Jamie Dimon, who has led America’s largest bank, JPMorgan, for 20 years and through multiple recessions, blasted remote work and offered a stern warning for any younger generations who want to move up the career ladder: Get into the office.
“If you go to a meeting with me, you got my full friggin’ attention the whole time,” he said at the Hill and Valley Forum, which brought together leaders from Washington and Silicon Valley, on Tuesday.
During the session titled “Wealth, Power, and the Next American Century,” Dimon said remote work only works well for certain jobs like call centers, but for everyone else, including young people and managers alike, in-person working is best. Young people, especially, he said, need to work in person because they are still learning.
“They learn by going on a sales call. They learn by seeing you make a mistake. They learn by how you deal with the mistake,” Dimon said, adding that remote work also fails to help young people develop their emotional intelligence.
The problem is universal, Dimon said, and managers should also get comfortable sitting in the office. Video calls, which he compared to the game show Hollywood Squares, where participants sit in a real-life tic-tac-toe board, allow for far fewer checkups than would happen in person where you can ask someone directly for an update. Working from home, Dimon said, causes less ownership of a project, less curiosity, and, using a Muhammad Ali tactic, tires people faster.
“There’s very little follow-up, a lot more game playing, you know, rope-a-dope type of politics,” he said.
Plus, he added, “a lot of people aren’t paying attention at all,” as many of them are on their phones while on a video call, a trend which he didn’t notice early on, he said.
The remarks are not new for the 70-year-old, who has often protested remote work for early-career employees, advocating for an “apprentice system” in which younger workers learn from more experienced veterans.
While Dimon acknowledged JPMorgan wants to keep its workers happy, he also said the company has to adapt to what its customers want.
“We’re not in business so my employee’s happy. I’m in business so my customer’s happy, and I want my employee to be happy, but not at the expense of the customer.”
