In a shock to no one who has ever been in corporate leadership, remote workers are found to not get promoted at the rate that in person employees do. If I can't see you, then you don't exist.

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/remote-workers-are-losing-out-on-promotions-8219ec63?st=3xg7bzv3sxrzzy5&reflink=article_copyURL_share

Equally not shocking is that they don't get mentored. Myself and others pretty much wrote this article 2-3 years ago when this all kicked off.

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Over the past year, remote workers were promoted 31% less frequently than people who worked in an office, either full-time or on a hybrid basis, according to an analysis of two million white-collar workers by employment-data provider Live Data Technologies. Remote workers also get less mentorship, a gap that's especially pronounced for women, research shows.

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Lol at this:

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"There's some proximity bias going on," says Nick Bloom, an economist at Stanford University who studies remote work and management practices, of the challenges facing remote workers. "I literally call it discrimination."

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If I were CEO, I would be saying the same thing because it's common sense and human behavior.

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Nearly 90% of chief executives who were surveyed said that when it comes to favorable assignments, raises or promotions, they are more likely to reward employees who make an effort to come to the office. In the online survey of 1,325 CEOs of large companies in 11 countries, conducted last year by professional-services firm KPMG, almost two-thirds of respondents said they expect most employees will be working in offices full-time in another three years.

"People may not like it, but I can't build a company by playing to the lowest common denominator," says Vineet Jain, Egnyte's chief executive. "If you don't show up and work with the rest of your colleagues, it's showing a lack of connectivity and a lack of ownership."

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Agree with all of this. If you want to promote and you are early in career you should at least work in a hybrid format and be adult enough to go into the office 2-3 days per week. If you do not, I do not think you have any right to complain if you don't get promoted.

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For Americans who are still fond of working from home, one piece of good news is that data shows no difference in promotion rates between hybrid workers and those who come to the office five days a week, says Bloom, the Stanford economist, who co-wrote a related 2023 National Bureau of Economic Research paper.

Bloom's research has found that fully remote workers are more productive than their fully on-site peers, but because remote workers miss out on casual in-person conversations around the office, relationships suffer, and their promotion prospects tend to take a hit. Remote work tends to be a better fit for people who are already more established in their careers and have the skills and relationships to help them win promotions, Bloom and other researchers who study workplaces say.

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Full disclosure: I'm 100% remote but I'm also at a startup with 6 employees. All of us including the owner are 100% remote, for now. I've told him as we grow and evolve (hopefully) I would expect to have to be at HQ 2-3 days per week especially since I'm one of the founding "executives". I'm 3 hours away from him so I would have to adjust how/where we live if it comes to that and am prepared to do that if we get to that point and I still want to be there.

I'm remote.
My company is about 20-30% remote workers.


In some cases, it's arguably better than a promotion. I can move where I want, in lower cost of living area, and gives me a higher take home pay, bigger house, less crime, better schools.

My fiend has had two promotions in two years in his 100% remote job. His company is over 50% remote workers.

It depends on the specific job.

I think remote is great for mid and late career individual contributors who own their work.

It's bad for early career individuals who still need and benefit from mentoring and more guidance.

Article tracks, but is disappointing. I wish it was "Productive employees that improve their organizations beyond their defined roles get promoted faster." That should be how organizations are run irrespective of remote / hybrid / on site. But people are gonna people.

I don't find it surprising that people who go into their jobs do better with promotions, probably raises too. That's just human nature. If that delta is important go in. If a little more sleep or time with family, or working wherever is more important keep working from home.

What they keep passing over is that lots of remote workers are ok with where they are at and aren't seeking a promotion. They make it seem like every employee is fighting every day to be the CEO tomorrow. I am happy where I am at right now. I don't want the additional headache and responsibilities that come with a promotion. Maybe when my kids are older, but I am good right now.

In reply to TheMasterplan

TheMasterplan said:

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Are remote workers likely to be replaced by someone at their level if that other person is willing to work on site?

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All else being equal I would say it's likely.

Most promotions are worth far less than the money saved on clothing and transportation. Keep the 4% raise and the 25% more responsibility and give it to someone else.

In reply to Stat Monitor Repairman

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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Inclined to say that some remote workers dgaf about any of this because they working more than one remote job already.

See r/overemployed

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I applaud those people. All but one C-level in my company is also a board member at another place, and a chair member at a third and getting paid for all 3. They regularly miss whole company meetings, and are 'out of the office' for weeks at a time. I've flown up to our HQ several times and have never met any of them, despite them all having an office.

As always, it depends. I've worked for remote first organizations where the majority of the company worked remote, including the CEO and senior executives. In those situations, it was easy for remote workers to get promoted. Ive also worked for organizations where mostly everyone worked on site, and had a small percentage of remote workers. In those situations, they obviously valued the onsite workers more.

Ok. Giving someone a promotion primarily based on if they can drive into work and sit in an office sounds like a great idea and surely won't backfire and cause good remote workers to look elsewhere.

In reply to Ridge14 Pre covid they gave up a bunch of buildings in their RR complex so they could make everyone remote or quasi remote, didn't they?

A lot of companies made regretful permanent decisions (or at least made them appear as permanent) in what was a volatile, non-permanent situation.

It would have been nice had executives shared this concern for workplace productivity before COVID. During my ~15 year career, the office environment has become a steadily worse place to actually do work. All of this pre-dates WFH becoming mainstream:

- Hot desks or hoteling where you can't keep any resources at your desk day-to-day
- Open concept floor plans where noise carries all over
- Organizations matrixed six ways to Sunday so that nobody you actually work with sits in your office.
- Eliminating onsite support roles (IT, HR, admins) so that my valuable time is spent helping the Chinese Sparklets guy into the server room.

Just before I left the corporate world, my day in the office could be summarized as "drive an hour round trip to teleconference with people in Europe and NY with constant background noise."

Yes, I've got responsibility for about of 60 people, and one of my teams within that group (about 15) is a group of experts in our business who are literally on the phone (or zoom) > 90% of their day supporting our sales teams in the field across the country. Pre-covid, we had a nice, dedicated location for this team where they could work without disturbing others or being disturbed. The hoteling concept flat-out does not work for this team. They are a distraction to others. Others are a distraction to them. There is essentially no benefit to them being in office, only downside.

It was a pain in the ass, but I pushed back on their behalf and ultimately got them exempted. We have 1-2 certain purposeful days per month to have them come in, but that's it.

I'm a big believer in "work that works". One concept does not work for all roles or career paths. Instead, we've seen the pendulum swing in 2 different directions with 2 concepts (first full wfh, and now in office absolutes) that don't work in all cases

Cracks me up that people still believe remote work is sticking around as a common option.

In reply to Flashdiaz

Flashdiaz said:

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PeekingDuck said:

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Cracks me up that people still believe remote work is sticking around as a common option.

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it has been a common option in IT precovid. It simply doesn't make sense when the team and the people they support are geographically dispersed around the globe.

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I've worked in software for 20 years, and even before COVID, there were always people that worked remotely. I spent 3 years at one point working for a software company in Plano while living in Los Angeles.

I currently work for one of the big banks. We are technically required to show up to a local office twice a week. My immediate group is scattered across Dallas, Tampa, New York, Canada, and London. And we work and interact with people across the globe every day. Most of the people I work and interact with are in some other location. We go into the office, find a desk, and sit on zoom for meetings, just like we do at home. No one would even know we were there, if it wasn't for badge scans. But somehow, being in the office promotes teamwork and collaboration and such.

Many jobs, industries, and roles absolutely need people on site to function at a high level or to even just do their job. But there are also many where going into the office serves little purpose and is nothing more than a distraction and waste of time.

My wife works for a major IT company. She was 100% WFH since well before COVID, I want to say since 2017ish.

Obviously COVID happened and then everyone went WFH. I think they caught a lot of people working 2 jobs, etc. and decided to mandate everyone has to go back into the office last Q4 (3 days a week). Unfortunately, this was a mandate for all so teams like hers caught got up in it and had to also go back into the office.

Well, issue is they planned for WFH. My wife's team, for example, has nobody in the same city. She's in Houston, someone's in Austin, another in the midwest, one in North Carolina, and another somewhere on the east coast. So they just go to the local offices, hotel, and have virtual meetings anyway. And their "hotels" don't even have chargers or docking stations.

Also....company has been getting more strict on "go back to the office or you're getting fired" so attendance has gone up to the point they don't have enough parking.....If you don't get one of the spots you have to pay $25 to park in the garage across the street, then traverse the homeless camps to get to the office.

I will say I believe hybrid is the way to go. Most (not all) people need to be, or are greatly benefited by being in person for several reasons. Companies are just really, really bad at implementing these changes. And, as said, made really dumb and costly changes during what ended up simply as a few year transition.

https://instagr.am/p/C2-WxUYRu11