A Theory About Remote Work
I've worked remotely for more than a decade, so I'm not exactly an unbiased observer about the promise of remote work. That said, I also realize that we're starting to see evidence of pushback against remote work.
Elon Musk recently announced a return to in office work at Tesla:
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken a hardline stance against his employees working from home, Electrek and Bloomberg report. In an email apparently sent to the company’s executive staff with the subject line “Remote work is no longer acceptable,” the CEO said employees must spend a minimum of 40 hours per week in the office, or else “depart Tesla.” He said this should be a “main Tesla office,” and not a “remote branch office.”
Venture capitalists, as well, have not been shy about announcing their support for in office work.
At first blush this seems like evidence that the remote work experiement is over, and that everyone will head back to the office.
I don't think it's quite that simple, though, as I say above, I am admittedly biased in favor of remote work. I think that the world is complicated and mainly non-linear, and that simple claims like "remote work is the future" or "remote work is an aberration" are facile attempts to avoid thinking.
My Theory
My theory is that people who perform poorly while working remotely don't have the executive function for remote work. I suspect that it is possible to have good executive functioning generally, and not be able to have it while working remotely, for a variety of reasons.
What I think is happening is this: during the pandemic a lot of people ill-suited for remote work suddenly started working remotely, and companies more or less made do. But as the pandemic has eased up and companies started to figure out what a post-covid world looked like, a lot of aggrieved managers saw that certain of their reports floundered while doing remote work.
Rather than do the hard work of figuring out who performs well while working remotely and who does not, and adapting work accordingly, these same managers have chosen to mandate that all employees return to the office.
The market will solve this problem, as markets tend to do. Those who can work remotely, and be successful at it, will flock to companies that have figured out how to manage distributed workforces. Those who can't perform well while working remotely will flock to companies that adopt in-office or hybrid work structures. That prediction is of course much more prosaic than is the absolutism we see on either side of the issue ("remote is the future!" vs "remote is an aberration!")
It's easier for a CEO and her direct reprots to mandate that everyone return to the office, than it is to do the hard work of learning how to manage a distributed workforce. The labor market is a sorting mechanism and those firms which have figured out remote work will attract workers who want to work remotely, and those that have not, won't.