At 25, I’ve Never Been To A Real Life Meeting – Working From Home Ruined My Career

Starting her first professional role shortly after graduating from university in 2022 was a real win for Alice*.

The junior PR agency position she secured quickly turned into promotion after promotion, after she had proven herself to be a quick learner that was eager to get stuck into any task.

But there’s one catch. Alice’s job is fully remote, and there is no office at all. She has met her colleagues in the flesh only a handful of times, and she’s met just one of her clients in person. At the time, it seemed like a good opportunity, and working remotely was neither a priority nor a deal breaker for Alice.

Now, after three and a half years at the same company, Alice is keen to pursue new opportunities – but potential employers are writing her off due to a lack of in-office experience.

“I had an interview a few weeks ago with a big PR agency, and I was being interrogated about my remote working, and whether I’d be capable in an office. I emphasised how I’m really ready to be in an office environment, and that I can translate my skills to be collaborative and just contribute to the team, but I felt like I couldn’t really convince them,” says Manchester-based Alice, 25.

“It’s very deflating when I’ve got the experience of working with different clients on campaigns, as I’m being judged for not having enough interpersonal, teamwork and leadership skills, that employers believe you gain from being in an office.”

Yet, there is some truth in that… as Alice reluctantly acknowledges. Due to the lack of physical contact with her colleagues and clients, she has little experience of speaking and presenting in real life meetings.

Alice also hasn’t had a chance to develop client relationships, or understand how to deal with them. Her communications skills have largely been honed in an online setting, which naturally leaves some gaps.

She hasn’t minded remote work up until now, but is certain it’s holding her back. “If I had in-office experience, I think I would have already got a new role. I would have had access to more resources and opportunities, and I think that would have given me the edge,” says Alice.

Remote work, not AI, is to blame for the youth jobs crisis

New research has highlighted how Alice’s remote experience being negatively perceived by employers – and employers also not wanting to take a chance on younger people who will need a lot of guidance – is becoming a wider trend.

London School of Economics academics Peter John Lambert and Yannick Schindler have found that remote work can make the learning curve slower for younger people. They analysed millions of job postings and new hire data for their recent paper, The Broken Ladder: AI, Remote Work, and Early-Career Hiring.

They found that young people with predominantly remote experience become unappealing to hiring managers in an office environment, who assume they’ll have to play catch up when training them. On the other side, hiring managers also in a remote environment increasingly want to make experienced hires so they don’t have to do too much hand holding.

Lambert and Schindler therefore argue that remote working is more of a contributor to the rise in youth unemployment than AI.

In parallel, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently analysed Fortune 500 companies’ hiring data to came to the same conclusion – that remote work is also a large driver behind the rise in unemployment for university graduates.

“Remote work (is) making it more difficult for managers to train and mentor new employees. Accordingly, companies may be reluctant to hire less-experienced workers in distributed work arrangements,” the authors wrote in their paper.

“The timing of this surge suggests that remote work – not generative AI – explains the bulk of the rise in youth unemployment.”

These findings are confirmed by bosses who shared their experiences with The I Paper of struggling with the work ethic of remote talent in their 20s.

‘I’ve sacked eight young people for slacking off while working remotely’

Lyndon Stickley, CEO of business finance platform Iplicit, runs a fully remote company which requires the kind of autonomy you only get from experience. That’s why he tends not to hire people in their 20s, preferring to make older hires. Those he has made exceptions for, he says, have let him down.

He has sacked eight people over the past year for underperforming while working remotely – half of whom were in their 20s.

He believes their lack of office experience made them unable to stick to targets and deadlines on their own – and also made them unable to communicate any issues.

“They gaslight themselves that they’re going to be fine, but they don’t realise the challenge of working from home and the discipline required – then they can’t stick to it,” says London-based Stickley.

“At the end of the week, they hadn’t achieved what they said they’d achieve. Then it became excuses for missed targets, missed goals, missed objectives. They’ll blame tech, or that they didn’t realise what you meant.”

Stickley thinks young people should prioritise working with companies where they can experience and learn from office life.

“I think everyone in their 20s should always be in an office, and then you earn the right in your 30s to then work from home if you want.”

Similarly, Finlay Wellington, owner of a fully remote website development company, has had to let go three people in their 20s over the past year for not pulling their weight while working remotely.

They all followed a similar pattern of missed deadlines, delayed responses to customers and prospects, and repeatedly blaming illness. They were also found to be using AI chatbots to respond to customer queries.

“It was like this week there’s this issue, the next week there’s another issue, and it just kept going to the point where they weren’t even really working anymore,” says Wellington, who runs Edinburgh-based Wellington Web Co.

He is only 20 himself, and meets many motivated and ambitious young people. The problem, he says, is remote working and the subsequent lack of accountability. He also says influencer culture has a lot to answer for – planting the seed in the minds of the younger generation that you can live large on little effort.

“There’s almost some form of epidemic of people wanting the money [without wanting] to do the work to get it. They do just enough work to scrape by, and then still get the money at the end of the day…they want to go drink and have fun,” says Wellington.

“I don’t think lazy is the correct terminology, but there’s definitely an aspect of feeling a lot less threatened when there’s a screen. People just think they can get away with more because they’re working remotely.”

Why bosses are cracking down

Businesses are now putting more structure in place because they feel remote work, and flexibility, has gotten harder to manage, especially amongst younger employees. Wellington, for example, has introduced more check-ins and updates from his team.

Kelly Tucker of HR consultancy HR Star is seeing a similar trend among the companies she works with.

“Some of our clients are ending fully flexible working in favour of more structured arrangements, and increasing the number of in-office days. Clients are concerned that younger employees are not learning about workplace norms, in person communication and in the moment conversations, feedback, and informal learning,” she says.

“To manage this, clients are ensuring more office time during induction and onboarding, more frequent check-ins and clearer expectations around output and what good looks like.”

As a result, she says senior team members are coming into the office more frequently to be present for junior reports.

“Who are junior members of the team learning from if none of the seniors are in? There will be some management needed there.”

The Gen Zs bucking the trend

For those young people who have had few options other than working from home, the career barrier it’s created can feel unfair. Alice is so determined to get an office-based role that she’s now decided to work with two mentors that she meets up with regularly. She’s optimistic that what she learns from them will help her get a new job this year.

“I’m hoping that they will give me confidence in speaking and leadership, and things that I can’t really do in my day‑to‑day role,” she says.

Alice is also going to remove the term “remote” from her CV, and stop mentioning it in interviews.

“There’s a role that I’ve seen that appeals, so I’m going to try for that one. That’s all I can do, really. I just have to hope that there’ll be just one person who can see past the fact I’ve only worked remotely, and see my potential.”

*name has been changed