Bosses are fed up with remote work for 4 main reasons
finance.yahoo.comSo let's review these "4 main reasons":
#1: "As a boss, I can't effectively mentor remote employees so they're the problem"
#2: "As a boss, I can't make an effective plan for hybrid work so remote work is the problem"
#3: "As a boss, I don't want my people getting too much leisure or sleep so I need them to waste more of their day commuting"
#4: "I heard from literally one guy that remote work was bad for productivity"
The last one is flat-out anecdote and even the article's author admits it. The other three are BOSS problems, not remote-work problems.
I get it, and I sympathize with bosses wanting reports to be in the general vicinity of them during working hours.
But as housing and other costs increase quickly and continually push workers further and further out, it's really not fair for bosses to expect that their workers are going to want to commute longer and longer distances for no additional pay, and zero personal benefit.
Personally, I think the hybrid approach is the best - there needs to be times when teams are together physically, and times when teams and individual contributors (in any domain, not just tech or engineering) when people should be trusted to work - and that should be wherever a given employee is able to do their best work. If that's in the office, great. If that's at a coffee shop, great. If that's at home, great. Let everyone do their best work when, where and how they are able to.
Remote first with quarterly or less get togethers seems infrequently discussed, but I think that works pretty well. A hybrid where even one day a week is expected basically is in-office limiting.
The marketplace will shake this out. If remote heavy companies do better than in-office companies in terms of hiring and retention that will be obvious in a few years. Older workers, those with professional partners, those with kids or geographic preferences or family ties are less interested in offices. We’ll see what happens.
Ironically, workers like I described are not too interesting to some tech firms. Is this a cost or just a sour grapes argument?
They gotta do everything they can to justify all the money spent on commercial real estate.