Remote work is becoming less available (if you're not a CEO)

What's happening: Incoming Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol won't have to relocate to Seattle, where the coffee chain is headquartered, from his current home in Newport Beach, Calif.

State of play: Instead, Starbucks says Niccol should commute to company headquarters "as is required to perform your responsibilities," per the new CEO's offer letter, made public in an SEC filing this week.

• Starbucks will set Niccol up with a remote office in Newport, along with "an assistant of your choosing,"

The intrigue: White-collar workers at Starbucks, known as "support center based-employees" in company parlance, don't quite have this kind of freedom.

• Last year, the company tightened its work-from-home stance, requiring everyone living within an hour of the office to commute in at least three days a week.
• After some initial pushback, the policy stuck.

Niccol's predecessor, Laxman Narasimhan, was required to relocate when he was hired as CEO in 2022 — but he was coming from London, way too far to make regular trips to the U.S. West Coast.

The big picture: "Being allowed to work remotely is becoming more common for CEOs," reports Bloomberg.

• Hillary Super, the new CEO of Victoria's Secret, won't be relocating to the company's headquarters in Ohio. Instead, she'll reportedly fly in from her home in New York.

Anecdotally, there are many examples of CEOs who are "working from anywhere," says Raj Choudhury, a professor at Harvard Business School who studies remote work. Though there's no comprehensive data, he adds.

• "I think the CEO going remote is commendable," he says.
• The next step would be giving other employees similar flexibility.

Flashback: CEOs and executives have been working remotely since long before the pandemic upended workplaces, often to disastrous ends.

• Former Sears CEO Eddie Lampert was lambasted for living in Florida, far from the company's Illinois base. It did not go well.
• Ron Johnson was similarly called out for not moving near JCPenney's headquarters when he tried to turn the retailer around, more than a decade ago.

For the record: Niccol will likely obtain some residence in Seattle, says Starbucks spokesperson Andrew Trull.

• When he is not traveling for work, Niccol will be in the Seattle office at least three days a week, in alignment with Starbucks' hybrid work policies, he says.
• "While Brian will have an office in Southern California, his primary office and a majority of his time will be spent" in Starbucks' Seattle headquarters, Trull says.

The bottom line: It pays to be on top.

Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional comment from Starbucks on how many days a week Brian Niccol will be in the office.