BoumTAC

GAFAM and Full Remote: When You Reach the Dream Job

Published on May 22, 2025

You may have seen it in the news: Microsoft is laying off 6,000 employees, which is 3% of its workforce. From France's perspective, this is shocking, but it's something very common in the United States.

Over there, permanent contracts don't exist. Certainly, this has the disadvantage of being able to be fired overnight, but it also has the advantage of considerably shortening recruitment processes. Indeed, in case of a mistake, the employer isn't forced to keep an incompetent employee who would be difficult to fire. This flexibility therefore reduces employers' fear of hiring.

Companies regularly proceed with laying off the least productive employees, as their inferior performance can drag the entire team down. If I notice that I'm already more efficient than my colleague, while being paid as much as him, what would motivate me to make more effort? On the other hand, if this colleague is laid off, I would then become the least performing in the group, which would push me to increase my productivity to avoid being affected by the next round of layoffs myself. This type of practice is very common in the United States, where companies don't hesitate to replace the least performing with more competent employees.

Routine and Productivity Decline

A job is always more or less repetitive — we do the same thing for years and routine sets in.

Look at the veterans in your professional experiences: we've all known someone who has been there for more than twenty years doing the same job. He's there, he's always on time, he does the work asked — but he's always slow, you mustn't rush him. He's never one of the most productive members of the team.

Similarly, we've all experienced the civil servant cliché: the guy has spent his entire career on the same chair, but it takes him three hours to gather the necessary documents to renew a passport.

This drop in motivation occurs once routine has set in and the job is no longer stimulating.

To break this productivity collapse, you need to change jobs. A company change is necessary, but sometimes a simple team change can suffice. This allows learning new things, being stimulated and highlighting previously acquired skills — often resulting in an appreciable salary increase.

It's human, it's normal to act this way, our ancestors didn't spend 8 hours a day, 47 weeks a year doing the same tasks. Sometimes they had to hunt, sometimes they had to spend entire days in the fields sowing or harvesting to the rhythm of the seasons, other times, it was about building or repairing shelters and tools. And sometimes, when essential needs were met and nature allowed, there was simply nothing urgent to do, and the day could be devoted to rest, community or simple contemplation. Human beings are fundamentally adapted to this diversity of activities and rhythms, much more than to the tireless repetition of a single task day after day.

The GAFAM Problem

Working for a GAFAM is reaching the peak of your career: it's hard to hope for better. You benefit from a stable job, remarkable professional security, exceptionally high salary, ideal working conditions, attractive stock options, as well as many other advantages.

No other company ensures such attractive conditions.

Once at a GAFAM, employees don't move anymore — gone are the days when we jumped from job to job every two years. So, little by little, we get bored and productivity drops.

It's a vicious circle: no one wants to leave the company anymore, because they won't find better anywhere else. The company is therefore forced to recruit new motivated profiles to compensate for this loss of productivity. To attract the best talents in the world, it must continue to offer the best salaries and working conditions.

Other "normal" companies don't have this problem. When an employee starts to get bored, he will himself look for another company, hoping to earn an additional 4k on his annual salary. He then finds motivation again, at least for a certain time, in his new position. Meanwhile, the initial company has a vacant position and can recruit a new employee, often more motivated than the one who left.

This guy worked at Microsoft for 18 years and on TypeScript which is a huge success. Why was he laid off? I'm convinced that after 18 years at Microsoft, he had probably settled into his routine and wasn't accomplishing much in his days anymore — to the point that this "normal" productivity had become his reference. When reality hits after that, it hurts.

Moreover, the more our career progresses, the more we specialize in a field to obtain better compensation. We can of course change paths, but it then becomes difficult to justify a high salary if we start from scratch.

In the previous example, when you're one of the best TypeScript experts in the world, apart from Microsoft, there are hardly any other options. So we stay comfortably in our position, years pass, weariness sets in, and we find ourselves eighteen years later with only 20% of the productivity we had when we arrived.

The Full Remote Problem

Full remote is often perceived as the Holy Grail of the professional world, and for good reason! Working from home is the promise of attractive salaries, often aligned with those of big tech companies, without having to endure the constraints of an office. You gain free time by eliminating daily commutes, which leaves you more moments for yourself, your family or your passions. This flexibility, coupled with comfortable working conditions and high compensation, makes full remote a dream for many.

Full remote saves at least 15 hours of free time per week, whether in Paris, with an hour of metro to get to the office, or in the provinces, where you can spend an hour in traffic jams to get to work; this represents, round trip, about 10 hours gained per week. And this, without counting the gas saved or car wear.

To this are added the "little frauds" that everyone practices: hanging laundry during work hours, quickly going to the Post Office to pick up a package, brushing teeth, doing a quick vacuum, going to get bread at the bakery, doing the dishes... We easily reach 15 hours of time gained per week.

As with GAFAMs, once in full remote, an employee can hardly hope for better, especially since full remote has become very rare. So he stays in his position and, like the Microsoft employee, productivity gradually drops.

The little fraud amplifies: brushing teeth during work hours becomes a complete shower, the quick trip to the bakery transforms into shopping at Carrefour, the little afternoon YouTube break becomes a full Netflix episode, and the quick vacuum pass changes into mowing the lawn.

Sometimes, there are dead times at work; so it's not really "cheating", we simply take advantage of this time not to waste it. But these exceptional free times quickly become habits.

During a quiet week, we take advantage to do these little frauds (get bread, brush teeth, etc.). But the following week is eventful — and it was still pretty cool to have free time for these little activities — so we work less, too bad for work — we absolutely must hang the finished laundry.

Productivity collapses.

@mrbrotein Replying to @TruthOrLie #workfromhome #remotework #corporate #9to5life #gamer #fyp #comedy ♬ original sound - banditdied
@jourdangames Gamers don’t have lunch breaks, we have mid-day gaming breaks🙂‍↕️ #gamerlife #gamingmemes #remotework #remoteworklife #wfhlife #gaming #fortnite #stardewvalley #bg3 #fortnitememes #cozygames ♬ Head Empty - Tsundere Twintails

All these little frauds (and bigger ones) remain relatively light. Some take advantage to spend an afternoon playing video games or taking care of their children, others don't respond to messages under the pretext that they are "concentrated on a task".

Some employees end up doing nothing at all.

It's a vicious circle: employees stay in position, convinced that no other company offers better conditions, which leads to a drop in team productivity. In response, some companies reduce telework, making full remote rarer. This pushes the lucky ones who benefit from it to cling to their job, fearing never to find such good conditions elsewhere.

The Normal Job

Normal jobs don't have this problem: you work, you gain skills, then you eventually get bored.

So you look for a new job where you can use your acquired skills and hope for better compensation. You gain skills again and, from job to job, you progress in your career.

Those who are better progress faster and change jobs more often. Conversely, those who are less good progress more slowly and change jobs less regularly.

Progressing fast is also dangerous: we reach the plateau where we find ourselves stuck more quickly, which leads to a risk of bore-out, depression, or dropping everything on a whim.

Solutions

To keep morale up, some start practicing a sport intensively. We've all had a colleague who's absent for a long time during lunch break to go do their sports session in preparation for a competition. It's a good solution to think about something else, but it doesn't solve the initial problem: we continue to get bored at work. In addition, it can have a harmful effect: the employee arrives late in the morning because he has to do his session, he's less concentrated at work, etc. In short, his work becomes even less of a priority.

Another solution would be to develop a hobby or personal project. But it's the same problem: it doesn't solve the drop in morale at work. And the more we launch into a personal project, the more it will encroach on our professional life and have a harmful influence on it. We'll tend to take professional time to accomplish tasks related to our personal project.

Life is Made of Variance

LindyMan has an excellent theory on variance in life. He maintains that life was much more varied before than nowadays. The metro-work-sleep wasn't the norm 100 years ago.

Humans aren't made to do the same thing eight hours a day for twenty years. We aren't fulfilled this way — we need variety in life, challenges.

Our ancestors didn't behave this way. We can't spend our days hunting game or plowing a field by hand — we must find other ways to reproduce this behavior.

Maybe we should drop everything and practice another profession. We then lose the accumulated advantages; it's neither reasonable nor profitable, but humans are, after all, made for this. Maybe we would be much more fulfilled? Isn't this what life is about?

I remember reading from Jujimufu an excellent article on versatility.

He stipulated that it was almost impossible to be in the top 1% in one field, but much easier to be in the top 10% or 20% in two or three fields simultaneously.

As a developer, being hired by Google is almost Mission Impossible. On the other hand, it's much more accessible to be in the top 20% of the best developers, with a good job as a key, and, in parallel, to be in the top 20% of DJs and mix in big local clubs on weekends.

The overall salary of the two combined jobs will surely be lower than that of a position at Google. But we'll probably be more fulfilled than a person in full remote who no longer accomplishes anything in their days.

Above all, we become more resilient to life's uncertainties.

If, for example, we lose our developer job, we won't find ourselves without employment or income. We can even take advantage of this new free time to work more as a DJ on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, to earn more money.

A Concrete Example

My cousin is an osteopath by profession and practices three days a week. The rest of the time, he gives osteopathy courses or renovates houses and cars.

Would he earn more if he were a full-time osteopath? Surely, and he would even have much fewer troubles to manage. But practicing a profession full-time becomes tedious and less fulfilling.

Sometimes, there are fewer patients during holidays. He then takes advantage of this free time to renovate cars and sell them. He earns less money from his osteopath profession, but more from the work done.

If he didn't do this, he would suffer a bigger loss of income and a greater sense of failure in his life. Conversely, sometimes there are many more demands, and he works longer — the work will wait.

Having several sources of income may seem counterproductive, because we would earn more by specializing in one field. But it has the advantage that in case of unexpected events in the initial profession, we don't find ourselves without skills or income.

Conclusion

Human beings aren't made to do the same thing permanently. We must introduce variety into our lives. Staying in the same place throughout your journey is dying slowly. Life is far too rich to settle for this option. We must seek new options to develop — this is where we'll find our happiness.