The Hidden Cost of Working From Home for Too Long

For years, I have worked from home.

In fact, ever since I moved to the US in 2013, remote work has been my default. I would either travel to customer locations or work out of my home office. As I moved into more senior roles, this freedom became even more natural.

Except for a couple of years when I moved to Florida and worked from a client’s office, I’ve essentially lived a remote-work life for more than a decade.

And while working from home has amazing advantages, it also comes with meaningful downsides that reveal themselves only over time.

Upsides of Working From Home

Massive Freedom
I can pick up and drop my kids. I can step out between meetings to run errands. Life becomes more fluid, like everything fits into one continuous calendar instead of two competing ones.


Extreme Flexibility
This is the big one. No commute. No traffic. No wasted hours sitting in a car or on a train. Honestly, it’s hard for me to imagine now how people willingly choose to spend a couple of hours every day going to and from work.


Better Energy Management
You can tailor your environment, take breaks when needed, eat at home, and generally run your day without the usual office friction. For many years, this felt like the perfect setup.

Downsides of Working From Home

This is where reality hits after you’ve lived remote life long enough.

The experience becomes stale
You start craving the freshness of stepping into an office—new spaces, new energy, random interactions, the simple human feeling of movement. Sitting in the same spot for years begins to feel like creative suffocation.


The magic of serendipity disappears
Offices are not just workplaces—they’re idea factories.
Being remote is like being on a mission: you execute what you already know.
Being around people helps you figure out new missions—what really matters, what has value, what direction the team should take.
That randomness is underrated, and it’s lost when you’re remote for too long.


Leadership becomes harder
In corporate jobs, leading teams, influencing decisions, and building relationships is a requirement—not optional. You simply can’t survive without it.
Remote leadership works on paper, but in reality, subtle things get lost: body language, mood, hallway chats, trust-building moments.
You only realize how important these are when they’re gone.


Freedom becomes a curse
This one sounds counterintuitive.
But having an open schedule, especially as a leader, is one of the hardest things to navigate.
When you are senior enough and have done things right, most of your time becomes unstructured.
You’re often staring at a blank page—your day, your goals, your plans. And that blank page can feel overwhelming.
Remote work amplifies this loneliness. There’s no natural rhythm, no environmental cues, no spontaneous direction-setting.

Why Full-Time Remote Is Less Than Ideal for Senior Leaders

This is my honest takeaway after more than a decade of remote work:
full-time remote work is great for execution roles, but not ideal for senior leadership.

Leadership needs presence—physical energy, human connection, proximity to people, and the ability to influence through the subtle moments that never get scheduled on a calendar.

If there’s one thing I would change about my work today, it’s this:
I would not be fully remote in a senior role.
Not because remote is bad, but because leadership requires a level of in-person richness that simply cannot be replicated behind a webcam.