The C-Suite is so highly paid and lives such a comfortable life that they can't even fathom how much productivity is lost by the average individual commuting for an hour and having to bounce for kids/family/home/medical issues.
They truly don't understand why people may want to leave work, be at home when they themselves have ZERO chores to deal with.
And they also don't understand why people are not as passionate as themselves about the work - when they make millions every quarter but the average person just gets by.
Empathy is not what C-Suite operates on because they have lost those empathy brain cells by virtue of living a life SO PRIVILEGED that even a basic middle class life with no help, appointments, kids, schools, rent, is unimaginable to them.
> They truly don't understand why people may want to leave work
Exactly. Leadership typically sees the workplace as a rewarding experience where they exercise control and get lots of dopamine. They truly can't understand that it's the exact opposite for everyone else.
I would frame what I think is the same observation as, leadership optimizes for the experience of passionate people who find work rewarding. If you’re just putting in your 40 hours so you have money for the stuff that really matters, yeah, I don’t see how anyone could dispute that remote work is better for that.
Management roles certainly filter for people who find workplace dynamics rewarding. As much as technical roles filter for people who like to solve problems and dislike social games.
It's not much a matter of empathy, it's a matter of interests: if WFH is the norm, JustEat, Uber, Waymo and so on will be dead in seconds, preceded by large real estate, large hotel chains, ... essentially ALL big corps would loose more or less and many would simply default meanwhile SMEs would thrive.
A distributed economy is for many little and medium actors, a concentrated one for an oligarchy. The topmost of the current oligarchy knows that, their relatively near entourage simply slavishly follow their desires and concerns because so far it have paid well them.
Let's not be too hyperbolic here. The average mid-level dev at Amazon is making over $250k while the average senior makes over $400k (source levels.fyi) so they're hardly "just scraping by" and can afford many of those same life comforts.
> Let's not be too hyperbolic here. The average mid-level dev at Amazon is making over $250k while the average senior makes over $400k (source levels.fyi)
This $400k guy still pays an enormous mortgage, still struggles to pay $2.5k for daycare, still can't call a concierge to take care of medical appointments, can't just hire Uber eats for every meal, can't just hire a service for everything, still has to commute in traffic for work, still has to take cars for servicing, still has to call handyman and play scheduling poker for fixes in the house.
Compare this to Andy Jassy making $7 million in the NEXT 3 months. He's going to be able to hire services for everything, helicopter into work, get catered food, have schools, house, kids, services all taken care of. His life is literally just work in the most comfortable setting possible.
It is not even comparable. Higher compensation does not compensate for shithole lives imposed by an employer who themselves are living the most lavish life possible. The $125k/quarter person will NEVER be as motivated as $7m/quarter person. It is delusional to expect the same level of work for such wide pay disparity.
They truly don't understand why people may want to leave work, be at home when they themselves have ZERO chores to deal with.
And they also don't understand why people are not as passionate as themselves about the work - when they make millions every quarter but the average person just gets by.
Empathy is not what C-Suite operates on because they have lost those empathy brain cells by virtue of living a life SO PRIVILEGED that even a basic middle class life with no help, appointments, kids, schools, rent, is unimaginable to them.