'People Who Don’t Come To Office, Don’t Work': PayPal's Founder Peter Thiel Blasts Remote Work

Meta and Google have been actively encouraging employees to return to physical offices, implementing policies that require a set number of in-office days each week

Amazon recently announced that remote work for all employees will officially end in 2025, though some flexibility will remain for specific roles and teams

Source : Hamilton College

PayPal founder Peter Thiel recently explained why Silicon Valley moved away from the Work from Home (WFH) model. In a TV interview, Thiel criticised remote work, stating, "When people didn’t come into the office, they weren’t working.”

He described the initial phase as one where employees had the power to "insist on not working." However, he explained that after two years, companies "fired a bunch of these people and reasserted control because you realise, wow, there were all these people we hired, and they’re not working. And it doesn’t matter, and we can just get rid of them."

In late 2022 and early 2023, major tech companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon carried out a series of layoffs, which coincided with the decline of the COVID-19 pandemic. Highlighting a connection between remote work, perceived low productivity, and these mass layoffs, Thiel noted that tech companies recognised the dispensability of many remote workers, leading to their dismissal without significantly affecting business operations.

Amazon recently announced that remote work for all employees will officially end in 2025, though some flexibility will remain for specific roles and teams. Similarly, Meta and Google have been actively encouraging employees to return to physical offices, implementing policies that require a set number of in-office days each week. 

This shift by major tech companies signals a potential decline in remote work as the pandemic fades into the past. Some suggest that the push to return to the office is driven by concerns about preserving company culture, promoting innovation through in-person collaboration, and managing performance more effectively. Additionally, factors such as commercial real estate interests and the desire to revitalise urban centres may also be playing a role.