It feels like he's just old and pining for days gone by - in person meetings have people staring at their laptops and phones too. I dislike that as well, but that's not a WFH issue.
I've worked at a variety of places with a variety of problems, but I've never seen that kind of rudeness be widespread or persistent. It was corrected in different ways depending on the company culture, but it was corrected.
I agree with this, but I didn't grow up with a phone in my hand. I didn't have a mobile phone until I was about 30 years old and I didn't have a smartphone until I was in my 40s. I can't work well with people over remote calls, I hate Zoom and desktop sharing, don't like slack or teams. I find it so much more efficient to sit with another person or small group if there is a group task to be completed or a group decision to be made.
That said, unnecessary meetings are a real thing, have been a problem in large orgs forever, and Zoom doesn't fix that. Might make it worse, as invites are not limited by the physical size of the room.
To me, as someone who has deep and meaningful friendships with certain people mediated almost entirely through Discord messaging, which is basically non-work Slack, asynchronous mentorship and collaboration don't seem strange at all. I do recognize not everyone's a fan, and that there is a certain learning curve involved if you're not used to it (gamers, for example, seem to fall into virtual work naturally), but it's absolutely doable and these C-levels who say it's not are behind the curve.
I spent so many years in offices, in open plan offices where whole teams would sit with their headphones on loud, trying to ignore the presence of all other humans, that actually working in my own space has been a relief.
In my 40s now though, I work on stuff I’m interested in, and have a work ethic that doesn’t require oversight. 20 years ago I may not have been so good at it.
Genuinely, there is too much appeal to emotion from both sides of the argument and not enough substance, so if you have something here I'd be interested to read about it.
Yeah, I think there's a bigger issue with management here if this is how it was handled.
I can see the argument that young people aren’t being exposed to older peers the same way and their learning may be stunted.
But… I haven’t set foot in an office for five years now and I’m as productive as I ever was. Possibly more.
As for his “people are distracted during meetings”, perhaps there ought to be more focus on only holding necessary meetings, rather than dragging people in when there’s no reason for them to be there and nothing to hold their interest? In my experience that’s the cause of a lot of the snark and slacking.