Paul Graham, a co-founder of startup accelerator and seed capital firm Y Combinator, took to Twitter to share his thoughts against the remote work revolution. He thinks leaders were “fooled” at first, but most companies will mandate workers to come back to the office.
He said:
“I’ve talked to multiple founders recently who have changed their minds about remote work and are trying to get people back to the office. I doubt things will go all the way back to how they were before Covid, but it looks like they will go most of the way back.”
The venture capitalist suggested that the effectiveness of remote work fades over time, and companies just tricked people to get new talent in their squads.
He added: “Why were all these smart people fooled? Partly because remote work does work initially if you start with a system already healthy from in-person work … And partly because it seemed to solve recruiting, which is always a bottleneck.”
“There will definitely continue to be remote-first companies. It works for some businesses. And there will be types of jobs, like customer service, that will commonly be done remotely. But remote-first won’t be the default,” he concluded.
Graham’s comments come as a number of major companies reverse their flexible working policies, including Amazon, Apple, and Goldman Sachs.
