Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

When you actually look at the claim Altman can defend from his own experience, it's not that remote work doesn't work for "the tech industry"; it's that remote work doesn't work for early stage startups. But most of "the tech industry" is not early stage startups. Most of the people working in the tech industry could still be working remotely, while at the same time the small fraction of them that are working at early stage startups could be working in person in an office (or hangout space, or whatever), and the tech industry would do just fine.

Unfortunately, when I look at Altman's track record as a pundit (as opposed to as a startup developer), this kind of schoolboy error is what I usually see.

Sam Altman is the worst mistake of the tech industry.

edit: Like, I'm only half snarky. He ran like one ok company and then got pretty much coronated into OpenAI.

edit: edit: Like really. It was a company that let you share your phone location. Revolutionary unicorn to the moon on steroids for sure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loopt

... for startups:

> Discussing about the importance of working from office for a startup, Altman noted, “The more unclear and early the product is, the more in-person time the team needs to grind together," he added.

Are the incentives really there? Obviously the people with the real estate would like this, but if they were really that influential, you'd also see a huge push for private offices (=> more space per employee, more real-estate demand), which alas we don't.

I think if you see companies shying away from remote work it'll really just be because it isn't proving effective -- because companies will be losing out on huge recruiting and cost-advantages in doing so.

I've been working remote for a while, and I'm still pretty skeptical. It's definitely a lot harder to build relationships, which are super-important, I think.

Maybe a hybrid model with lots of frequent in-person work retreats could be ideal.

If you actually look at the quote and not the flamebait title, he says the "experiment" of there being no loss to creativity with remote work is over, and that the tech isn't there yet for early-stage startups.