Need an update on back-to-office plans? A business that feeds tech workers for a living might give you a clue: Sweetgreen said this week that it’s losing money because people aren’t going back to in-person work, and the company needs to lay off some staff as a result.

Unfortunately for Sweetgreen, tech workers might never come back.

Companies are getting rid of their office space across the board. What used to be a conversation about “when we go back” is now more like “if we go back at all.”

• Twitter vacated or downsized its offices in New York, San Francisco and elsewhere and scrapped plans to build a new office in Oakland. Employees there aren’t being laid off; they’re just working from home.
• Between the start of the pandemic and now, at least 43 companies have subleased, downsized, sold or let their office leases expire, according to a running list compiled by Buildremote. Salesforce, Uber, Pinterest and others are on that list.

So what happens next? People who haven’t gone back to the office yet probably won’t anytime soon.

• We may also see much more downsizing in the next few years. According to commercial real estate firm CBRE’s Spring 2022 Occupier Sentiment Survey, a little more than half of companies plan to cut down on office space in the next three years because of remote work and space efficiency.
• Office occupancy floated around 44% over the past four months, according to Kastle Systems’ workplace occupancy barometer, indicating that the office-goers will continue to go to the office, and the people who haven't yet gone back to the office probably never will.

Still, calling office life entirely “over” might be a stretch. Let’s not forget about Google’s shiny new Manhattan office, which it built last year. But the idea of a “back to normal” return to the office is all but gone fading fast, and companies need adjust to the new reality.

— Sarah Roach