Paul Doran, a health care salesman, dreads the thought of commuting back to his office in Manhattan after 19 months of working from home in Jersey City, N.J.
But Mr. Doran, 33, also wants a break from overhearing his fiancée’s calls and a better place to meet with clients than the local Starbucks. So he signed up for Daybase, a new company that is opening several co-working spaces, including in Hoboken, close to his apartment.
“It would take a couple more zeros on the paycheck,” he said, “to get me back to commuting into Manhattan four or five days a week.”
More than a year and a half ago, the coronavirus pandemic triggered an unprecedented disruption to the daily routines of office work, keeping millions of employees in their homes.
Now, as the pandemic crawls into a second year, the future of work is still up in the air as many companies have embraced a hybrid model, allowing employees to split their workweek between the office and home, with little clarity about the timing of a mandatory return.
In this uncertainty, a growing number of start-ups are betting that the pandemic has spawned a new kind of worker — one who will not be commuting into a central business district five days a week, but would still desire occasional office space closer to home for a distraction-free environment.