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đ Apple, Twitter, and Salesforce's misguided remote policies
Inside: Record remote job openings and years of productivity data mean big tech is destined to lose talent.
Remote Source
March 27, 2023
Good Morning,
The layoffs continued last week, and Indeed and Glassdoor (both owned by Recruit Holdings) announced 15% layoffs. Discouragingly notable because they both have substantial insight into the job market and hiring trends.
In other news, AI is quickly affecting everything we do, and this is the first hype train in a long time that Iâve quickly jumped onto. But donât worry, ChatGPT isnât writing these newsletters - that wouldnât be any fun.
Need to know
What does all of this mean?
Executives are pushing HARD for office work. In a layoff-prone environment, companies know they have the upper hand â and this is their opportunity to negotiate for what they, or investors, think will benefit the company most.
Especially telling is Slackâs Future Forum closure. Slack, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2021, has always been an enabler, advocate, and beneficiary of remote work, and its findings were prescient.
Take the trends they uncovered in Fall 2022 (below): managers were faring worse with remote work, while their employees were more productive.
In times of disruption, leaders can either lean in and learn new skills or fall back on what worked for themâoften decades ago. Given macroeconomic stress, itâs understandable that many want to go back to what worked in the past. But two generations of digital natives have now entered the workplace. Workforces are more diverse, and thereâs an accelerating pace of change and competition. That means that the job of leaders must change as well. And change, for everyone, can be daunting.
Marc Benioff shutting down the research arm that directly counters his policy with verifiable data is a fitting anecdote. It wonât be long until these companies and more realize theyâre losing out on the best talent, and they have to accommodate remote work all over again.
Lots of doom and gloom so far, but donât worry: I wouldnât lead you down this path just to tell you weâre all going back to the office.
In addition to all the positive benefit you and I know remote work brings, and the myriad benefits others have found, this National Bureau of Economic Research report found that remote job openings are now at an all-time high in several major metropolitan areas.
The shift has been especially strong in cities that have universities, tech hubs, and government operations. In Lansing, for example, 39% of job openings cite remote work options.
And in the same report by NBER, it was found that the Information, Finance, Insurance, and Public Administraton industries held especially steadfast in their remote shift and are not expected to revert to more time in the office.
The conclusion to draw here is this: when the economy rebounds from this slump, the US is ready for a substantial shift toward even more remote work. When employees have the upper hand again and companies need to attract more talent, thereâs no other solution. Hereâs hoping the shift happens sooner than later.
If you donât want to wait for the tide to turn, our job board now has 11,000+ remote jobs to browse and apply to - and itâs updated daily.
Elsewhere
Interview with a remote Yelp product manager who moved away from San Francisco (Insider)
âZoom Townsâ exploded, but new residents are facing layoffs (Bloomberg)
Home office ideas from a Manhattan loft (WSJ)
4 ways to build company culture in a remote environment (Forbes)
WFH policies could boost the US birth rate (MarketWatch)
Any Succession fans here? Something tells me Logan Roy wouldnât be jazzed about remote work, but his kids would support it. Then Tom would find a way to butcher the policy rollout and, of course, blame it all on Greg.
Cheers,
Grant
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