can’t try to keep 2019 more than 1950. We have to move on.”

He continued, “If the office didn’t exist, I like to ask, would we invent it? And if we invented it, what would it be used for? going to go to cafes and work again – those spaces just make sense. But I think for someone whose work is on a laptop, the question is, well, what’s the use of a desk?”

Chesky said shortly after announcing that Airbnb would go entirely remote, the company’s careers page received more 800,000 views.

In January, Chesky said he was “living on Airbnb”, working in different cities in the United States. In his Time Sunday interview, he acknowledged that there would still be a need for offices, but he concluded that “the office has to do something that a house cannot do”.

“People will still go to offices, but it will be for different purposes, for collaborative spaces,” he said.

Chesky told Time that working 100% remotely could diversify hiring since employees could be based anywhere, but it could also make some employees feel isolated from their colleagues and the company.

The story continues

Although he said a compromise was needed, he believed there were flaws in the common hybrid work model of having office workers work three days a week, which companies such as Google and Apple use.

Airbnb’s alternative to this model is for employees to meet face-to-face approximately one week per quarter.

“My prediction is that three days a week becomes two days a week, and two days a week becomes one day a week, and pretty soon are you really in a hybrid world, or are you mostly a remote world?” he said. “People don’t realize that this two, three day a week thing isn’t super sustainable. People are going to realize, ‘OK, let’s be more intentional about when people come together. And let’s come together during a week or two at a time.’ “

Read the original article at Business Intern