Did the Met Office, with staff working from home, fail to predict the recent cold snap? This a question that appears to trouble the Tory grandee Jacob Rees-Mogg and his staff. But then, the former business secretary has long been on a campaign against public sector employees working from home. In April, he left notes on the desk of civil servants who were not in the office. More recently, he described working from home as “second best”.
Rees-Mogg’s views about working from home may seem anachronistic, but they reflect a wider culture of in-personism. Since taking over Twitter, Elon Musk has demanded staff return to the office and work long hours there. Alan Sugar has deemed home workers to be “lazy layabouts”. Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, which recently bought the messaging service Slack, worries that the rise of remote working means his company’s employees are “not building tribal knowledge with new employees”. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, claims remote working “doesn’t work for people who want to hustle”.
