Why narcissistic leaders resist remote work

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597826000300?fr=RR-2&ref=pdf_download&rr=a102cca8b930e8a3

by dcre • 23 days ago

58 38 23 days ago

Fortune 500 bosses demanding staff RTO share 1 trait: Narcissism, research finds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48682333 - June 2026

The Secret Reason Bosses Want Everyone Back in the Office, Every Day: Narcissism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48639459 - June 2026

ciefa• 23 days ago

I will never work somewhere again where I can't work remote.

bell-cot• 23 days ago

Might the Evil Overlord List be due for an update?

throwitaway2222• 23 days ago

I get the attempt to make these arguments, but on the face and common sense of it, remote work promotes narcissistic behavior far more than some CEO does. The CEO wants the company to succeed.

bibimsz• 23 days ago

found the CEO

xchip• 23 days ago

Citation needed

9x392• 23 days ago

I 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

throwitaway2222• 22 days ago

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.

jdw642• 23 days ago

What I'm feeling is that this narcissistic personality might actually be a signal that society rewards. I saw a news report recently saying that narcissistic traits are often found in successful CEOs.

In my view, maybe society is designed in a way that makes it hard for people without narcissism to succeed. It's like bad money driving out good.

Most successful VC leaders in the US are generally considered to have narcissistic traits. Why is that? VCs are inherently dealing with uncertainty in their investments. Grandiose delusions and absolute conviction get packaged as 'vision' and 'confidence.' Elon Musk's space data center project might look physically implausible, but some famous VCs see it as vision.

Narcissistic leadership is an extreme high-risk, high-return play. They ignore others' advice and bet on their own intuition. If they succeed, it's called innovation (Tesla, Apple). If they fail, it becomes WeWork. We only ever see the narcissists who won, but on the flip side, that's exactly what society rewards as a signal.

Society can't measure actual ability directly. So it looks for proxy signals. But vision, grandiosity, self-promotion, and actual performance are hard to distinguish. In a mass market, someone who speaks loudly gets famous before someone who quietly does good work.

Narcissism is advantageous in this selection stage. People say the preliminaries don't matter, only the finals do. But without the preliminaries, there's no finals, and in the preliminaries, narcissism is almost always advantageous.

Summarizing the papers I've read, narcissistic leaders tend to resist pushback because face-to-face environments where their power and status can be checked are reduced over time. And our society has built a system that rewards exactly that.

So rationally, we all know that this is wrong, that we should respect others, and that we should cut down our own egos. But the capitalist system seems to run in the exact opposite direction.

forshaper2• 23 days ago

At scale, a clear identity is needed to get people to give you what it takes to pay the bills. An identity that is continuously refined becomes clearer. The act of refinement of the identity may then create an attachment to the identity, like an IKEA effect. Any protections of the identity also serve to make the identity clearer to others.

jdw642• 23 days ago

It feels like identity and personal branding. The Western perspective and the Eastern perspective definitely seem different.

krrishd3• 23 days ago

Even if one were to grant the conclusion — leaders resist remote work to preserve their "power and status" — to what extent is the magnitude and success of a company (or for that matter, any serious enterprise) a direct function of its leader's ability to:

- Exercise authority / power

- Maintain status within the hierarchy

As in - who wants to work for a leader who is neither powerful nor high-status within their own company? Who consciously chooses a leader who is neither effective in getting people to do the right things, nor effective in commanding a (somewhat faith-based) trust in their long-term vision?

The study feels extremely leading in its idea of what a "good" leader would look like (presumably "hands off," leaves everyone alone such that good outcomes simple "emerge", etc) -- while treating this bent as obvious truth.

I say this as someone who spent the last 6 years straight working remotely (also having been successful in contributing impact).

thesuitonym• 23 days ago

It's not a zero sum game. You can preserver power and status without being a narcissist.

krrishd3• 23 days ago

Certainly you can - but this study appears to use motivations around power and status as its heuristic for narcissism!

john01dav• 23 days ago

There are other reasons that an employee may comply with a leader's instructions than some highly subjective and deeply irrational notion of social status. For example, they might comply because they're paid to, or because they want company to succeed (for stocks, or for other reasons). Some performance of authority isn't a perquisite for humans choosing to organize.

krrishd3• 23 days ago

Sure, but there are longer shots than others, where money alone won't make the difference and when conviction in mission is directly related to conviction in founders/leaders.

"subjective and deeply irrational" aren't the exception for how humans organize

NeutralCrane• 23 days ago

who wants to work for a leader who is neither powerful nor high-status within their own company?

Me. In my limited experience, the more leaders are involved, the less likely the project is to be successful. The ideal situation is having leadership that is able to set a decent strategy, and then get out of the way of their subordinates and let them execute. Bad leadership micromanages and inserts themselves in the way of execution.

The status and “power” involved in setting strategy isn’t nearly as significant as the amount involved in micromanagement.

tencentshill• 22 days ago

Good managers are there to clear obstacles for good workers to do their best work. Unfortunately, not all workers are on board/motivated enough to do their best. It's less of an issue in software, because essentially everyone is well-compensated and comfortable.

moezd• 23 days ago

Sometimes they are just too addicted to gossip by the water cooler. For all the information that flies in and out of different teams, departments and organisations, water cooler is probably the best place to learn enough to position yourself in the company. A narcissistic boss would be obsessed with that, naturally, and consider others who don't as outliers.

webpraktikos• 23 days ago

Without other people in the room, or at least on a video call, they have no audience to perform for, so they'd barely move.

The ego rages for energy — to run on stress hormones.

hoppp3• 23 days ago

It's evident that human tribes are organized to be led by narcissists.

It's easy to organize a tribe around neurodivergence and personality disorders if we think about them as genetic roles.

Typical people are highly social and efficient. They depend heavily on hierrarchy and social coherence to navigate the world and can take on any task as general workers.

Narcissistic people are a subtype of typicals who are the leaders of the tribe, they play the hierarchy games the best to raise to the top.

Adhd people are the explorers of the world, they are social but can leave the group to explore, they bring entropy to the system.

Autistic people are the engineers of society, the hierrarchy thinking is replaced by a systemizer view of the world. No scientific discovery happens without a high functioning autistic quietly working in the background. Their brain rewards them for learning and progress, not social games.

Dyslexic people are the other engineers of the tribe, they can live within hierarchy and have a view of the entire picture, so they can efficiently organize and build structures like housing.

The list goes on. It's all on purpose but the modern humans forgot it all, or maybe we never really knew our roles in the world, it all just "happens"

danparsonson• 23 days ago

https://complementarycognition.co.uk/

hoppp3• 23 days ago

I'm happy it's a thing and not just my autistic ramblings :)

VeejayRampay• 23 days ago

incredibly cliché and essentialist view of the world, reads like a bad pseudoscientific self help book from the 90's

hoppp3• 23 days ago

It's not trying to be scientific, it's merely a little play on imagining human diversity.

A fragment of imagination.

ButlerianJihad2• 23 days ago

All of my jobs until the last one were in-person, in-office, and toward the end of my schooling, some college courses were 100% remote/online, so I've developed a lot of thoughts.

At this point I would oppose remote jobs and opt for the in-person ones. Though my remote job was fantastic in terms of flexibility and the comfort of my own home, much was lacking.

It is far, far easier to collaborate with humans and rally around supervisors and leadership who are visible and tangible, and interact as humans not mediated. It was fine, in my silo, doing my solitary worker-bee work, and turning out productive results every day, but honestly it stopped feeling like "a job" or "work" but just one of those things I was doing online that happened to increase my bank balance. It wasn't functionally different from Wikipedia editing!

I think that in-person work fosters loyalty, it forms us in the corporate culture, and we grow fond of a good employer inside their walls and using their resources, rather than cleaning our own damn bathroom and the "break room" is our personal fridge, where we pay the electric bill. It is not wrong for subordinates to experience emotional attachment and devotion to our managers, supervisors, and executives, and within the bounds of corporate professionalism, there is nothing wrong with those emotional ties. Even if I must lament the demise of same-sex exclusive spaces and the increase in gender-based tensions or imbalances among office workers.

Nevermind the practical and financial WFH disadvantages but I don't call leaders "narcissistic" just because they enjoy being human and socialized.

folkrav• 23 days ago

At this point its not even about practical and financial "disadvantages" for me but literal affordability. I'd gladly go to the office every day, if they weren't all hell bent on setting up downtown while having to live >1h15 out of town on a good day to be able to think about affording anything.

toxic72• 22 days ago

Financial wfh disadvantages?

RiverCrochet• 22 days ago

there is nothing wrong with those emotional ties

This is a US centric viewpoint, and also a non-leadership viewpoint.

It may not be wrong to experience emotional attachment to an employer, but it's unwise in my opinion if it can all be gone instantly.

Because companies exist to make money, and they will let you go if they can't afford you, want to avoid serious trouble, or think they'll make more money doing something else, with little or no notice. They'll lay off thousands at the drop of an email. You might get some severance, and that takes care of you for a while, but it's better if you take it into your own hands and jump ship every few years. Ultimately you have to be responsible for yourself and your own well-being.

but honestly it stopped feeling like "a job" or "work" but just one of those things I was doing online that happened to increase my bank balance

This sentence right here makes me think you don't need to work for survival, and that's not the position the majority of people on the planet are in. I'd love to look at my job as something that merely increases my bank balance and not something essential to keep me insured, housed and fed.

ButlerianJihad2• 21 days ago

Since I live in a nation that offers a tapestry of entitlements and safety nets for the indigent, and I've tapped into those resources, finding them available in my time of greatest need, I worry far less now about losing all my income, because if it drops near-enough to zero, then that clears the way for assistance for my basic needs, especially food, medical care, shelter, and utilities.

You may hear tell of the "donut hole" or "welfare trap" or similar terms. Being among the working poor is a zero-sum game. I get gov't assistance for vocational rehab and supported employment. I secure employment, I earn money in legitimate paychecks, it's siphoned away for taxes and living expenses, I can't build a savings; my job ends, and I'm "back on the dole". The cycle repeats.

tamimio• 23 days ago

Here’s a short list why remote work was attacked in a coordinated way:

- government: the government found that remote workers aren’t staying in expensive urban areas, it means less taxes through property taxes and other forms of taxes as well. It also means they have to build infrastructure in other areas than few hotspots in the country.

- banks: banks gave loans to landlords, primarily commercial and residential, landlords can’t pay it back because no one is renting the inflated prices of urban areas.

- landlords: obviously, their income is your hardwork for residential, or investors’ money/cut of your revenue for commercial. Also the government too, like how it’s in Canada, housing market is one of the categories that make the economy, you hit that, you hit the economy.

- managers/CEOs: as the article goes in details, it’s pure power dynamics, the lust to feel in charge can’t be satisfied remotely, and the ones who tried it either failed or looked like a total freaks (one manager I remember requested to have camera on while working from home), the manager needs to feel the status of walking around the horrible open office style and checking on this, criticizing that, all while other employees are hearing this big boss in the room!

Who was winning in remote work? The employees, their families, their kids, their wellbeing, their wallets, even cars went cheap because people don’t need to commute 2hrs everyday. Sure, remote work isn’t for everyone, but it should be always available as an option for who can.

fennecbutt• 23 days ago

Doesn't really need more words to explain it than "do what I say".

mrandish• 23 days ago

This study is extremely weak. The "unobtrusive measures" they use as proxies for narcissism are poorly correlated. It's also a bad sign they need to devote such substantial portions of the paper trying to defend Study 1's questionable proxy measures.

There are obvious confounding variable and alternate explanations for these factors starting with the fact relative compensation metrics vary by industry norms, sector dynamics, and company maturity. This feels like a paper where they went looking for a correlation they hoped to find and then did a lot of work to rationalize weak correlations and coax their preferred narrative past peer review.

While the conclusion is sure to find a sympathetic audience among employees psycho-analyzing the personality flaws of "the boss" around the water-cooler, the paper fails to adequately support its conclusions.

egberts12• 21 days ago

Shorter title: why lazy workers resist on-site work.

lordkrandel• 20 days ago

Yesterday I was remote, worked with a colleague until 21, while at the office I drop the mouse at 17.30. Have fun with your delusions.

egberts12• 11 days ago

Hard working. Need more of that

Why narcissistic leaders resist remote work

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