Christy Tabors, a 35-year-old Texan, worked remotely for a Meta Group subcontractor. In the spring of 2023, she got a phone call. Her job was being cut. She called her department manager, who didn’t even know. The decision had been made higher up. M’s lightning layoffme Tabors is not original. On TikTok, testimonies of dismissed employees who worked from home are multiplying. One had not hit the keys of his computer keyboard often enough, so spyware had considered him not diligent. Another, a Cloudflare salesperson, had “little chance of success”according to its management, which dismissed it.
During the pandemic, large companies in the high-tech sector had hired a lot. At the end of the health crisis, a wave of job cuts followed, affecting white-collar workers, and particularly remote employees. The probability of being “let go” is 35% higher for remote employees than for those who regularly go to the office, indicates a survey by software publisher Live Data Technologies, which surveyed two million white-collar workers in 2023, office workers and home workers.
Their chances of promotion are also reduced by 31%. “It is obvious that there is an a priori of proximity for both the employer and the employee, comments Jason Saltzman, Director of Development at Live Data Technologies. The manager feels closer to those he sees in meetings or around the coffee machine. So it is the absent person who will disappear from the organization chart when difficult decisions have to be made.
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Tech companies are reluctant to publicly discuss their lack of appetite for remote work. They are too afraid of being judged as backward by newcomers to the workforce. Some, however, acknowledge their preference for in-person work. IBM has asked its executives to locate to a company office within a 50-mile radius. Senior Vice President John Granger has clearly set the rules of the game. In a January 2024 memo, he adds that from now on, employees must clock in at least three days a week or risk their job.
The pendulum swings back
Another company, same message: the computer manufacturer Dell requires a presence three days a week in the company. In February, the management explained itself. Those who do not adopt this new schedule will no longer be entitled to a promotion or a change of direction. Dell has thus instituted a system of control by color. Blues are strongly present in the office, green and yellow in the middle, reds are very rare. This classification is taken into account for future promotions, annual evaluations, or even possible redundancy plans.
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