Remote work morphs into elite status symbol for wealthy, college-educated

https://fortune.com/2024/01/29/remote-work-wealth-education-inequality-white-collar-jobs/

by BerislavLopac • 2 years ago

33 79 2 years ago

fortune.com

spking• 2 years ago

https://archive.ph/osPFP

ambyra• 2 years ago

Thanks!

ajsnigrutin• 2 years ago

So... people who do intellectual work and only need a desk, chair and a computer?

I mean... it would be pretty hard for a plumber, electrician, construction worker, etc. to work from home.

aeonik• 2 years ago

Honestly, I think there's a market for a professional trades phone support. There are so many cases were I just wish I could video chat and ask some basic questions from a professional plumber or electrician while I'm doing some DIY work.

My pet insurance provides something similar, where I will call a veterinarian outside of office hours that can help my triage potential emergency issues.

MattGaiser2• 2 years ago

This was a complaint during the pandemic too, so I am not sure much has changed.

Only knowledge jobs generally can work remotely. Robotic avatars are a long ways away for the other jobs.

lloydatkinson• 2 years ago

No it does not. This is another hit piece from the elites worried about office space and buildings.

flir• 2 years ago

There's an argument that anyone with a pension should be worried about commerical real estate[1].

UK-specific, but for political reasons our local government tier has been investing in commercial real estate for the last 15 years or so[2].

I've no intention of going back, of course. Someone else can take one for the team.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/pension-funds-feeling-pain-c...

[2] https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/local-authority-investment-in...

0823498723498722• 2 years ago

anyone with a pension should be worried about commerical real estate

I'd find it more likely that anyone with a rationally-managed pension would find they are (and always have been) diversified enough that things which benefit the wider economy (ie WFH) bring them more gains overall than sporadic losses concentrated in specific sectors.

walthamstow2• 2 years ago

Just a few years after most knowledge workers shifted to remote work, it’s now mostly wealthy, college-educated employees who are still being allowed to work from home

What job does a poor, uneducated knowledge worker do?

glitchc• 2 years ago

Customer/employee service, executive assistant, front-line IT support...

MattGaiser2• 2 years ago

Except for really frontline customer service, those jobs seem to require a degree nowadays or at least have everywhere I have worked.

dangus2• 2 years ago

On top of that, in what universe is the typical remote knowledge worker “wealthy?”

Making a 50-70% higher salary than the median isn’t “wealthy.” That’s just “upper quartile middle class.” That’s a wage employee who depends on a regular paycheck and couldn’t remain unemployed for an extended period of time.

The word “wealthy” doesn’t meant that at all. “Wealthy” means you fly first class. “Wealthy” means you pay for luxury cars with cash. “Wealthy” means you own more than one home.

The median software engineering salary is now at the bottom cutoff for being approved for a mortgage on a basic home.

I bet most of the “wealthy” software engineers who worked in-office in 2018 and are remote now make less today after adjusting for inflation.

XorNot2• 2 years ago

I mean this is just another entry in the various hit pieces being sponsored by anyone who's long on downtown corporate real estate.

alisonatwork• 2 years ago

By definition upper quartile means being in the top 25%. I think most people would understand "middle class" to mean exactly what it sounds like it means: the 50% of people clustered around the middle. I know some wealthy people like to imagine they aren't wealthy because there are always other people around even wealthier than they are, but that doesn't mean they're not wealthy compared to the average.

FuriouslyAdrift2• 2 years ago

Truck driver is the number 1 job in most states in the US.

Walmart is paying $95k per year starting salary.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/07/business/walmart-truck-driver...

walthamstow2• 2 years ago

Isn't that skilled labour, rather than knowledge work? A truck driver is operating heavy machinery with his hands

pjc504• 2 years ago

"Knowledge worker who doesn't know anything" => straight out of college management consultants.

yardie• 2 years ago

Remote work is ... a bargaining tool for people who prefer to work remotely, and it doesn't matter what socioeconomic class you're in.

CRE funds are so determined to get employees back into the office (while their asset class implodes) that they'll sponsor any piece of journalism that will help toe the line. Since last year it's been a steady drumbeat of articles claiming remote work is over or is "bad" for morale. And the data doesn't seem to line up.

dandy233• 2 years ago

But it will and should increase the salaries for employees in fields where they cannot work from home.

Salaries for blue collar jobs will go up and for white collar jobs down.

pyrale• 2 years ago

Salaries for blue collar jobs will go up and for white collar jobs down.

Not really, because there's a lock-in due to job specialization. If the job you're proficient at requires you on the line, you won't see a dime more for being there, because there's no alternative.

Which means, if any raise happens, it will go to lines of work where remote is an option - white collars jobs mostly.

otteromkram• 2 years ago

How so?

Blue-collar workers are limited to a viable commuting distance. If employees don't like the rate of pay, they have limited options, which is why many in those fields have formed unions.

White-collar workers who don't like the rate of pay can look elsewhere around the globe.

I would note that WFH is beneficial to all parties (except commercial real estate). There's not only fewer cars on the road at key times, but remote workers can run errands at odd hours, allowing workers with less flexibility to complete their errands faster as there's less traffic to contend with during "rush hour" time blocks.

Also, WFH isn't for everyone:

* As much as people love their family, being around them 24/7 takes a toll

* Some people like the social aspects of office work.

* Remote workers are less likely to move up the food chain unless a company is 100% distributed (pure speculation).

I really don't understand why WFH is being touted as evil or elitist. The evil doers are the execs cutting those workers, forcing life changes, and making people miserable, all for financial gain atop already padded compensation packages.

neogodless• 2 years ago

* Commercial Real Estate

pavlov• 2 years ago

Remote work always was a luxury for those with enough status in the workplace to feel confident not being seen at the office.

ajmurmann• 2 years ago

IMO being seen as important or competent enough to be certain to get consulted for decisions you care about also plays a role when we are taking about hybrid. I've seen it so often that a conversation arises organically, people overhear it pull up their chairs and half an hour later some problem was solved a certain way. Next day at stand-up or when the PR hits might be the first time the remote employee hears about it who now has to be caught up and sometimes the decision now gets unmade or we are that the alternative is only marginally better and not worse redoing the work for. The little bit of barrier to call someone in is just sometimes too much to interrupt the discussion and even add a very senior person who is remote.

One of many reasons I think hybrid is super hard and likely worse than full remote, full local or remote with set days in the office for everyone (my personal favorite).

crotchfire• 2 years ago

This is going to shock people, but remote work was very common for blue-collar workers in the 1800s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putting-out_system

dandy233• 2 years ago

I think in this setting (WFH) blue collar job also means hospital jobs, restaurant, r&d lab workers, teachers, sales etc, i.e. any kind of job where one cannot physically work from home.

XorNot2• 2 years ago

Yes imagine if the physical requirements of those jobs were rewarded with some type of additional monetary compensation, given the demands placed upon the workers...

soneca• 2 years ago

Not “shock” precisely, but definitely an interesting surprise to me. Thanks for posting this

legitster2• 2 years ago

This is still common in many places.

I remember reading somewhere that some items in IKEA were essentially home made in places like India or Vietnam. Things like brooms and rugs.

orbisvicis• 2 years ago

Heh that sounds like the workers worked from home while management had to go in.

allium• 2 years ago

This is just an attempt to pit workers against other workers, both to make lower-proles hate WFH upper-proles (“middle class”) and to pit the upper-proles on notice that RTO will come for them if they don’t shape up. Do not fall for it. The real enemy is up top and always has been.

Anyway, RTO is more about fucking over people with disabilities—for unclear reason, because accommodated disabled people are, in my experience, the best people to work with, because they’ve seen real shit—and this attempt to create intra-proletarian dissension is just a distraction, at the end of the day.

ttt11199907• 2 years ago

I read this the same way. Any divide will be exploited to keep us from getting mad over all time high corporate profits unaccompanied by any benefit to the workers, the actual value creators.

toomuchtodo• 2 years ago

"Ahh, cool, you want me to help blue collar workers unionize to get more leverage and agency against low empathy high status demanding usually elderly (55+) management. You got it boss."

JoshGG• 2 years ago

So true thanks for posting.

Minions must return to office and support CRE valuations!

mg• 2 years ago

Yesterday, in Microsofts earnings report, a number that stood out to me was their quarterly Linkedin revenue of $4B.

That revenue probably mostly comes from the old school hiring process where employer and employee get to know each other and then jump into a long term contract, right?

I'm surprised Upwork and Fiverr are still so small in comparison. Their model of letting people quickly band and disband on projects seems so much more natural to me in the times of remote work.

organsnyder• 2 years ago

Their model of letting people quickly band and disband on projects seems so much more natural to me in the times of remote work.

For certain tasks, sure. But every position I've held required gathering quite a bit of context before I was able to really be effective. It's not just the tech stack and existing systems, either: it's learning the business to a level where I can better know that I'm meeting the actual business need (rather than just the text on the JIRA ticket).

mikepurvis• 2 years ago

Agree. Indeed we often specifically flag those tickets which require so little context that they might make a good "onboarding issue" or "intern issue".

pjc504• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm : "quickly band and disband on projects" has overheads which can be prohibitive. Especially in knowledge work. This is partly why offshore outsourcing wasn't a success.

marricks2• 2 years ago

A friend who does clerical work and makes less than half of my programmer wage is getting forced into office by a boss who reads trash like this.

After the dust settles from this I bet there will be studies showing lower wage workers were forced into the office just as much if not more than higher paid counter parts.

While she’s fighting to stay remote my job has absolutely no risk of that, same with my coworkers companies we work with.

bryanlarsen• 2 years ago

Her job is probably even more suited for remote work than yours is. She likely has some sort of output statistic that provides a good measure of productivity, unlike most programming jobs.

marricks2• 2 years ago

Right… and her direct boss (who doesn’t care about remote) is, by nature of job, not in office.

Its fucked.

lucidguppy• 2 years ago

Is this supposed to make remoters feel guilty?

Go away...

If corporate wanted to reduce the desire for remote - they would have smaller satellite campuses outside the great automobile slums of America.

The wealthy don't care about efficiency, they aren't being rational about this.

They go into the office - see an empty building and say "this is wrong".

But they put the cart before the horse - they should say "why is my company operating just fine without office space?" - that should say something about how horrible open offices are for productivity.

The intangibles that come with in-office work could be addressed by augmented reality meetings (a headset costs a lot less than a year of gasoline).

The ONLY problem I see that isn't addressed with remote work is junior development. This again could be addressed by much smaller campuses and augmented reality.

mettamage• 2 years ago

Junior development can be addressed with things like tuple.app and recorded screens when pair programming. That's how I learned a lot. Also, screen recordings of pair programming sessions are an advantage. The seniors I worked with would often go on tangents that I wouldn't remember, rewatching those sessions made me understand the tangents and have a much more complete context of what was said.

Remote work is a competitive advantage when it comes to programming.

xangel• 2 years ago

You know, "operating just fine" is pretty relative. It the company lacked high-performance culture in the first place - yeah, it would continue to operate/decline just fine. Just a personal opinion.

Clubber• 2 years ago

I would guess this article is paid propaganda. So many articles about RTO/WFH in the last few years, it's obviously trying to manipulate people. If you consider news today as a paid propaganda machine for the wealthy, articles like this make more sense.

The premise on it's face is wrong. A lot of big tech companies are forcing their employees to RTO, including Apple, Amazon and Google. If they aren't elite, I don't know who is. I suspect this article is designed to introduce class division into the RTO/WFH argument. Sadly, it will probably sway some people on that basis alone.

Return-to-office mandates in select tech companies worldwide 2024, by number of days. As of January 2024, several major technology companies, including Google, Amazon, Meta, and Apple, have implemented return-to-office mandates requiring employees to be in the office at least three days per week.

api• 2 years ago

They could also get behind zoning reform to address housing affordability in major cities. For many people remote work is more about breaking real estate than not coming to an office.

pjc504• 2 years ago

Maybe people have been gaslit into thinking that being an ""elite"" is somehow a word of shame rather than something one should be proud of?

Anyway, all this comes down to power, both in terms of market power and the social relations between manager and employee. The elite knowledge workers have something that is a critical factor of production for many businesses. Since this thing - knowledge, a form of fixed capital - exists inside the human mind and is extremely time-consuming to transfer, it has to be leased from the employees. Since it's in relatively short supply that commands a high price.

But that scarcity also converts into other forms of market power: the ability to set non-monetary conditions of sale on the knowledge.

This upsets the social relations of the office, because managers are used to being able to micromanage and physically surveil subordinates. The idea that an employee can set boundaries radically upsets American managers. Next people will be asking for holiday.

The reverse of this is of course at the very bottom end of the market: if your boss can change your shift pattern at the last minute, if you're on a so-called "zero hours" contract, then that's because you're deemed utterly replaceable and have no market power.

vidanay• 2 years ago

And yet so many people practically worship the concept of elite athletes, or elite actors, or elite musicians.

pjc504• 2 years ago

.. and another thing: although I work in an office some of the week, my boss^2 works in a different city and the parent company including people I work with frequently is in a different country in a different timezone. I can't not be remote from some people, because we're spread out.

Building a massive office, getting visas, and paying staff enough to afford to live within commuting radius of a particular city in the western United States is very expensive.

candiodari• 2 years ago

I think this site just has a seriously warped view of what "elite" means. To everyone it seems to mean something like "people with 2x your wealth or more". Great, but a more reasonable definition of elite would be akin to, "top 10%":

1) any higher degree => elite

2) $150k or more family income => elite (and this is only counting people being paid a monthly wage for at least, I believe, 4 months of the year, otherwise it's $89k to get you into the top 10%, this is definitely not all Americans)

And if you count worldwide ... let's just not go there. Take off multiple zeroes.

So it is not about manager vs non-manager. I think you'll find managers don't have much decision making power anyway. It is not about directors or CEOs or people who own companies. Elite is nearly everyone that reads this site.

bloqs• 2 years ago

This is not new. Being away from the office AFTER establishing your presence at critical stages and making your face known reads as "busy and productive".

0823498723498722• 2 years ago

"college-educated", in the US context, is a long way from "elite"

"Some college" is now ~60% of the population (closer to 2/3 in recent generations), so a similar characterisation on the wealth axis would be households with USD 100k or more in (pre-tax!) assets; holding the equivalent of a few cars or a small condo also does not strike me as being very "elite".

(in short, it would appear that "elite" in US discourse has become as meaning-free as "middle-class")

pizzafeelsright• 2 years ago

I love working from home. So blessed. Quit my good job to go 30% less money just so I could stay remote.

It is elite because I don't have to commute.

I'm wealthy now in time and proximity.

antipaul• 2 years ago

Maybe companies should lift a finger to create work spaces that, well, work?

borplk• 2 years ago

"elite status symbol for wealthy" don't work! :))

glimshe• 2 years ago

Let me have my status symbol, it's at least more earth-friendly than driving a F-150 or Mercedes around town.

spacecadet• 2 years ago

gross thinking! a huge chunk of the workforce has always been "remote" or does not/never did report directly to a corporate overlord and their pit...

legitster2• 2 years ago

I mean, they are not wrong!

I moved out into the country into a more blue collar area. On the coast, I was a nobody. But out here my income alone sets me apart. I inhabit many of the same social spaces in town as the doctors and lawyers. And even they don't get to work from home! Even amongst the elite its a luxury.

It's awesome - I'm not going to go back into an office anytime soon. But I am completely clear-eyed that it is a unique privilege. It's hard to act entitled about it knowing there is absolutely no one in my circle who would give me a shoulder to cry on.

mouzogu• 2 years ago

what remote jobs....

"One thing appears to become clear: The chasm between the sectors in the workforce is likely to only get wider."

thats the real subtext here. and i agree.

goalieca• 2 years ago

The office used to also be a status symbol. Ever seen a waterfront tech office with glass walls and ping-pong tables?

SauciestGNU2• 2 years ago

The office, both at a group level (works for company in fancy building) and at an individual level (has a large or corner office, works on a higher floor) have long been and I would argue continue to be status symbols. I think both can be true, certainly there are people still who prefer to or must work in a facility. I won't voluntarily work in an office again.

nicomeemes• 2 years ago

Lol - this from Fortune magazine. I swear I see a steady stream of these hit pieces from Fortune, WSJ, etc. Go away!

lawgimenez• 2 years ago

It seems like the author has run out of topics to write.

schuyler2d• 2 years ago

As a programmer, when I was on the job market two years ago, even though I'd actually prefer to be local in-person so I could hang out with colleagues, I realized it would be a red flag for any software dev team that wasn't remote by now.

What kind of brain-dead culturally frozen and fragile org, post-covid, would resist or be incapable of managing a remote team at this point?

Uptrenda• 2 years ago

Yep, here's some awesome perks of being remote too:

1. never knowing anyone on a personal level in the company (no matter how long you've been there)

2. being perceived as a sub-human disposable 'resource'

3. never being promoted

4. often hired as contractors without same benefits as employees

offering people remote jobs is done as much for cutting costs as it is to access more talent. you don't have to spend as much money when they provide everything themselves.

surgical_fire• 2 years ago

I unironically upvoted you:

1. never knowing anyone on a personal level in the company (no matter how long you've been there)

Good. My relationship with my colleagues should be based on respect and professionalism. I don't need to know them on a personal level, nor do I want to.

2. being perceived as a sub-human disposable 'resource'

I worked for 15 years prior to the pandemic in office. All companies perceive you as "sub human disposable resource". Just wait for a market downturn, and you will see that I am right. The only answer to this is treat your employer as "disposable employment that you need to pay bills"

3. never being promoted

Being promoted is for fools. You get more money by job hopping into a higher salary every couple of years, more or less.

4. often hired as contractors without same benefits as employees

Never happened to me as a remote worker. But the daily rates for some contractors I know give me pause, and I wonder if I should pursue this instead.

AnimalMuppet2• 2 years ago

Re 1: I'm a human, not just a worker. I don't need to go out for beers every week after work, but knowing my coworkers as humans is a nice bit of human contact... if they're not jerks or too messed up. (Otherwise, knowing my coworkers personally is a bit of human contact, but it's not nice...)

Re 3: This works... for maybe the first 10 or 15 years. After that, switching too often can be a red flag, limiting your ability to land the better jobs.

ubermonkey• 2 years ago

All this is so weird to me -- or, rather, it points out how weird my career has been.

I'm 53. I've worked at home since 2001, but it happened kinda accidentally. The dot-com-era software consultancy/internet studio I worked for in the late 90s cratered in the fall of 2001, so I hung out my shingle and went back to doing hands-on technical work. This was catch-as-catch-can for a while, but I kept the lights on -- and at no point did I consider renting an office to do it.

Then I joined a startup that didn't really take off, and we BRIEFLY had an office before realizing it was dumb and giving it up (so, like, 4-6 months?). We were traveling all the time anyway.

Then I went back to consulting and worked at home or on the road.

Then I joined my current employer, which has NEVER had an office anywhere, and as such had employees spread nationwide. We used to be cagey about it with customers (who are generally large traditional companies), but since COVID normalized WFH we've been much more open about it.

I miss very few things about an office. When I think about it, what I actually miss isn't the office, but the few moments in my early career where the office was also a place generally full of people whose company I enjoyed even external to the working relationship. That's an unusual thing, and (I bet) something you're more likely to experience in your 20s than your 50s.

I would like to see my boss more often. It's been a couple years now. I haven't seen our VP of SW in person in probably 10 years. But my home office comes with cats, a better coffee machine than any in-person office has, a kitchen I can cook lunch in, and a couch if I want to catch a short nap.

AnimalMuppet2• 2 years ago

But my home office comes with cats...

Getting paid for time when you have a cat on your lap is one of the best things in life.

shrimp_emoji• 2 years ago

So college degrees were worth it after all. ;D

303uru• 2 years ago

Happily Elite here then. I love that we've all been gaslit into thinking Elite is something to be ashamed of. Real be proud to be average vibes. I'm surprised no one is calling remote work Woke yet.

tennisflyi• 2 years ago

Always has

Remote work morphs into elite status symbol for wealthy, college-educated

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