Implicit in the framing is that employers are the losers as the dates for returning to the office get pushed back. But there’s a strong case to be made that in the long run, more employees may be the losers from remote work.
BY:
Salvatore Nicci
Technology Analyst / Reporter
PROJECT COUNSEL MEDIA
15 December 2021 Paris, France) – Former AOL CEO Tim Armstrong won’t win many friends with his comments, published in The Information yesterday, that young people should go back to the office to protect their own career development. It’s an unfashionable view, particularly given the surging Omicron variant. It may also be impractical right now. For instance, California’s reintroduction of an indoor mask mandate will turn off a lot of people about working in an office, regardless of their views on remote work.
But Armstrong has a point that deserves more attention. The broader debate over remote work focuses on the opposing viewpoints of employees who prefer the flexibility offered by remote work – and who want to retain those benefits long term – and bosses who want people back in the office. Implicit in that framing is that employers are the losers as the dates for returning to the office get pushed back. But there’s a strong case to be made that in the long run, more employees may be the losers from remote work.
Armstrong’s point was that 20-somethings learn a lot from in-office interaction with older colleagues, experiences that pay off over time. Does anyone imagine that an internship or first job for a college graduate is as valuable a learning opportunity when performed at home as it is in the office? With many companies (especially tech companies) extending remote work as far out as 2023, the number of young people affected by this shift will multiply.
Older employees with years in the workforce may not need the benefits that come from mixing with people in the office. But they owe it to their much younger colleagues to pass on what they have learned. For everyone’s sake, returning to the office as soon as possible should be the goal.
And a bonus for our UK readers
Britain’s antitrust regulator is on a tear, going after Meta Platform’s Giphy deal, scrutinizing Microsoft’s Nuance purchase and now weighing in on mobile. This is presumably what Brexit means for antitrust.
The Brits have decided that people want more choice in mobile, which is hard to argue with. It’s no secret that if you don’t like iPhones for some reason, there’s not a lot of choice in high-end phones. And in a 445-page report (which we scanned but, yes, we will read the entire thing), the Competition and Markets Authority of the U.K. squarely blames the control exerted over the market by Apple and Google for preventing another mobile ecosystem from emerging. The regulator is considering ways of creating more choice.
But this is a complicated problem to solve. After all, Microsoft—about as deep-pocketed a tech company as you can get, short of Apple itself—famously launched a well-received mobile operating system, Windows Phone. Yet, for a number of reasons, including the fact that Microsoft couldn’t get enough app developers on board, the company gave up.
Developers don’t want to modify their apps for another mobile operating system if it doesn’t have market share. That’s a chicken-and-egg problem, of course, as you can’t get market share without the apps. Even Android doesn’t offer the same lineup of apps as iOS (try getting the New Yorker magazine app on Android). The bottom line is that regulators can’t simply will another mobile ecosystem into existence. Just another example of how regulators simply do not understand how the tech ecosystem works 🤷♂️
