More remote workers are being called back to private sector and federal government offices. However, new rules do not always apply to everyone.
Workers want flexibility as employers carry out their office duties
Despite technological advancements and preferences for flexibility in American workers, employers are seeking a return to the office.
Scripps News
The mandate of returning to the office caused a fiery backlash when ride-sharing company Uber increased the number of days they had to show up directly to the three of them from the two days. At all-hand meetings and on online forums, Rank and Files were summoned to work while many corner offices sat empty.
Soon another Blouhaha erupted at JP Morgan Chase. After thousands of employees of the world’s largest bank were ordered back to their offices five days a week, Filippogoli began operating business affairs in Europe, the Middle East and Africa from New York, not from Dubai, Johannesburg or London. JPMorgan Chase did not comment.
If an employer cracks down on days per week a home-based worker will call it a double standard.
Salesforce’s Marc Benioff is one of the CEOs who self-identify as a remote worker. “I have always been my lifelong remote worker,” Benioff told MSNBC in 2023.
His employees often don’t have that luxury. In September they were told to return to the office at least three days a week. Benioff said the message was “mixing direct and remote together.” Salesforce did not respond to requests for comment.
“No matter how you feel about remote work, you have to laugh at the nerves of these types of people who are compensated millions of dollars a year.
“Like the executive toilet key.”
As the Covid-19 pandemic has shut down offices across the United States, many office workers have become obsessed with remote work. White-collar workforce skipped rush hour and was present at home, as only “essential” frontline workers needed to appear directly.
Prioritizing elusive goals such as quality of life, they moved in large numbers to more affordable locations such as Salt Lake City and Boise, Idaho. Their new schedules have made life easier, especially for parents of young children and disabled workers, but research has frequently shown that there are other benefits to pandemic-induced work arrangements. The employees who worked from home were happier and, if not more, productive.
Five years later, the number of companies from Amazon to Ford is increasing.
Flexibility is rapidly becoming an elite perk, with some top executives running businesses hundreds or even thousands of miles from their home offices due to the comfort of their home office.
Last year, Starbucks invited Brian Nicole out of Chipotle Mexico’s grill to become one of America’s highest-paid CEOs, claiming a $10 million cash signature bonus, a $75 million stock award and a $1.6 million annual salary. But none of his eye-opening perks attracted as much attention as the work from the house he cut.
Nicole didn’t raise his stakes if other corporate workers at the coffee chain’s Seattle headquarters were told to work in the office three days a week. Instead, he commutes 1,600 miles from Newport Beach, California, and becomes home to his company’s private jet and dime.
Starbucks, who designed the “Back to Starbucks” turnaround plan to rebound from long-term sales disruptions, said that while maintaining an office and home in Seattle, he prioritizes an aggressive schedule of visiting coffee houses, roasting plants, support centers and business partners around the world.
Still, that special treatment is bothering employees. The 2023 Wall Street Journal reports that Boeing’s chief financial officer, Brian West, the company’s second-highest executive, worked from a small office, about five minutes from his home in New Canaan, Connecticut, from his small office hundreds of miles from his headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. West maintains that arrangement even after many staff members are told to return to the office.
According to a securities application, Boeing provided $42,271 worth of flights on the company’s aircraft last year, with a total Western pay of around $6.2 million. Boeing declined to comment.
Management experts say there are far fewer places where key executives log in to work every day. After all, they often fall off their suitcases, jetting into far away offices and calling customers. But executives are allowed to confront remotely with messaging that business will benefit most when employees come in person, and to work remotely.
Like most popular workplace perks, flexibility is primarily a function of power and payment, according to Stanford University economics professor who studies remote work.
His research shows that high-income workers are more likely to make remote work arrangements than those at the bottom of the wage scale. Just 5% of workers make between $10,000 and $50,000 a year on live shows over 50 miles from the office, compared to 14% of those who earned more than $250,000.
“Before the pandemic, working from home was a predictor of low wages. We were joking about it. Does he work from home or is he shir at home?” Bloom said. “Now it’s like the key to an executive toilet. Being able to work from home is what people are succumbing.”
Some workers and CEOs will take office
A similar phenomenon is unfolding in the public sector. President Donald Trump made flashy headlines when he ordered federal workers to be returned to their offices full time. But Bloom said, Trump often prefers his Marlago estate in Florida to an oval office.
There’s not just a single president. A 2023 McKinsey survey found that the largest share of employees who prefer to work from home is highly hoping to earn more than $150,000 a year. They were also the group who were most likely to quit their job if they called back to the office every day.
Rank and File also feels strong about that. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, three-quarters of employers who work from home work work remotely for at least some time. Almost half said that if their employers no longer allow flexibility, they are unlikely to stay.
Pavi Theva was placed in Texas as product manager when Amazon began implementing its new three-day in-person policy.
With no teammates in Austin’s office, she sat herself for 45 minutes to work. She regularly scrambled to find empty meeting rooms, allowing her to attend virtual meetings uninterrupted.
She said that time spent in the office was pointless. “We didn’t add value from a productivity perspective or collaboration perspective.”
After flagging several times for not bashing the office frequently, Theva quit in February 2024 and turned career coaching side hustle into a full-time gig. She never looked back.
“There’s zero commute,” she said. “It’s only 20 seconds from the bedroom to study at PJS.”
A report from the Census Bureau, which surveyed 150,000 companies from November 2024 to January 2025, concluded that remote workers like TheVA would remain here. On average, employees work from home at least one day a week, and businesses expect it to last until 2029. And some business leaders are leaning towards that trend.
In 2022, Airbnb established a “Live and Work Anywhere” remote work policy that allows employees to work from home as long as employees meet in person regularly. Before the pandemic, about 95% of Airbnb employees lived within 50 miles of their office, according to the online market for short-term vacation rentals. Today, that number is about 70%.
“If you want your team to work hard, don’t come to the office and give them crazy deadlines and check their progress every week,” CEO Brian Chesky said of the master of the Scale Rapid Response Podcast. “It’s not about you having them in the office, it’s a way to make them work harder. I don’t care where you are.”
Dropbox has doubled its flexibility with its “virtual first” remote work policy. CEO Drew Houston says it makes no sense to force employees to show up in the office and do the same job they do remotely.
Dropbox said in the past five years, about 70% of job seekers have cited remote work as a reason they are interested in working at file storage companies. Dropbox has also seen its lowest turnover and highest offer acceptance rates since it was completely remote.
“We can be far more stupid than bringing people back to the car three days a week or literally going back to the same Zoom meeting they were at home,” Houston told Fortune’s next leadership podcast. “There’s a better way to do this.”
