ReportWire

Tag: Remote Work

  • How I Build iOS Apps from Coffee Shops Using Claude Code

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    It’s 9AM and I am sitting in my favorite coffee shop. Somewhere in Mekong Delta, or
    in Lisbon, or in Seoul, doesn’t really matter. What matters is that my espresso was
    already tested and approved as high quality, the internet connection in the coffee shop
    is decent, and I am ready to start my vibe coding session on my iPad – using
    Claude.

    But let’s stop for a second.

    I’ve been writing code for more than 35 years. Went through the whole shebang, from
    2 floppy disks Slackware, through PHP and Laravel, and then Objective C, Swift and
    React Native. I coded apps with more than 100,000 monthly users (for me or for my
    clients). So, do you think I can still be called a “vibe coder”? Let’s keep this
    question in mind, and revisit towards the end.

    The Actual Vibe Coding Workflow

    Without further ado, let’s go into what I’m actually doing.

    First and foremost, I look at my yesterday’s priorities file. I keep between 4 and 6
    projects alive at the same time, which means I’m juggling through them as I build, in
    real time. Sometimes I can remember yesterday’s session, but most of the days I need
    reminders to know the context, the features I’m building, the blockers and the
    priorities. That’s why, at the end of the day, I’m writing down my priorities for
    tomorrow.

    In a way, I’m starting backwards.

    After that, I select whatever I’m committed to do in the next 3-4 hours. Yes, no
    more than 3-4 hours – and you’ll see why, again, towards the end of this article. In
    Assess-Decide-Do terms, I’m staying in the Decide realm. I’m trying to evaluate what
    can be reasonably done in that time slice and sometimes I leave some projects out. On
    average, in a week, each project gets at least 3-4 days of consistent work.

    Once I have a clear understanding of the features, I start my working sessions.
    Which are unfolding in this order:

    • the actual coding (the technical mumbo-jumbo)
    • the review stage (kind of the second Decide stage)
    • the committing: writing logs and setting priorities for the next session

    Let’s take them one at a time.

    The Technical Mumbo-Jumbo

    If you’re the technical type, this is for you. But even if you’re not, you may get
    some insights (otherwise feel free to skip to the next section).

    I work with Claude Code on my iPad, using the remote repos. On each app, I maintain
    a different branch, usually named version/X.x.x, and then I set up XCode
    Cloud workflows that will trigger builds on merging to master.

    All coding happens in the version branches, until the app compiles, and the feature
    I’m working on is ready to test.

    Then, still on my iPad, I open my Github app and start a PR, aiming at merging the
    version branch into master. If there are no conflicts, I hit merge, and that triggers
    XCode Cloud builds. I am on the normal developer plan, so I get around 25 hours per
    month. If you are conscientious about what you’re doing, even with 3-4 apps developed
    at the same time, this is more than enough.

    A build is usually taking between 2 minutes and 10 minutes, and then there is a
    little bit of processing time. I use these gaps to enhance the prompts and write logs
    as the features are implemented. Once the builds are up in the App Store and processed
    in TestFlight, I just open, you guessed, the TestFlight app on my iPad, and begin
    playing with the apps.

    Most of the time, bugs are found, or incomplete implementations are revealed, so I
    get back to Claude Code and start the whole process anew.

    By now, half of my espresso is gone, but I just keep going, until I hit the review
    stage.

    The Review Stage

    Around this time, my espresso is more than 80% gone, just maybe two more sips left.
    That means I can get out of the technical workflow and look at what was actually
    achieved. This usually involves a thorough end to end testing of the features, but this
    time without any pressure to add code. I’m going again through all the projects I’m
    working, and take time to write down any quirks, improvement ideas and leftovers, and
    then mark as done anything that’s already done. I’m using addTaskManager for this.

    This is also the stage where my mind can start resting. It’s a big step from
    focusing deep down on one project and writing uninterrupted sessions of 1-2 hours, like
    before, to actually juggling between 3-4 apps, all with very different requirements
    and at very different stages. The biggest bottleneck of this vibe coding thing is not
    the actual code implementation. It’s the mental clarity and the strength of focus. At
    this stage, both of them are starting to fade out, which means it’s time to stop.

    The Productivity Throughput

    In very simple numbers, my throughput is now 5x-7x higher. I can code 3-4 iOS
    projects in parallel and cut time from idea to deployment from months to weeks. It’s
    not unusual to do a cold start of a new project at the beginning of the month, and by
    the end of the month it is ready for App Store.

    On top of the iOS apps layer, I’m also maintaining this blog and a little bit of
    marketing around it (and around the apps, of course). Here, I think I’m around 2x-4x
    more productive. I can maintain the 2-3 articles / week posting speed and most of the
    time my audience on social media is up to date with what I’m doing – including blog
    readers like you.

    So, I’m revisiting the opening question: even though I have a 5x-7x throughput, can
    you really say I’m a vibe coder? I dare to say no, because behind this dramatic
    productivity increase is not only the AI, but mostly my 35 year coding experience.
    Maybe the special workflow too (I’m talking Assess-Decide-Do here),
    but honestly, I think it’s the hard earned ability to know what to pick, how much time
    to dedicate, what to cut out and, generally, how to maintain a consistent architecture
    that’s slim enough to not slide out, but strong enough to produce results. Without
    these, I would probably be at 1 app at a time.

    Closing Out – Commits and Priorities

    It’s around 1-2 PM and the coffee shop audience is slightly changing towards lunch
    eaters. That’s my cue to prepare to go home. The coffee shop will become busier and,
    sometimes, noisier and harder to concentrate in.

    By now, the changes have been committed, the logs have been written and the
    priorities for tomorrow’s “vibe coding” session have been set. My espresso is long
    gone, and I’m ready to head back to my one-year-old son.

    See, using AI to amplify my productivity is a great use case, but for me, the best
    use case is to get more time. I need more time to spend with my family, to be there for
    my one-year-old. At 50+ you don’t get too many second chances.

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    dragos@dragosroua.com (Dragos Roua)

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  • How To Avoid Being Scammed on LinkedIn – Dragos Roua

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    In the last 3 months I’ve been targeted twice by a relatively sophisticated scam on LinkedIn. What follows is a short description of the pattern and some common sense steps you can take to avoid leaking your credentials.

    The LinkedIn Scam Pattern

    Both attempts started with a direct message from a recruiter. First thing I do when I get cold messaged is to look at the user’s LinkedIn history. Here are some red flags:

    • recent account but with hundreds/thousands of followers (likely bots)
    • very little publishing history (not too much posting / commenting)
    • inconsistent work history (random companies stitched together for credibility)

    Both these accounts were in good shape, which suggests they were initially legit accounts, which were compromised – and the right owners didn’t know, or didn’t report the takeover, so LinkedIn could block the accounts. So, some guys were initially scammed out of their LinkedIn accounts which were now operated by perpetrators. That was step 1.

    Step 2 involves a proposal which looks slightly better than the market level, but still credible. Both scams pretend they had a project in the works, something very common, not a bright idea, just a project. I asked a few questions about the company, the answers were again credible. It’s worth noting that both attempts were conducted in perfect English. So, step 2 is engaging in the proposal.

    Step 3 – here’s where everything happens – is setting up a meeting and offering some materials in preparation of the meeting. The meeting was set up via a legit Calendly link. And the prepping materials were in the form of a BitBucket repo, which I was supposed to download and install, so we could chat about the existing features.

    From here on the things would go like:

    • you clone the repo
    • you install dependencies
    • you add .env variables (the repo has calls to various APIs that require private keys)
    • you run the code
    • ka-boom – your credentials are gone in less than a second, because you just launched a backdoor

    But it doesn’t have to be like this.

    Common Sense Protection Measures

    Both times I asked one of my agents to scan the repo in the remote site (not installing it). ChatGPT and Claude are really good at these things if you prompt them well. First time ChatGPT found it just by listing the files in the repo, second time I installed the repo and Claude found the exact point where the exfiltration was taking place, and described the mechanism in detail.

    Here are a few basic, common sense protection measures:

    • ask many questions first about the company and look for these red flags: fully remote team (no physical location), vague information about funding (the company doesn’t actually exist), how long the team has been around
    • share as little information as possible during the messaging (ideally only what’s already in your LinkedIn profile, not more)
    • when you get a meeting proposal, make sure you use legit apps (no custom video conferencing platforms, vanilla Calendly setup)
    • when you get a repo, scan it first. I cannot emphasize this enough: do NOT run random repos on your machine, without scanning them first. It’s just a question of asking your favorite LLM to identify security holes, and ask them to look for: obfuscated code, suspicious npm/pip packages, or unusual postinstall scripts

    The Boundaries Are Fading Away

    AI is advancing at an incredible speed. Humans, not so much. The proportion of scammers / legit people is pretty much the same, but AI is making the boundary between good and bad guys almost invisible. The disguise is cheap and very effective. That’s one of the reasons your main behavior online should be don’t trust, verify.

    We’ve been heading for this inflection point very slowly during the last 5-10 years. I know, because I’ve been studying machine learning before ChatGPT was cool, and back then it was still very difficult to mirror reality the way AI is mirroring it right now. Now we’re there. We’re in the middle of an AI generated fantasy world, where it’s almost impossible to find your way out, almost impossible to detect what’s fabricated from what’s real.

    That’s why – and I will say this over and over – bio content, or provably human generated content will become not only more precious, but it will eventually aggregate itself in the foundation of a new, trustable world, separating itself from the Matrix.

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    dragos@dragosroua.com (Dragos Roua)

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  • Asking employees to come back to the office like the old days is the same as trying to ‘jam the toothpaste back in the tube,’ workforce expert says | Fortune

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    Return-to-office mandates continue to feel like high-level math equations that even the business world’s brightest can’t solve.

    Amazon, JPMorgan, and AT&T are among the most recent companies to require a full-time RTOs. But some of these mandates have faced obstacles, including a lack of office space and dissatisfied employees.

    Amazon, for example, said in September, it wanted its 350,000-person workforce in the office by early January. As of February, many of their offices didn’t have enough desks to accommodate the return, leaving many employees continuing working from home. AT&T had a similar issue. In response to JPMorgan’s RTO mandate, employees expressed their outrage on an internal platform. The company then disabled comments. Some JPMorgan and Amazon workers have also signed petitions protesting their employers’ requirements.

    What’s missing from some of these RTO plans is the recognition of a cultural change, said Jennifer Moss, workplace strategist and author of Why Are We Here?: Creating a Work Culture Everyone Wants. The post-pandemic workplace should combine lessons from the pre-pandemic and pandemic-era models, she said.

    “When we’re trying to get people back into the office, we still are executing the office in the same way that it used to be,” Moss told HR Brew. “We just can’t jam the toothpaste back in the tube.”

    Recognize the new environment. Improved collaboration, culture, and productivity are often cited as reasons for an RTO, Moss said, but being in the office won’t necessarily help employees achieve these goals.

    “People are going into the office, unfortunately, it feels very much like what it feels like to be at home,” she said. “You’re still on Zoom, and you’re still spending your day doing the exact same things you could be doing at home. It feels very arbitrary.”

    To facilitate this new era of work, employers should embrace a model Moss called “the third office.” Instead of “pushing” for employees to go back to pre-pandemic norms, she said, employers should consider how they can incorporate the benefits of remote work, like autonomy and flexibility. To that end, a hybrid approach, she said, typically works best.

    Moss also urged mindfulness around how the physical office space can affect employees. If a company doesn’t have enough desks, for example, she said HR leaders should rethink how employees work in the office, and create quiet or collaborative spaces outside of the open floor plan.

    “The [third office] is a place where you have challenging discussions, where you learn to network, develop soft skills, be able to have team building, build up that social energy and that cohesion,” she said, adding that these activities were undervalued pre-pandemic and lost during the pandemic, and should be part of this new era.

    Eventually, however, companies that require five days in the office should offer employees their own dedicated workspace, Moss said. It may seem simple, but being able to personalize a desk is something that, she said, may help employees feel more connected to their workplace.

    Identify and communicate the play-by-play. Some executives want RTO to alleviate their own “trust issues,” without considering how it might affect employees, according to John Frehse, the global head of labor strategy at consulting firm Ankura.

    “You only trust me when I’m in the office. You don’t trust me when I’m at home. What kind of a worker and employer relationship are we dealing with?” Frehse told HR Brew.

    Sujay Saha, an employee experience strategist and founder of consulting firm Cortico-X, emphasized the need for a plan. “Don’t make the decision and then try to figure it out, how do I make that decision happen for people…that is the biggest problem in a lot of this,” Saha said. He suggested HR start by identifying employees’ “personas,” like whether they’re working parents or belong to the sandwich generation. This can give HR a sense of employees’ needs and schedules, which can help inform what kind of RTO might make sense.

    “There are pros and cons in all of this, so the most important thing that we can tackle is how we do it,” Saha said. “Maybe there is a pace at which you could do it…Reduce the pace and give people that mental adjustment time that is needed genuinely, to take care of their lives before you change [their lives].”

    Frehse also advised against focusing an RTO announcement on the enforcement and repercussions of not following the mandate. Instead, communicate the steps and value-add for professional growth.

    “It’s both culturally and intellectually lazy to announce a certain number of days of return to office each week, without listing in heavy detail the reasons why—not just benefits for the business, but the benefits for the employee,” he said.

    Saha agreed. “Don’t do it, just for the heck of doing it…Be clear about why you’re doing it.”

    This report was originally published by HR Brew.

    A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on February 28, 2025.

    Join us at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit May 19–20, 2026, in Atlanta. The next era of workplace innovation is here—and the old playbook is being rewritten. At this exclusive, high-energy event, the world’s most innovative leaders will convene to explore how AI, humanity, and strategy converge to redefine, again, the future of work. Register now.

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    Mikaela Cohen, HR Brew

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  • Ethics: My Employee Is Hiding Her Job From Her Husband. It’s Become Everyone’s Problem

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    A reader writes: I have a part time employee who has been with me for several years now. She’s never been able to do more than 10 hours a week but she has a unique skill set and experiences that are really helpful for my business.

    For the last year, her productivity and quality of work have become increasingly inconsistent. Her work is great sometimes and poor others. Sometimes she’s very productive and sometimes she misses important deadlines completely. Sometimes she doesn’t put in any hours for a week and then wants to make it all up later. That puts a lot of stress on other people who suddenly receive a large number of requests from her. My business is run entirely remotely, which makes this whole situation so much harder because all communication is via Zoom, or Monday, or texts, or phone calls.

    Fairly frequently she’ll cancel a meeting with someone at the last minute because she’s “sick” and leave them without needed information or deliverables. One time she had to leave abruptly in the middle of a team meeting because her husband got home.

    I know there are issues at home and she’s currently hiding the fact that she’s working from her husband. I’m concerned she’s in a physically abusive relationship. I’ve talked with her about it and she has confirmed that she wants to continue working for my company. What’s the best way to handle this?

    Minda Zetlin responds:

    First of all, it does sound very much like this employee is in an abusive relationship. It may be physical abusive, emotional abuse, or both. But if she believes she needs to hide her work from her husband, it sounds like he is attempting to control her. And most abusive relationships are all about control.

    For people trapped in those kinds of relationships, work is often a lifeline, and a much needed sanity check. It sounds like your company needs her, and she needs her job as well.

    You wisely are not trying to intervene in your employee’s relationship. At the same time, she trusts you enough to tell you what’s going on. That leaves the door open for you to let her know you can be a resource if she ever needs one.

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    Minda Zetlin

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  • How to Keep Work From Home Fridays From Getting Too Casual

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    Hybrid work is now an established norm of the modern, despite many recent efforts to force workers back into the office five days a week. These arrangements, a legacy of the pandemic, remain popular with millions of people who prefer this kind of workday flexibility. But in some circles, remote and hybrid work models are very much out of favor, as experts and managers argue that they reduce productivity. New research adds fuel to this fire because it found that hybrid and remote workers typically work fewer hours on a Friday, perhaps trying to get a head start on that relaxing weekend feeling. 

    But before power-crazed micromanagers giggle in delight and ramp up calls for more RTO rules, the research also showed that these same workers put in extra time on a Wednesday.

    The workplace data, gathered by Christos Andreas Makridis a labor economist and research professor at Arizona State University, first reinforced that more people are working remotely. Just 15 percent of professionals who could do so tended to work remotely on Thursdays and Fridays in 2019, but in 2025 fully 35 percent to 40 percent worked remotely. The same pattern held for the first three days of the work week: in 2019 about 10 to 15 percent of professionals worked remotely, while in 2024 that figure rose to nearly 30 percent.

    But the key part of Makridis’ data is that from 2019 to 2024 the average number of minutes people worked on Fridays dropped by up to 90 minutes for workers on remote or hybrid schedules. For workers with jobs that are harder to achieve remotely, Makridis notes that this decline was “much smaller,” which indicates the change really does go hand in glove with remote work.

    Meanwhile, his research also found that those workers were redistributing some of these “missing” minutes to other parts of the week, working an average of 8 hours 24 minutes on Wednesdays in 2024, up from 7 hours 54 minutes typically logged on Wednesdays in 2019.

    In some ways, Makridis’ data runs counter to other investigations that have shown the benefits of remote work. And his data merely measures minutes worked, and doesn’t attempt to examine how shifting working hours affects business metrics like productivity or profitability. A slightly lower pressure Friday could easily boost worker happiness levels, for example, and that quality is closely linked to engagement — and profits.

    Makridis makes a nod toward these points in his report at Phys.org, acknowledging this earlier research and also pointing out other benefits of the hybrid and remote working models. This includes better work-life balance (which we know appeals to Gen-Z workers), and boosted recruitment opportunities (with companies able to appeal to a broader pool of non-geographically limited candidates). It also noted increased employee retention and how work flexibility addresses the needs of working mothers.

    But he concludes that the “erosion of Fridays” that began with informal traditions like casual dress Fridays and quitting work a little early before the weekend, may be going further with remote work. This is “part of a broader shift toward individualized schedules that expand autonomy but reduce shared time for coordination,” he says and this last part, he worries, may impact team cohesiveness.

    What’s the takeaway from this for your company? After all, you may feel that in your smaller, more family-like workplace the emotional and cultural benefits of letting work workers slack off a little on Fridays more than compensates for the slight dip in hours worked. 

    Essentially it comes down to managerial choice and corporate culture decisions. Makridis’ data appears to dent the notion that remote and hybrid workers achieve the same as in-office staff do, and this may make you frown on the idea of informally reduced Friday hours, or even rethink hybrid work options entirely. But remember: research shows that RTO rules may be hurting employee morale, that there’s little evidence that RTOs improve productivity, and that there’s broad support for hybrid and remote working models among actual workers. 

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Kit Eaton

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  • The LiberNovo Omni Office Chair Has a Built-in Battery for Motorized Lumbar Adjustments

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    The Omni looks nice. It’s a step up from your average office chair design, with a bit of class and a design language on the backrest that resembles the spine-like look of the Herman Miller Embody. It comes in Midnight Black or Space Gray (creative names), and my unit is the latter. The company says the Omni can support people up to 300 pounds.

    I don’t think I’ve sat on an office chair with softer padding than the Omni. The multi-density sponge cushion material of the seat and backrest is plush without feeling like you’re sinking in, because it isn’t super thick. It’s very comfortable, and the softness of the material is still what surprises me the most about the Omni after sitting on it for weeks.

    It’ll be interesting to see how the fabric holds up after more than a year of use. So far, it still looks great after close to a month of sitting, though it likes to collect hair. It’s hard to gauge breathability as we’re now in the cooler months, but my back feels a little warm after a few hours on the chair. If you’re in a hot environment, you’ll likely feel sweaty. It’s not as bad as the vegan leather-covered foam on most gaming chairs, but it won’t offer the breathability of a true mesh.

    The armrests aren’t much to write home about—you can move them up or down, forward and back, and angle them inward or outward. You can’t push them toward or away from your body like on the Embody, but this is standard for a chair at this price (which is $1,099 MSRP, though the company seems to have a persistent sale of $848). I appreciate that the arms don’t easily shift or slide around, which is a common problem with many chairs. The armrest itself isn’t too hard, and the material feels fairly durable.

    A Battery-Powered Chair

    Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

    The Bionic FlexFit Backrest is the Omni’s highlight, which uses the battery-powered ErgoPulse Motor System for configuration. It’s essentially a motorized way to ensure the backrest lines up perfectly against your back; no need to fiddle around with an awkward lumbar support. There are three buttons on the left armrest. The front two shift the backrest support up or down, and the third is a spinal massage function, which I’ll address later.

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    Julian Chokkattu

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  • Remote Work Boosts Employment for People With Disabilities, Survey Shows

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    The language of DEI may be currently out of favor, but a new report from the country’s largest human resources trade association, SHRM, suggests that the American workforce is far more diverse since the Covid pandemic effectively ended in 2021. The surprising change happened almost by default, but SHRM’s data show that there’s been a huge surge in the numbers of people with disabilities participating in the workplace — partly thanks to the shift toward hybrid and remote working. 

    In fact, SHRM says the rates have hit a “historic high.” As of July this year “nearly 25 percent of people with disabilities participated in the labor force,” the organization notes, adding that the numbers represent a 30 percent surge since the beginning of the covid pandemic. The rising numbers are partly attributed to the shift to teleworking which has ”lowered traditional barriers to employment,” and SHRM also notes that research shows “workers with disabilities are more likely to work fully remote schedules compared to their counterparts without disabilities.”

    An interesting factor in the growth is that it may skew toward younger people with disabilities: labor force participation of people in this group aged 16 to 24 has grown by nearly 60 percent since February 2020, SHRM says, higher than the average growth. This may mesh smoothly with the technological skills of digital-first age cohorts.

    Of course the rising workforce participation of people with disabilities isn’t evenly spread, and the data show it’s lowest in jobs like “life, physical, social science and health care practitioners, and technical roles,” and high in work like building, maintenance and grounds cleaning. It’s possible this is linked, the report notes, to lower barriers to entry for these types of work. This may be a representation, SHRM says, of persistent societal challenges for people with disabilities, including “higher unemployment rates and lower educational attainment compared to those without disabilities.”

    Nevertheless, the positive note here is that the surge in participation numbers are a “a vital opportunity for employers to address ongoing labor shortages,” SHRM’s report suggests, and it also says the data should be a call for HR teams and companies to persist in recruiting and advancing workers with disabilities. The research shows that having inclusive hiring habits, along with flexible or remote working models can help “foster a more diverse and competitive economic environment.”

    The takeaways from this data for your company are very clear. SHRM’s report notes that workers with disabilities right now make up nearly 5 percent of the total employed workforce — that’s 1 in 20 people. If your company’s benefits and working models aren’t disability-friendly, then your recruitment process may be skipping potentially talented, valuable workers without addressing that pool of prospective job candidates.

    But there’s much more value in hiring people with disabilities, starting with presenting an image of a company that has a good reputation — a recent report says that this characteristic may be more important when hiring the right candidates than ever. 

    Meanwhile, a 2018 study of 140 American companies by consultancy giant Accenture found that companies that actively hire people with disabilities recorded 28 percent higher average revenues compared to companies without this policy, and their profit margins were 30 percent higher. Data also show that if an employee with disabilities is happy in their place of work they tend to remain with that employer for longer than people without disabilities. This can lead to cost savings over time, due to lower costs from reduced staff turnover.

    To support your workers with disabilities, it’s also important to remember that there’s more work to do. Reports show that one-third of people in this cohort experience workplace discrimination of one sort or another, including a quarter who say discrimination began with interviewers, and 12 percent who said they’ve had difficulty even accessing the interview.

    The other fact to remember is that there is much wider support for hybrid and remote working models than you may have thought. Offering this to your workers is known to be a good for business as well as a good incentive, and, as SHRM’s data show, it also has benefits for workers with disabilities.

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    Kit Eaton

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  • Don’t Buy a Random USB Hub Off Amazon. Get These WIRED-Tested Models Instead

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    USB hubs should be simple devices, but apparently it’s not possible to make One Port to Rule Them All without things getting a little messy. We have a full explainer here, but if you just want to get the basics before you buy your hub, here are a few things to keep in mind.

    Ports speeds matter; version numbers don’t. It’s tempting to look at a USB 3.2 label and assume it’s faster than USB 3.0, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. In fact, many manufacturers have started defaulting to writing the speed of individual ports directly onto the device itself, rather than relying on version numbers on spec sheets.

    Use Thunderbolt for your most data-hungry devices. Thunderbolt is a beefed-up version of USB, developed by Intel and Apple, that uses the same USB-C port you’re familiar with. These can carry huge amounts of data (up to 40 Gbps for Thunderbolt 3 and 4), which makes them ideal for things like SSDs, 4K and 8K displays, or monitors with ultrahigh frame rates for gaming. We’re now up to Thunderbolt 5, which is slowly making its way into some laptops. (Make sure your laptop port supports Thunderbolt.)

    Don’t forget the power. Most USB hubs will draw electricity directly from your laptop to power any devices connected to it, but they obviously need to take up a port to do so. However, some hubs support USB Power Delivery (or USB-PD, sometimes marketed as “passthrough charging”) which allows you to plug a charger into one of the ports on the hub so you can keep charging your laptop while you plug in all your extra gadgets.

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    Luke Larsen

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  • How Tighter RTO Rules May Cost Employers High Performer Pet Owners

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    Company announcements of reinforced return to office (RTO) rules often spark vociferous protests from employees who have come to cherish more flexible working arrangements. But a recent report suggests employers ordering staff to spend more time back in the cubicle also provoke dissenting barks, meows, and threats to quit from many staffers who work at home in the company of their beloved pets.

    The risk of loud, even dogged RTO pushback from animal loving workers became clear in a recent report by Employee Borderless, a research platform that reviews remote work service providers. It noted that 71 percent of all U.S. households — or 94 million in all — now own a pet, up from 65 percent in 2015. More significantly for workplace harmony and stability, 67 percent of employees who live with a dog, cat, parrot, Guinea pig — or the potbellied variety — and other domestic critters said they’d find a new job if their employer decided to reduce or terminate their remote working arrangements.

    Similarly, 41 percent of pet owners questioned said they’d take a cut in pay in order to continue working alongside their animal companions, and 78 percent said they’d reconsider their office job if dogs were banned from company premises. About 60 percent of respondents said they’d take themselves for a walk away from work that created conflicts in caring for their pet.

    There are reasons to fear the bite of those warnings would be worse than their bark for employers. For starters, the report cited research showing pet owning worker surpass colleagues who don’t have animal roommates in many performance metrics.

    Take for example the 91 percent engagement rates of pet owners compared to 65 percent for critter-less colleagues. The same gap exists for productivity rates of 88 percent versus 65 percent, and intent to remain with employers — so long as remote working options allow them to stay with Fido and Sheeba — of 88 percent versus 73 percent.

    Similar differences in favor of the animal cohabitation crowd were found in work-life balance, commitment to the company’s mission, and workplace stress reduction.

    Pet owning workers offer other advantages to employers. Those include better structuring of their workday, heightened focus on work, and more clearly defined times and duration of breaks they take.

    “What happened between 2020 and 2025 wasn’t just people getting pets,” the Employee Borderless report said. “It was millions of workers discovering they could structure their days around both work and pet care, leading to unprecedented productivity gains. They learned to take walking meetings, use pet breaks for mental resets, and leverage the calming presence of animals during stressful projects.”

    That latter effect also reduces employer costs for pet-owning workers’ mental health care.

    More than 90 percent of surveyed employees with fur babies said they have lower levels of stress when their animals are around. That benefit is higher within remote working situations.

    Even though companies like Amazon and Google have very accommodating pet policies, polls found 89 percent of owners said their mental health was better while working at home with their animals, compared to 53 percent saying they got the same effect in traditional offices that allow critter companions.

    The upshot, the Employees Borderless report says, is that in addition to the shouts, yelps screeches, and occasional whinnies that tighter RTO mandates will draw from employees with pets, business owners may risk losing valuable workers by restricting their remote work permissions.

    “Companies issuing return-to-office mandates will face resistance from pet owners, with the majority saying they would rather change jobs than give up remote work,” it said. “This is leaving them at risk of losing their happiest and most productive workers.”

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    Bruce Crumley

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  • Hybrid Work Isn’t Dead. It’s Being Optimized

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    For office employees, the transition from the traditional, Monday through Friday “9-to-5 work model” office to a more flexible, technology-forward workplace is nearly complete. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the traditional workplace relied heavily on the physical environment and tools that employees had access to. Hybrid or remote work options were rare, coveted benefits, usually limited to the tech sector. Otherwise, people came into an office daily to do their work surrounded by other colleagues. 

    Today, the workplace looks different as hybrid and remote work options are mainstream. With technology enabling people to work from anywhere—and AI becoming an integral part of the workforce—flexibility has become a strategic lever for many organizations, helping to maximize productivity, streamline overhead, and enhance employee retention. Despite the slew of Return-to-Office (RTO) headlines over the last few years, the reality is many leaders are leaving the traditional work model in the rearview and leaning into hybrid work. 

    The prominence of hybrid work  

    For small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), the prominence of hybrid work has remained stable, with only minor shifts over the last three years. According to Vistage CEO Confidence Index data, 43% of all SMBs offer hybrid work as of Q3 2025, a decrease of seven percentage points since Q2 2022. Meanwhile, the percentage of workplaces that are fully remote has increased slightly from 8% in Q3 2025 compared to 7% in Q2 2022. 

    This 7% rise in fully onsite work, up to 45% in Q3 2025 from 38% in Q2 2022. is a far cry from recent rhetoric around return to office. Hybrid work is far from dead; for many, it’s the new normal. The once-deafening drumbeat of RTO has lost momentum since early 2025, as CEOs shift their focus to pressing matters such as economic uncertainty, policy confusion, and the three Is of inflation, interest rates, and immigration. As a result, some of the strictest and most inflexible RTO plans have stalled, cementing hybrid work’s place in the modern world. Hybrid work hasn’t disappeared. It has evolved as leaders determine the best mix of in-person and at-home work for their organization’s needs. 

    Why hybrid work didn’t end when the market declined 

    It goes without saying that the job market of 2025 is nowhere near as robust as it was in 2022.  Rather than the Great Resignation, many organizations face the “Great Stay,” with employees holding onto jobs amid uncertainty and a weak market. Enter the rise of “quiet quitters” who are completely unengaged but try to do just enough to avoid being let go. In every workplace, employee engagement remains critical to driving performance, productivity, and ultimately return on investment. Regardless of how strong or weak the job market is, rocking the boat on workplace dynamics is a risk to business success. In the short term, employees may comply, but at what cost?  

    Amid economic uncertainty, geopolitical tensions and the rapid adoption of new technology, hybrid work is playing a key role in how many business leaders are preparing for the year ahead. Here are four ways CEOs are using hybrid work to optimize their business: 

    Reinforcing culture and collaboration 

    When hybrid work first became more widespread during the COVID pandemic, CEOs expressed concerns about fostering company culture and collaboration virtually. Today, many leaders find hybrid work can help elevate and better define culture and collaboration by reinforcing a more intentional approach to time spent in the office. 

    Improving the physical environment  

    A physical environment isn’t just what an office space looks like. Also, it includes all the tools and technology people need to be successful in their roles. Today’s most forward-thinking leaders are creating in-person environments that complement at-home work while improving infrastructure and rethinking floor plans to promote teamwork. 

    Providing more flexibility 

    In Vistage’s most recent survey of CEOs, respondents identified flexibility as the third leg of the workplace. Since experiencing hybrid benefits during shutdowns, employee satisfaction rates have become increasingly reliant on people’s ability to achieve better balance through flexible arrangements. 

    Building better bosses  

    It’s often said that people don’t leave bad jobs. Instead, they leave bad bosses. Bosses play the single most significant role in shaping employee experience. Businesses can only reap the full benefits of their hybrid workforce if managers are equipped to help teams maximize their workflows and technology, while upholding strong communication both in-person and virtually.  

    In today’s world of constant change and instability, the principles of the most productive and engaged workplaces remain the same. Instead of reinstating the traditional 9-to-5 work model, many leaders are leveraging hybrid work to enhance employee engagement and increase productivity. 

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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    Joe Galvin

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  • As Many CEOs Call Employees Back to the Office, This CEO Is Bucking the Trend and Embracing Remote Work

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    Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.

    When Brian Doubles became CEO of Synchrony in 2021, a global pandemic had upended the way companies thought about work. Remote options became ubiquitous, and many employees, when possible, were given the tools they needed to do their jobs from anywhere. Now, even as other financial services companies and banks have issued return-to-office mandates, Doubles is making a different bet: Stamford, Connecticut–based Synchrony allows its more than 20,000 employees to work from home or in a company facility (or a mix of both) with in-person gatherings for training, leadership meetings, innovation sessions, and culture-building events.

    The decision appears to be paying off. Turnover is down, job applications are up 30%, and this year Synchrony climbed to No. 2 on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list, up from No. 37 in 2021.

    The recognition caps four years of key gains for the company, which is the nation’s largest issuer of private-label credit cards. In June, Synchrony announced it would power a new credit card program with Walmart, winning back business the company lost to rival Capital One in 2018, and adding to a roster of clients that includes Lowe’s, Verizon, and Amazon. Last year, the company reported net interest income of $18 billion, an increase of 26% from 2021. Since Doubles became CEO, the stock has risen more than 60%, outperforming the S&P 500. (Disclosure: Synchrony was a sponsor of the recent Fast Company Innovation Festival.)

    Synchrony’s growth comes despite some headwinds in the world of consumer credit, which former Synchrony parent General Electric helped popularize when it started financing appliance purchases in the 1930s. (GE completed the spin-off of its credit business in 2015.) Store-branded cards once dominated credit card issuance. Now, as big brick-and-mortar retailers such as JCPenney and Macy’s have contracted, store credit cards account for just 4% of purchase volume in the U.S. Well-heeled consumers, meanwhile, are opting for rewards cards such as American Express Platinum or Chase Sapphire Reserve, while more cash-conscious Gen Z consumers finance purchases using buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) products.

    Productive paranoia

    Synchrony is well placed to respond to changes in the business and economic landscape thanks to a reorganization Doubles executed upon becoming CEO. Though the company was posting strong financial results as consumers returned to pre-pandemic spending, Doubles restructured the business to expand and diversify its customer base; he also created a growth organization and combined the technology and operations to accelerate new product development.

    “I have a productive paranoia, and I think the best time to embark on a big change like that is from a position of strength,” he says. “The intent of the reorganization was to bring innovation to market faster—to anticipate what our partners need from us before they’re asking us for it.” For example, rather than creating a dedicated solution for every enterprise customer (Synchrony calls them partners), the company now develops a standardized product and scales it across hundreds of customers, making customized tweaks in the later stages.

    Leaders say bringing teams together has given different departments fluency in their counterparts’ work, leading to faster digital tool development. “When I go inside our P.I. [program increment] sessions, which is how agile teams operate, I can’t tell who’s from technology and who’s from credit,” Max Axler, chief credit officer, says of the cross-departmental group that works on PRISM, a proprietary system that makes underwriting and credit decisions.

    PRISM is a case study in harnessing Doubles’s productive paranoia. Synchrony changed a process that was working just fine—Synchrony has always been expert at underwriting—and took it to new levels. Today, PRISM can assess an applicant’s creditworthiness in a six-second window while they’re checking out at a store, using 9,000 data points, up from about 100 in 2018. “It was a big message to the organization that we were going to completely redesign the credit platform,” Doubles says, adding: “It gave other teams permission to rethink everything they were doing as well. Even if it’s working, rethink it.”

    Because PRISM looks at more variables to make credit decisions, Synchrony says it has been able to extend cards to people who previously might have been rejected because of their credit scores alone. And many of those consumers become especially loyal customers: Synchrony says these customers use their cards as “top-of-wallet” payment methods, driving repeat purchases. (Synchrony makes money when consumers borrow and pay interest on credit cards it has issued.)

    Winning back Walmart

    Even as Synchrony has been seeking new sources of revenue, including its own buy-now-pay-later offering, investors and analysts are cautiously optimistic about the financial impact of returning customer Walmart. (Before the companies parted ways in 2018, Walmart accounted for about $10 billion, or 19%, of Synchrony’s retail card balances, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal.)

    Doubles didn’t offer much detail about the renewed relationship other than touting the benefits of the new card, especially for Walmart+ subscribers, who pay a membership fee for perks like free delivery and shipping, among others.

    In a September report recapping a meeting with Synchrony executives, Bank of America Securities senior payments analyst Mihir Bhatia noted that management expects the partnership to be accretive to growth and profit margins, and characterized company leaders as “palpably more excited” about a deeper collaboration with Walmart, including store displays and online promotion of the card. “If Walmart is invested in the partnership and pushes the product and

    creates an interesting value proposition, customers will respond to that and get the card,” says Bhatia, who has a “buy” rating on Synchrony stock. “If more people get the card, more people spend money on the card, more people borrow on the card, and that’s good for Synchrony.” (The report also paraphrased management saying pure-play BNPL competitors are having a limited impact on Synchrony’s growth, and noted that Synchrony has introduced its own BNPL offering.)

    RTO outlier

    For all its technological and operational gains, Synchrony is still best known in some circles for its flexible work arrangements. But it wasn’t always a remote-work champion. “Pre-pandemic, we were a 99% in-office culture,” says DJ Casto, chief human resources officer at Synchrony. “This was a big fundamental change and a big trust exercise with our workforce.”

    A company survey showed that more than 85% of employees wanted a remote option, prompting the company to permanently adopt a policy that lets everyone work from home or in the office, or for many, a combination of the two, provided they live within commuting distance of a Synchrony office and come in from time to time. In contrast, many Wall Street investment banks and competitors such as JPMorganChase have mandated in-office days. It is worth noting that because Synchrony doesn’t have any physical bank branches, which aren’t needed in the credit card business, the company is able to offer hybrid work to hourly and salaried workers alike.

    “We’re trusting our employees to still give 110% even though we’re not monitoring how much time they’re spending in the office,” Doubles adds. “I remind our team all the time that the hybrid work model is a privilege, and we have to earn it every day. We have to earn it by running a successful business that’s growing.”

    To ensure accountability and employee engagement in a hybrid workforce, Casto says the company emphasizes the importance of ongoing one-on-one meetings between employees and managers with “significant focus on coaching” versus “managing.” Indeed, the company has embedded coaching throughout the organization. All of Doubles’s executive leadership team members have coaches, and Casto is working to make coaching available to a wider group of employees, including high-potential folks or people trying to work through complicated problems. The company also offers wellness coaches to all employees.

    Listening to employees drove Synchrony’s approach to work. Doubles says he also leans on active listening to help him run the business. “You have to listen to your employees,” he says. “They’re going to tell you what’s working and what’s not working. And if they’re telling you what’s not working, you have got to act on it fast, and they have to feel you acting on it.”

    Is your team remote or back in office?

    What is your company’s remote-work policy, and has it improved employee engagement? Send your experiences to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. I’d like to share some of your insights in a future newsletter.

    Read more: winning workplaces

    Fast Company’s 100 Best Workplaces for Innovators in 2025

    Inc.’s 2025 Best Workplaces recognizes the top small and midsize employers

    Adam Grant on how to build a winning workplace

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    Stephanie Mehta

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  • What Business Leaders Got Wrong About Zoom Fatigue

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    Back in the dark days of Covid lockdowns, millions of people around the globe brought a new app into their homes and lives to adapt to working at home: Zoom. Five years later, after the collective experience of endless video calls and other pandemic-era stressors led to Zoom fatigue or video call burnout, prompting the creation of guidelines about how to minimize those risks, those on-screen meetings are part of many people’s ordinary working lives. The enduring shift to hybrid and remote working conditions has changed how many of us go to the “office.” New research on current attitudes to Zoom today suggests video interactions no longer wear us down. In fact, a recent academic article says that under certain conditions, Zoom meetings may be less stressful than face to face gatherings.

    The scientists’ work, published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, described extensively interviewing over 100 people who take part in different types of work meetings. Researchers asked about their exhaustion levels, if they were able to take a mid-meeting break, and their more general attitudes about the platform’s role in their work lives. One team member, Hadar Nesher Shoshan, a junior professor at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany told news outlet Phys.org that their initial hypothesis was that “zoom fatigue still existed” simply because “all previous studies had come to this conclusion.” 

    But their investigation came to a startling conclusion that told a very different story. “We found no evidence of the phenomenon,” Shoshan said, and in fact, according to their findings, “online meetings are not more fatiguing than in-person meetings.”

    Even more fascinating, from the questions the subjects in the study answered, the researchers concluded that if a Zoom meeting lasts less than 44 minutes, the experience of attending the meeting may even be less exhausting to the attendees than traditional in-person business meetings.

    Intuitively, this makes sense. A shortish Zoom meeting from the comfort of your own home, a cafe or a coworking space may not seem as inconvenient as dressing in office-suitable clothing, suffering your commute, and then having to sit in a drab office environment to have the same discussion with the same people. For Zooms that last less than three-quarters of an hour, you probably wouldn’t even feel the need to get off the sofa or top up your coffee mug. That’s much less tiring than having to listen to Steve from Accounts in person, droning on across a conference table under poor lighting.

    So what’s going on here? Why did this research find such different answers about Zoom fatigue? And what can you learn from it for your own company?

    According to Shoshan, the most likely cause of Zoom fatigue at first was the pandemic itself, versus the complications of switching to mainly online meetings. When you add all the complex social issues lockdowns caused, Zoom meetings — closely linked to lockdowns in user’s minds — were thus subject to many of the same negative feelings. “People were missing their old way of life, their social contacts and were no longer enjoying their work,” Shoshan said. 

    Meanwhile, previous studies that suggested we were still suffering Zoom fatigue years after the lockdown ended mainly included data gathered actually during lockdown, Shoshan contends.

    So what’s the lesson here for your company?

    It might be surprising: hybrid and remote working may actually be better for your workforce, under certain conditions, at least regarding video call meetings.

    This is definitely something to consider if you’re thinking of pivoting back toward a more traditional in-office model (which data show will be deeply unpopular with your staff). As long as you keep your Zooms short, it may actually boost your workers’ efficiency, since they may not be so tired out. And while you’re at it, why not set a firm time limit for in-person meetings too?

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    Kit Eaton

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  • Lumbar Support Can Make a Huge Difference in Your Office Chair

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    I also spoke to John Gallucci, a licensed physical therapist and athletic trainer who specializes in treating symptoms from poor office posture, and he confirmed much of what Egbert said. Closed case, right? Well, it’s certainly not just marketing speak so that office chair manufacturers can charge you extra. But there are some important factors to consider.

    Not All Lumbar Support Is Equal

    Gallucci was quick to point out the benefits of lumbar support, but he also issued some warnings about how to proceed. Turns out, not all lumbar support is equal. “The most important thing to look for in a chair is ergonomic adjustability,” he says, referencing the need for adjustable lumbar support. “A good chair should support your posture for long periods without causing discomfort or fatigue. That means it should allow you to adjust the seat height, seat pan depth, armrests, lumbar support, and backrest tilt.”

    Chairs with fixed lumbar support mean it isn’t adjustable to your body. Lumbar support and adjustments come in different forms these days. For example, some chairs have lumbar height adjustment but not depth, also known as “two-way” adjustment. Some use a dial for adjustment, and others use a ratchet or lever system. Other chairs let you adjust the entire backrest to find the right position, and some cheaper chairs resort to just a simple pad that can be manually moved. These can, in theory, all be good solutions, so long as you’re able to find the right position.

    “That curve has to be adjustable as to where it is,” Egbert says. “My butt might be lower than your butt, and you want it to match where that curve in your lower back is. You want to be able to slide it up and down.”

    A good example of an ergonomic chair with “two-way” lumbar adjustment is the Branch Ergonomic Chair Pro. We’ve tested dozens of chairs, and this excellent lumbar support is one of the reasons WIRED’s office chair reviewer, Julian Chokkattu, found it so comfortable. It also doesn’t cost over a thousand dollars like so many high-end office chairs.

    If you aren’t ready to shell out $500 on an ergonomic chair, that doesn’t mean you have to be doomed to lower back pain. Some DIY solutions can even be better than a chair with inadequate lumbar adjustment. We’ve even tested some add-on lumbar cushions that we like, such as this LoveHome model you can find on Amazon.

    When it comes down to it, though, lumbar support isn’t the first thing to tackle when setting up your workspace. If you’re sitting at an old desk working from only a laptop, lumbar support is never going to solve your posture issues. Fix that first, with either a laptop stand or a height-adjustable monitor.

    After that, yes, lumbar support is a good thing. It needs to be adjustable and well-implemented, but it’s something you’ll want to make sure is available on your next office chair. If you’re sitting for eight hours a day, your back deserves it.

    Branch

    Ergonomic Chair Pro

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    Luke Larsen

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  • Stop Using Your Laptop at the Dinner Table Already

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    Branch Ergonomic Chair Pro

    Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

    Kristianne Egbert has worked in occupational ergonomics for nearly 20 years and is now a senior corporate ergonomist at Briotix Health, a workplace injury prevention company. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Egbert also says that repeated use of a laptop alone on a desk is going to have a huge effect on your overall posture.

    Egbert referred to what’s known as the 20-degree rule. If you’re holding your neck at an angle of 20 degrees or more, you’re officially crossing the risk threshold. “You’re probably bending over because you’re leaning forward to see that screen and be able to reach the keyboard,” she says.

    Sitting back farther in your chair might seem like a fix to the problem temporarily, but in reality, bending beyond 20 degrees isn’t the real issue. Most people aren’t comfortable holding that position for long periods of time, which means it’s what else your body does to compensate that’s problematic.

    “Nobody really wants to bend their head that much more than 20 degrees,” Egbert says. “So, when you don’t want to bend your neck forward, then the rest of your body is going to try and accommodate.”

    You might tilt your whole back forward to avoid that extreme neck posture to type on the keyboard and see the screen of your laptop. That’s where bad posture habits really form. It’s not that you need to just suck it up and have better posture. You need to change the way you’re working, not necessarily your discipline.

    “The other thing that ends up happening when your back starts getting tired is you’re like, ‘OK, well, I’m gonna scoot back a little bit to keep my back a little straighter,’” she says, demonstrating the position over the Zoom call. “But then, my arms are going to come out a little bit more, and I’m anchoring my wrist down while I’m typing.” This position can cause all sorts of other problems.

    It’s even worse for shorter people, who are often working from chairs that aren’t tall enough. Egbert often recommends putting the laptop down on the lap, so that your arms can be down “where they belong.” You can tilt the laptop screen and look down at it, cutting the risk of leaning forward too much.

    What to Do Instead

    Image may contain Computer Hardware Electronics Hardware and Mouse

    Hansker Productivity Mouse

    Photograph: Henri Robbins

    Fortunately, there are some simple (and even affordable!) solutions to this ergonomic disaster. Both experts I interviewed indicated that your office chair is a good place to start for better posture and office ergonomics. (We have an excellent guide that can help.)

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    Luke Larsen

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  • The American Dream on European time: How late-night remote workers are cashing in on big U.S. salaries

    The American Dream on European time: How late-night remote workers are cashing in on big U.S. salaries

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    It’s 9 p.m. in London, and Gita Selli is still at her computer, finishing up one last Zoom call with her team in the U.S. Her son has taken his bath, her husband is already in bed, and while the idea of a late-night video call may sound horrendous to some, Gita is feeling incredibly satisfied.

    “Of course, American companies do pay better than European companies,” says Gita Selli, Senior Manager of Global Talent Acquisition at Chicago-based tech firm Loadsmart. “I’d lose between half and a third of what I make today if I were working for a European company.”

    European workers, on average, earn 20-40% less than their American counterparts for similar jobs. For example, software engineers in the U.S. typically earn around $115,000; in Europe, the average is $75,000, depending on the region. Marketing managers see a similar gap, with U.S. salaries averaging $107,000 compared to Europe’s $70,000.

    Before the pandemic, Europeans working for U.S. companies wasn’t unheard of, but holding U.S.-based roles with American-level salaries was a rarity. The shift to remote work has opened the floodgates, enabling Europeans to land positions traditionally reserved for American workers.

    How do Europeans make it work?

    Landing a U.S. job can feel like hitting the jackpot, but the rewards come with strings attached. European workers must adjust to U.S. hours, often working late into the night to align with American time zones. 

    Seasoned remote workers prefer companies on America’s East Coast, where a five- to six-hour time difference is easier to manage compared to those on the West Coast, where the eight- to nine-hour gap can make for grueling nights.

    For many, especially working parents, this trade-off is worth it. “It’s helped a lot with family life,” says Selli, who has two kids. “I take breaks to pick up the kids, which I couldn’t do with a traditional nine-to-five UK job. But in the evenings, I’m glued to my desk, which is balanced by help from my husband.”

    The flexibility is attractive to many, but not everyone can handle the time zone challenges. “It’s a killer for early-morning people,” Selli admits. “If you’re someone who wants to hit the pub after work, this isn’t the right place for you.”

    “If you’re someone who wants to hit the pub after work, this isn’t the right place for you.”

    Breaking up the day helps many remote workers. Some like to complete the first round of tasks in the European morning when coworkers aren’t around to interrupt with calls, emails, or instant messages, saving the afternoon for video conference calls. “I don’t need to be at my desk for eight hours straight,” says Romanian video and audio editor Otinel Mezin. “I can stay nearby and get back to my computer if any urgent editing requests come in.”

    American companies have also become increasingly flexible with remote workers’ schedules. “I noticed a significant shift when COVID hit,” says Irish marketing executive Laura Mundow. “I’ve been working remotely for over a decade, but during the pandemic, many companies finally seemed to acknowledge time zone differences and adjusted accordingly.”

    Selli offers practical advice: “Make sure everyone can see your calendar. If they know when you start and finish work, they won’t schedule meetings at unreasonable times. It won’t always be perfect, but it will help avoid having to work until 3 a.m.,” she advises.

    Cultural differences also play a noteworthy role. American companies often operate at a faster pace, with a more aggressive approach to sales and more open discussions around salaries than their European counterparts. Despite these contrasts, many Europeans say they have come to appreciate the innovative and optimistic spirit.

    “I really love working with Americans,” Mundow says. “There’s an openness there that you might not get in Europe. The stereotype of work being a massive focus for Americans is true. That might not suit everybody. It suits me, but I can see how it could be jarring if work weren’t a central part of your life.”

    Although it requires some initial adjustment, many find the cultural differences refreshing. “I find clients to be more polite in the way they request work and not haggling over prices,” Mezin says.

    Laura Mundow.

    ‘Geographic arbitrage’

    One piece of advice from European workers is to avoid undervaluing yourself in the American market by accepting a salary lower than what an American would earn, even if it’s higher than typical European pay.

    “My goal is always to be paid at an average U.S. rate, even though I live in Romania,” Mezin says.

    “I wouldn’t consider undercutting myself,” Mundow states, who entered remote work upon graduating due to the dearth of media jobs in Ireland. “I just wouldn’t be happy with getting European wages working for an American company.”

    One of the significant financial benefits is what Mundow dubs geographic arbitrage. “If you’re earning American money, you can live very well somewhere that is not America.” 

    It doesn’t have to be limited to Western Europe; Mundow has set up shop in Eastern Europe, using her mornings to explore before America wakes up. She’s also done stints from cost-effective spots in Latin America. Asia, however, has been impossible to pull off due to the time zone.

    Are there days when the remote workers long for the 9-to-5 of a regular European job? 

    “Never! Never, ever,” Selli says. “I could never go back. The flexibility is so much better.”

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    Samuel Burke

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  • 1 in 5 workers are ignoring their companies’ RTO mandates

    1 in 5 workers are ignoring their companies’ RTO mandates

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    Regardless of how many days per week workers—or their bosses—want to be in the office, nobody likes being told what to do. Case in point: nearly 1 in 5 workers are outright ignoring their employer’s mandates.

    That’s according to a new report from Resume Builder, which surveyed over 1,000 full-time U.S. workers at companies where a return-to-office (RTO) mandate has been implemented some time since 2020. 

    Just under 80% of workers said they follow the rules, while 18% occasionally ignore it, 2% “rarely” follow the policy, and 1% don’t adhere to mandates—at all.

    How do workers get away with snubbing their boss?

    To get away with RTO snubbing, workers told Resume Builder they’re getting crafty. 

    Many enlist a coworker for help—mainly asking them to swipe them in. 

    Others will sneak in for a moment on weekends and administer a swipe, just to make it look like their weekly tally is up to par. 

    But the most common tactic is the simplest: They flout the policy by simply leaving the office early.

    Broken down by schedule type, workers who are required to come in a handful of days per week—on a hybrid schedule, as Resume Builder puts it—have the highest rates of noncompliance with the mandate. 

    Just 3 in 5 hybrid workers follow their company’s RTO policy.

    Still, forcing defiant workers to show face five days a week in the hopes of increased compliance could backfire: Resume Builder’s respondents only want to be in-person for three days a week at most. 

    If their companies start taking a hard line on in-person attendance, more than half of workers said they’d sooner quit than comply. 

    Want your workers to comply with an RTO? Pay for their commute and some

    The reasons behind the noncompliance are exactly as one might expect; it’s simply inconvenient, and workers deem those in-office hours to be a poor use of their time. It’s also expensive; some estimates say between commuting or gas, lunch, parking, and pet care, each day of in-person work can cost $51. 

    Perhaps that explains why Resume Builder respondents had a straightforward answer as to what would actually push them to comply with the mandates: More money.

    In fact, 2 in 3 workers said a raise would move them to cooperate. They also wouldn’t mind their company’s help in paying for costs associated with a commute, like transportation benefits and a lunch stipend—or even better, catered lunch at the office. 

    In second place: More flexibility, including having their pick of start and end times to their workdays that best align with their needs. 

    Being a worker in 2024 means enjoying a level of flexibility that, prior to the pandemic, was unthinkable, Stacie Haller, Resume Builder’s chief career advisor, noted in the report. 

    While bosses once viewed remote work as a temporary stopgap as COVID receded, the toothpaste is out of the tube: Millions of workers, thrilled to avoid long commutes, sad desk lunches and early-morning routines, are demanding a better balance. 

    Remote work has become a “non-negotiable” for many professionals, Haller said. “Employers should know job seekers today still have options if they are looking to work remotely.”

    Companies need to balance their in-office desires with their workforce’s preferences, Haller concluded, “or they risk losing valuable employees to more flexible competitors.” 

    Just ask the Amazon employees who boss Andy Jassy is forcing back full-time in January, and are “rage-applying” to other, more flexible jobs as a result.

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    Jane Thier

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  • Google’s ex-CEO blames remote working on the company’s AI woes

    Google’s ex-CEO blames remote working on the company’s AI woes

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    Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt has a complaint about his old stomping ground—and it’s one that workers have heard on repeat for the past two years: They aren’t working in the office enough. 

    Schmidt, who left Google for good in 2020, blasted the company’s working-from-home policy during a recent talk at Stanford University, while claiming it’s the reason why the search engine giant is lagging behind in the AI race. 

    “Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning,” Schmidt told Stanford students.

    “And the reason startups work is because the people work like hell.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxDM8io4lUA

    “I’m sorry to be so blunt,” Schmidt continued in the video posted on Stanford’s YouTube channel on Tuesday. “But the fact of the matter is, if you all leave the university and go found a company, you’re not gonna let people work from home and only come in one day a week if you want to compete against the other startups.”

    Schmidt made the remarks in response to a question from professor Erik Brynjolfsson about how Google have lost the lead in AI to startups like OpenAI and Anthropic.

    “I asked [Google CEO] Sundar [Pichai] this, he didn’t really give me a very sharp answer. Maybe you have a sharper or a more objective explanation for what’s going on there,” Brynjolfsson posed to the former Google boss.

    Fortune has contacted Schmidt and Google for comment.

    WFH became the norm at Google after Schmidt left

    Schmidt, who led Google from 2001 to 2011, before handing the reins back to the search giant’s co-founder Larry Page, stayed on as Google’s executive chairman and technical advisor until 2020. 

    Since then, the world of work has undergone a significant transformation. Despite the dangers of the pandemic being long behind us, companies are largely still operating remotely—at least for part of the week. 

    In fact, a study from KPMG recently revealed that CEOs who believe office workers will be back at their desks five days a week in the near future are now in the small minority. 

    It’s worth highlighting that Schmidt’s one-day-a-week remark is an exaggeration: Like most firms, Google has asked workers to come into offices around three days a week, per the company’s 2022 Diversity Annual Report.

    More recently, Google has even begun formally tracking office badge swipes and using it as a metric in performance reviews.

    However, Schmidt should note that employee backlash from rigid return-to-office mandates could actually wipe out any productivity gains in Google’s AI department.

    WFH, RTO and productivity

    Schmidt’s not the first leader to complain that working from home kills innovation.

    However, CEOs who order their staff to work from an office five days à la pre-pandemic risk having fewer staff around to innovate.

    Reams of research suggest that workers would quit their jobs if forced to return to their company’s vertical towers.

    Meanwhile, leaders who have already enforced an RTO mandate have admitted they experienced more attrition than they anticipated and are struggling with recruitment. 

    Elon Musk, for one, has been an outspoken advocate for in-office work—he quickly found out that employees will call their bosses ultimatum to commute to work or find another job.

    Twitter’s (now X) operations were put at risk soon after he took over when more workers than expected chose to quit rather than answer Musk’s call to go “hardcore”.

    Plus, even if employees don’t quit in anger, they’ll likely have less zing for their jobs: A staggering 99% of companies with RTO mandates have seen a drop in engagement. 

    Either way, Google’s lack of innovation in the AI department can’t be down to staff working from home more than those at OpenAI—they have the same 3-day in-office policy.

    Recommended Newsletter: The Fortune Next to Lead newsletter is a must-read for the next generation of C-suite leaders. Every Monday, the newsletter provides the strategies, resources, and expert insight needed to claim the most coveted positions in business. Subscribe now.

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    Orianna Rosa Royle

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  • Tech CEOs are backtracking on their RTO mandates—now, just 3% of firms asking workers to go into the office full-time

    Tech CEOs are backtracking on their RTO mandates—now, just 3% of firms asking workers to go into the office full-time

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    Many tech firms have spent the last two years summoning workers back into the office—all the while threatening them with layoffs. Even Zoom reverted to in-person working last year.

    But now, it looks like tech bosses have given up their war on working from home. 

    Just 3% of tech firms are now asking their workers to go into the office full-time—a significant drop from 8% last year.

    Flex Index analyzed the flexible work policies for 2,670 tech companies that collectively employ over 11 million people—and it found that tech firms have conceded that flexible working is here to stay.

    In fact, 79% of the tech firms surveyed are fully flexible, up from 75% in 2023. 

    Meanwhile, more and more firms are giving employees the choice of when and where they work.

    While 38% of tech firms had an “employee’s choice” model in 2023, today that percentage has jumped to 56%. It’s now the most popular policy among tech firms.

    In comparison, just 18% of firms are dictating which days their workers need to work from the office with a “structure hybrid model”.

    Tech CEOs can’t make their minds up on RTO

    Tech companies are perhaps the most well-positioned to work from home—and, in some cases, have even created the tools to do so.

    It’s why in 2020, the likes of Meta, Twitter (now X), Shopify, and more declared that they were going to leverage the new decentralized way of working for good. 

    “We are going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale, with a thoughtful and responsible plan for how to do this,” Mark Zuckerberg boasted, while claiming that half of Meta’s employees would be working remotely within the next five to 10 years. 

    That was until last year, when Zuckerberg declared that 2023 was going to be the “Year of Efficiency” and demanded workers return to work in the name of productivity, while simultaneously scaring staff into complying with mass layoffs.

    Meanwhile, just two years after declaring that 60% of its workforce would operate remotely, Dell has now told workers that they must go into the office three days a week if they want any hope of a promotion.

    Google, Salesforce and Amazon are also among major tech companies that are cracking down on return-to-office policies—and meeting resistance from workers.

    CEOs have given up on RTO

    It’s not just in the tech world that defeated CEOs have given up on forcing their workers to return to their vertical towers. Separate research echoes that CEOs across the board have softened their stance on working from home. 

    KPMG surveyed U.S. CEOs of companies turning over at least $500 million and found that just one-third expect a full return to the office in the next three years.

    It’s a complete 360 from their stance last year, when 62% of CEOs surveyed predicted that working from home would end by 2026.

    Why the change of heart? It’s no secret that rigid in-office policies haven’t landed well with workers.

    Leaders are perhaps experiencing more resistance than they had anticipated.

    Amazon is perhaps the most documented example of how ugly the RTO battle can get: Around 30,000 employees signed a petition protesting the company’s in-office mandate, and more than 1,800 pledged to walk out from their jobs to take a stand. 

    The tech giant is still complaining that workers are dodging the three-day in-office mandate, over a year after it was announced.

    Dropbox cofounder and CEO Drew Houston perfectly summed up the situation with bosses struggling over RTO: “They keep hitting the go-back-to-2019 button, and it’s clear it’s not working.”

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    Orianna Rosa Royle

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  • WeWork Survived Bankruptcy. Now It Has to Make Coworking Pay Off

    WeWork Survived Bankruptcy. Now It Has to Make Coworking Pay Off

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    WeWork is set to become a smaller—and potentially rightsized—company. Following a final hearing on its bankruptcy plan Thursday morning, the coworking pioneer will have fewer locations, a new influx of capital, and $4 billion in debt wiped from its books.

    In a packed courtroom in Newark, New Jersey, Judge John Sherwood approved WeWork’s restructuring plan. WeWork expects to finally exit bankruptcy in mid-June. The plan also staved off a bid by WeWork’s controversial founder Adam Neumann, who had sought to buy back the company he’d founded before he was infamously ousted.

    WeWork’s clean slate will coincide with a new era of working, one in which office workers have pushed back against returning to offices full-time; as of late 2023, nearly 20 percent of office space in the US sat vacant. Yet workers are also experiencing more loneliness, a problem that coworking companies argue they can address by bringing people together. WeWork’s reboot is a test of the future of coworking itself.

    “WeWork still believes that this is a viable business model,” says Sarah Foss, global head of legal and restructuring at Debtwire, a financial services company. “They’re exiting a much leaner company.”

    WeWork filed for bankruptcy in November. Hammered by high interest rates and the Covid-19 pandemic, which started a work-from-home phenomenon, it was left with too many leases and too many hot desks and flexible office spaces it couldn’t fill. In 2023, lease costs made up two-thirds of its operating expenses.

    WeWork had more than 500 global locations before it filed for bankruptcy, and will operate about 330 WeWorks going forward, about half of which will be in the US and Canada. That will save WeWork about $12 billion in rent obligations, cutting its rent costs in half, according to the company’s estimates. WeWork’s plan comes from amending or assuming many leases, and rejecting or negotiating to exit some 150 others. It prioritized reducing its footprint in areas where it had oversupply, either from occupying too many floors in the same building or having multiple locations in close proximity.

    Many of these changes come as part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings, but locations outside of the US and Canada are not part of that bundle. In other countries, WeWork has worked with landlords to renegotiate some of its leases, including those in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Manila, and Paris.

    WeWork went to hundreds of landlords during the process to negotiate new lease terms or exits from buildings. Bankruptcy allows companies to renegotiate and reject leases outright, but the market conditions that now plague office landlords primed WeWork with advantages to negotiate better terms to stay in place. “They have all the leverage, knowing that we’re in a terrible time for landlords,” says Eric Haber, counsel at Wharton Property Advisors, a New York City office-leasing advisory firm. Now, a slimmer WeWork has a “streamlined configuration where they hope they can make money, but they have very optimistic projections,” Haber says. “Even with this much better setup, they still have to execute.”

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    Amanda Hoover

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  • Give Your Back a Break With Our Favorite Office Chairs

    Give Your Back a Break With Our Favorite Office Chairs

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    Not every chair is a winner. Here are a few others we like enough to recommend, but they’re not as good as our top picks above.

    Hinomi X1 Chair for $669: Hinomi’s X1 mesh chair has a trick up its sleeve—a built-in footrest! Just extend and flip out the footrest; voilà, your feet are now propped up. This might not be very practical for fellow tall people, as my legs often hit the wall behind my desk, but it’s quite comfy. The chair is otherwise well-built. I like the lumbar support here, and there’s a good amount of adjustments you can make. The seat itself is a bit firm, but I got used to it after some time. Hinomi offers a 12-year warranty, but best of all you can snag it in a dusty pink from the company’s website. I’d buy this over the X-Chair mesh chair listed below.

    BodyBilt Midcelli Mesh Chair for $949: BodyBilt’s chair looks quite average, but the seat pad is plushy and soft, and it’s contoured to your butt and legs, which I liked more than I expected. The mesh back has some give to it, so it doesn’t feel rigid, and there are all the usual points of adjustment, including moving the seat forward and back. I wish the arms could lock to a position. It has a lifetime warranty on select parts, while other chair areas are covered for 12, seven, five, or three years. There are more customization options on BodyBilt’s website—with the option to get a consultation—but I just think it’s overpriced.

    Razer Fujin Pro for $1,049: Razer is asking for Herman Miller and Steelcase prices despite offering a measly five-year warranty on this $1,000-plus chair. Still, my colleague Eric Ravenscraft likes the Fujin Pro (8/10, WIRED Recommends). There are a good amount of adjustments you can make, the armrests are useful, and the mesh is breathable. Oh, and it doesn’t have the over-used gaming chair race-car seat aesthetic.

    Tempur-Pedic Tempur-Lumbar Support Office Chair for $352: I think this is a nice alternative to the Branch Ergonomic Chair, our top pick. The Tempur seat cushion is, perhaps unsurprisingly, wonderfully comfy to sit on for hours at a time. And most chairs that have a thick lumbar cushion end up causing me back pain, but not here—I’ve had no issues sitting on this chair for a month. The mesh back is nice for airflow too. The arms tend to move around a bit though, and the mechanism to adjust them is not elegant. Installation wasn’t too hard, but the instructions weren’t as simple as Branch’s, and the overall build quality feels cheap.

    Cooler Master Motion 1 Gaming Chair for $2,500: I don’t recommend most gaming chairs—that’s coming from someone who sat on one for several years. They are quite adjustable, but they’re not terribly comfy, breathable, or ergonomic. They also mostly go after a particular racing car aesthetic. For most people, the above chairs will work better. However, the Cooler Master Motion 1 (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is different. WIRED contributor Simon Hill says it’s quite literally built for gaming—the seat rumbles when you move on bumpy terrain in Forza Horizon 5, and it’ll throw in a few jolts if you crash. You do need to make sure the game you own is supported, but there are more than 100 AAA titles on the roster. It works with a catalog of more than 2,000 movies and TV shows too, in case you want to feel the power behind Batman’s blows. As a chair itself, it’s OK. It’s decently comfy but lacks the adjustability you might find on a normal office chair. The armrests are fixed, and prolonged sessions might leave you nauseous. But it’s unique and worth considering if you love racing games and flight sims.

    Knoll Newson Task Chair for $1,195: This minimalist chair looks best in the graphite and petal colors; it’s a bit drab in black and umber. It’s nice that I didn’t have to fuss with any levers or knobs much—it’s comfy out of the box and decently adjustable if you need to make some tweaks—and it feels especially nice when you recline. (The red knob adjusts the tension of the recline, but you need to twist it for five rotations, and I found it hard to turn sometimes.) The Newson didn’t give me trouble in the two months I sat in it. I’m just not a huge fan of how the elastomer mesh backrest distorts, depending on how you sit. It feels lumpy. This chair also doesn’t let me sit as upright as I’d like, but maybe you’re fine with a bit of give. Ultimately, it’s the price that pulls it out of our top recommendations, but you do get a 12-year warranty.

    X-Chair X2 K-Sport Management Chair for $879: This used to be our top mesh chair pick but it has been supplanted by the Steelcase Karman. Sitting in the X-Chair feels like lounging in a hammock. Every part of my body feels well supported, and you can adjust nearly everything on the chair. Pull the seat up and push the armrests up, down, and side to side, or angle them in or out. The lumbar support feels like a cushion, and it adjusts as you move in your seat. If you want to rest your head, you can pay extra for the headrest. It has held up extremely well after three years of near-continuous sitting, but I don’t like how bulky it is. X-Chair has a number of models to choose from. I tested the X-2 K-Sport with the wide seat, and it fits my 6’4″ frame really well, but it was too wide for my partner, who is 5’1″. Most people should be fine with the standard X1.

    Ikea Markus Chair for $290: The Markus is a perfectly fine office chair. It’s not the most comfortable, but it’s far from the worst. The mesh design keeps you cool, and the tall back lets you fully lean into it. It’s rather thin and isn’t obtrusive in a small home office or bedroom. It was annoying to put together (lol, Ikea), and you might need someone to hold up the back of the chair while you properly attach the seat. Unfortunately, if you often sit with at least one leg up or with your legs crossed, the width between the arms will make you uncomfortable.

    X-Chair X-Tech Executive Chair for $2,049: Functionally, the X-Tech is similar to the X-Chair above. In this version, the M-Foam cooling gel seat is indeed wonderful to sit on, though it’s not as heat-wicking as the all-mesh X-Chairs. It’s the Brisa Soft Touch material that impresses the most—it’s ridiculously soft. I recommend you stick with the standard armrests instead of the FS 360 armrests, which tend to move about too much. But my biggest gripe with this model is the price. Why on earth does it cost that much?

    Mavix M7 Chair for $677: If it looks strangely similar to the X-Chair (see above), that’s because both are owned by the same company. WIRED reviewer Louryn Strampe ran into some issues with assembly, but customer service was able to exchange the model without much effort. The M7 has similarly adjustable armrests and seat angles, but you get wheels that lock. The mesh back and wide seat construction keep you cool and comfortable during sweaty League of Legends sessions, and the lumbar support does the job. If you’re short, contact customer support while ordering—Mavix offers shorter cylinders so your feet touch the ground.

    Hon Ignition 2.0 Office Chair for $425: This chair is easy to set up and looks great, but it gave me really bad back pain, which is why I originally placed it in our “Avoid” section. I thought it was perhaps the long hours I was working, so I switched back to the Knoll Newson Task chair and my pain quickly began to ease. Sometime later, I gave it a shot again. After a few hours, the pain came back, and switching to another chair dissipated it. Color me confused, because this chair has positive reviews around the web. I then asked a friend who is around 5′ 4″ to try it for a few weeks, and she has had zero issues. This seems to be the answer. It’s possible the Ignition doesn’t work for my 6′ 4″ self and is better suited for smaller folks.

    Hon Ignition 2.0 Big and Tall for $712: I had a much better experience with this Hon chair, which, as the name suggests, is suited for big and tall people like me. It has a reinforced steel frame that can support up to 450 pounds with a wider seat. It’s comfy, transfers heat away well, and does a nice job supporting my back. However, it looks incredibly dull in Boring Black. I had a fine experience in the chair, aside from the arms that tend to slide left and right whenever you put some pressure on them. I’m just not sure it’s worth the weirdly high price.

    Pipersong Meditation Chair for $369: Have a problem sitting in a traditional chair? If your legs need to be bent and twisted for you to be comfortable, you’ll want to check this chair out. It has a 360-degree swiveling footstool that can accommodate pretty much any sitting position you want. I can go from kneeling to cross-legged to one leg up, one leg down. It’s possible to sit regularly too, with the footstool behind you and your feet flat on the floor. It’s the only chair I’ve found that’s designed for odd sitting habits. There are no armrests, which I didn’t mind because that’s what makes it possible to sit in many of these positions. The actual stool and chair back could stand to be bigger and taller, respectively. I had to use a pillow to keep my back comfy.

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    Julian Chokkattu

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