Is remote work causing corporate divide?
Remote work has become a privilege for high earners while ordinary workers face return-to-office mandates. CEOs at Amazon, Salesforce, and Starbucks keep remote flexibility, but workers earning under $200k lost 14% of remote days versus 5% for those earning over $200k. Research shows remote work boosts productivity when managed properly, suggesting RTO policies are about control, not efficiency.
Chapters
So remote work was supposed to be like the great equalizer. It would improve productivity, offer better work-life balance, reduce costs for employers and employees, and tap into a global talent pool. But now it's becoming a perk for the elite only. So, uh, there's some interesting data out and we have to ask ourselves, why are CEOs forcing their employees back to the office while they work from private jets, ranches, and from their house? Well, it's not that great. So there's some new data out today, um, that came through and there's a coming like double standard in remote work. So I've talked in previous videos. Uh, you know, Amazon, uh, is a famous company now for sending people back to return to office. Well, uh, like I've seen videos where there's key employees and key executives who are allowed to work from boats on lakes and places. Like there's just a level of hypocrisy going on here. And it's not just Amazon, like, uh, it's places like Salesforce as well, right? Um, CEO Marc Benioff just says he doesn't like to, uh, work from an office so much, so he works from his house. Well, but the employees are working from the office. And then there's another example that happened recently. Starbucks just has been in struggle mode, right? And they hired a new CEO. And as part of that guy's deal was that they would open an office, quote unquote, near his house in Southern California while the headquarters stayed up in Seattle. And he would fly back and forth to Seattle on the weeks that he didn't work from his office in Newport Beach. So like you could just see kind of there's a level of hypocrisy going on here. And this happens even in light of some of the data out there. Multiple universities, Boston College, ASU, they've done these studies of the performance of CEOs. And the larger that they live, the distance from the headquarters, the larger their performance gap. So the closer they live to headquarters, the better, which is kind of an interesting thing, which is there's another data point from studies I've seen where 95% of HQ headquarter relocations move the company's headquarters closer to where the CEO lives. So, you know, just the hypocrisy continues and it's kind of frustrating. Like, if I was an employee, I would feel frustrated if there was a mandate that I return to the office and my employer is like working from his private jet, like kind of a frustrating thing. And so we're actually seeing here is that like remote work is actually stratifying and becoming elitist, right? We're seeing the requirement that rank-and-file folks are more likely to be expected to come back to the office, while CEOs and stuff like that, well, they like, you know, get more flexibility. And the numbers kind of reflect this. So the stat I saw was that for jobs above $200,000 a year in pay, those guys only lost 5% of their remote work days, whereas people below that, it's a 14% drop. Over the past couple years. So in other words, the more money you were making, the more you just got to work wherever the hell you wanted to. And there's another study that came through which showed that the more money you were earning, the more likely you are to live 50 miles or plus from headquarters. In other words, this big stratification where remote work is becoming unfortunately kind of an elite thing. But look, I think it's interesting because remote work has proven to be something that is actually pretty effective. The problem is more so that people don't know how to manage those remote workers. And if you go back to this idea of remote work being effective, like they've actually done studies of call center employees, like in overseas places, right? So one study I read showed that in China and Turkey, like the more, the remote workers were actually taking fewer sick days and they were answering more calls. So quantitatively, like these workers were actually doing better. The difference in those places was those bosses had learned how to do remote work and remote management and remote measuring of employee, like, ability and output rather than just like relying upon, okay, well, you're in the office, you must be getting stuff done, which is frankly just kind of an old way of doing stuff. Like it doesn't work. And employees darn sure have figured out how not to just waste time playing Minesweeper on their computer, but make it really look like they're working hard and not getting much done, even if they're in the office. And for me, as I've like employed people, like great people produce a lot. Whether they're in the office or not. And the great people tend to produce even more when they're remote because they're not spending 2 hours a day commuting. And look, this doesn't apply to all jobs, right? Some jobs like require that level of in-office teamwork or you're physically having to be present to make stuff go. But look, remote is getting pooped on a lot these days, and I think the pendulum is swinging too far the other way and it's going to be hurting a lot of companies if they're giving up on the concept. And look like we should call a spade a spade for why a lot of companies are bringing back return to office, right? They're bringing back return to office because it isn't about like, how do we be more efficient? It's about like, how do we have greater control over what our employees are doing? How do they make it look like they're in control and they're doing a difference to provide greater output for their shareholders, right? And then the other thing is it's a tricky way to get people to reduce headcount, right? If you bring back return to office, frustrated employees who really want to work remotely, or it's impossible for them to go back to office, like those people will just walk out the door. And it's interesting, like despite a lot of the stuff going on with the data showing like remote work can be highly efficient, companies are still doing return to office. And a lot of it is performative. In other words, performative, like it's done just to look good rather than to truly make a difference in the output of the company. So where do we go from here? Look, I think what I'm seeing is there are a lot of pretty darn smart companies that see the types of employees who are being left behind or are leaving kind of these big corps because of return to office mandates. So there's actually some pretty amazing talent coming on the market that doesn't want to move back to be near headquarters at these companies and wants to work remotely. So if you're willing to swing to the other side as a small business and like actually try to do remote work well, um, it's increasing the talent base that you can choose from. So this is really good for us. And then I think for these employers that have gone so hard now with return-to-office mandates, like, they're not going to give in on this thing, right? They've made a change here, they've made a sweeping thing. And until we go a few more years of return-to-office kind of proving to be something that just doesn't make a ton of sense for every single company, uh, those managers are going to have to turn over. We're going to have to bring new leadership in, uh, just naturally before we start to see a swing back of pendulum of remote versus return to office. And I think we'll get there and we'll go back to an equilibrium at some point. But for now, we're going to continue to see companies kind of taking a rational view of stuff. And the good news is, for those of us that are open-minded, like, it'll create a ton of opportunity to recruit some really good people.
