Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy call remote work a 'Covid-era privilege.' Economists say it's here to stay
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.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/02/musk-ramaswamy-call-remote-work-a-covid-era-privilege-some-economists-disagree.htmlOpen linkView original on lemmy.world594
Comments121
Billionaires need to be taxed out of existance.
That's certainly one of the two ways.
Elon is probably only carrying that child on his shoulders all the time now as a human shield.
I thought he was practicing to do that with Trump.
It would be nice to see poo trickling down Elon's back every day
If he'd ever actually parented any of his children he'd have already experienced that at least once.
Which is how you know he knows fuck-all about America, cause we're kinda indifferent to both collateral casualties and gun violence being the number one cause of death for children.
I unironically believe this to be true.
Is it a reference to the recent alt account thing?
What's the other one? Saving a 't' in the process?
Like
?
No taxation without as... I mean representation?
At least until everyone has homes, food, healthcare, freedom, and education.
naw. keep the tax around, keep them from coming back.
I was being sarcastic. You can't have billionaires without exploiting everyone's basic human needs for food, shelter, safety, healthcare, or freedom, and they'll figure that out with a proper education.
Neither of these assholes have ever had a real job. Not even a high paying real job.
Billionaires are a problem.
As someone who was mostly remote since 2015 I’m pretty confused
Clearly you're living a life of luxury and privilege unlike ordinary hard-working folk like... (tries to keep straight face)... Elon Musk.
Doing drugs and shit-posting is hard work.
Don’t forget Diablo IV #1
He is "playing" Path Of Exile 2 as well. Someone is on his account at least.
Don't forget all the effort he put in for years to not scream from the top of his lungs that he's a nazi. It's tough, I bet he even broke a sweat.
Doing drugs and shit-posting REMOTELY is hard work. ;)
Funny part is that for a few of those years I was actually helping Tesla and SpaceX as part of my fully remote job.
Me too. Musk can't actually manage people, but he can pretend more convincingly if he can see them in person and yell at them. There are a lot of managers like that and there are far more executives.
My company looked at the actual business results from the period of COVID remote work. Productivity went up, so they decided to keep things that way. It also allowed them to get rid of all their office space, except for a sparsely populated headquarters building, which is saving them a lot of money.
Most studies have shown that workers were more efficient when working remotely. Why would any executive want to reduce efficiency and increase infrastructure costs? The Return-To-Office push is not rational. It represents an inability to adapt to changing conditions. If boards were doing their jobs, they would be quietly showing those executives the door and looking for better people to run their companies.
It's not irrational it just has more to do with corporate real estate and control than productivity or employee satisfaction. Large companies don't do anything solely for the benefit of their employees.
Especially with land prices trending upwards. You don't want to be the exec who has to explain that yes, productivity is up 15%, but you're sitting on a skyscraper that nobody wants to buy because it's worth $60mil or whatever.
If no one wants to buy it at $60mil then it is not worth that much.
Line goes up, not down.
I think it is irrational, in the sense that executives' sole legal responsibility, at least in the US, is to make as much money as possible for their shareholders. Favoring control over productivity is a violation of that. They are gratifying their egos instead of doing their jobs.
Of course, in a sane world, how they treat their employees would be an issue, not just profitability.
Like most stupid things in our world, it's about emotions.
This topic is funny to me because I worked for a place that was all about data. Data driven decisions. They had tshirts made that said like "Data > Feelings".
And yet when people brought up to the CEO stuff like studies showing WFH or 4-day-workweeks were effective, he just said "Nah, we're not doing that.". No discussion. No looking at the data. Just no.
To his credit, that CEO did run a profitable startup with barely any funding, so he wasn't a total fool. But on that kind of stuff he was a total gutfeel asshole.
People who run startups, even the successful ones, tend to be awful to their employees. I should say, especially the successful ones.
Commercial real estate. That's why.
The owner of a previous company is a lot like that. He is way more comfortable walking around and seeing people toiling away. I told him I'm perfectly capable of sitting in the office and looking busy for 8 hours.
He treats the place like a convenience store and assumes everyone is stealing from the till.
Remote since 2014... People are crazy
Hell, my uncle was an attorney who was fully remote in the 80s.
Me too (exact same year)! It weirds me out when people are like “you never went back to the office?” Back? Why would I go in the first place? 🤣
Don't try to make it make sense.
This never works well with propaganda.
Check your privilege!
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.
The stupid thing is I actively do less work in the office.
Almost all desk work should be ad hoc.
Get your shit done. Then do what ever until there's more work to do.
This is known. It's been proven; for introverts and/or ADHD especially, since the interaction is stressful and/or completely disturbing. The difference is stark.
But, for extroverts, the office can be where they thrive, and it's the environment that lures them in. So unless they adapt (what? Them? But adapting is for the introverts who run the shit) quickly, they're gonna be fish outta water in short order.
There's absolutely no automatic tangible benefit to RTO for those jobs that are remote capable (ie anything at a desk with no customer interface). Only a subset works marginally better with people to disturb, and I'll question even that number or the benefit. The only reason they want you back in is this lie about being unable to manage your ass unless they can see your ass -- which is the creepiest way to cover for "sunk cost fallacy" for the space lease.
But yeah, keep some space for extroverts who can't cope. It's us being the better people about it.
Many people do for the sole reason that you're more productive when you're comfortable and you're probably going to be more comfortable at home.
pretty much every office I've had to work in was either too cold or too hot. Hoodies in the summer and t-shirts in the winter. I don't have that problem at home.
Most mixed gender offices will have that issue. But also among the same gender one person is comfy at 19°C and another needs 23°C to not be cold.
One of the offices I worked in the HVAC was bizarre. The thermostat was by sales, but the cold air came out of a vent by eng on the other side of the building. Sales was hot, so they'd set a lower temperature. Eng would then get blasted by cold air, and sales would still be hot.
"Nothing to be done about it. Wear a hoodie" said management. Fuck that.
That and they don't understand how to manage people remotely.
One of the benefits of working from home has been that my manager can no longer use standing staring at me as his main means of judging whether I'm doing work. The whole business of needing to see people working just smacks of shitty management.
FTFY
Largely also true. In my office, my manager is remote anyway, so it doesn't matter if I'm in my local office or home office.
So their reasons is control, paranoia, vanity, incompetence when it comes to remote management and their undivided devotion to the American Dollar.
^something^ ^something^ ^spanish^ ^inquisition^
Man, I don't even get a comfy chair!
My new Aeron arrived two weeks ago. It replaced my 18 year old .... Aeron. It has served me well, and needs just 200 in repairs (new pads, new struts, cylinder) so I may give it to my cousin.
Yeah. Comfy chair, cool lifty desk, sweet river view, floofy cats. I dearly hope we can keep WFBest in our next union contract too.
Now wait a minute, I saw your review!
WORK chair. :)
Don't forget sweetheart tax breaks from local municipalities on real estate!
Sure you can have this huge complex company, because we know the 1500 people who work from the office will frequent the local Subway for lunch and that's sales tax!
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
You forgot, it saves people 30 mins - 2 hours every day. What are they going to do with that time? Enjoy themselves? Advocate for their own interests?
No, clearly this cannot stand
If someone still has secret guilt of this looking like a conspiracy thing - it isn't, there's buying and there's buying out on markets, these are different.
Also a pretty normal thing for authoritarian governments to make honey pots for intelligent people, so that they'd work in some kinda useful, but more importantly well-paid positions different from where they could make a difference.
I still think there are 3 other components, all of which can be considered good to some degree - 1) feeling of belonging and, ahem, of hierarchy, people all seeing each other and their employer, 2) less disruption in case of connectivity problems, 3) better understanding of processes and dynamics when in one location. To be clear, 1 is bs, 2 is factual, but can be negotiated for some skeleton group, 3 is bs. But some people make think this way without malice.
Makes me wonder, though, when they say Musk has ASD, how in hell would he be against remote work. Other than commute being hard, actually being present among all those people, boss or not (even worse when boss), should be exhausting. There is that pop culture idea that ASD is connected to being very intelligent (actually no, just caring about interests above social needs), so perhaps it's a PR thing and he really doesn't have it.
Musk didn't say he was against remote work for himself. This is for peons like the American worker class, not for the ruling oligarchy.
But I also wouldn't be surprised if ASD is just PR to help explain away some truly disturbing behavior throughout Musk's career.
ASD doesn't explain anything disturbing. That would be ASPD.
No, you don't understand... This isn't a "the government is doing this to control people" kind of conspiracy
This is a "consulting firms like McKinsey have been quietly but openly pushing the idea of exploiting workers to keep them too busy to advocate for their interests for the last 50 years, using concepts such as corporate culture, surpressing wages, and most recently return to office" thing
It's the investigative journalism kind of conspiracy
Oh. Corporate culture is something I absolutely hate. I have ASD and get sick from the thought itself.
Welllll, Elon owns a large share of a company that makes vehicles. So the more people drive, the better for him.
It’s also incredibly fucked up that they’re worried about real estate prices falling in an economy where so many are having a problem paying rent or owning a house.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's entire existence is a privilege.
They thank us by directly using their endless wealth to fuck us out of our last bit of political/economic power
Can Musk please, please, please, just fucking die already? Preferably burnt to death while trapped in a cybertruck. He's just so stupid and has too much power, and I'm tired of people treating him like he's worth more than utter contempt.
Ramaswamy can go, too. Conspiracy theory peddling sycophant.
Or just have him go to mars or something. And take Bezos with him. With some luck, they will miss Mars... Or be stuck there.
FTFY
"I'll be in the office when Elon is in the office."
Yeah is this guy showing up to Tesla, Twitter, and SpaceX every single day?
Didnt you hear he personally unlocked the Trump hotel bomb for law enforcement and sent them the surveillance footage of it being charged?
He needs us more than we need him.
he should probably let that sink in.
He just needs a firm reminder from a true patriot at the end of their rope.
Covid - the best times of our lives
If COVID was the best, just wait till bird flu gets here.
They probably won’t lock down again. It will be full steam ahead for the economy. Keep throwing bodies into the burner.
All hail the Economy. We must sacrifice the plebs to make sure the Economy continues to award those at the top.
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.
Elon after 2024/12/04:
Seems like he has a pretty exposed area there above the neck...
Well, Elon is smarter than that. That's why you see him carrying little X on his shoulders everywhere now...
I mean, that's the trolley problem. Someone would pull the lever to kill the billionaire even if it meant hurting a child. Sucks, but musk's continued existence is probably going to harm millions of children.
That's the big baby and you get bonus points for a clean takedown.
Rip Disabled people I guess.
And this is coming from the same peoppe saying “just get a job”.
You gotta provide accomodations my guy.
I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if they re-invent Aktion T4 and kill all the undesirables. It's just much more efficient, you know?
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).
Does that make you classist?
Either way, all good. It ain't racist if the fact they're all white guys or Clearence Thomas is accidental or their own nepo action.
That's how the concept was worded around the people I grew up with. I forget my audience on here sometimes lol
They wouldn't say "classist" they'd say "racist against the _____ class"
I can think of two billionaires that I'm tentatively okay with. One sold a software service for a dollar a year to a couple billion people, and the other is a musician with an extremely valuable musical portfolio and popular live shows.
The key part being that they almost entirely made their money by actually producing something themselves, not just leveraging money to make money or leeching off the work of others, and what they made actually provides value. $1 a year for communication services is a fair value, and the musician has easily provided more than a billion hours of enjoyment.
I can't think of anyone else that it seems reasonable to have that much money that actually has that much money.
I agree we should eat the rich, but I'll also admit that it's a rare treat, so worth going all out on the seasoning and dining experience. At the least some fresh herbs and butter basted. :P
I'd cap it high enough so that you can obviously retire with a life of luxury, leave your children unquestionably provided for, and start a few odd businesses without realistically risking the previous points.
"Solving" you and your families material needs is sort of the endgame for wealth. The extra for random business ventures is because society actually benefits from people with safety nets taking risks to see if something makes money. It works better if we had a society wide safety net so failure doesn't kill you, but even a limited form still has a benefit.
Anything leftover shouldn't go to charity, it should go back to the society that helped them get the money in the first place. Charity is good, but it's ultimately a bandaid on social problems, and too often isn't distributed evenly or without condition to those who need it. Taxes and entitlement programs won't require a religious sermon to get food,
The company I work for is pushing almost all of IT to WFH so they can get rid of all the office space they're renting. It actually kind of sucks for me because I don't like working from home.
Give it a some time. I didn't like it the first 3 months. Now I'd never go back.
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.
HE'S WORKING FROM FUCKING MARALAGO FUCK YOU
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.
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?
This is why they're also fighting for those visas. They want to hire people but don't want to pay US wages. And when your residency depends on your employment, you're going to be much less likely to call out bullshit or whatever
These large tech companies are relying upon their brand to keep talent. Amazon and the rest all believe people will put up with shit to have their company listed on someone’s CV.
Or it’s all about quiet layoffs.
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
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
I appreciate you sharing your opinion even though it may be unpopular.
This is me right here. But I go in 3 times a week into the office for my BioTech job. Works great for me.
I don't really find "I fuck off more at home" especially compelling. That sounds like a problem for you and your manager to deal with, and not something that everyone else needs to suffer for.
Stupid fuckers.
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.
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 believe most jobs that can be done from home can be automated by AI within the next 5 years.
It doesn't matter whether AI can do the jobs of humans, it only matters whether management believes that AI can do the job of a human.
If it means I can have my old job back with the compensation and terms I dictate, then by all means, go ahead, give ai a try!
Narrator: It did not mean that.
What's the old job? And what's keeping you from it now?
I guess people misread. I meant go ahead and have an AI take my job. Then when it fails miserably, and they need me back, id be rehired on my terms. Know a few people who got that deal.
Oh! Yes that.
And literally everyone without billions in their bank account will suffer from that. But line go up, so it must be great!
Ramaswamy should be shipped back to his dalit homeland
He's a terrible human being, but I don't think he deserves to be sent back to Ohio.