The Office Lease and Going Fully Remote Link to heading

Another domino falls in the acquisition transition. Our office lease came up for renewal this week, and unsurprisingly, we’re not renewing. With the company being absorbed over the next five months, there’s no point in signing another year-long commitment. We’re officially 100% work from home now.

The Make Good Link to heading

My last trip to the office was on a Saturday, and it wasn’t sentimental; it was practical. Everyone else had already cleared out their spaces during the week. I showed up with my vehicle and trailer (a holdover from my days before returning to software) to handle the furniture removal for the make good. The lease required the space to be returned to bare bones by Monday.

It was a small office to begin with; we’d been hotdesking with BYO laptops and company-provided monitors, keyboards, and mice. At most, we’d have 10 people in at once. Now it was just me, loading up desks and chairs, disconnecting the last of the equipment, stripping it back to an empty shell.

Alex, my boss, showed up with his kids to help with the final clean. We vacuumed, wiped down surfaces, patched the few holes in the walls where monitors had been mounted. By lunch, we were done. The office was officially “made good”; just another empty commercial space ready for the next tenant.

The Remote Reality Link to heading

Truth is, we’d been mostly remote since March 2020 anyway. The office had become more of a symbolic anchor than a practical necessity. Some folks came in once or twice a week, but most of us had settled into our home office routines. The lease renewal was really just forcing us to acknowledge what had already happened; we’d evolved beyond needing a physical space.

The transition to fully remote has been surprisingly smooth. Our tooling was already cloud-based, our communication happened primarily through Slack and video calls, and we’d proven over the past two years that we could be just as productive from home. Maybe more so, without the commute.

Leadership That Made the Difference Link to heading

But here’s what I’ll miss most about this transition: working under genuinely exceptional leadership. I know everyone says they have a great boss when things are going well, but I genuinely believe I’ll be hard pressed to find a boss as good as the one I’ll be leaving behind.

This is someone who:

  • Always had our backs, even when it meant pushing back on unreasonable demands
  • Gave credit generously and took responsibility when things went wrong
  • Understood the technology deeply enough to make informed decisions
  • Trusted the team to do our jobs without micromanaging
  • Made the acquisition process as transparent as legally possible
  • Fought for the six-month transition period to give everyone time to land softly

During the lease discussion, they even offered to personally cover a coworking space membership for anyone who missed having an office environment. That’s the kind of thoughtfulness that defined their leadership style.

What We’re Actually Losing Link to heading

The office was never the heart of our culture; we were too small and too distributed for that. But we did have our rhythms:

  • Monthly Friday lunches where we’d actually talk face-to-face
  • Informal meetings when someone had a problem that was easier to solve in person
  • The option to come in when home was too distracting
  • A physical address that made us feel like a “real” company

The truth is, most of us won’t miss the commute or the hotdesking setup. But there was value in having a space to gather when needed, even if we rarely used it.

Looking Forward Link to heading

As we enter this fully remote phase for our remaining months together, I’m trying to be intentional about maintaining connections, but its not going to be the same as grabbing lunch together, but it’s something.

The irony isn’t lost on me that just as remote work has become completely normalised in tech, I’m about to be job hunting. My next role will likely be remote-first or hybrid, and I’ll be comparing every future manager to the standard set by my current one. That’s a high bar; perhaps impossibly high.

The Practical Reality Link to heading

Helping with the make good was oddly fitting; using skills from my pre-software days to close out this chapter. There’s something honest about being the one with the truck and trailer, doing the physical work of shutting down a business. No ceremony, no farewell drinks, just loading furniture and vacuuming carpets on a Saturday morning.

The office closure is just another practical step in the acquisition process. We’ve been effectively remote for two years, the lease was up, and paying for unused space made no sense. Simple business logic.

But Alex showing up with his kids to help clean? That’s the kind of boss he is. Even in the mundane task of meeting lease obligations, he was there, making sure it got done right. That’s the leadership I’ll miss; not the grand gestures, but the Saturday morning vacuum runs, the thoughtful check-ins, the quiet competence.

I’ll be hard pressed to find another boss like that.

Have you experienced the transition from office to fully remote work? What did you miss most about having a physical workspace?