A prominent venture capitalist said remote work ‘fooled’ leaders because it worked initially

• Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham said remote work "fooled" leaders at the start of the pandemic.
• Graham explained in a tweet that multiple leaders are returning to pre-pandemic ways of working.

A prominent venture capitalist has spoken out against the remote work revolution saying leaders were "fooled" at first but most companies will mandate workers to come back to the office.

Paul Graham, a co-founder of startup accelerator and seed capital firm Y Combinator, took to Twitter to share his thoughts, saying: "I've talked to multiple founders recently who have changed their minds about remote work and are trying to get people back to the office. I doubt things will go all the way back to the way they were before Covid, but it looks like they will go most of the way back."

He added: "Why were all these smart people fooled? Partly I think because remote work does work initially, if you start with a system already healthy from in-person work ... And partly because it seemed to solve recruiting, which is always a bottleneck."

"There will definitely continue to be remote-first companies. There were before Covid. It works for some businesses. And there will be types of jobs, like customer service, that will commonly be done remotely. But remote-first won't be the default," he added.

Graham's comments come as a number of major companies reverse their flexible working policies including Amazon, Apple, and Goldman Sachs. Most recently Meta announced that workers must come to the office three days a week from September, while also pausing job listings that offer remote options.

Graham joins a list of influential figures who are taking a stand against remote work including Elon Musk who has famously waged a war against the practice calling it "morally wrong."

Musk ordered employees at his companies Twitter and Tesla to return to the office or quit in 2022.

And NYU professor Scott Galloway said that young people "should never be at home" if they want to be successful professionally.

He said: "You should never be at home. That's what I tell young people. Home is for seven hours of sleep and that's it. The amount of time you spend at home is inversely correlated to your success professionally and romantically. You need to be out of the house."