The Real Reason Gen Z Is Returning to the Office

Young workers returning to the office According to the Times, new research shows younger workers are paying a quiet price for remote work. Economists from the New York Fed, Virginia and Harvard found that early career employees working from home receive less training, fewer opportunities to advance, and even face higher unemployment than older colleagues. At one major e commerce company, young engineers who sat near their teams got roughly 20% more feedback on their code than remote peers. Many also asked more follow up questions, often online, simply because in person proximity made communication easier. Young workers themselves are noticing the difference and are now spending more time in the office than older workers. They say they're seeking mentoring, visibility and better odds at promotion. The study concludes remote work can boost productivity for experienced employees but may stunt career development for those still learning the basics. What's the real message here? If you are a young person just starting out your career, you are crazy to select the remote work versus working in an office. You're slitting your own throat. When you work in an office, you can actually communicate with employees, get mentors, get feedback, have all sorts of spontaneous interactions. This will give more opportunities for you to grow, learn and get promoted. If everything is remote, guess what? You're also the easiest person to fire when there's a downturn. Let's dig a little deeper here. Look, I get it. If you are just out of college, you're kind of used to your own schedule. You're kind of used to well, I'm going to take classes in the afternoon. I like to sleep late. I like to stay up late, party and get up at 11am the idea of showing up at an office at 8:30am each day, leaving your home at say 7:30 sounds harsh. I get it. But you know what else is harsh? Being unemployed from age 25 to 30 when your colleagues are advancing in their careers, getting more money, getting more promotions, getting more mentoring. Now I do have a number of young people who ask me for guidance and mentorship, extended family members and others. I always say do whatever it takes to work in an office. If you have two different job opportunities, one of them even pays more. But it's remote work. But the other one is in an office where there are other people and people senior to you. Mid level managers, senior managers, do whatever it takes to get into that office. Long term you will make more money. But TJ I don't like to commute. I'm comfortable at home. I have my coffee cup just the way I like it. Guess what? Nobody cares about you and your career. I'm sorry to say that. And the companies you work for may say that, oh, employees are. People are number one asset. And let's tell you how much they love you. Guess what? They don't. If there's an economic downturn, you're going to be fired. If some AI chatbot can do your job cheaper than you can, you're fired. If there's a merger and the acquiring company already has someone in your position, you're out on the street. So you've got to think selfishly about what is in the best interest of your career. I'm just laying it out for you selfishly. It's going to be better off for you to be in an office where you can form real relationships. Sometimes it's in the form of a mentor, sometimes it's just in the form of a colleague, that maybe they work in something adjacent to what you're doing, but it's not the same department. But you become friends, they get a better job offer and they go to another similar company in your industry and they like it. And now they are asked to find new employees because you've already talked to this person in the lunchroom. Maybe you went out for drinks at happy hour after work on Friday. There's already a personal relationship with that person. They have your cell phone number, you have theirs. And they say, hey, got a great job opportunity that just opened up here. We don't have time to advertise for it, but I can set up a meeting with my boss Tuesday morning. Can you come in? That's gold for your career. You know, everyone says they love competition. Love competition. No. You know, Peter Thiel's. I'm not a huge fan of Peter Thiel, but he's very clear about this. Great businesses don't want competition. They want Monopoly. Now, he's, I think, taking it too far. But in terms of your own career, the best possible way of job hunting is when you already have a job and somebody who knows you, knows your work, has had a meal with you, has had coffee with you, recommends you internally to someone else at another company. So, yeah, if you do see the job opening on monster.com and you're putting in an email and a resume with 10,000 other people, it doesn't get lost because your friend is saying to the boss, hey, this guy's applied, here's his name, or here's her name, let's make sure that they at least get to an interview. That's what you need. That's what it takes to succeed. You minimize your chances of ever doing that. If you are working Remotely. Now, let me be fair. I understand there are plenty of people where they really, really do need to work remotely. If you're 35, you've had your first couple of jobs, you have some seniority, you have credibility, you're doing something valuable in the marketplace. And now you have kids, and you really need to spend some time each day taking care of your kids. You don't want to waste the two hours of commuting. That may be a great situation for you. Let's say you are really established in your career and you're a consultant, or you have some highly defined skill where people know you're producing something, whether it's a piece of software, whether it's a novel, whether it's a consulting report, it's highly, highly valued, and you can now live anywhere. Okay? And you're not trying to advance to the CEO level of a big company. Maybe you don't want any more promotions in life. I mean, that's frankly where I am. I'm not looking to be promoted within a company. I'm looking to build my own media company. The success of my podcast, my courses, my AI clone and others, and to be able to see the world and go anywhere I want and do what I want, when I want. I didn't start off with this attitude in my 20s. It's something I had to earn through a lot of toils, failures, and a lot of successes to get me here. Apologies if that sounds smug, but that is reality. If you're. If you're at the advanced stages of your career. Well, I made that sound like a disease. If you're in the later stages, more established parts of your career, and you want to structure things so you can work remotely and you've got multiple sources of revenue, by all means, live it up. I know I do. Which reminds me, next week I'll be broadcasting to you live from Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City. The week after that from Taipei, because I can, and also because I'm working in some of those places making money as well. But as a junior employee, those opportunities are not really there for you yet. You might get one job that says, okay, you can work remotely, but it's much harder to build relationships. It's simply human nature as well, that if you're working face to face with someone every day, you share information about family, friends, ups and downs, your pet diet. If it's all remote, you don't share those things. So when there is a downturn for your company or your industry or your sector, and those are inevitable, if you're just a remote employee. You are the first to get fired, to get laid off. If you're working there face to face with, with other employees, with your boss, it's just human nature. They're much less likely to fire you. Let's look at some more of the facts going on here. Younger workers received 20% less feedback if they were software developers. That stunts your growth. Absolutely stunts your growth. Physical proximity. The closer you are sitting to someone, even if their office door is closed, the easier it is to have not only in person communication, but online communication. If you know someone's in the cubicle right next to you and you already said good morning to them, you're more likely to send them a message on slack or text or email. So it's. That's somewhat surprising, but makes sense when you think about it. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan says, quote, the young generation is being damaged. He was referring to remote work. He's absolutely right. Now, younger workers now go to the office more than older colleagues. Again, the context for this story was things are changing and more young people realize they're kind of losing out. It's also frankly boring if you're just working from an apartment or your parents basement and you're not leaving the house for 24 hours a day. It's just boring. Life is boring. You lose out on so much serendipity. Things that can happen on the bus ride to work, the car to work, the subway to work, chance encounters. Walking out of an office. You bump into an old friend, bumping into perhaps a new friend and say hey, let's get together for a bite, a coffee, a drink. You lose out on all of those things with the remote work. Quite often workers report fewer promotion opportunities when they work remotely. We've talked about that. Not surprising. Mentoring is much harder in teams when you're across time zones. Now again, it's great to be able to work remotely. I have been able to train ambassadors and United nations officials in Japan and throughout Asia when I was in my home studio in Florida. That was great, but it's not the same as when I go to them and we have a meal before, we have a meal after, we have chit chat during the down times and lunch. It's not as powerful a connection but it's great to be able to have that option. Good onboarding requires in person contact. According to one study, you've actually got to look at someone from HR or your boss. They've got to look at you to really make good assessments. One firm recently required office attendance as young people struggled to get up to speed. Good for them. And if your employees don't like it, you know, look, I don't want to seem callous and mean and mean spirited and I'm not someone who thinks that in the overall power relations employees have too much power in the world today. Clearly when you look at how the spoils of major companies are dispersed throughout our economy, the rate are getting richer, the middle class is being hollowed out, union organization is at an all time low in the last 80 years and that's why we see so few people who are so called working class having middle income jobs anymore. So I'm not suggesting employers are somehow disadvantaged and employees have all the power but on this one issue come to work to get paid. I am going to side with the the bosses on this one because ultimately it's really in the best interest for you especially if you are young.