Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
Mon, 23 Dec 2024
Episode 480: Kyle Hagge and Kaila Lopez join Neal and Toby and discuss the year in work trends. What is the latest of return to office mandates? How will AI impact work? Should you even get an MBA at this point? All of that and more in the first ever MBD x PMLE crossover! Listen to Per My Last Email here: https://www.permylastemailshow.com/ Follow Per My Last Email on social! X: https://x.com/permylast_email Instagram: https://instagram.com/permylastemailshow TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@permylastemailshow YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@permylastemailshow LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/per-my-last-email/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the latest trends in return to office mandates?
Well, obviously everyone would love the show, but early to mid-career professionals looking to level up in their career, they want help navigating some of the thorniest work-life scenarios per my last email of the show for them.
Sweet. So let's dive into some of those issues and begin with what's expected to be the number one workplace battle of 2025, return to office.
Yes, it feels like we've been talking about the end of remote work for years now, but the push to bring workers back to the office ramped up in a big way in September when one of the nation's largest companies, Amazon, said it would require employees to work from the office five days a week.
Meanwhile, Starbucks said starting next year, it'll begin actually enforcing its hybrid work policy that requires employees to commute three days a week. Many see ulterior motives by these companies here, namely something called backdoor layoffs. The theory goes Amazon, Starbucks and other companies cracking down on remote work.
Chapter 2: What are backdoor layoffs and how are they affecting employees?
think they have too many employees, but instead of going through the grueling process of laying people off themselves, they're mandating return to office to accomplish the same thing because they know angry employees who love their work-from-home setup will just voluntarily quit. Kyle and Kayla, do you think there's any validity to this backdoor layoff concept?
And more broadly, how do you see the remote work battle lines being drawn in 2025?
I mean, first, if I work at Starbucks and they're making me come in and Brian Nichols is like taking his private jet from California to Seattle.
This is the new CEO you're talking about, who they're allowing to live in Southern California and commute up to Seattle.
Exactly. I would be pretty pissed. I mean, I think this is all about voluntary layoffs. Even in Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon's note, he said, we're doing this. as well to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers. So I think this is a way to right-size without actually having to assess talent.
It's just an easier way to get people to quit if they don't want to work there or they like their work-from-home setup. And I'm actually pretty disappointed. This feels like a big step backwards, particularly from Amazon, who's always been super innovative. They were like, people don't need to go into a physical bookstore. We can actually sell books online and embrace these new technologies.
And now it seems like, but people still need to work in an office, it feels backwards and I'm a little disappointed in Amazon.
Yeah, I think my hottest take here is that this is just laziness. It's laziness from the management team that basically is pining for these like older, the olden days when they could tell how hard people were working by standing behind their desk.
And I think that instead of doing the actual work of determining who are high performers, who maybe should be downsized or right-sized or whatever the hell they want to talk about, they're just saying, if you work from home and you want to stay there, just leave. And I think that that's a very lazy practice and it's not going to It's not going to turn into improved performance.
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Chapter 3: What defines sneaky layoffs in today's workplace?
I'm sure a lot of people now hearing that, listening to this are saying, what can I do to make sure I don't run afoul of these things? Do you guys have any perspective on what you can do to make sure you're not part of these sneaky layoffs?
Yeah, I mean, I think going back to what I said, the problem is most people think they're above average. So, like, everyone's probably like, oh, I'm doing a great job at work. It would never happen to me. I think be realistic. So, like, don't do something that the company says not to do. We probably all do a little bit of that, but don't do something egregious.
But then the second thing is I think you just have to decide, do I want to work at a place that legitimately would fire me for doing fantasy football? For me, I'd be like – F that, like I don't even wanna work here. Like that is super, super lame. So I think you also just have to come to terms with like, do you wanna be micromanaged to that degree? I personally wouldn't, so.
I think also one of the things that we actually don't know about these sneaky layoffs is how abrupt they were. Were people warned about this and then they were fired? If that's the case, then you have, you know, you're probably fine. If you get warned about misuse of the $30 credits, maybe just don't misuse them again. And now you'll be okay.
But I think for the most part, maybe revisit that employee handbook if you're a little nervous and try to reduce your rule breaking.
If I'm a company and I found someone doing two training videos at once, I'd promote the person. That's efficiency. Come on.
The year of efficiency. I will need to see both of your fantasy football records to see where your head's at. I'm eight and five. Oh, sure you are. Sure you are. All right, another topic that you've mentioned and that we've talked about on Morning Brew Daily a lot is how many people that are using AI at work.
Google released this survey where they talked to over 1,000 young knowledge workers, and 93% of Gen Z respondents said that they were using two or more AI tools a week, 93%. Some of the use cases they mentioned for AI at work were revising emails, taking notes, or generating ideas. Nearly 90% actually said that they use AI to start a task that felt overwhelming.
Now, our take on this was consider the source. Google ran the survey, and they obviously have a vested interest in showing that AR products are catching on in the workplace. But from where you guys sit, give us a broad overview of where you see AI in the workplace. Is it really a game changer, or is it still a ways off from affecting people's daily work lives?
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Chapter 4: How is AI changing the workplace dynamics?
It talked to just a wider range of people, not just these young, hungry knowledge workers. So you could be right that maybe it isn't vibing with a lot of people's workflows. Maybe they've had bad experiences with that. I'm just giving you a little bit of backup here, Kayla.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
You're not alone out there.
Okay. I want us to talk about the hottest three letters in higher education, MBA. Many people listening to this might be at the point in their careers where they're considered We'll be right back. The tippy top B school saw an even bigger surge in applications. Columbia up 27 percent. Northwestern's Kellogg up 23 percent. University of Chicago Booth up 22 percent.
Harvard Business School up 21 percent. It's huge double digit increases across the board driven by Americans rather than international students. And people are searching for the full immersive MBA experience rather than evening part-time classes. Applications for full-time, in-person MBAs jumped 32% to their highest level in a decade.
So Kyle and Kayla, I'd love to hear your take on why we're seeing such a rise in MBA applications and what you think it says about the current state of the job market.
Yeah, I think it's all connected, right? So we've been talking about sneaky layoffs, backdoor layoffs. If these knowledge workers, tech workers are getting laid off and don't necessarily see any prospects in the job market, it makes sense that they're looking for ways to strengthen their resume.
And typically, I guess I don't have exactly the data on this, but typically the idea is when you see expected declines in the economy, these graduate degrees or additional degrees, additional credentialing will increase, right? So I'm not surprised that you're seeing that at the same time.
What I'm surprised by is the fact that I'm also seeing, anecdotally, an increase in distaste for hiring people with MBAs. And just a few months ago, we did an episode on if you should get an MBA. And one of the stats that we saw was actually that people who graduated from the Harvard Business School, which is one of those tippy-top business schools that you mentioned—
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Chapter 5: Are MBAs still worth it in the current job market?
Chapter 6: How do generational differences affect AI adoption at work?
I think also we're in a period of pretty rapid technological change. We talked about AI. There's a lot of other things happening from clean energy to machine learning that's part of AI. Data analytics is becoming, there's new fields popping up every single year.
And so something that might be going into applicants' minds is, you know, I would love to level up my game in these various fields and be a leader in this space, but I don't really have the skills or the knowledge set to do it right now. Why don't I go to get an MBA and become an AI data science person.
And I'm just looking at the trend line here and I'm seeing, wow, they're probably going to be hiring a lot of employees, a lot of leaders in this space going forward. So it might be an opportunity to learn more about the changes that are happening pretty rapidly in our labor force.
It's really interesting, Neil, though, because as you said, like as new fields get developed more and more rapidly, I feel like a two year program should actually become less relevant. And you'd want to focus on really quick bits of learning that are hyper relevant to the scenario you find yourself in right now, because you start an MBA program in two years.
There's like 100 new fields that didn't even exist when you started. So that's an interesting like counter trend. And we'll have to see how it plays out.
Well, hiring for roles that require a bachelor's degree dropped below 2019 levels in recent months. So I think that stat has a lot to do with what we're seeing.
I think some Silicon Valley people and some founders just cringed at the fact that Neil said, best way to get ahead in these emerging fields is to go get an MBA in it. No, the best way is probably to go and actually work in the field, go do research in it and stuff like that. I definitely do think.
If you can get a job.
If you can.
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