The office is crucial for professional development. You can’t expect to grow in your career without spending time with your coworkers, learning by osmosis, picking up cues from observing your superiors, and bonding with your peers and managers.
That’s been the party line for the past three and a half years among CEOs who are insistent that remote work has no staying power—or that it shouldn’t, at least, among anyone with ambitions of climbing the corporate ladder.
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“Well, I’m a remote worker. I’ve always been a remote worker my whole life. I don’t work well in an office,” Benioff said. “It just doesn’t work for my personality. I can’t tell you why. I do love to go in to visit customers, though. I’m on the road constantly visiting customers.”
Literally the whole point of forcing people back. To remind them that their betters make the rules.
The execs want us to see, and to truly understand, that they do what they want, and we also do what they want.