Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy call remote work a 'Covid-era privilege.' Economists say it's here to stay
Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy call remote work a 'Covid-era privilege.' Economists say it's here to stay
Economists say the work-from-home trend, which was widespread during the pandemic, won't diminish to its pre-Covid level because it's profitable for employers.
KEY POINTS
- Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, whom President-elect Donald Trump appointed to lead a new government efficiency team, said they intend to call federal employees back to the office five days a week.
- Companies such as Amazon and The Washington Post are adopting a similar policy in 2025.
- But many companies will keep remote or hybrid work arrangements, largely because they boost profits, economists said.
- Some view return-to-office mandates as a stealthy way to reduce employee head count.
Neither of these assholes have ever had a real job. Not even a high paying real job.
Billionaires are a problem.
stupid control freaks. Because controlling of their employees is what RTO is about, control and paranoia.
They are stupid paranoid control freaks who fear that their neat buildings stand empty and they cant just throw work at their wage slaves. So this is actually about control, paranoia, and vanity.
Ok, let's say it is a covid-era privilege. Why does that mean it has to go away? Why can't it be a modern day innovation? Isn't it a curb on vehicle emissions? More spending money in people's wallets if they're not paying for gas or coffee or meals on the go due to commuting? What's the fuckin downside?? We stumbled upon a good thing
Oh fuck, I forgot the real estate prices. My bad. Yea let's cancel this whole thing
I worked at a national company of some fame for nearly 20 years. They have two main offices, one in the midwest and one in New England. Before COVID, it was common for folks to work from home, spread across the United States. We even had some fringe cases where people lived in England or Japan and worked from there. I don't work there anymore, but I hear post covid they are forcing people to move and work from the office. It really is leadership brain rot, everywhere, regardless of industry.
I’ve been working remotely long before the pandemic and I will continue to do so - I’m far from being alone in that. Also, we are still in the “covid-era”, we just collectively decided to pretend we aren’t.
First remote job I had was in 2010 making barely more than minimum wage for tier 1 phone support. These guys are off their rockers.
It's in my union contract. Your move, hair plugs.
I'm "racist" against billionaires and not even pretending not to be. There's like no more than a small handful who do much (relative % I mean) good for anybody. Those should be noted and tasted normally (if they weren't while on the way up), but they should be taxed out of existence. Il
I don't know what the number should be, but it shouldn't be possible for your net worth to even approach a billion.
Probably smaller than $50M. Shouldn't be possible to surpass that much. Even that amount should be heavily forced into charity.
If you're in that upper echelon, I automatically hate you before I've heard of you, and I'm fairly confident the amount of times I'm wrong would be extremely small.
Super rich people have to prove they're worth not hating. Their default position is "hated idiot" until proven otherwise.
There's just so little possibility I wouldn't want them dead in a vacuum (devoid of other moral considerations).
HE'S WORKING FROM FUCKING MARALAGO FUCK YOU
You mean the "privilege" of working from home so tech CEOs could make billions of dollars?
Obviously billions of dollars is just the result of hard work and not a privilege at all.
Musk and ramoswamy are foreign invader trash and they should go back to exploiting their own shitty countries. Fucking scum. Deport these counts or throw them in a detention center with no toilet. MAGA
What i don't get in all of this: There are already companies that did go out of business because too many people just left, due to them not being able to do WFH. Personally, I do like going to the office 1-2 times a week, but even I would leave the company if the got rid of WFH completely. There's near full employment everywhere, especially tech companies already have to go the extra mile to get people to work for them. Why would anyone stay at a company that does not do WFH, if that's one thing they got to enjoy?
Fuck it, I’m saying it, I’m less productive when I work from home. I get to fuck off easier and I do genuinely miss in person collaboration on complex problems.
That said, I’m probably never going to work another job that is more than 2 day hybrid. If every company in the world decided they would go back to 100% in person, I’d have to go back to working harder but as long as some companies care a tiny bit about the wellbeing of their workers, there will be this continuous push/pull of most companies wanting to squeeze every ounce of juice out of every worker.
Tech is a weird industry tho. There are some companies that just rely on churn and burn through employees (cough cough spacex cough cough amazon cough cough). I’m lucky to have ended up in a specific sector where there is a lot of attrition due to frustration so they kind of just deal with the fact that they aren’t gonna get 100% out of everyone.
All that is to say is that there are some interesting dynamics at play and I’ll hold the line, but there is a grain of truth in there but fuck capitalism, not everything has to be done as efficiently and as profitable as possible. Let people just live and work and chill
Still trying to look as cool as possible, and it doesn't work when they do it, so they try harder, which makes it even worse. Dweebs.
Stupid fuckers.
I like the freedom to watch the kids remote work brings, but I hate the loss of concentration that having kids "at the office" (home) brings.
I expect that he'll push for some kind of corporate tax credit to companies that have in-person employees. To help tip the scales.
He thinks it'll increase control, but it's just as likely to rile up discontent. Especially targeted towards him.
