It looks like remote workers are getting the boot once again
The days of fully remote working are under threat as tech execs continue to cut costs.
Wayfair targeted remote workers in layoffs of 13% of its staff, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Wayfair job cuts follow return-to-office mandates from the likes of Goldman Sachs and Meta.
Remote workers are in the crosshairs once more.
A bunch of executives at the e-commerce firm Wayfair singled out remote workers as the ones who were more likely to have been laid off in a fresh round of cuts, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The layoffs, which affected 13% of its workforce, or about 1,650 employees, were announced on Friday, weeks after its CEO Niraj Shah sent a memo to staff telling them to work harder.
"Working long hours, being responsive, blending work and life, is not anything to shy away from. There is not a lot of history of laziness being rewarded with success," Shah wrote in the memo.
Wayfair said the purpose of the restructuring was to "establish a healthy foundation for growth."
"One of the outcomes of that work was that a number of workers, including some remote employees, ended up without roles," a Wayfair spokesperson said.
"While we fundamentally believe our best work is done in person, we will continue to have remote roles in areas where they make sense."
The targeting of remote workers will come as little surprise for many, given the ugly battle that's been raging over remote work in recent months.
Employees latching onto pandemic-era working habits that afford flexibility and improved work-life balance have faced growing calls from CEOs to get back into the office amid fears that their productivity is lacking.
Some bosses have disparaged remote workers, with Elon Musk referring to "laptop classes living in la la land" and calling out remote working as "morally wrong." Others have raised concerns that people are doing second jobs and other side hustles during working hours.
Remote workers, meanwhile, have put up a resistance to aggressive return-to-office mandates issued over the past year.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has demanded employees be back in the office five days a week. Meta and Amazon have threatened workers who refuse their RTO mandates with poor performance reviews and termination.
Companies that have made layoffs since the start of this year — such as Google, eBay, and Discord — have cited efficiency gains as a key reason for letting workers go. Many companies that over-hired during the pandemic have turned to artificial intelligence as a replacement.
But the Wayfair layoffs are a reminder that remote workers are in grave danger if their managers don't believe they're putting in the hours away from the office.
The billionaire hedge-fund manager and Citadel founder Ken Griffin said as much last year after warning that "the cultural or social contract that holds people together in a company is unquestionably weaker" in a work-from-home environment.
Many remote workers will be feeling more vulnerable than ever.
Read the original article on Business Insider