79 Percent of CEOs Say Remote Work Will Be Dead in 3 Years or Less

Because loads of commercial real estate is empty that is all financed by mortgages which won't pay by themselves.

If a mission critical kernel can be developed remotely with people from basement of the world Australia to Seattle then these shopping carts, comparison websites, classified portals, review aggregators etc etc. should perfectly be possible remotely and if not, that's totally on your incompetence to communicate and organise things properly.

Trends among my mostly-not-even-tech circle of friends and acquaintances do not support this opinion.

Also, their answer is aspirational. They’re saying what they want to be true, to sway opinion. Whether they believe it has nothing to do with their answer, in most cases.

As usual, the headline is more provocative than the actual article (not submitter's fault): "...U.S. corporate CEOs predicted that corporate roles that were performed in the office before the pandemic will be back in office full time within the next three years."

Basically if the job wasn't remote pre-pandemic, it likely won't be in the next few years either. Could say more about the corporate policy than the job function though.

As someone who's worked mostly remote for going on 15 years now, there will evolve a hybrid approach.

There's too much value to the individual in remote work for it to go away and there's too much value to the team to have a space to meet periodically. Some people thrive in remote, some people thrive in-office. I've had moments of both - there's definitely benefit to getting up earlier, dressed, commuting, being around other people but it doesn't have to be every day.

The office space comment is often made derisively, and I think it's definitely true. Huge, expensive offices need to be justified at some point, and when long-term leases expire a lot of larger companies will opt for new options. I just don't know what that is. Less space? Shared spaces? Hard to say. Another reason for offices is for appearances and recruitment. A great, beautiful office can be inspiring sometimes, and it's really nice to have that option.

But ultimately I think the wastefulness of full-time RTO will hit these companies and their CEOs and we'll have a lot more hybrid with mostly WFH at least in our industry.

The headline contradicts their own claims in the article. They say that corporate roles returning to in-office will give an opportunity to entrepreneurs to poach talent by offering remote work... which would mean that remote work is not dead.

No problem.

Just get me a decent home for fair price close to the office or the commuting and preparation for office will be deducted from working hours. Oh yes, decent desk and chairs, individual climate control, healthy and available food provided for fair price in a good variety to choose from. Flexibility to rearrange around essential personal matters. Otherwise fuck your office, sit in there alone dear CEO!

The boards should fire CEOs who are willing to so openly rule out some of the best engineers from working for them.

The math is simple. Clearly some engineers hate offices. Clearly some engineers are good. Clearly those sets intersect. As long as your competition openly states they offer WFH while your company is run by an idiot who openly says “offices or bust”, you have just denied yourself some of the best talent. Not a clever move. Boards, take note.

We have learned a lot about what can be done remote. However it isn't clear anyone has actually taken the time to put together a study of all that and come to real conclusions. Instead everyone wants to assume their bias is correct and do whatever their bias is.

Which is why we need unions to push back, bylaws to protect workers right, and sensible environmental policies that promote remote work to reduce gas emission.

You need to have your employees in the office? Alright, pay for their commute and add a tax to finance public transportation systems for each employees at the office.

"Man won't fly for a million years" says the New York Times, 9 days before Wright brothers' first flight

It’s time for governments to levy extra taxes on companies that require employees to commute into the office.

The taxes should pay not only for the transportation infrastructure but also for the childcare costs that are incurred by employees forced to be in the office.

They spent the last couple of years trying to get everyone back in the office, but found limited success, so they are giving themselves another three years.

New headline: CEOs say things that help CEOs keep their jobs in front of boards.

Sigh. It's the usual multi-millionaire CEO that can buy a multi-million apartment 15 minutes from the office telling staff that would have a 90 minute commute in hellish traffic or public transport and the physical and mental toll that ensues, to come into a noisy open-plan office to try and concentrate on a job, whilst moaning about productivity and costs.

Want me in your office? Give me an *office* with a door that shuts. And don't stop me from working from home if I need to sort out "life".

Stop being cheap.

"Come and work* for our multinational company and collaborate with smart colleagues around the world"

*must physically be in office to work with team 2000 miles and three timezones away over Zoom/Slack

I think remote work might have different acceptance in different stages of companies for most roles and maybe that’s okay.

Startups will benefit from big companies getting rid of talent.

Will be interesting to see how the market evolves.

> Whatever the explanation, the continuing rollback of remote work options at larger employers creates a rare opportunity for startups and smaller employers to recruit employees who have sought-after skills.

We could be looking at a shift in talent from larger organizations joining smaller projects.

Wondering what the pros/cons are if this happens. I could see this putting more strain on entry-level folks getting a foot in the door of remote companies. But I could also see this being a net positive outcome for innovation.

Here's the KPMG report on which the Inc piece is based... https://kpmg.com/us/en/articles/2024/kpmg-2024-us-ceo-outloo...

Note: The survey was of CEOs of large companies world-wide, not a general survey of all CEOs across corporate sizes in any specific country.

It also states that flexibility is important. So take that however you want. Based on what I'm seeing in the workplace today, I'm reading that as "the BoD is invested in real estate, so we're saying we'll RTO but employees will really just be hybrid."

If a sad day comes where they put me back in an office I’ll spend a lot of time planning my escape

It would be nice if companies would at least make a decision one way or another. Instead companies continue to be wishy washy, changing policies, not enforcing policies, then enforcing the policy, so they use it as an excuse later to reduce the workforce.

Oh the irony: https://futurism.com/the-byte/ceos-easily-replaced-with-ai

By mandate.

RTO is something CEOs want anyway. Gotta justify that office space, can't or won't downsize to a smaller space. And currently harsh RTO mandates function as stealth layoffs. It's win-win!

Sure. The slaves must row and can’t leave the galleys. Guys living in the PowerPoint world can’t imagine that their subordinates are people and not abstract headcount number. And most of the people hate long commutes, full parking lots, cheap open offices and disgusting canteen food. I never had a mythical water cooler conversation with creativity burst. Because a water cooler was too expensive for a greedy CEO.

Someone's living under a rock :) Far from the truth.

One way of reading this claim is that, within 3 years, all work that only requires "pressing buttons to make the pattern of lights change" will be taken over by AI, and the only jobs that remain will be those where you have to do some dextrous in-person activities, like cleaning or plumbing.

If they'd get me an actual office, I'd go to it.

79% of CEOs either have significant holdings of commercial real estate, or have friends / family who do. None of this "RTO" nonsense has literally anything to do with productivity, creativity or whatever other nonsense CEOs are prattling on about, it has 100% to do with propping up the value of the commercial RE holdings of these CEOs and their cronies. The venn diagram of the people who own commercial real estate and the people opposed to remote work is a circle. These greedy, feckless bastards want you to sit in traffic and suffer not because it's going to make anything actually better, but because it's the only way to protect the value of their investments, and it make me sick.

Remote Work Says 79 Percent of CEO Roles Will Be Dead in 3 Years or Less

Surveyed every CEO did they?