Infosys’ Narayana Murthy, Mark Zuckerberg and 3 other tech leaders who spoke against work from home policy

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said that Google has fallen behind the AI race because of its remote work policy – a remark for which he later expressed regret. However, he is not the only tech leader who has said that remote work has a negative influence on productivity. These leaders include Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy, Facebook-parent Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who have expressed concerns about the long-term viability of remote work.
A notable mention is Schmidt who argued that remote work policy hindered Google’s ability to innovate at the same pace as its competitors.
“Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning,” Schmidt said. However, Google requires in-person employee attendance for three-days-a-week.
Here are 5 tech leaders who have thrown their weight behind and have publicly advocated for work from office, arguing that it fosters innovation, collaboration and company culture..

NR Narayana Murthy, Infosys, co-founder

At the Asia Economic Dialogue in Pune in February 2023, NR Narayana Murthy emphasised that “laziness” must be dealt with.
“Please don’t fall into this trap of ‘I will moonlight, I will do work from home, I will come to office three days in a week’,” the tech leader said.

Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI

Last year OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Fortune Magazine that he believed one of the tech industry’s “worst mistakes” was to allow employees to go “full remote forever.”
“I would say that the experiment on that is over, and the technology is not yet good enough that people can be full remote forever, particularly on startups,” he told the magazine. The company, just like Google, the ChatGPT-maker also requires three days a week in-person attendance.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook co-founder and Meta CEO

Zuckerberg has also said that “people who work from home are not efficient and engineers who come to the office get more work done.”
In 2023, Meta reportedly reversed the work-from-home policy, mandating that employees return to the office for at least three days a week.

Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and X owner

In 2023, Elon Musk called remote work “morally wrong” during an interview with CNBC.
“I think that the whole notion of work from home is a bit like the fake Marie Antoinette quote, ’Let them eat cake’. It’s not just a productivity thing. I think it’s morally wrong,” Musk said.
He added that engineers in the Silicon Valley are a part of “laptop classes living in la-la land” and said they should get off “their moral high horse work-from-home bulls***.”

Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff last year told MSNBC that he loves remote work.
“I’m a remote worker. I’ve always been a remote worker my whole life. I don’t work well in an office,” he said.
“For my people that’s my message. They need to mix in person and remote together. Our engineers are extremely productive at home. We have lots of people who are extremely productive at home. But there also has to be sales people being productive in the office selling to customers and we need to make it all work,” Benioff said.