Working from the office means a pay cut

Another win for business is that remote work can help retain talent and reduce recruitment and training costs. Let’s also not forget that if someone is working in Asheville, NC, their cost of living is 73% lower than if they worked in San Francisco. And that, my friends, is why no one has yet to talk me into moving to the Bay area for a job. I and other remote workers are a lot cheaper to hire when you let us work from home. 

So, why are businesses insisting people return to the office anyway? CEOs say it’s about increasing productivity, generating better ideas from collaboration, and improving the corporate culture. If you can believe it, some top brass claim that it’s for your own good. As IBM’s CEO, Arvind Krishna, put it, “In the short term, you probably can be equally productive [working remotely], but your career does suffer.”

Yeah, right. For the record, I’ve been working remotely for the entire 21st century, and I’ve done very well for myself in a notoriously difficult field: Journalism.