The “if you trusted them enough to hire them you should trust them with everything unconditionally” meme is popular, but it’s a very weak argument.

Everyone has to build trust and establish a reputation at any job. Every company treats new employees as probationary, whether they make it explicit or not.

You don’t get hired into a company and immediately have the same trust level as the guy who has been there for 5 years and has a long history of delivering results.

For some issues with new employees you can pivot quickly: If you discover that someone is not good at interacting with databases and is causing downtime and restore from backup situations, you pivot quickly and remove their database privileges while you observe their skill growth.

With remote, you can’t pivot quickly. If you’re 12 weeks in and the new remote hire obviously can’t communicate remotely or focus at home, you can’t pivot quickly and have them work in the office most of the time because remote hires don’t necessarily live by the office. So it’s a slowly earned privilege in companies that aren’t remote-first.

I’m surprised this is a foreign concept. This was actually the common situation with remote work before COVID: Gaining WFH ability was something earned and negotiated over time. It wasn’t widely publicized, but that’s how many of us started working remote.

Building trust is a gradual thing. You give some, you get some, you do that long enough and you will have a lot of trust. You can still lose it all in a heartbeat. But you're never going to get the keys to the kingdom on day #1.

'Trust comes on foot, but leaves by horse'.