Returning to office at Microsoft, three days a week

Today, many of us in the Puget Sound area returned to the Microsoft office three days a week. As this new rhythm takes shape, I wanted to share what I’ve been thinking about.

When COVID hit in March 2020, work didn’t just change where it happened. It changed how opportunity showed up. Over the years that followed, the question stopped being remote versus in office and became something more nuanced: how do we use both well to do our best work?

Remote work kept things moving. It expanded what was possible and removed proximity as a prerequisite for opportunity. It gave me room to move into a new career in marketing, build confidence, and find my voice as a default introvert. Some of my biggest career moments, including launching Copilot Studio happened from my home office.

I was hired into Marketing through Microsoft Teams interviews and moved to the United States 4.5 years ago on an exception flight that was about 10% full, arriving to a closed campus and meeting my team through a screen. I remember picturing the day we’d collaborate in person, whiteboard ideas, learn by osmosis, and feel the energy of incredibly talented people working together.

While the campus has been open again for some time, with updated flexible work expectations, Microsoft is now setting a clearer baseline: three days a week in the office, starting in Puget Sound, with an emphasis on making in-person time intentional and impactful. That framing matters to me. It acknowledges we’re not trying to rewind the clock. We’re trying to take the best of what we learned in a remote-first world and combine it with the benefits of being together.

I’ve already felt the upside. The brief hallway conversations. Talking through blockers in real time. Whiteboarding instead of scheduling another call. Things that can take much longer in a fully remote setting.

Here’s what I’m noticing: I’m genuinely excited to spend more time working with my team in person, and I’m also mindful of how we thoughtfully adapt the remote habits we’ve built over the years to an office setting.

With remote work, we optimized our calendars. We stack meetings. We remove friction. Going back means rethinking how we use time, how we plan our days, and how intentional we are when we’re together. It also means accounting for commutes and even walking between meeting rooms.

I’m excited to take what we’ve learned over the last few years and be deliberate about how we split the week to support different kinds of work. I’m thinking of it like a design problem. Each week includes three kinds of work:

• Build: deep focus and protected uninterrupted work.
• Collaborate: live decision making, co-creation, whiteboards.
• Learn: mentorship and relationship building.

My plan is to use in-person days for the work that benefits from proximity and protect remote time for focus.

I’m curious how others have approached the shift from remote-first habits into a more hybrid rhythm. What have habits have you decided to keep, and what are you intentionally changing?

For those interested, Microsoft shared more context on our updated flexible work approach here: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2025/09/09/flexible-work-update/

You can learn about the campus here: From Redmond to the world & LinkedIn post about the campus.