There's this viral video going around the internet right now of a CEO who
was recorded in a company-wide Zoom meeting,
and he's going on this quite bizarre rant about how people at his company
haven't been working hard enough and people who are working remotely aren't
working.
The star employees are the ones who sell their dogs and moms apparently can't
work and raise their kids at the same time.
You also may have noticed a lot of headlines recently about tech layoffs and
other billionaire CEOs complaining that their remote workers aren't
working as someone who has been working remotely for pretty much my entire
career,
I have some thoughts on this situation and also some tips and advice for anyone
who might find themselves working for a boss like this or in a role
as a remote manager. So let's jump right in. First of all,
why is this happening?
Why are there so many CEOs who are out in the media complaining that remote
work isn't working for them and calling employees back into the office?
And I think this is the direct result of decades of
companies and CEOs resisting remote work. I mean,
telecommuting has been possible since the 1970s,
but it wasn't until the pandemic that companies were finally forced to change.
So if they had been adopting remote work organically over the years,
none of these people would've been caught so off guard.
So rather than having remote work policies already in place,
people just basically shifted their meetings from the meeting room to zoom calls
and Slack channels.
And this wasn't very productive and resulted in a lot of remote work burnout
and a lot of companies just approaching remote work from a traditional work
model that's already outdated and doesn't apply to the
economy that we find ourselves in today.
This traditional nine to five office model is as old as the Industrial
Revolution and Henry Ford's manufacturing plants.
We no longer are based on a manufacturing economy.
We are a digital and service based economy that runs on output
and results and not hours worked.
And so the attempt by traditional brick and mortar companies
to just take their old way of working and drop it into a remote model doesn't
work.
And so when we see headlines of experienced CEOs
speaking out against remote work, uh,
what that says to me is that they just weren't prepared for this shift and they
haven't been willing to adopt remote work practices and models that work for
other companies. Take companies like GitLab,
which is one of the biggest remote companies,
possibly the biggest all remote company in the world.
They've never had a central office or headquarters and they're doing just fine.
So if these companies like Clearlink where this guy.
James Clark works at, um, if they don't change,
then their companies are just not going to be able to compete. Okay,
so let's take a look at his complaints. First of all,
the headlines here we have CEO says many of his workers didn't open their
laptops for a month,
and only the rarest of full-time caregivers can be productive employees.
Whereas Vice says CEO celebrates worker who sold Family dog
after he demanded that they returned to the office. Oh boy,
the first problem is, well, how did this get on to Reddit in the first place?
The Zoom video was leaked,
and that's my first problem with this whole thing is that company-wide Zoom
meetings should be illegal. I think the limit goes up to a thousand people.
And if you really need to have a thousand remote employees on a Zoom meeting,
then you might as well just record a video and let people watch it at their
leisure asynchronously or do a live stream or something like a private live
stream where people can just tune into the link.
I think it's absurd to force people to sit through company-wide zoom
meetings at the same time. I mean, come on.
So that's my 2 cents on that.
The first thing he accuses people of is not opening their laptops for a month.
And I find this really hard to believe,
like how is it possible that in an organization 30 people can
just not open their laptops for 30 days?
I think it's much more likely that this was just some sort of technical fluke
where his monitoring software is just not detecting certain
laptops or maybe those laptops are docked and people are using them as desktops
and not opening them. I mean, there's any number of explanations here.
I wonder if he even went to those employees and talked with them and confirmed
that that was the case,
that they weren't opening their computers because they weren't working, um,
before he went on this Zoom rant.
But I just can't even imagine the conditions,
especially of an 800 person organization where there would
be absolutely no communication or accountability with this
many people for this long of a period of time. And if that is the case,
then the problem really lies with the organizational structure with the company
culture, not the employees themselves.
If these people truly did not work for 30 days,
then their jobs were not necessary.
And if it only takes software for the CEO to find out that they're not working
and not the other policies and teams and people that are in place
to make an organization run, then there's a lot bigger problems there. I mean,
if you didn't show up for work for 30 days,
don't you think that somebody would've noticed like a co-worker or anybody?
I mean, it's just crazy remote work or not.
And if his solution to people not working is
to make them sit in the office, how is that going to make them work?
Either this is a case of redesigning these jobs,
eliminating certain roles or hiring better people,
taking someone who does not work and then just putting them in an office is not
the solution here either.
But that seems to be what he's going to do by revoking remote work
of policies and putting in a permanent return to the office in place.
More thoughts on that in a minute.
Something that angered a lot of people is that he appeared to
commend the work ethic of an employee who allegedly sold their dog
to be able to focus more on work.
And this seems very unreasonable for to me,
and also counterproductive. I mean, pets,
they give you emotional support, they bring happiness to your life,
and they also need to be walked at least twice a day. So if you have a dog,
at least you're getting out and getting away from the screen a couple of times a
day. You're going out to clear your mind, get some fresh air, get some exercise.
So I don't see how like working with a dog could be anything but
beneficial to your output. I mean, I work with, um,
our family dog under my desk all day and it makes me a lot happier and I'm
always grateful to have that time in the morning or afternoons to go out for a
walk on the beach.
So that's does just doesn't even make sense and it's not gonna help people work
better if they give up the pets that they love.
He also accuses people of not working hard enough or at least not working as
hard as him who should be working the hardest because he's the CEO. So he says,
I challenge any of you to outwork me, but you won't. Um,
so that's not very motivating first off.
But what really sticks out to me in this is his real
glorifying of the hustle culture that can be so problematic in
economies like the US. There is a tipping point to where investing
more hours, more sleepless nights and more blood, sweat and tears as he says,
is not going to result, result in additional output.
It's gonna be counterproductive and I don't know how competitive his
organization is,
but having such a toxic work culture is really not doing him any favors
and forcing people to abandon things that they enjoy in life,
like raising their kids or having dogs or doing anything other than working
is also not going to be very motivating to his employees.
Something that rightfully made many people angry is his position
on childcare where he seems to be singling out women and
claiming that there's no way that we can raise kids and
work full-time at the same time.
And I think a lot of men and women alike would be very offended by that because
that's exactly what they do.
And those are the expectations in the global economy,
but especially in the United States, um,
this is a country where women are expected to have full-time jobs just
as much as men. We're not living in the 1950s anymore.
And it's also a time where wages aren't high enough for just one person in
the household to work. So this is a macroeconomic problem,
but it also has solutions if maybe he wants to provide a,
a childcare stipend or even provide daycare in the organization.
There's definitely companies that are able to make this work and he needs to
take a hint from them before just saying that no one that has kids can
work well enough to work at his company. That's just absurd.
And the US is also a country that doesn't mandate any sort of parental
leave or benefits that many other countries do have.
And so that's also an uphill battle for people to climb. But I I,
I mean, I don't know if he has children himself,
but I doubt that he is the primary caregiver in his house if he is.
So not everybody can have, uh,
a maid or a nanny or a significant other to watch the children
full-time while you work on your career and or be a full-time CEO.
That's not the position that everybody's in.
And so any sort of leader needs to have some compassion and understanding for
their diverse workforce with diverse life situations and
how those different life backgrounds and experiences
contribute to the overall creativity and
innovation of that organization.
And so I just think he's flat out wrong about that and it's
extremely antiquated thinking that is not going to serve him now or in the
future. Yeah,
so he says that this is a permanent decision and that it's not optional.
If your employee that lives within this 50 mile radius of the office and
they even had to say moving is not an option.
So now you can't move if you're already inside of this 50 mile
radius,
you now can't decide you want to move to a different side of town because that
would be counterproductive to the purpose of this decision.
What is interesting to me here is that this return to the office
mandate only applies to that 35% of the people that live within that
radius regardless of what their job is.
So you could have two people with the same job.
One lives 49 miles from the office and one lives 52 miles from the office.
And that person who lives farther away doesn't have to come in.
So if you are gonna put this kind of a mandate in place,
at least make it uniform and logical in applying to certain positions
that he feels would thrive in an office environment versus others. Uh,
so this doesn't make any sense to me,
and many of the employees are rightly angry about this,
especially people who applied for jobs with this company when they were
marketing themselves as a remote first organization that
wouldn't force you to go to the office.
So they're basically retracting that policy,
and this is also a bad move by him if he wants to
recruit better employees now or in the future.
Not only can I imagine that many people will resign over this,
but from now on into the future,
it's going to be very difficult for companies like this to recruit top talent
if they're not offering competitive benefits and being able
to work from anywhere is being seen as more of a necessity than
a job perk. So if that's his outlook,
and the whole point of changing these policies is to bring people back into the
office to help the company,
then this is very counterproductive because what is he gonna do in a year
from now or two years from now or five years from now as remote work becomes
more and more embedded in business culture in general,
he's not gonna be able to attract top talent,
and this is just not a good long-term strategy for the company's growth.
He says, I believe that a combination of some virtual,
but primarily an in-person environment is what we really need to
allow for the best of the business and the best people to operate. Yeah,
as I mentioned, uh,
you're not gonna bring in the best people with this type of attitude and this
type of company culture,
but more so is the hybrid work where you have some of the
team in the office and some out of the office,
and there's no clear policies in place for how that's decided other than just
people can choose if they wanna come in or not. Um,
that is counterproductive as well.
And it there've been studies that are ongoing that are hinting that hybrid
work is not as effective or that to be very effective,
you have to have really clear, um,
policies in place and make sure that the culture really supports that.
Otherwise,
it can be very confusing just saying that people are going to be
more productive in the office while ignoring the studies and ignoring the
science doesn't make it true.
And he's also then ignoring all of the downsides that come from commuting,
the long and expensive and draining commutes,
the physical and mental health issues that come from it,
the lack of motivation from employees,
the wasted time and meetings and water cooler conversations and a lot,
and the extra overhead costs and a lot of things that can be avoided,
um, with flexible work.
If you're working for a company like this one that is so rigid
in their outlook, then you might wanna look for a different job.
But if you are managing in a company like this,
then it's really important to know that there are options out there.
There are so many remote first companies that have either never had a brick and
mortar office, or they close them and they're now fully remote like GitLab,
like Basecamp, like many, many, many more.
And so if it can be done by some organizations,
then it can be done by others.
It's just a matter of overcoming that learning curve.
And there are plenty of ways to do that.
This guy could hire in ahead of remote work,
he can bring in some remote work consultants, he can Google it ,
how to be a good remote CEO. I mean,
GitLab even has a free guide to remote work on their website
that you can read. Um,
you can go to remote work conferences like running remote and network with other
remote CEOs,
remote employees and remote founders who have experience doing this and know
what they're doing. Uh,
I--I find it so strange that a CEO would just like throw his hands up and
say, oh, it can't be done.
We have to go in the office because we need to be more innovative.
The innovative thing to do would be to get better at remote work
because it is the present,
it is the future of work and not just put your head in the sand and say it can't
be done. There's also this, uh,
billionaire tech CEO who says that tech companies overhired and
didn't have enough work for their employees. Quote,
they were really doing nothing.
And he says he jokes that his company instituted a voluntary
work from office policy in 2021.
You're either voluntarily at your desk or you voluntarily went to work somewhere
else. He said, um,
then I'm gonna voluntarily not work for you. I mean,
I think we'll leave tech layoffs to another video,
but I have a friend that works for Google and I can't imagine her
not having enough stuff to do. I swear she works 12 to 14 hours a day.
Studies show that remote workers actually work more than they did in offices.
And rather than these CEOs being worried about people not working,
they should really be worried about them working too much and getting remote
work burnout.
So I think that that works great for a headline,
but I doubt that that's really happening.
And if it's true that Facebook or Meta and
TikTok and Google and these tech companies are just hiring employees so that
they can't work for other companies and competitors,
or if they're just hiring them for some future projects that haven't been
assigned yet, then.
That's their payroll. Like if that's what they're choosing to do and these, um,
employees are having second and third jobs,
then I guess that's the way it is.
We live in a time of the side hustle and it is completely possible to have a
full-time job and also have a side hustle and also raise kids and also have a
dog if you want.
So the more that companies try to micromanage people's personal lives,
the more apt they are to start taking that side hustle and making it full-time.
Do you agree with any of the positions that these CEOs have or do you think that
they're just outdated? Let me know in the comments below,
and if you wanna know why I think so many people quit during the great
resignation. Check out this video here.