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IBM boss warns remote workers “Careers will suffer"

by on05 May 2023


No promotion – especially to management

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna (pictured) said that while he is not forcing remote workers to come into the office, those who do not might find it difficult to be promoted.

Bloomberg reports that Krishna thinks that if you are managing people, you must see them occasionally.

“It doesn’t need to be every minute. You don’t need to function under those old ‘Everybody’s under my eye’ rules, but at least sometimes. We work better when we are together in person,” said Krishna.

He said that Biggish Blue’s return-to-office policy is “we encourage you to come in, we expect you to come in, we want you to come in”… at least three days a week.

More than 80 per cent of IBM’s employees work from home at least some of the time. Krishna said remote arrangements are best suited for specific “individual contributor” roles like customer service or software programmers.

“You probably can be equally productive in the short term, but your career suffers. Moving from there to another role is probably less likely because nobody’s observing them in another context. It will be tougher. Not impossible, but probably a lot tougher,” Krishna said.

 

Last modified on 05 May 2023
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