This month, Facebook announced that its previous stance on hybrid working was changing, switching to a demand that staff return to the office for a portion of their working week.

They had previously been told that they could permanently work remotely after Covid had died down.

Google is now clamping down on workers who do not attend offices in person.

It feels like a long time since Twitter (now ‘X’) let their workers know that they could WFH ‘forever’ at the start of the pandemic.

One of Musk’s first diktats was a revocation of working from home.  

Amongst the other headaches he is causing for his HR department, this is the one that makes Data scientists and Cloud experts the most uncomfortable.

According to reports, it will not apply to those who are fully remote at the moment, but, regardless, those within the tech world, who believed that there was finally a common-sense breakthrough happening off the back of the pandemic, are starting to realise that what they want, in terms of flexibility, goes against corporate beliefs.

Even when there is ample evidence that productivity is not affected by being in a different state or city to your co-workers, the old ways persist.

From a recruitment perspective, offering such flexibility is a huge draw to new talent, both in a sense that people love a better work/life balance, and due to the fact that you can get the very best prospective candidates when you can spread your net across the world, rather than just your nearest cities.

Admittedly, the Facebooks and Googles of the world will never struggle to attract talent, in fact, they have been stockpiling too much talent recently and have had to let huge swathes of workers go.

It would be unwise for SMEs to follow the example of the big tech giants.

On the ground, the fight for niche talent is still raging.

Attempting to dictate to a candidate that they must return to office working, while a competitor is offering them fully remote, will always result in losing that candidate to the competitor.

This is a time when you really should listen to the workers.

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