Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy call remote work a 'Covid-era privilege.'

Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy call remote work a 'Covid-era privilege.'
cnbc.com

The problem for them? They can't spy on and control your employees, which is what they want. They don't want their workers to have freedom, they want them to be slaves both in mentality and time, the most valuable aspects of our limited lives. This, with the added benefit, that anyone who doesn't "tow-the-line" will quit, reducing severance packages, etc. It's a harassment tactic to not pay out and force others to quit.

Perhaps those two should be required to be in a single office, all day, every day. Oh - that's right! They won't because it's a fucking nightmare and a waste of time, they are both paranoid messes and want to ensure they can track everything and everyone at all times. Must be great to be at the top to stifle the bottom.

tl;dr: They just want to spy on and control their employees, they know that remote working is highly effective, as they and their executive teams all do it, they just don't want others to have what used to be 'their special executive privilege'.

When the whole world went remote during COVID I knew most of the people doing so were not adequately prepared (through no fault of their own to be fair) and others would game the system and eventually the suits would come for all remote workers. Seems to be happening now.

I put this out there simply to draw some attention to the question of exactly who are we "taking direction" from and on what basis? Why?

As a remote worker, I think the move to remote work is a little naïve. From a company's perspective, if a faceless person from Iowa can do the job just as effectively as someone on site, then you may as well commit and get someone from Bangalore who can do it even cheaper. This middle ground argument that you need to be open to talent from anywhere, but that you should still pay a premium for domestic talent makes no sense to an emotionless organization.

That said, the feudalistic tech management bros that makes these decisions needs to get their heads out of their butts. The problem isn't just that people don't want to go into the office - it's that the cities these jobs are in are overstuffed and underplanned and suck to raise a family.

Having only 6-7 job markets in the entire US for tech workers continues to be dumb and short-sighted, both for cost effeciency as well as the politics of it.