Spotify’s Billboard Moment

Remote Work, Trust, and the Social Contract

Spotify’s set of bold billboard ads declaring “Our employees aren’t children” isn’t a tagline; it’s a mic-drop moment that nearly every major tech employer has ignored, despite overwhelming evidence that RTO mandates cause companies to lose top talent.

This is a deliberate statement on what work, trust, and accountability look like in the modern era. Remote work and people management, isn’t babysitting. It’s a two-sided social contract: trust your employees to do their jobs, and they’ll thrive.

Gauntlet Unwrapped

The Trust Fall of Modern Work

The remote work revolution wasn’t born out of altruism or a sudden enlightenment about productivity. It was forced on businesses by necessity. But here’s the thing: it worked. Employees adjusted to the new rhythm, and many thrived. Productivity didn’t plummet; in many cases, it soared. People converted their commute time into productive time. Cynically, one can view productive time as additional hours of work, or as time recharging with sleep or hobbies and not rushing about—activities that make workers more productive!

For organizations like Spotify, the experiment yielded an obvious conclusion: if you trust adults to manage their work, they’ll generally act like adults. But that trust doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s a two-way street. Employees earn trust by consistently delivering results, meeting deadlines, and communicating effectively. Managers earn trust by contributing to the business, not acting as a hall monitor or creating a culture of surveillance that treats everyone like a suspect.

It’s not a question of whether employees will slack off—data shows that most won’t. The risk lies in how companies handle the few who do.

Why Bad Managers Hate Remote Work

A remote-first policy like Spotify’s doesn’t mean throwing structure out the window. It means rethinking what accountability looks like in a world where your team isn’t sitting within earshot.

Good managers know this. They focus on outcomes rather than optics. They recognize that staring at a screen doesn’t equal productivity any more than a four-year degree guarantees intelligence. They hold their teams accountable for delivering results, not for adhering to arbitrary schedules or showing “activity” on Slack.

But bad managers? Remote work is their kryptonite. The ones who thrive on micromanagement—checking monitors, ambling through the break room, monitoring bathroom breaks, counting keystrokes— and the ones who exist to insert themselves—into meetings, into discussions, into projects and launches—lose their power when the office walls disappear. Their inability to lead through trust, vision, or clear expectations becomes glaringly obvious.

This is where the other side of the social contract comes in: employees need to have the tools and support to call out ineffective leadership and people who manage managers need to understand each manager’s contributions. Put another way, a bad manager is just a bad employee with a bigger title and, arguably, greater ability to damage the business.

Once you know what to look for, spotting a bad manager is easy in person—watch them disrupt workflows, overreact to minor mistakes, or play politics with deadlines. With remote work, ask what they did. What did they contribute? If the answer is catching minor infractions, sound the alarm.

Remote Work Is a Mirror, Not a Mask

Spotify’s billboards work because they capture a deeper truth about remote work: it’s not a retreat from responsibility; it’s a spotlight on the cracks in the system. In-person work has a way of camouflaging dysfunction. A chatty boss can mask poor leadership skills with charm and a slacking employee can stare at an Excel for hours at a time while listening to podcasts on their headphones. Cultural inertia protects them because they appear to be working.

But remote work exposes all of this. Without the distractions of the office, the work speaks for itself—or doesn’t.

The companies most resistant to remote work often argue that it’s about “culture” or “collaboration,” but that’s some No Eye-Contact Wednesday drivel.

It’s about control.

The same managers who are uncomfortable with remote work are often uncomfortable with the idea that their value isn’t tied to their ability to monitor badge swipes and manage face time. It’s managers who are uncomfortable with holding employees accountable for big things (We missed our goal), so they focus on the little ones (You’re late!).

It’s managers who have let their skills lapse to the point where they’re unable to add value.

Spotify’s decision to let employees work remotely is an implicit challenge to that mindset. By declaring, “Our employees aren’t children,” they’re saying, “We don’t need to watch you to believe in your ability to deliver.” That’s a powerful statement and one that many organizations remain afraid to make.

Building the New Social Contract

If you’re clinging to the old ways just because they’re familiar, maybe it’s time to ask yourself why. After all, we’re adults. And as Spotify so aptly points out, we deserve to be treated like it.