The CEO of an $8 billion logistics company that thrived during the pandemic is reviving the debate about remote work with a controversial take that has some calling him out online.
Ryan Petersen, the founder and CEO of Flexport, said on the Twenty Minute VC podcast this week that remote work is “white collar fraud,” partly because it can lead employees to become distracted at home, especially those who have children.
“I have a three-year-old and a five-year-old. The idea that I could do any work at my house is like a total fantasy,” he said. “Like, come on. You’re kidding.”
Petersen added these distractions may be even worse for people who have less space at home than he does.
“I have a bigger house than most employees do. Like, I actually do have a private office I can close the door on. It doesn’t matter. Like, there’s no work getting done at that house when the children are around,” he added.
The comments were immediately lambasted online by parents and some other founders. Ryan Carson, the CEO of Untangle, which provides legal workflow software for divorce attorneys, said in a post on X he was saddened by Petersen’s opinion.
“As someone who has raised an 18-year-old and a 15-year-old, the precious time you get to see them while you’re working from home will be worth more than anything you could do with your company or the dollars that you can make,” he wrote in the post.
Petersen’s comments are notable given his company benefited greatly from the pandemic, when many companies switched to remote work.
Flexport didn’t immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Through its software, Flexport has helped companies like Brawny paper towel maker Georgia-Pacific and baby food maker Gerber streamline their supply chains. And when employees working from home triggered an ecommerce boom during the pandemic, Flexport’s revenue skyrocketed to $3.3 billion in 2021, up from $670 million pre-pandemic, and it became profitable for the first time.
Still, Petersen said it was during this era that he started to realize he was “highly against” remote work, partly because of how it affected the company’s culture.
“I made the mistake during COVID of going remote and letting it stay remote for way too long and I think our culture suffered as a result,” he said. He did not elaborate on how remote work specifically hurt Flexport’s company culture.
Petersen said Flexport now requires employees to work in the office five days a week, and implied that workers who refused to return were let go. He added remote work should ideally be reserved for highly skilled workers in developing nations who can use telework to earn higher wages than their local markets would otherwise offer.
“I think that also the idea that work from home is going to benefit highly paid employees is sort of a total fantasy,” he said.
C-suite executives are torn on remote work
The argument about remote work has divided the C-suite between CEOs who see it as an equalizer in the labor market that allows them to hire the best talent, and those who say it hurts company culture and productivity.
One of the most vocal anti-remote work CEOs is JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, who has previously said remote work breeds “rope-a-dope politics” and is bad for young workers. His company reinstated a five day in-office policy at the beginning of 2025.
Another anti-remote work advocate, Elon Musk has criticized the “laptop class” of work-from home employees and has called the practice of working from home morally wrong, especially when other workers like factory workers at Tesla must be present to do their work.
“You’re going to work from home, and you’re going to make everyone else who made your car come work in the factory? You’re going to make people who make your food that gets delivered—they can’t work from home?” Musk asked in an interview with CNBC in 2023. “Does that seem morally right?”
Still, other CEOs and business leaders have repeatedly advocated for remote work, including Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary, who said earlier this year that limiting a company’s hiring to only in-person employees leads to them missing out on the best talent.
“If you’re trying to say to people, ‘Oh, you got to work in an office,’ and that’s the talent you want to hire, you’ll just get the bottom quartile people that have no choice,” he said.
Despite the objections of some CEOs, remote work may be here to stay. A monthly survey conducted by economists for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found 26% of fully paid workdays were worked from home in May. While that’s down sharply from the pandemic peak of 62% in May 2020, it remains well above the pre-pandemic baseline of just 7%.
Another study by Gallup from earlier this year shows working from home at least some days of the week is popular among workers. More than half of employees with remote-capable jobs would prefer to work at least some days at home, while one-third prefer to be fully remote, the study found.
