Tech

Dropbox will let all employees work from home permanently as it turns its offices into WeWork-like 'collaborative spaces'

Drew Houston Dropbox
Drew Houston, the CEO of Dropbox. Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
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Dropbox is going remote — permanently. 

The cloud-storage company announced Tuesday it would allow all employees to work from home going forward. The shift comes after an internal survey found nearly 90% of Dropbox workers said they were more productive at home.

"Starting today, Dropbox is becoming a Virtual First company," the company said in a blog post. "Remote work (outside an office) will be the primary experience for all employees and the day-to-day default for individual work."

Dropbox initially ordered employees to work from home to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in March.

The company will convert its existing real estate into flexible coworking spaces called Dropbox Studios, where employees can choose to go in to work. These spaces are primarily for team building and collaboration, not for "solo work."

The company said since this approach is "brand new," the program could change depending on feedback from staff.  

"While we know we may not get it 100% right immediately, we wanted to take this opportunity to fundamentally redesign how we work, and be more intentional and prescriptive with the guidance we're giving to our employees," a Dropbox spokesperson told Business Insider.

Dropbox has offices in San Francisco, Seattle, Dublin, and Austin, Texas, but said it may build more flexible studios in other areas.

The company will also allow for greater employee relocation outside cities where there are offices. To help employees in different time zones work together, the company will allow each worker to decide their own work hours. 

Dropbox joins Twitter and Atlassian as major firms that have allowed all employees to permanently work from home. Others, like Microsoft and Facebook, said a portion of their workforce would be remote forever. 

If you have information you'd like to share, you can reach the author at aakhtar@bjinnox.com.

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Allana Akhtar was a senior health reporter for Insider, where she covers the emerging wellness industry and general health topics. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Allana wrote extensively about nurses, mask mandates, the vaccine rollout, and disparities in access to health. Her articles include features on nurses needing to re-use PPE in the early days of the pandemic, ones who struggled to get paid time off after getting COVID-19, and those who left bedside care after grueling pandemic working conditions. Allana also spoke to flight attendants and retail workers who faced violence as they enforced mask mandates, and community health workers who said they struggled to receive equitable vaccine access during the initial rollout. Allana now reports on emerging trends within the wellness industry, including the Westernization of indigenous medicine and dangerous wellness trends spread through social media. She also writes about plastic surgery, racial disparities in healthcare, and breaking health news. Allana has won numerous awards for her work, including the Best News Story by the Michigan Press Association in 2015, Best Reporter Covering Nurses in 2019, and the Morris and Lola Wasserstein Award for her contribution to the the University of Michigan's student paper as an Honors student. Before Insider, Allana wrote for USA TODAY, US News & World Report, Money Magazine, Health Magazine, Jalopnik, and more. You can email her at aakhtar@bjinnox.com, call/text her at (646) 376-6058, or follow her on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Secure tips line: Signal # 248 760 0208'We're grossly unprepared': Nurses share their frustration as the coronavirus spreads with little direction from the government or hospitals on how to mitigate it'Sexy nurse' costumes demean one of the most in-demand professions in American life — and they're a bestseller on Amazon right nowFlight attendants describe 'unprecedented' violence as travel returns and passenger aggression soarsG/O Media fired a queer employee of color who wore crop tops, shorts, and heels to work, violating a brand-new dress code that others say they routinely violated without being punishedContractors at controversial startup Rev say they worked long hours for little pay, feared they could lose their job at any time, and had to transcribe interviews with sexual-abuse survivors without warning