Billionaire investor Marc Andreessen warns remote work is 'not a good life' for young workers
Grace KayFeb 14, 2023, 8:54 AM
Andreessen Horowitz's Marc Andreessen says remote work is "not a good life" for young workers.Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch
- Marc Andreessen said remote work has "detonated" the role of office relationships in people's lives.
- The billionaire said during a summit that young remote workers are "cut off from everything."
- Andreessen used the discussion to promote Adam Neumann's new housing startup, Flow.
"This sort of model an entire generation grew up with has all of the sudden been detonated," Andreessen said of the era when workers went into the office every day and companies built elaborate campus communities like at Google, Apple, or Facebook.
The billionaire made the comments during the "American Dynamism Summit" in Washington, D.C. that was hosted by his investment firm, Andreessen Horowitz, in November. The comments were shared via an Andreessen Horowitz podcastlast week and first reported by Fortune.
Andreessen called offices a "continuation of a college campus experience" and said that the pandemic has robbed young workers of work relationships and opportunities — from frequent outings and water-cooler chats with coworkers to inner-office dating.
"All of the sudden it's like 'Nope, you don't get that.' What you get is to sit in your studio apartment in front of your laptop," he said, adding that younger workers are now "cut off from everything" and their lives revolve around Tinder and Doordash.
The billionaire said that while some companies are trying to bring people backinto the office for a few days a week, he believes "Elvis has left the building" when it comes to developing connections at work. A shift he says has made a worker's living environment their primary source of social interaction.
"Are you literally by yourself?" Andreessen said of workers' remote offices. "Do you have any sense of connection whatsoever? Do you know who your neighbors are? Historically, living in apartments, I don't think they generally would even know who their neighbors are," he added, saying the cultural shift "opens the door for reinvention."
The discussion, which was called "Disrupting the World's Largest Asset Class," featured WeWork cofounder Adam Neumann, who discussed his new startup Flow, a rental housing company that aims to create living communities. Insider previously reported that the WeWork cofounder had said the startup would make renters feel so much ownership that they'll plunge their own toilets. Andreessen's venture capital firm has invested $350 million in the startup, according to the podcast, a move that some have criticized as a "do-over" and evidence of the privilege many white male cofounders enjoy.
It's not the first time Andreessen has addressed the rise of remote work. Last year, he said remote work could cause an "earthquake" in how we live. In 2021, he said in a blog post that remote work was "a consequence of the internet that's maybe even more important than the internet."
Source:https://www.businessinsider.com/marc-andreessen-remote-work-not-good-life-for-young-workers-2023-2
