Remote Worker Reprimanded for Not Being Performative Enough on Slack Despite Stellar Output

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Jun 4, 2026 2:30 PM EDT

When will employers stop being so obsessed with optics?

This fully remote employee was known for being productive and efficient at his job. In fact, it seemed like no one in upper management was taking any issue with his output, even though he was no longer working in an office environment. Despite the fact that he has been working in this remote role now for over two years at the mid-sized company, all of a sudden, he and his teammates were given a lecture about needing to be more active on email chains and Slack channels.

Yes, none of the feedback had anything to do with the quality of their actual work. Instead, it had everything to do with how performative they needed to be about all the work they were getting done. The employee immediately took to Reddit's r/remotework community and was met with similar stories from other folks who have found themselves in this situation.

What will it take for the people in upper management to realize that, despite what they may think, they are actually wasting valuable work time by enforcing that their remote employees stay engaged on Slack at all times? Yes, it takes time and effort to respond to any and all messages in order to show that you're working. Shouldn't that green dot demonstrating that you're active and reachable be enough?

It's only inevitable that leadership will eventually miss pertinent information that will get lost in the shuffle of all these unnecessary messages in Slack channels. Only then will they likely ask their employees to respond only when they are actively being asked something.

Contrary to the beliefs of folks from a backward time, performative optics and professionalism are not one and the same. Professionalism is about the output. It's about an employee's ability to meet and fulfill the expectations and responsibilities that they were hired for. It isn't about liking and responding to every single message on Slack. If upper management cannot see the difference, then perhaps they shouldn't be managing a team of fully remote employees anyway.

We've seen plenty of similar stories about the nonsense that some employees have recently had to put up with, from this Texas employee's conundrum with his former boss to this California worker's plight after a rough round of layoffs.

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  • A male model sits in a white dress shirt at a table with a laptop open, representing a remote worker answering the phone.
    via May Gauthier

    A male model sits in a white dress shirt at a table with a laptop open, representing a remote worker answering the phone.

  • My manager wants us “more visible” on Slack, so now everyone is just pretending to work louder

    I've been fully remote for a little over 2 years at a mid sized software company. Nothing glamorous, I do customer
    via Last_Reddt_User
  • operations stuff, mostly tickets, data checks, weird little account issues, and chasing people for answers. Our
    via Last_Reddt_User
  • team has been pretty solid. Work gets done, response times are fine, nobody is disappearing for 5 hours without saying anything. At least I thought so.
    via Last_Reddt_User
  • A few weeks ago my manager said leadership was worried remote employees were becoming "less visible."
    via Last_Reddt_User
  • A photograph of a laptop open to the Slack app.
    via hostreviews

    A photograph of a laptop open to the Slack app.

  • Not less productive, just less visible. So now we're supposed to post more updates in Slack during the day. Not a formal status report, because
    via Last_Reddt_User
  • apparently that sounds too annoying, but "organic visibility." Which somehow means saying things like "jumping into the export issue now" or
    via Last_Reddt_User
  • "circling back on the vendor file" in a channel where nobody replies because we are all doing the exact same fake performance.
    via Last_Reddt_User
  • A portrait depicting a remote worker answering the phone while typing on his laptop.
    via May Gauthier

    A portrait depicting a remote worker answering the phone while typing on his laptop.

  • The funny part is it has made me work worse. Before, I would put on music, knock out a batch of tickets, take notes, then message someone if I actually needed them.
    via Last_Reddt_User
  • Now I keep stopping to think, "Have I looked active enough in the last hour?" Yesterday I literally wrote "checking the billing mismatch on account 4812" and then
    via Last_Reddt_User
  • immediately realized I had. not actually opened the file yet. I was narrating the job before doing the job.
    via Last_Reddt_User
  • An image representing a remote employee typing on his laptop as he works from home.
    via May Gauthier

    An image representing a remote employee typing on his laptop as he works from home.

  • There's also this unspoken thing where if someone posts at 8:03, another person posts at 8:05, and then suddenly half the team is online saying good morning like we're all clocking into a group chat factory. One
    via Last_Reddt_User
  • coworker started reacting with thumbs up to every update, and now that looks like a new expectation too. It's so dumb but you can feel everyone adapting
    via Last_Reddt_User
  • because nobody wants to be the "quiet" remote worker. I don't hate my job, and I'm grateful to work from home. My laundry gets done, my dog is happier,
    via Last_Reddt_User
  • and I'm not wasting part of my life in traffic. But this stuff makes remote work feel like office culture found a way to follow us home and sit in the corner watching Slack.
    via Last_Reddt_User

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work from home remote work employee toxic-workplace slack Office Horrible Bosses
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