I have worked in remote-first organizations for more than 15 years, mostly at technology companies, both as an individual contributor and a manager. By dint of my role, I also get to meet with companies of all different sizes all over the country and see companies who are fully remote, hybrid, and fully on-premise. I have literally talked with hundreds of companies across the world and got to observe the differences.

There are some leaders who simply can't function in a remote environment. However, this is a flaw of their leadership and the organizational culture, not a problem with employees or their preferences. It is a problem with personal fear, inflexibility, and lack of vision more than anything else. My experience is that the older people are and the longer they have worked at a company, the more issues they have with remote work.

We proved during COVID that we can function just fine remotely. It benefits the employees in a hundred different ways. An organization that wants people to come to work at their detriment is one that doesn't value their people, and this is how they are expressing it.