Return To Office Doesn't Mean What You Think It Does: Why Gen Z Never Left Remote Work Behind

Since COVID, many companies have implemented what they call “return to office” mandates. The idea is that “COVID was fun (from a work perspective), but now we need to get back to work.” This change has meant that employees who moved out of large metro areas, joined from rural areas, or otherwise structured their lifestyle around being able to work from anywhere have had to either move or change jobs, often with little notice.

There are many reasons used to justify this policy. However, for Gen Z, “return to office” is a misnomer; we’re being asked to readopt a workplace model we never experienced in the first place.

Why Are RTO Mandates Being Issued?

One of the most common reasons that I’ve heard is the sentiment that employees do not work as hard from home or that being in the office affords more opportunities for collaboration. Beyond behavioral reasons, other points are more economically grounded. Many large companies have existing office space leases in large business and tech hubs. That investment in those communities and the incentives sometimes offered to attract them are forfeited if everyone is logging in from home.

The now CTO of Cloudflare, Dane Knecht, shared this tweet earlier in the year (linked below), saying that for Cloudflare, remote employees are actually more expensive. It would be easy to say, “See, big tech company says remote costs more,” but that doesn’t consider the context. I have a lot of respect for Cloudflare and Dane, and I don’t want to misrepresent what’s being said. It is important to note that because Cloudflare is a global company with large offices, especially in Europe, these cost comparisons aren’t necessarily comparing what they may seem on the surface without that context. Offshoring changes the equation significantly. For Cloudflare, they can get some of the brightest minds in-office at tech hubs (SF, Austin, NYC, London, etc.), recruit exceptionally skilled/high comp folks remotely, and have large offshored offices to reduce personnel costs. The global talent market means we’re not just comparing in-person versus remote work in the U.S., but comparing in-person and remote work worldwide.

From a U.S. company perspective, talent in weaker markets where comp is less competitive, such as in Europe and Asia, will often see offers significantly less than what the same companies would have to pay to attract remote workers in the U.S. and a small fraction of what may be required to attract talent in highly competitive markets like SF.

Ha. Remote is our most expensive and least diverse cohort of employees and that is before you tack on 10k in travel because they still want to see their colleagues.

— Dane Knecht 🦭 (@dok2001) February 23, 2025

Remote work was once championed for benefits like:

• Not having to lease an office
• Lower salaries than SF/NY
• Increased employee morale
• Access to the global and national talent pool rather than just your city

Most of those benefits do still exist, but with offshoring, companies can often drive costs even lower. Why hire a truly 10x engineer from North Dakota remotely when you can spend the same or less to hire an entire team of good engineers in a country with few tech jobs and low salaries? Offshoring becomes even better when you consider that you don’t have to hire juniors; there are 10x engineers or engineers with the potential to become them everywhere.

The public discourse has recently criticized immigration policy, specifically H-1Bs within the tech industry, resulting in policy changes that seek to reduce the number of H-1Bs issued. It seems, however, that this shift will likely have a significant unintended consequence. If companies are using H-1Bs to get access to lower-cost labor, as claimed, eliminating that domestic lower-cost option will further shift the economics of hiring in favor of increased offshoring. Rather than bringing workers to the U.S., it now makes even more sense to open an office in a weaker market.

Employer Sentiment Towards Remote Work

DHH, a strong proponent of remote work, tweeted this out a few years ago, highlighting one of the strongest reasons that your everyday employer says they want you back in the office. And that is that some people, especially those more senior in their careers, really like being in the office and seeing people face to face.

It’s not surprising that companies that refuse to put in the work to become a proper remote organization think remote is a bust. It’s hard to change your old ways, but it’s worth trying! https://t.co/wJCC0a5sBt pic.twitter.com/Vmuo11Seuz

— DHH (@dhh) July 24, 2020

This criticism argues that remote work doesn’t facilitate mentorship, brainstorming, and other traditionally in-person social benefits. My perspective on that is, yes, you’re right (sorta). If managers do not adapt their methods for managing remote employees, they’re skipping many of the important responsibilities that ensure teams are healthy and working towards the same goals. Throughout my master’s studies, my research focus was on remote work, specifically looking at ways to manage remote teams and prevent burnout. The academic literature on the subject suggests that managing in the same way as you would in person when you never see your team members is really, really bad. In such an environment, you will likely see significant morale and mental health issues arise among your team. That can be kinda alarming.

Strategies such as having the team meet up a few times a year (such as at conferences), having a dedicated annual company-wide gathering/conference, having regular virtual coffee chats with no agenda/shop talk, flexible hours, and using async communication to prevent meeting fatigue can all go a long way towards reshaping remote work for the better.

When many people reflect on being fully remote during the COVID pandemic, they likely recall how isolated and unengaged they felt. Only viewing the world from your porch, computer screen, and TV made even the most introverted people crave human interaction. But being isolated is not the same thing as being remote. Companies with remote workforces have to proactively address the different management challenges related to managing remote teams. It does take some effort, and probably some airline miles, but among teams that embrace remote work and lead with that in mind, many of the concerns related to isolation are no longer a factor because you’re not isolated at all.

Is Remote Work Bad for Productivity?

There’s a common assumption that remote work = less work. If true, then nearly every argument for remote work is moot. However, it doesn’t appear that that is the case. In fact, it is associated with the exact opposite. That BLS article found that within industries embracing remote work, productivity increases outpaced labor input increases. Interestingly, wage increases did not scale proportionally with productivity increases, suggesting companies were able to get more for their dollar. It is unclear whether this improvement is primarily due to reduced facility costs, technological advancements, economies of scale, or increased productivity among workers, but it doesn’t indicate that remote work is detrimental to productivity, as often claimed.

The Generational Disconnect Between In-Person and Remote Work Styles

I’m coming at this problem from the perspective of someone who is Gen Z and in tech. I was finishing high school in 2020. Some of my earliest memories are of using computers. I always remember having computers in my home and even in the homes of my grandparents. I have been around technology, emails, and the internet for as long as I can remember. However, I acknowledge that not everyone, especially those in older generations, grew up this way.

All of my jobs except for one have been fully remote (and that one was hybrid). From grade school through college, I’ve consistently had to work remotely. That wasn’t necessarily by choice. It was the way I had to learn to work. My last year of high school? Remotely from home. My first year of college? Remotely at home except for one or two classes, where everyone was far apart and covered in masks with minimal face-to-face interaction. While we may have left masks at home, the online-first approach to work and education persisted. Throughout my time working and learning, I’ve consistently been online.

As someone who graduated from high school in 2020, I’m a member of one of the only age groups that universally didn’t get to experience the in-person transition from high school to college and career. Additionally, we were among the last to accomplish that transition without the use of ChatGPT. Perhaps my age group represents the extreme of being remote-native, due to those rare circumstances; however, the overall trend among all generations post-internet is being increasingly comfortable online and interacting digitally.

We can argue whether it would have been better for Gen Z (and Gen Alpha to a lesser extent) not to have had to spend their youth online, but the good or damage has already been done. For some, COVID-related work from home was a convenience and a welcomed temporary break from coming into the office, but for others, it was the reality of how we entered the workforce and where we learned to be professionals.

Just like millennials and Gen X are famous for saying a meeting could have been an email, Gen Z thinks that their commute could’ve been extra time to get household chores done, more rest/personal time, or time to upskill. And that doesn’t even consider the higher costs of living in the urban area where the office is located. Especially when almost all work communication is now through Slack, email, or Teams, I spend most of my days in the office not talking face-to-face to anyone.

While past generations and generations in leadership may have grown up accustomed to meeting in person, phone calls, sending faxes, having “water cooler chats,” and managers having to constantly look over the shoulders of their employees to ensure they’re running out the clock, younger generations’ natural working behavior is async remote. As Gen Z, I don’t expect other generations to approach work in the same way as me, but I also call on other generations to acknowledge that work styles have changed significantly and require different approaches for different generations.

Leadership Takeaways

Over the next 10 years, the full force of Gen Z will enter the workforce, replacing Millennials as the dominant employed generation. Simultaneously, Boomers will mostly be fully retired, while Gen X will be in the process of retirement.

Generation	Age Group	Current Workforce Share	Workforce (2035P)
Boomers	1946-1964 (age 61-79)	12%	0%
Gen X	1965-1979 (age 46-60)	27%	21%
Gen Y	1980-1994 (age 31-45)	34%	29%
Gen Z	1995-2009 (age 16-30)	27%	31%
Gen Alpha	2010-2024 (age 15 and younger)	0%	19%

According to “Charted: How Generations Will Shape the Workforce by 2035” Published January 29, 2025 by Bruno Venditti

As generations and their respective work styles evolve, we should adopt forward-looking policy decisions in our long-term planning. Is it a good idea to commit to long-term office leases? Maybe not. Is it a good idea to force everyone to be remote? Probably not. Is it a good idea to apply behavior-aware policies that account for the differences in work styles? Definitely.

And you might be thinking, well, yeah, but if companies are going to increase offshoring, U.S. workers’ work styles don’t matter as much. You may be correct, but you’re ignoring a major risk. The U.S. public has never liked offshoring, but increasingly nationalistic political pressures mean that public policy is likely going to target companies that choose to utilize cheaper overseas labor, increasing the costs of doing so. Likewise, global tensions are such that the likelihood of major international conflict in the coming decades is rising (but isn’t it always?).

Economic and political incentives are important, but often change overnight. However, cultural and generational shifts are much more permanent. For generations like mine, returning to the office sounds ridiculous because we’ve never really been to the office in the traditional sense. As leaders and future leaders, we all have to make decisions with empathy and consider the long-term benefits and risks associated with our actions. What may be the dominant work style today might not be for the next generation. Forward-looking leadership, if desiring to remain competitive, must consider how future generations are accustomed to working and implement policies that embrace the strengths of every generation in order to achieve the greatest outcomes.