Think about your self working at Apple. It’s April 2022. You’re being informed by the higher-ups that you just’ve received to return again to the workplace — by which I imply you’ve learn a Slack message in your laptop computer. You proceed your workday, pissed that your bosses don’t appear to grasp that you are able to do this job remotely.
Then any person sends you a YouTube hyperlink to a nine-minute industrial for distant work, telling the story of a gaggle of people that give up their firm after being compelled to return to the workplace. The commercial is by Apple, which is at the moment telling you to return to the workplace. You punch your desk so laborious that your screensaver deactivates.
It’s unusual that the businesses which have made a lot cash off distant work appear to be probably the most allergic to its prospects. Google, which accurately helps you to run an organization in a browser, has been forcing staff again to places of work three days per week.
Meta, Apple and Google are trade leaders, but they’re main their trade backward — again to places of work the place individuals will do the identical factor they did at house.
Meta, which has misplaced billions making an attempt to make us dwell within the laptop, has additionally made individuals return to the workplace. In studying virtually each remote-work article that has been printed for a yr for my analysis, I’ve but to discover a single compelling argument about why workers ought to return to the workplace.
“In-person collaboration” and “serendipity” are phrases that make sense for those who dwell in Narnia and consider in magical creatures. In actuality, workplace environments resemble our distant lives, solely with extra annoying conferences and the prospect to odor our co-workers’ lunch decisions.
The tech trade pretends to be disruptive, however is following a path solid by older corporations like Goldman Sachs. How is it that Apple and Google, the businesses that successfully gave us the power to distant work at scale, sound like they’re studying from a generic New York Occasions anti-remote op-ed?