“Work from home” didn’t work

One of the most interesting things about the COVID-19 era and the time that immediately followed it was the vast number of significant traditions, norms, and societal practices that we were told “would never be the same.”

Some claims were easier to see through than others. While plane travel was understandably down in a period of lockdowns and mask requirements, it was a pretty shortsighted prediction to assert that “people will never travel again.” Having heard this forecast before in the aftermath of 9/11 and having seen record levels of airplane travel achieved just a couple of years later, I felt the COVID-era predictions around air travel were myopic, naïve, and ignorant. My feeling was validated very quickly after society reopened.

Other “this time it’s different” assertions were more muddied. When people predicted streaming would take significant market share from movie theaters, was that really a “COVID” moment paradigm shift or just a technological and consumer shift that was playing out regardless? Many things we associate as being COVID-era shifts were in motion before the pandemic and may have been merely accelerated by that era’s logistical challenges (like streaming, food delivery, ride-share, etc.).

A wide array of COVID practices did, indeed, peak in 2020, and we will look back in amusement that anyone ever thought home-based Pelotons were going to make gyms, spin classes, and other traditional workout venues obsolete.

But perhaps the most controversial (and certainly the most presumptive) assertion coming out of the COVID era were statements like “No one needs to go to work anymore. COVID revealed that most people can easily work from home and be just as productive.” It is difficult to ascertain how many people actually believed this to be true versus how many merely wanted it to be true, but it is not an exaggeration to say that it was a consensus view for quite some time. Adding fuel to the fire was nearly every Big Tech company at the time boastfully declaring that work attendance would be optional going forward (at one point, Apple, Amazon, Google, Netflix, Salesforce, and Microsoft all made some form of that declaration).

And now, every single one of them has taken it back. Every single one.

Amazon announced last week that not only was “work from home” being terminated as an option going into 2025, but even the “hybrid” option so many companies adopted post-COVID was also being eliminated. Amazon is now doing what my own company did in 2020, which is to require all employees to come to work five days per week. This follows similar announcements from almost every company one can think of that once boldly declared “work from home” as a permanent solution. My favorite announcement reversing course on the romanticized idea of home-based, pajama-wearing work was from Zoom itself, the actual company providing the service that facilitated most of the work-from-home capability. The irony runs thick!

Time and time again, the announcements (in truth, mea culpas) regarding a need to return to the office have addressed the fundamental issue that should be no surprise to those of us who hold to a Biblical anthropology: People are social creatures who work in collaboration with one another. While there is no doubt that some businesses and some endeavors can work in isolation better than others, the vast majority of company-based endeavors (versus sole practitioners) benefit from the mentorship in-office work facilitates, the collaboration and culture that such physical connectivity allows, and the brand and reputation that is built behind such unity and proximity.

We teach our kids best when we are with them in person, not using a Zoom screen for important conversations. Likewise, we junior analysts learn from more experienced professionals best in person, reading facial expressions and interacting in real-time and -place circumstances. The irony of the 2020–2022 “work from home” moment was that so many people over the age of 40 who had learned their craft working under the mentoring presence of a more seasoned veteran were now willing to kick the ladder out from under and deprive the next generation of employees the very mentorship they once received.

There are all sorts of exceptions and nuances related to when working from home may make sense, but the basic reality of human nature and the powerful testimony of tradition is that many office-based jobs facilitate the profoundly “human things” that matter in our vocational endeavors. Big Tech is catching up to what many of us knew from the earliest moments of COVID: Viruses come and go, but human nature doesn’t change.