Remote work is making Gen Z lazy and nobody wants to admit it.
I'm 17. I've worked remote internships. I've built Nexus mostly from my room. And I've watched how remote culture has turned ambitious people into people who think showing up on Zoom calls is "grinding."
Remote work promised freedom. What it delivered for most people is an excuse to do the bare minimum while pretending they're working hard.
The productivity illusion
Here's what remote work looks like for most people my age:
Wake up 5 minutes before standup
Half-listen to Zoom call while scrolling Twitter
"Deep work" session that's actually 30 minutes of work and 2 hours of YouTube
Slack messages to prove you're online
Deliver the absolute minimum required to not get fired
Log off early because "async work culture"
Everyone's convinced they're more productive at home. The data says otherwise. But admitting that remote work makes you lazy feels like admitting you lack discipline.
So instead, we've created this mythology where "I'm in my zone at home" means "I'm in my bed doing less work than I would at an office."
The ambition decay
Remote work destroys ambition through comfort.
When you're in an office, you see:
People working late on hard problems
Intensity and focus around you
What exceptional actually looks like
The social cost of being the person who leaves at 5
At home, you see:
Your bed
Your fridge
YouTube
Zero social pressure
And most people aren't disciplined enough to maintain intensity when there's no external pressure. So they decay into comfort, slowly, without realizing it's happening.
You think you're working hard because you're "busy" all day. But busy isn't the same as productive. And at home, it's way easier to confuse the two.
Why Gen Z is especially bad at this
Millennials at least experienced office culture first. They know what high-output environments feel like.
Gen Z entered the workforce during COVID. Remote is all we know.
We never learned:
What it feels like to be surrounded by people grinding
How to maintain focus without external structure
The difference between "I'm online" and "I'm working"
How much you learn from just being around competent people
So we think we're working hard when we're really just... available. Online. Responsive to Slack.
But intensity? Focus? The kind of deep work that actually moves things forward? Most Gen Z workers have no idea what that even looks like because they've never been in an environment that demanded it.
The learning problem
You overhear how senior people think through problems. You see how they prioritize. You watch them work through technical challenges in real-time.
Remote, you get:
Scheduled calls where everyone's performing
Async communication that's optimized for politeness
No spontaneous learning
No casual knowledge transfer
Junior people especially get destroyed by this. They're supposed to be learning by watching. But remote work means they're just executing tickets in isolation with no context for why or how.
The social cost we don't talk about
Remote work killed the social fabric that made ambitious people push each other.
In offices:
You see who's staying late
You feel competitive pressure
You develop real relationships
You have impromptu conversations that spark ideas
Remote:
Everyone pretends to work the same amount
There's no competitive pressure (which sounds nice but kills drive)
"Relationships" are scheduled Zoom calls
All conversations are agenda-driven
The result is that the social dynamics that create ambition just... don't exist. Everyone's optimizing for their individual comfort instead of collective output.
When remote actually works
Remote isn't inherently bad. It works for:
1. Senior people who already know how to work. They have the discipline. They've seen what high output looks like. They don't need external pressure.
2. People building their own thing. When you have skin in the game, you don't need office pressure. The market pressure is enough.
3. Specific types of deep work. Writing, coding, design—things that actually benefit from isolation.
But for most people, especially young people trying to develop ambition and discipline? Remote is just permission to be mediocre.
The brutal truth about "flexibility"
"I love remote because of flexibility" is usually code for "I love remote because I can work less without anyone noticing."
Real talk: how many people use remote work flexibility to:
Work harder and ship more?
Versus how many use it to:
Work less while maintaining the appearance of working?
If remote work actually made you more productive, you'd have shipped more in the last three years. Have you?
Most people haven't. They've just gotten comfortable.
What successful people do differently
The people who are actually winning while remote:
Have external accountability (co-founder, users, revenue)
Set their own high standards
Work in focused blocks, not all day
Go to offices/coworking when they need intensity
They're not relying on remote work's "flexibility." They're succeeding despite it by creating their own structure.
But that takes discipline most people don't have. Which is why most people are slowly becoming less ambitious without realizing it.
What you should do instead
If you're serious about building something:
Go to offices when possible. Even if you're remote, find a coworking space. The ambient pressure helps.
Create external accountability. Ship publicly. Have users who depend on you. Make commitments you can't quietly back out of.
Track actual output, not hours. "I worked 8 hours" means nothing. "I shipped X feature" means something.
Be honest about your productivity. If you're working less at home, either fix it or admit it. Don't gaslight yourself into thinking you're grinding when you're not.
Remote work isn't going away. But pretending it doesn't have massive downsides is just cope.
Most people are less ambitious, less productive, and less intense than they would be in person.
They just don't want to admit it.
— Arjun