alt Hacker NewsI wasn't able to find anything to either support or refute what you said.
On one hand, there's a poll that said 58% of respondents admit to ghostwork:
https://www.resume-now.com/job-resources/careers/ghostworkin...
But how many people sit at a desk or office idly to keep up appearances? That's so common its a trope.
Gallup has some interesting polls, they highlight manager engagement as the #1 link to employee engagement:
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-...
and
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/697904/state-of-the-global-...
Expectations on some remote work remain stable since 2023:
https://www.gallup.com/401384/indicator-hybrid-work.aspx
My speculation and experience at what's going on between the cracks since we're just talking:
-Leadership skills and leadership positions are woefully not 1:1 (lot of bad leaders out there)
-Leaders have to work a bit harder to make sure hybrid works well, whereas all onsite or all remote tend to naturally keep things more in sync with "one way to do things", this goes poorly with empty suits in leadership roles
-Enough people want better work-life that they dig in and treat remote work as birthright, this can drive anecdotes you see in the CEO-level rags when they clash with meh or worse leaders
-Employee perks like remote work don't always = ROI or better company outcomes, and vice versa
Generally, people that expect remote work don't care at all about people that can't have remote work. Instead why don't people that demand remote work, demand that the factory work also be moved to people's homes?
Larry normally goes into the factory to melt tires and mold new ones. The company can buy him a rubber melter and a mold press and install it at his house. Of course this makes no sense for a billion reasons.
No, instead we'll just keep insisting/pretending that the work needed to be done in the world can be done from a laptop computer and that 99% of the workforce deserves 200k+ salaries, but not Larry.
And as for the fate of Larry and many others like him - well fuck him, he has to go to work, I want my damn at home desk job.
Whether people realize this or not, a lot more people are going to lose their tech jobs. And just because our work isn't as productive at home than in an office where coordination is 100x easier, we'll just keep insisting that there's no other way to do this. Besides, everyone moved to SmallTown, USA so we can't go back.
It's all so much more Narcissistic than that CEO would ever be.
I'm not saying there is an easy solution, but to simply lay blame on narcissistic CEOs is laughable.