The battle over remote work began in earnest when the covid pandemic was officially declared over in 2023.
In the months before President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan congressional resolution to officially end the U.S. national emergency response in April, Big Tech CEOs across Silicon Valley were prepping their workers for a time when working from the office would be required once again.
Related: Salesforce CEO takes another bold stand on remote work
Wall Street has made a concerted effort to get workers back in the office with CEOs including BlackRock's (BLK) -) Larry Fink, Apple's (AAPL) -) Tim Cook, Alphabet's (GOOGL) -) Sundar Pichai and Amazon's (AMZN) -) Andy Jassy — who said return-to-office resisters are "probably not going to work out" at the e-retail giant — have stressed the importance of returning to the office.
Add Bloomberg CEO Michael Bloomberg to the list of people who say the era of remote work should come to an end.
"I can't work with you if it's over Zoom," the 81-year old former mayor of New York said in a recent "CBS Sunday Morning" interview. "You can't do the same thing via Zoom that you can do in person. Period."
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It's not just the lack of in-person collaboration that worries Bloomberg, — whose net worth is estimated at $96 billion. He also says productivity is suffering because workers have more freedom.
"I will say we are paying our employees for five days a week of work. Now, if you think that those can be done at home, I don't know. But every golf course that I've heard about in the last three years has had record summers, okay? It is funny, but it's tragic," Bloomberg said.
The data on whether productivity goes down for remote workers is mixed.
Data from early in the pandemic — when employers needed people to work from home — show productivity remained constant. But now that employers want their employees back in the office, "the evidence on remote work is changing," according to some experts.
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