The Inconvenient Truth About Visibility

The Inconvenient Truth About Visibility

Emma Grede said the quiet part loud.

Here's the part that actually helps you.

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."

James Baldwin

Emma Grede has been everywhere this week. On Keke Palmer's podcast Monday, on the Today Show Tuesday, in Elle, in the Wall Street Journal. She is on tour for her new book Start With Yourself, and every interview has sparked its own debate. The one that caught my attention was the Elle piece, where she doubled down on something she has said before — that work-from-home culture is "career suicide."

And the internet did what the internet does.

You have probably seen the posts, dissecting her privilege. The pointed observations about what it means to tell women to show up five days a week while she can afford a team, at home and at work.

And still.

We know that visibility matters to a career because perception becomes reality.

And before we go further, let me acknowledge something very important which underpins much of the social media critique. Race, gender, and any other type of difference — are no-control factors that significantly impact our careers. And the data confirms what the lived experience already told us. Women, people of color, and especially Black women bear the brunt of workplace discrimination.

In the first half of 2025 alone, more than 300,000 Black women left the U.S. workforce — pushed out by federal layoffs, DEI rollbacks, and a labor market that hit this group harder than almost any other. Unemployment for Black women — despite being the most educated segment of the workforce — climbed from 5.1% in March to 6.7% by the end of summer, nearly double the national rate. This is more than daunting.

And yet remote work still has real consequences. Fairly or not, working remotely might be seen as less engaged, less ready, less available for what comes next. In a musical-chairs moment in corporate America, that perception becomes ammunition.

The research on proximity bias has been sitting in plain sight for years. People who are physically present get more face time with decision makers, more stretch assignments, more of the informal feedback that becomes a promotion packet — and more access to sponsors with actual influence. They are also the people who get pulled into the room when something goes sideways — the crisis huddle, the last-minute pivot, the moment leadership needs to think out loud with people they trust. A Zoom is no substitute for that.

We have known this for a long time. It is the reason people used to make the decision to leave their preferred city and move to headquarters in Bentonville, or wherever the mothership lived. For what it's worth, as a native New Yorker, I declined to do it. And I knew I was making a choice.

The phrase "out of sight, out of mind" existed before any of us had a laptop.

So the inconvenient truth is this: you can build a full career, a meaningful career, a career with flexibility baked into it. What you cannot do is build ambitions for a full leadership role while assuming the rules of proximity have been rewritten in your favor. They have not. Some companies are trying. Most are not.

This is the part that makes people uncomfortable, and I think it should. Because the question is no longer whether the old rules are fair. They are not. We have to say it plainly — in a world where bias is real, there is no guarantee that working the old way levels the playing field. Showing up in the office does not make you safe from the ceilings that existed before remote work. And on the other hand, I fear that being remote furthers the chasm. Both of those things can be true. We do not get to pretend one of them away because it is easier.

I remember when my Uncle Tony, one of the only people in my family who had worked in corporate America, gave me his wise counsel. He had moved his family for work — from Baltimore, to Kansas City, to Puerto Rico, finally settling in the Bay Area. He knew the practical reality of both proximity and visibility.

He told me, in the plain way he said most important things: "Leilani, one of the worst things someone can say about you during review or promotion time is 'I don't know her.'"

That stayed with me. Because he was right.

The work is visible on paper. The worker is not.

The 2025 Women in the Workplace report from Lean In and McKinsey is the sharpest picture we have. Women who work on-site three or more days a week: 54% have a sponsor, 53% have been promoted in the last two years. Women who work remotely the majority of the week: 37% and 37%. Now look at the men in the same data. Remote men: 52% have a sponsor, 49% get promoted. The gap for men between on-site and remote barely moves. The gap for women is a cliff — and this starts early. At entry level, 44% of men working remotely are promoted within two years. For entry-level women working remotely, it is 25%. Same arrangement. Almost half the promotion rate.

That is not flexibility failing women. That is proximity bias meeting a promotion system that was already uneven, and the two layering on top of each other.

For people of color, it is true that remote and hybrid improve belonging, fairness, and recruiting reach. They reduce some of the day-to-day bias that is exhausting to carry. What they do not do is remove structural promotion bias. If sponsorship, stretch assignments, and visibility still flow through in-person norms, the inequity does not disappear. It just becomes harder to see.

For women of color, both things happen at once. Flexibility may help more. Invisibility may cost more. This group was already facing the steepest broken rung before any of this. Remote work does not fix that on its own. It can either ease the pressure or deepen the gap, depending on what the company is willing to do.

Flexibility helps people stay. On its own, it does not help them advance. In weak systems — which is most systems — flexibility can actually worsen who gets sponsored and who gets promoted, even as it keeps people in their jobs longer. Retention up. Equity down. That is not a contradiction. That is what happens when you change the work arrangement without changing the promotion system underneath it.

Real equity-enhancing policy requires what most companies still avoid: promotion criteria based on outcomes instead of face time, formal sponsorship instead of ad hoc advocacy, deliberate allocation of stretch assignments, and real manager accountability for proximity bias.

Because as the saying goes — if they wanted to, they would. The same is true of companies. If they wanted to do this work, they would be doing it. The rare ones who are, I love them for it. The rest are telling us exactly who they are.

Grede is describing how to win the game as it is. The harder question is who is willing to change the game itself.

Both conversations matter. Neither one is a substitute for the other.

Remote Work By Career Stage

Here is the part most of the debate is missing. Remote work is not one question. It is three different questions, and the right answer depends on where you are standing.

The thing you need most from work changes over time. In your twenties, you are learning. In your thirties and forties, you are producing. At the top, you are aligning. And remote work does not serve all three the same way.

Early Career: Optimize for exposure and learning.

Remote gives you flexibility, a wider job pool, fewer geographic limits, and often better focus for individual work. It also forces you to build stronger written communication and self-management earlier than office work would. Those are real advantages, and they compound. And if you happen to work in a fast-paced environment, remote can offer early leadership opportunities and stretch assignments that put you on a fast track — at your company or elsewhere — and give you solid, credible experience.

The cost is apprenticeship. You learn fastest by proximity — the overheard context, the quick coaching after a meeting, the social cues, the how-things-really-work-here knowledge that gets absorbed in person and not over Slack. It is also harder to build trust, get noticed, find mentors, and recover from your early mistakes when people do not know you well yet.

So the tradeoff is this. Remote gives you autonomy and access. It can also slow down the three things that matter most early — apprenticeship, visibility, and network formation. If your company is unusually strong at mentorship and your manager is high quality, remote can work. If not, you are paying a tax you will feel later.

Mid-Career: Optimize for leverage and flexibility.

This is usually the most balanced stage for remote. By now, you have the skill, judgment, and credibility to work independently. Remote can improve your productivity, reduce commute drain, expand your options, and make it easier to manage the life you are building around the career. You can often perform well with fewer touchpoints because you already know how to navigate an organization.

The cost is that advancement stops being automatic. You may deliver a lot and still lose out on stretch assignments, sponsorship, and the kind of political visibility that moves you from senior individual contributor to the next level. Cross-functional influence is harder remotely than execution. And there is a quieter risk — you become efficient but less strategically central.

So the tradeoff is this. Remote often maximizes your lifestyle and your output. It can weaken your influence, your sponsorship, and your promotion velocity unless you manage it deliberately. This is the stage where engineering visibility matters most, because you are the most at risk of being very good and very overlooked at the same time. You are going to have to be incredibly intentional — ask for additional opportunities, and counter the assumptions about what you can and will do.

Executive: Optimize for trust, alignment, and cultural reach.

At the top, the question is not productivity. It is leadership signal.

Remote can widen your access to talent, support global teams, reduce travel and overhead, and let you model outcome-based leadership. Some executives lead distributed organizations very well. The ones who do it well tend to be extremely intentional about it.

Senior and executive leadership runs on trust, speed of alignment, culture shaping, conflict resolution, succession, and presence. While not impossible, remote leaders will need to prioritize in-person contact, and pivot when the stakes are high, or the organization needs energy, repair, or change. You may have to literally drop everything.

The other thing to remember is the higher you go, the less you know. Executives also need soft data — the hallway conversation, the body language, the informal network that tells you something is off before the dashboard does. Being remote can cause you to miss it. Because it is really hard to feel the energy of a room you are not in.

So the tradeoff is this. Remote can scale your reach and your efficiency. It can also reduce your presence, your cultural influence, and your ability to sense what is happening inside your own organization.

The cleanest way to think about it — remote works best when your value is specialized expertise, independent execution, and clear deliverables. In-person matters more when your value depends on apprenticeship, relationship building, influence without authority, or high-stakes alignment.

Can you be honest with yourself? Where are you now? Where do you want to go? What is the best way to get there? Those are your answers — not the commentary on social media.

And another thing…

Indra Nooyi — the former CEO of PepsiCo — once famously said "I don't think women can have it all."

And I can attest that I heard her say a version of the same thing in person. I was in attendance at the Women's Leadership Forum convening I co-chaired for the Executive Leadership Council alongside Westina Matthews Shateen (the founder), Susan Chapman-Hughes, Nicole Lewis, and Julia Brown. In a quiet room of more than 100 Black executive women, she said it plainly. If you wanted the top job, you would not be able to do it all. That you would miss a lot of things, that there would be tradeoffs, and even at times distance from your family. That you would need support — sometimes from your loved ones, sometimes paid. That your kids would be fine. Sometimes annoyed. But that it would take that.

And she would not apologize for it, and she would not feel bad about it — the nannies, the missed meals, the strain on her family.

In that moment, Indra gave us instructions to make clear-eyed decisions.

I am a mother who worked outside of the home in a leadership role for a global company. And I made some of the tradeoffs, and in some cases I opted not to.

I was tired a lot. There were mornings I left before my son was up and nights I came home after he was down. There were school events I did not make. And there were jobs that required moves that I did not even entertain. Sometimes, I felt like a failure at work. Sometimes at home. Sometimes both.

But the fact that my income meant that he was able to go to top schools, attend the various camps and programs, and have everything he needed and almost everything he wanted — for me, that was the whole point. I am very proud of that.

Which brings me back to Emma Grede.

Grede grew up poor in East London. She understands what money does — what it buys you in terms of life, health, and safety, and what its absence costs. That frame is in everything she says, and most of the commentary is missing it. I understand it too. I was a mother who worked because the work gave my kid a running start I did not have.

But the internet did it again this week — with another hot take from her book tour, when she described herself as a "max three-hour mum." Three hours with her four kids on Saturday, three hours on Sunday, and the rest of the time is for her.

The headline is not the book. I just finished reading it, and I encourage you to do the same. We all need a little more nuance in our conversations, and sadly, social media does not give us that.

If you have decided to get off the hustle hamster wheel, good for you. I have no judgment on that.

But if you grew up poor, or with less, and decided you want to go for it, Grede is offering information about what it takes that can be useful to you.

And that is the part I wanted to say that a Threads post could not hold.

Do Well. Do Good.

— Leilani

Leilani M. Brown is the founder and CEO of Giant Steps, LLC, a strategy, culture, and governance advisory firm. She is the author of Your Next Giant Steps, From Campus to Career, and Your Next Giant Reset, and hosts Giant Steps with Leilani Brown, a podcast featuring some of the world's most talented and accomplished people.

Learn more at giantstepsllc.com.