My partner’s company just had their most profitable quarter in company history, when everyone but some bare bones staff was working at home, and they’re still debating whether or not to bring everyone back into the office.
At a certain point you have to recognize that it’s not about being safe or rational. It’s about bosses making sure they can hold power over employees.
Why do you think that? If anything, managers can help better connect a more distributed workforce. (And those connections are one of the definite downsides of everyone being remote.)
Because if you have competent people, managers don't need to do much, we just coordinate ourselves to achieve our goals and our boss asks us from time to time if everything is going OK.
The catch is, it takes a good manager to hire and keep good employees that can self coordinate effortlessly.
I think its less that "remote workers need fewer bosses" and more that "remote work is illustrating that the number of bosses we have is not necessary"
Many of them just don't have things to do when everyone is remote, and yet the work is still getting done.
At a certain point you have to recognize that it’s not about being safe or rational. It’s about bosses making sure they can hold power over employees.