I think that’s an opinion.

American businesses are trying to get workers to return to their offices, but fear, pleading and free food don’t stack up against reality.

OfficeOccupancy is less than half of pre-pandemic levels, according to the people who provide electronic keys to access so many buildings.

On the first day David Solomon ordered his bankers to work full-time, only half of his employees showed up.

The Wall Street aristocracy are the product of a system that hazes its young employees with long days and long nights. If I had to do it, it must be good for them, that’s what the mentality is.

Even though it has softened the stick by treating employees to rock concerts, it is cutting pay for those who wish to permanently work from home.

The message is that you should be working away to dead-end your career.

Businesses can’t afford the best, brightest and most obsessed with huge starting salaries and the prospect of making partner and being paid as well as a middle infielder for the New York Yankees. According to Ladders, the share of jobs that can be done remotely has risen from 18% to 25% over the last year.

We may be dealing with a problem among corporate decision-makers as the options expand. New CEOs may be more important than bread and circuses in attracting and retaining young talent.

Most of the young people’s lives have been done remotely. Video games as social spaces, texting and blended learning at universities that combined classroom and remote instruction were coming into play.

The shutdowns of 2020 and 2021 may have pushed distance learning to unproductive extremes, but the positive trend for relying more on instruction online as opposed to in classrooms has shifted upwards.

Getting ahead and to the top in most industries requires a larger work ethic and good advertising. I learned to have my car first in the lot, next to the door where my boss, his boss and their secretaries passed, when I was working for a business oriented think tank.

I became the youngest vice president in the firm’s storied history before you knew it.

I became a professor at the University of Maine after I got smart and wanted a life. I mostly worked from my home in Alexandria, Virginia after two years of cultivating campus contacts.

The Chinese would surely own the country by now if not for the fact that not all places are universities. Faculty are productive because we are rewarded for publishing and making trouble.

We didn’t ever buy into bonding at water coolers. Our most important colleagues are counterparts in the same subdisciplines at other universities and consulting clients, and we communicated well before email and conference calls.

Faculty are influenced but never managed because we are not managed by Luddites.

The optimal time for working in the office is two or three days.

Workers are divided into groups based on how much time they spent at the company desk. They found that one or two days a week at the office yielded the highest productivity.

The Pandemic was characterized by sprints where employers were able to rely on employee relationships that had been established before the shutdowns.

Too many bosses like to see their workers under their control because of their egos. Good ones like to encourage free-form collaboration with their junior members. Those who choose to stay at home and out of sight are less likely to get plum assignments and promotion.

If the employees fight over who gets to work on Mondays and Fridays, the offices should be closed the rest of the time.

Instead of requiring a good reason to work from home, employers should require a good reason to take up space at the office on days designated for work from home days. The obsessive young professionals who want to park their cars first in the lot will need to get ahead by being more productive and creative.

Peter is a professor at the University of Maryland and a national columnist.

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