I can report from personal experience that the free food Dropbox serves at its cafeteria is dazzling even by tech-industry standards. In 2016, my former colleague John Brownlee wrote that its offices resembled “a warehouse of different classic film sets, where employees can choose the world they want to work in that day.” That was before the company signed a deal for a new 736,000-square-foot headquarters-the biggest office lease in San Francisco history. This departs from Dropbox’s past philosophy when it came to collaboration, which has involved building ever-larger and more ambitious facilities dedicated to its work and culture, then filling them with people. Except for “core collaboration hours” designed to span multiple time zones, staffers will also be free to devise their own schedules rather than sticking to anything resembling a 9-5 day.

Working from home is now the official, permanent default experience, with “Dropbox Studios” physical spaces in San Francisco and the company’s other major hubs available for in-person collaboration when necessary.

Last month, it announced that it was going virtual first, effective immediately. Even among tech companies that have reassessed everything about how they operate, Dropbox’s reaction to the pandemic has been dramatic.

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