most employees have no concept how much space costs and the fact you need to plan for growth and make major outlays with maybe a decade of financial commitment to provide that space.

In our case, most days 75% of the space sat around empty while everyone was out serving clients. We were adding floors every other year and profit and partner payouts were plummeting mostly due to increased expenses.

Two years of no partner bonuses meant there was a lot of focus on cost reduction...which meant no more space and looking at more flexible work arrangements, which the younger staff were asking for anyways.