Jamie Dimon became the latest billionaire to CEO to rail against remote work and seek to force employees back into the office full time.
He went on an angry rant in a JPMorgan Chase town hall meeting where he claimed that being together in the office is the ONLY way to be creative and productive because there you can communicate and collaborate in person.
He also rejected a petition signed by thousands of his employees looking to preserve hybrid work, saying that he didn’t care how many people signed it and adding this:
Now, you have a choice. You don’t have to work at JP Morgan. So the people of you who don’t want to work at the company, that’s fine with me. I’m not mad at you. Don’t be mad at me. It’s a free country.
But here’s what Jamie’s ignoring: While there are definitely some advantages to in-office work he’s completely forgetting that even when employees are physically present in the office, most coordination and collaboration still happens over virtual channels like email, chat, phone calls, discord, slack, zoom or whatever.
You don’t go to a coworker’s desk and interrupt their workflow every time you need help with something. You don’t call a meeting every time you have a question. You don’t go to your manager’s office every time you need to make a decision. Or at least, I really, really hope you don’t!
So when some people rail against remote work arguing that there’s just no way people can collaborate well and be productive, they’re completely ignoring just how virtual the physical office already is.
The most hilarious part of Dimon’s rant is that he has since apologized for it. Not for maligning his remote workers. Not for claiming that they’re all slacking when they work from home. No – he apologized for cursing.
Jamie, Jamie, Jamie… the problem was not you dropping some F-bombs. The problem was your complete inability to trust your employees and to recognize that there are more ways of working effectively than just yours.
