In 2025, the world of work is still intensely debating remote, hybrid, and in-person work models.
The pandemic accelerated the adoption of remote work—which, for many, was nothing new. But now, many companies are reassessing their strategies, opting for hybrid models or returning to in-person work, especially since the pandemic officially ended in May 2023.
But what would be the ideal model?
That answer is complex and depends on several factors. If you’re an employee or a business owner, it’s natural for your opinions and interests regarding work models to differ. However, more than your position or set of responsibilities, what really matters in this choice are your personal preferences.
There’s no one-size-fits-all formula—and proof of that is the fact that, post-pandemic, several globally renowned companies made important moves regarding their work models:
Amazon: Since January 2025, it requires employees to work five days a week in the office, with CEO Andy Jassy emphasizing the importance of in-person interaction for learning and innovation.
Apple: Since 2022, it has adopted a hybrid model with at least three in-office days per week, valuing physical collaboration to maintain company culture.
Disney: Implemented a four-day in-office hybrid model, with CEO Bob Iger arguing that creativity and professional development are more effective in person.
Meta: Requires three in-office days per week, aiming to improve collaboration and efficiency after staff reductions.
Dell: Returning to full in-person work for those living near a headquarters, highlighting the importance of collaboration for fast problem-solving.
In Brazil, companies like the fintech Smart Save and Estúdio Jacarandá also chose to return to in-person work, aiming to strengthen culture and team interaction.
Additionally, Itaú, Bradesco, Santander, Banco do Brasil, and Caixa Econômica Federal adopted hybrid models, with most employees working in the office a few days a week.
Nubank follows an even more flexible model, requiring only one week of in-person work per quarter, which broadens access to talent across Brazil and enables a strong culture even with distributed teams.
These examples show that choosing the ideal model isn’t a binary decision—and as the title already suggests, between remote or in-person work, hybrid can be the worst of them. So let’s explore the reasoning behind this statement.
Remote work
Remote work—famously known as “home office”—offers many advantages for both workers and companies. Here are four major apparent advantages of remote work:
Flexibility: Employees can better manage their time, adjusting work hours to their personal needs.
Commuting: It saves time and money, and reduces stress related to traffic. You could even say this has a significant environmental impact.
Autonomy: Employees have more control over their work environment and can choose how and where to work, fostering accountability and independence.
Costs: Companies can save on office rent, administrative expenses, furniture, cleaning, and many other physical space costs. There are also savings in employee benefits like transportation and parking.
However, remote work also presents significant challenges. Just as we listed four benefits, here are four main challenges:
Isolation: Lack of interaction with colleagues can lead to feelings of loneliness and disconnection. Studies show social isolation is strongly linked to emotional and even physical illnesses.
Work-life boundary: Referring to the AppleTV series “Severance,” working and living in the same physical space makes it hard to separate personal and professional life. Many struggle to stay fully focused during work hours—or disconnect after them.
Problem-solving: Studies show that remote work without a strong culture and internal communication process has had a negative impact on productivity, especially in solving everyday issues.
Culture: Building and maintaining company culture can suffer without in-person interaction. Remote work requires a smart, effective approach to fostering a simple, strong culture with well-defined rituals.
In-person work
Contrary to what was said during the pandemic, the so-called “New Normal” quickly turned out to be just a “Temporary Common.” The traditional in-person model—where employees work in physical offices—has shown its clear advantages. Here are four of them:
Interaction: Facilitates spontaneous idea exchanges and stronger team bonds. Many great ideas come from a coffee break conversation. This people-to-people interaction is a big advantage of the in-person model.
Structure: Offices offer suitable, equipped workspaces. Generally, this includes fast internet, clean restrooms, available coffee and water, and ergonomically appropriate furniture.
Supervision: Managers often prefer the whole team together—it simplifies supervision. Much of this comes from “reading the room” and informal interactions within the formal work setting. It’s worth noting that most managers today started working in more analog times, and the pandemic-driven digital leap didn’t result in a full cultural transformation.
Communication: Communication involves more than just spoken and written language. Body language has a major impact, especially in sales or complex problem-solving environments.
Still, full in-person work has significant challenges. Here are four of them:
Commute: In Brazil’s major cities, commute times can exceed two hours a day. This burden is even worse for lower-income roles, where workers often live far from the city center, and rely on public transportation. Two hours may not be the average—it’s sometimes the minimum per leg.
Rigidity: Personal routines can suffer in a 100% in-person setup. Taking kids to school, attending doctor appointments, or fitting in the gym become difficult. In some cases, even planning ahead doesn’t solve it.
Well-being: Time spent commuting and the high cost of services in central areas affect employee health and finances.
Salaries: Like any market relation, hiring costs are impacted by supply and demand. Hiring a professional to work in an office on São Paulo’s Paulista Avenue is significantly more expensive than hiring someone in a smaller town working remotely.
Hybrid work
When a company chooses a hybrid model, it blends remote and in-person elements, allowing employees to alternate between working from home and the office.
Although often seen as the ideal middle ground, hybrid work has proven to be a trap for many companies—not because of the concept itself, but because of how poorly it’s implemented (or not implemented at all). It often inherits the worst of both extremes.
The article’s title wasn’t just a clickbait—it’s a warning for you to rethink not just your personal beliefs about work, but to dig deeper into a more nuanced conclusion.
Hybrid work can be the worst—or best—model. At my company, we follow the hybrid model—and we don’t plan to change it.
Here are the 5 main challenges that leaders (including us at Yellow) have faced:
1. Apparent flexibility, hidden rigidity
The narrative is one of freedom: “employees choose when to go to the office.” In practice, that autonomy is often fake. Teams are expected to show up on certain days—without that being openly stated. This disconnect erodes trust and frustrates everyone.
2. Ambiguity in rules and relationships
Unlike remote or in-person setups with clearer expectations, hybrid often plunges the organization into a gray zone. No one knows exactly which days require in-office presence or why. Rituals break down, teams create their own dynamics, and culture becomes fragmented and hard to scale.
3. Invisible, growing inequality
Those who frequent the office more often have greater informal access to leadership, participate in more strategic projects, and receive more growth opportunities. Those mostly remote can feel (and be) excluded from decision-making. This invisible bias is dangerous precisely because it’s subtle.
4. Operational complexity disguised as simplicity
Managing a hybrid model requires deliberate process design, communication, and alignment. Without proper planning, what seems “light” becomes a logistical nightmare.
5. Forced engagement, artificial culture
Companies trying to preserve “office culture” often push for in-person days with no clear purpose. The result: employees show up physically, but emotionally checked out. Presence becomes an obligation, not a bonding moment. Over time, culture becomes superficial—based on presence, not purpose.
So why do thousands of companies—including Yellow—still use the hybrid model?
Because, when done right, it can combine the best of both worlds: the flexibility of remote work and the connection of in-person collaboration. But it requires a departure from improvisation and a leap in organizational maturity.
How to maintain balance
Here’s what we’ve done to make the hybrid model work—and why we’ve chosen it as the best model for us:
Clarity of purpose: the “why” comes before the “how”
Mature companies don’t start with the calendar (“Tuesdays and Thursdays in the office”), but with purpose: why do we need in-person time? What do we do in person that can’t be done remotely?
Once that question is answered, the model is built around it. Presence stops being an obligation and becomes meaningful—like building bonds, resolving complex issues, or designing strategies together. Then, a clear calendar is developed that reflects company expectations. Over time, people form bonds and voluntarily align their in-office days for meetings or even casual hangouts.
