14 ms·

Amazon to sell Bay Area office complex as sales growth cools

169 points by A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

paxys 4y ago
> Amazon in October 2021 paid $123 million for the 29-acre property in Milpitas, California Talk about buying at the exact peak of the market. The cat is out of the proverbial bag for all these large tech employers. Doesn't matter if you are Amazon or Google or whoever else. Once people got a taste of WFH life they were never going back to the hour plus commutes, weird social structures and power dynamics, noisy environment, lack of privacy.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  I would like to be as optimistic as you are, but CEOs are clearly bent on returning to the old ways[1]( the gist of the article is:"it is not your decision to make"). [1]https://fortune.com/2023/01/20/work-from-home-remote-work-morgan-stanley-ceo-james-gorman-not-employee-choice/ https://fortune.com/2023/01/20/work-from-home-remote-work-mo...
  - TillE 4y ago
    The long-term financial benefits of remote work are likely to outweigh the emotional / speculative resistance from certain leaders.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      I'm not so sure. Companies don't really behave as "rational economic actors" anymore than people do.
  - jensensbutton 4y ago
    Agree. I worry that many companies will maintain notional "support" for remote roles, but it will revert to a two tiered system where in-office workers have better career growth.
  - Swizec 4y ago
    > "it is not your decision to make" Sure it is! Free market competition was made for exactly this sort of scenario. As long as some employers offer WFH, workers can make the choice. If we put a $$ figure on WFH and this makes salaries cheaper for employers that offer WFH, they may eventually win out the market. Saying "employees can't choose to WFH" may eventually be seen as silly of a decision as saying "we only buy inputs from countries with the highest import tariffs". Let the market decide. It's going to either way. Say I'm a company saving $50,000,000/year on office leases. That's a lot of room for higher salaries and nicer bonuses for my employees (including execs). And I still get to keep a huge chunk as extra profit. Long-term what sounds better to the board: A CEO who says "I saved us 50mil" or a CEO that says "I lost 30% of our workforce but we got them all back to the office! Btw I need another 50mil for the office"
    - grapescheesee 4y ago
      More so, I cut and saved 50,000,000. What salary increase allotments should go to increase in pay? I'll just say we saved n roles with the move.
  - pklausler 4y ago
    "it is not your decision to make" I think that it is, actually.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    CEOs are clearly bent on returning to the old ways My company was like that. It started firing people who didn't return to work. Then someone noticed that there weren't enough people left in certain departments to get things done. Now the company is 90% remote, and selling some of its office buildings. The only people in the office are those who choose to be, and those whose jobs require them to be hands-on.
- ojbyrne 4y ago
  I think “As Return to Office Stalls” is a bit of wishful thinking. 18000 employees gone, probably more to go, trimming real estate is just another cost cutting measure.
  - chrsig 4y ago
    I'd been reading this as returning to Office Stalls, comparing the open office to a barn. Or bathroom. Took me a moment to parse it properly that returning to the office is stalling.
- k__ 4y ago
  Good point on the weird social structures. I always found dating in the workplace kinda alarming, especially when people would date their subordinates.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    That's a reason to ask for immediate relocation within the company to ensure your love interest isn't in your chain of command/review and vv. Many companies have pretty explicit rules around this. https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/how-google-facebook-and-amazon-handle-office-romances/308983 https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/how-google-f... Just a couple of things you might open the company (and yourself) up to (from the POV of the person in the supervisor role): - a sexual harassment lawsuit in case things end on a bad note - colleagues complaining (possibly rightfully so) about favoritism - inability to set policy because you yourself violate policy - a potentially very toxic situation in case the relationship ends and you have to continue to work together It doesn't really matter whether the person in the supervisor role is a male or a female, either way it looks bad and will likely lead to trouble. And for an encore: between founders the risks (but also some of the potential rewards) are even higher. I've seen a start-up that was doing fantastically well end up in shreds because the co-founders got romantically involved, got married, had kids and then divorced, the divorce pretty much killed the company.
    - carlosjobim 4y ago
      The rest of the world laughs at the American prudes and their extreme fear of letting romance and life itself come in the way of the profit interests of their 85 year old corporate lords. I don't mean to insult, but please look at your reasoning and think about if it is healthy? Is it appropriate for an adult to talk about "lead to trouble". Kids get in trouble, grown ups don't. Oh, it is so unprofessional to let the wonder of being alive ever interrupt the demands of efficiency and a steady stream of taxes to the IRS. Imagine the nerve of that co-founder who destroyed the startup for unprofessional things like having children! My accountant will make a very stern frown when I tell him. Please corporate working Americans if you read this: It is okay to have romance in the workplace! Life is too short. All the rest of the world does this and knows it is natural and healthy.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  mostly agree, but for some work at a workplace was more coherent and peaceful than working from home
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  Unpaid commute... I know lots of folks in the Bay area spending hours per day commuting (and NOVA/DC area, if you live there you know). I'm not sure why it isn't considered stolen wages.
  - sneak 4y ago
    Stealing implies unilateral and without consent. People opt-in to jobs and the associated commutes completely voluntarily and consensually.
    - itake 4y ago
      Also, your commute time is your commute time. Your employer does not control how you go to your work nor what you do while traveling. Your employer also doesn't choose your housing.
      - bcrosby95 4y ago
        > Also, your commute time is your commute time. Your employer does not control how you go to your work nor what you do while traveling. Not necessarily true. Some employers offer company buses to/from certain cities, with wifi, and they count that as working hours.
        dragonwriter 4y ago
        > Some employers offer company buses to/from certain cities, with wifi, and they count that as working hours. Yes, effectively your company is choosing to send your worksite to (a place closer to) your home, so that you can start working sooner and stop working later.
      - Teever 4y ago
        I bet that if employers were legally mandated to pay their workers for the time they commute that those employers would suddenly appreciate the importance of effective public transit and increased urban density.
- barbazoo 4y ago
  Just a couple of hours ago I was kicking off a build that would take about 20 minutes. It's a slow sprint so I went and put the laundry in the dryer and then had a quick coffee with my partner before going back to work just in time for the build to finish. It's heaven. This is the best work life balance I've ever had in my career and I love it. I can't think of anything right now that would get me back into an office in the city.
  - Breza 4y ago
    I feel the exact same way, I run a data science team from my basement. At 4:30, I walk to my daughter's daycare and we play together in the time that I used to spend commuting. I never want to go back to an office.
  - kylehotchkiss 4y ago
    sounds like you need to run your build on a m2 max!
  - ttul 4y ago
    How about a $10K pay cut?
    - lsaferite 4y ago
      You could easily spend 10k on commuting. That's only about $40/day. Between fuel, maint, tolls, and maybe food, you can easily bust $40/day in the Bay Area. That's not even considering the _time_ spent commuting.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        And the morbidity/mortality risk. Driving is the most risky thing most Americans do.
        soiler 4y ago
        I already hated cars, but since I began WFH I've become really averse to driving unnecessarily. Getting killed by a car is one of the absolute stupidest ways to go. My dad smoked all his life and still made it past 60; my brain could hit pavement tonight if I run out of milk. And the worst part is that it wouldn't have to be my fault at all, and it wouldn't even require somebody to do something extraordinarily reckless. Driving too fast through my neighborhood is typical, because it happens to offer the shortest path from A to B for many people, and the road is wide thanks to bike lanes that I have never seen bikes in (because: cars drive too fast). I'll cut myself off here before this becomes an overly long screed.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  Edifice complex: http://www.ipglossary.com/glossary/edifice-complex/#.Y9hFf-wa6Lo http://www.ipglossary.com/glossary/edifice-complex/#.Y9hFf-w... As I was visiting the new space-age buildings at Meta, Google, and Apple in 2021 (and reading about Amazon's new HQ), I was thinking "Wow, all 4 are building new headquarters. I wonder if this means we're at the high point of Big Tech." Seems like that was prescient.
- notyourwork 4y ago
  > hour plus commutes Commuting is my biggest complaint with forcefully going back to office. If I have a bus or train that requires no brain power for me to get to office, I am more tolerable to it. Perhaps this will be a kick in the improve US public transportation for the masses? It is the only silver lining I can think of here.
  - monksy 4y ago
    Just wait till you get a mayor who has decided to kill public transit. Trains/buses don't show up, they're packed with homeless using it as a bed and a toliet, and gangsters who smoke it up. On top of that they're not running the schedule, but "keeping the schedule intact". That's what's been happening in Chicago. (Thanks Lori "we're a car city" Lightfoot)
    - reaperducer 4y ago
      I'm not sure you can blame Lightfoot for that. I've lived in Chicago on-and-off for 30 years -- never with a car -- and the CTA has always been like that. That's why some L cars have a "hobo corner," and why there's (was?) a homeless shelter at the O'Hare airport Blue Line station. The CTA may be smelly, but it beats getting shot at by thugs on the expressways.
      - monksy 4y ago
        It was never this bad. It's gotten worse over the last 2 years. https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-cta-riders-on-delays-safety-filth-smoking/00289237-4e60-4d9a-b355-8923fe433449 https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-cta-riders-on-delays-sa... Also, traffic has gotten a heck of a lot worse as well. Also the homeless have moved into the airport. [At the baggage areas,https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/zm4emb/homeless_people_at_ohare/ https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/zm4emb/homeless_pe... ]
  - CuriousCosmic 4y ago
    This is really the kicker. I would have no problem commuting 1+ hours into the city for work if I could actually make use of my time. I can't do anything while driving beyond listen to music. An audiobook is either going to get my full attention and I'll be distracted while driving or I'm going to miss 30-40% of the book trying to stay alert on the road. At that point I might as well just not listen to the audio book at all if I care about the contents. However if I could just take trains/buses into the city, provided they actually run regularly (i.e. they don't turn a 40 minute drive into 6 hours), I'd have 1-4 hours a day I could allocate to reading, listening to an audio book, watching TV, playing a game, working on personal projects, or continuing my education. Sure it might be a long commute but I could do the things that I'd otherwise barely have time for so it's not really lost time. Doubly so if I could actually do work on a company device while I commute (no surprise team meetings if you aren't actually on site yet meaning work would actually get done).
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  > Once people got a taste of WFH life they were never going back to the hour plus commutes, weird social structures and power dynamics, noisy environment, lack of privacy. Unless managers/directors/VPs/SVPs/C-suite executives get even more strict and companies around the country band together to not offer remote work closing any/all openings, forcing people back to work. 3 options: 1. get lucky enough to find a job that allows work from home 2. be unemployed 3. suck it up and work for a company that demands you work in the office unless you can find an alternative (aka a remote job) if you can't find a remote job, you're out of luck. whether this breaks down in reality (aka... what % of open jobs right now after all of these layoffs are in person vs hybrid vs full remote) is it a fairytale dream that there's a ton of remote jobs out there? especially with microsoft + google + apple + amazon being relatively against remote work.
  - noddingham 4y ago
    No, it isn't a fairy tale. I think because you're posting on HN you're only thinking about the popular stocks first. BLS says there's just shy of four million IT jobs out there. I'd say your chances are pretty good you can find one that doesn't have a shitty commute and/or allows remote/WFH options.
    - phpisthebest 4y ago
      The number of them fully remote has been dropping fast, at least based on what I see in my feed on various job sites like indeed, and linked in Hybrid seems to be more popular with 2 or 3 days of WFH Even the fully remote alot of them are requiring people to be with in 1-2 hour of a company office signalling that maybe they will be going hybrid as well
  - ghotli 4y ago
    Don't worry about it, seriously. If you'd like to work remotely then do so. It took a little bit of work a decade back to find a great paying remote job. These days it's so much more simple even with some of the largest tech employers forcing people back into the office. I'd argue you don't want to work somewhere that "does remote since the pandemic". Apply at remote-only companies and if you're employable they'll find you a spot since they're dealing with brain drain too. Hot take, but I've done this remote engineer thing for a long time. Feels like we're in the golden age of remote work compared to my experiences a decade back. Find the position in the world wherein you both enjoy your work and how/where you do it. It's out there, guaranteed.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- somethoughts 4y ago
  When I read the article it seems to be more about going from "Everything via Amazon Prime" to "Return to Physical Stores" versus going from "WFH" to "Return to Office"? "Amazon in October 2021 paid $123 million for the 29-acre property in Milpitas, California, part of a strategy to lock up real estate near big cities that could be used for new warehouses and facilitate future growth." Seems kind of crazy to buy an office complex and raze it for an Amazon warehouse/distribution center.
- NotYourLawyer 4y ago
  If they can outsource your job to your home, they can outsource it to India.
- remote_phone 4y ago
  Both me and my wife hate working from home. She is forced to but I elected to go into the office once it was available. The work life balance is better, sure, but my productivity plummeted and I was stuck doing nothing for hours every day waiting to hear back from coworkers. The stress involved especially during a recession is more than the benefit of no commute for me.
- ibejoeb 4y ago
  Maybe we'll collectively consider return to "office" again, as in a real office. Nobody wants to be in a bullpen, no matter how clever the PR is around open-plan. We all know it's just being too cheap to build walls.
- ClassyJacket 4y ago
  Making people work in the office is cruelty for the sake of cruelty. I will not accept any job in future that makes me go into an office. There's no reason for it. It's power tripping.
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  Or it has nothing to do with the work-from-home dream and everything with the 18000 jobs they’re cutting.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- enos_feedler 4y ago
  I worked at the Googleplex pre pandemic. It was bustling. I quit during the pandemic but biked through it for fun. Ghost town. I still bike through and it’s still a ghost town. Office space went from being a problem to a burden.
perfecthjrjth 4y ago
Property Address: 1001 S Milpitas Blvd, Milpitas, California https://www.google.com/maps/place/1001+S+Milpitas+Blvd,+Milpitas,+CA+95035/@37.4191792,-121.8931441,15.51z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x808fcec8f1a5fe6b:0x7409cbe802759562!8m2!3d37.418303!4d-121.8923699 https://www.google.com/maps/place/1001+S+Milpitas+Blvd,+Milp...
oldstrangers 4y ago
For every company forcing a return to the office, there will always be the smaller company that can't pay as well offering fully remote roles. I'll gladly take a pay cut to never be confined to an office again.
- charlie0 4y ago
  This. If I really care about purchasing power, I'll take the lower salary and move to a lower cost area or country. I'm not going back to an office unless it's my dream job.
  - mvc 4y ago
    As someone who lives in a "lower-cost area", consider that the grass may not be greener on the other side. My sister just bought a place in the city. Tiny compared to mine up north. And almost as much. But if the next 10 years are like the last 10, she could likely sell hers and buy my whole street.
    - eYrKEC2 4y ago
      So, live in a shoebox in the city and then what? Completely sever all contact with your in-person social network and start from scratch in a place where you can live like a king? I know that's a choice some folks make, but it seems odd to me.
      - ed25519FUUU 4y ago
        Stay in the city while your existing friends group fractures and people slowly move away from you as their family grows.
        eYrKEC2 4y ago
        That's probably true. I just wouldn't wait to move out of the city for my shoebox to appreciate.
    - 4y ago
cheriot 4y ago
Sadly building offices in places that prohibit new housing will not make sense. Your staff will have a hellish commute and/or extremely high housing prices. The hardest possible sell to employees accustom to WFH. Love the Bay Area, but we've plucked the golden goose.
muzz 4y ago
The title now says "as Sales Growth Cools" instead of "as Return to Office Stalls"
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  It is my bad. Please see the source below[1]: [1]https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/amazon-milpitas-property-possible-sale-17744872.php https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/amazon-milpitas-propert...
btbuildem 4y ago
That's a bit of reassuring news, it's nice to see a tech giant forced by circumstances to pump the brakes / perhaps even reconsider the whole RTO thing.
at-fates-hands 4y ago
I work for a huge health care company. Throughout the early 2000's they were busy buying up multiple large commercial buildings to house all of their employees. Then Covid hit and we went through several iterations trying to get people back into the office. The company spent tens of millions renovating the majority of their buildings to open office concepts less than 18 months before Covid hit and was still in the middle of finishing several of the buildings when C19 hit - thus having people back in the office was a huge risk without cubes and people using "hoteling" and they immediately went to assigned areas and desks to try and get people to come back in. First it was in two week shifts of A and B with assigned seating. Clean, rotate, repeat. Then it was VP's who wanted everybody back in the office and wanted badge reports so they could go after the people not coming in. They got a metric TON of pushback from managers who were telling their people not to come in if they didn't feel safe. In the end, the executives relented and approved full-time telecommuting to a majority of the employees. The company has already sold off four of its buildings to out-state real estate companies and over the last year have been consolidating everybody down to one or two of the larger buildings. I've been about half and half. Its a good break to just to get out of the house once in a while and have lunch with the other devs who are essentially doing the same thing.
- ed25519FUUU 4y ago
  Ironic that they converted to open-office, one of the most-hated methods to organize a workspace. Gee I wonder why nobody wants to come in? Maybe if they built cubicles they’d get some people interested.
  - postalrat 4y ago
    Is open-office really hated more than working in endless hallways and doors? Almost like working in a hotel.
    - baggy_trough 4y ago
      Certainly by most anyone that needs to concentrate for a living.
gweinberg 4y ago
Did anyone else parse "Stalls" as a plural noun rather than a verb at first?
- barbazoo 4y ago
  I did and just assumed that that's how they make people work there now. I think that's what comes after open concept offices or whatever they call it.
- diggernet 4y ago
  Yes. Amazon is returning to office stalls. Which I interpret as workplaces that look like this: https://i1.wp.com/stablestyle.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Beautiful-airy-stall-fronts.jpg https://i1.wp.com/stablestyle.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04... Edit: On second thought, that pic is way too nice. It'd be an upgrade from my current cube. I was really imagining something more like this: https://i.pinimg.com/1200x/24/64/1b/24641b4dbede7e32232ebdab7a493046.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/1200x/24/64/1b/24641b4dbede7e32232ebdab...
- meindnoch 4y ago
  Wouldn't be too out of character for Amazon.
rootusrootus 4y ago
I'm so torn on RTO. I really miss working with my team. I don't miss commuting. I enjoy the flexibility WFH adds to my day.
- space_fountain 4y ago
  Yeah, these people who are so all in on remote work are a bit foreign to me. Before trying it I too thought it would be great, but I can see what it's done to company culture and my engagement with work. I'm sure there are people it's better for, but there are definite downsides especially if you aren't 40 with partner and kids
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    As someone in my 40s with kids, I'll say for sure that the only reason I've survived this WFH experience is because of that. The very few times I tried remote work when I was in my 20s, living alone, it made me stir crazy in a matter of days. But surviving is all I can say for it. I worked with people that I would call friends, who I haven't seen now in a couple years. I don't want someone to tell me they weren't really friends, either. They were.
    - sylens 4y ago
      This is what I don’t understand. What is keeping you from seeing them without being compelled into the same office together? I’ve had coworkers who were friends that I have not seen in an office since 2019, but we have made plans to meet for lunch on the weekend occasionally to compensate.
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        There are a couple of these friends that I do make time to go out for beer with. So I haven't lost all of them. It's just that there is a group of people that I think are more than coworkers, but are still activity-based friendships where the activity is work. We're in the same department, we work in the same space, on projects which are adjacent but not necessarily joined. Take the office environment away, and the relationships fade. Yes that means they don't have the same value as a close friendship. But I still feel the loss.
narrator 4y ago
>Amazon Is Selling Its 29-Acre Bay Area Property as Return to Office Stalls So you're telling me Amazon is trying to sell us on a new office concept where we work in stalls like we're horses? /didn't read the article
- GaryNumanVevo 4y ago
  I thought I was crazy when _my_ office started handing out feed bags to go around our necks
jahewson 4y ago
Looks like Bloomberg has invented a new reason why Amazon is selling this property. It's not RTO after all! who knew!? The title is now "Amazon to Sell Bay Area Office Complex as Sales Growth Cools".
dpcx 4y ago
Near the beginning of the pandemic (May/June '20) I interviewed with AWS, specifically in the Lambda space. Before even speaking with the hiring manager, I made it clear that I wasn't interested in relocation, but they pushed for it anyway. After I reiterated my statement, I was told that WFH wasn't an option, and they moved on to other candidates. I'm glad to hear they're coming to their senses.
Moissanite 4y ago
Doesn't make sense to me. $123M is a lot of money, but not to Amazon. Surely keeping the property as a long-term investment would make sense? It's not like California is suffering terminal decline. Perhaps it is the ongoing cost of keeping it, like the taxes?
inasio 4y ago
I wonder what's going to happen in the new Vancouver office. Amazon bought the old Post office building that spanned two half-blocks in downtown Vancouver and built two massive towers inside it. Seems hard to imagine they'll need all that real estate
jurassic 4y ago
FWIW, all the startups (series B-ish) I'm currently in talks with to join are full-remote, and I did not specifically set that as a criteria when choosing which roles to go for. I think smaller companies see office space as pure overhead. They don't have the sunk costs of these large companies that have invested hundreds of millions building out luxurious workspaces that are hard to justify without regular use and are hard to divest from given the glut of office space on the market.
jsz0 4y ago
People working from home for the first time over the last few years are still in the honeymoon period where it seems 100% positive with no downsides. After 10+ years of working remotely I can tell you it's not as great as it seems. First unless you have an active social life outside work you are setting yourself up for a life of extreme social isolation. Second when your boss and co-workers don't see you in human form often there is a tendency for them to start treating you like a stranger with less trust and empathy. Third your work/life balance will never be the same. First you will be guilty you're not working hard enough then you'll be resentful you're working too hard. In my experience hybrid is the ideal setup so you can maintain good human relationships with your co-workers.
- ed25519FUUU 4y ago
  Hybrid loses huge proximity benefits. Rather than living in a low COL/low tax area or close to family, you’re back paying through the nose for Bay Area housing.
  - rowanajmarshall 4y ago
    Although remote-heavy hybrid expands your reasonable commute distance quite a bit. a An hour-a-way commute is is pretty bad doing it every day, if you're only doing it once a week, or once a fortnight, it becomes a lot more bearable.
  - babypuncher 4y ago
    That's a good and a bad thing. Some people actually want to live in a high COL area. Ubiquitous WFH could mean many of us are stuck moving to rural towns when we'd prefer to live in big cities.
- babypuncher 4y ago
  Yeah for me it's been a mixed bag, for the exact reasons you specify. I've moved to a hybrid work environment. I go into the office twice a week, which helps with these issues tremendously. It also means that my employer has to keep paying salaries that are livable within driving distance of our headquarters (I live about 20 minutes away). My biggest fear about WFH is that employers will wise up and start only hiring people willing to live in the middle of nowhere because they can live just as comfortably on half the salary.
bradenb 4y ago
Officially, my employer has moved on to three common "in office" work days per week (T-Th). Unofficially, that's a goal and people still often work from home during those days. But it's nice to at least have a compromise. It isn't the one I'd prefer (1 or 2 days only), but it acknowledges that employees want to keep it, and similarly employees acknowledge that for our particular industry we do sometimes need in-office or in-lab time. It also allows employees to push back on any in-office meetings on non-common days per official policy.
ttul 4y ago
Before the Industrial Revolution, companies would farm out production tasks to individuals who would churn out work at home. As office work became less physical and more knowledge-based, companies forgot to go back to the old model that worked well before. The pandemic just reminded companies that working from home is a natural, efficient way to produce output when you don’t require special facilities or equipment that you don’t happen to have in your house.
squokko 4y ago
Remote work is going to do a real number on any US software engineering talent that's not extremely competent, and a big boon to engineers in Europe, Latin America, and to some extent India and China (although timezones make that a bit tough)
neilparikh 4y ago
> Dermody Properties LLC, a commercial real estate developer based in Reno, Nevada, is buying the property and will convert it into warehouse space Is more warehouse space really the most efficient/needed use for land in the Bay Area?
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Efficient as in benefit / (cost to deliver)? Yes, far and away. Efficient as in benefit / land used, maybe not, but definitely once you apply the filter of (achievable given capital costs). Though I can see why locals would prefer Amazon pay property tax and leave the property unused.

169 points by A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

> Amazon in October 2021 paid $123 million for the 29-acre property in Milpitas, California Talk about buying at the exact peak of the market. The cat is out of the proverbial bag for all these large tech employers. Doesn't matter if you are Amazon or Google or whoever else. Once people got a taste of WFH life they were never going back to the hour plus commutes, weird social structures and power dynamics, noisy environment, lack of privacy.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
I would like to be as optimistic as you are, but CEOs are clearly bent on returning to the old ways[1]( the gist of the article is:"it is not your decision to make"). [1]https://fortune.com/2023/01/20/work-from-home-remote-work-morgan-stanley-ceo-james-gorman-not-employee-choice/ https://fortune.com/2023/01/20/work-from-home-remote-work-mo...
- TillE 4y ago
  The long-term financial benefits of remote work are likely to outweigh the emotional / speculative resistance from certain leaders.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    I'm not so sure. Companies don't really behave as "rational economic actors" anymore than people do.
- jensensbutton 4y ago
  Agree. I worry that many companies will maintain notional "support" for remote roles, but it will revert to a two tiered system where in-office workers have better career growth.
- Swizec 4y ago
  > "it is not your decision to make" Sure it is! Free market competition was made for exactly this sort of scenario. As long as some employers offer WFH, workers can make the choice. If we put a $$ figure on WFH and this makes salaries cheaper for employers that offer WFH, they may eventually win out the market. Saying "employees can't choose to WFH" may eventually be seen as silly of a decision as saying "we only buy inputs from countries with the highest import tariffs". Let the market decide. It's going to either way. Say I'm a company saving $50,000,000/year on office leases. That's a lot of room for higher salaries and nicer bonuses for my employees (including execs). And I still get to keep a huge chunk as extra profit. Long-term what sounds better to the board: A CEO who says "I saved us 50mil" or a CEO that says "I lost 30% of our workforce but we got them all back to the office! Btw I need another 50mil for the office"
  - grapescheesee 4y ago
    More so, I cut and saved 50,000,000. What salary increase allotments should go to increase in pay? I'll just say we saved n roles with the move.
- pklausler 4y ago
  "it is not your decision to make" I think that it is, actually.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  CEOs are clearly bent on returning to the old ways My company was like that. It started firing people who didn't return to work. Then someone noticed that there weren't enough people left in certain departments to get things done. Now the company is 90% remote, and selling some of its office buildings. The only people in the office are those who choose to be, and those whose jobs require them to be hands-on.
ojbyrne 4y ago
I think “As Return to Office Stalls” is a bit of wishful thinking. 18000 employees gone, probably more to go, trimming real estate is just another cost cutting measure.
- chrsig 4y ago
  I'd been reading this as returning to Office Stalls, comparing the open office to a barn. Or bathroom. Took me a moment to parse it properly that returning to the office is stalling.
k__ 4y ago
Good point on the weird social structures. I always found dating in the workplace kinda alarming, especially when people would date their subordinates.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  That's a reason to ask for immediate relocation within the company to ensure your love interest isn't in your chain of command/review and vv. Many companies have pretty explicit rules around this. https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/how-google-facebook-and-amazon-handle-office-romances/308983 https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/how-google-f... Just a couple of things you might open the company (and yourself) up to (from the POV of the person in the supervisor role): - a sexual harassment lawsuit in case things end on a bad note - colleagues complaining (possibly rightfully so) about favoritism - inability to set policy because you yourself violate policy - a potentially very toxic situation in case the relationship ends and you have to continue to work together It doesn't really matter whether the person in the supervisor role is a male or a female, either way it looks bad and will likely lead to trouble. And for an encore: between founders the risks (but also some of the potential rewards) are even higher. I've seen a start-up that was doing fantastically well end up in shreds because the co-founders got romantically involved, got married, had kids and then divorced, the divorce pretty much killed the company.
  - carlosjobim 4y ago
    The rest of the world laughs at the American prudes and their extreme fear of letting romance and life itself come in the way of the profit interests of their 85 year old corporate lords. I don't mean to insult, but please look at your reasoning and think about if it is healthy? Is it appropriate for an adult to talk about "lead to trouble". Kids get in trouble, grown ups don't. Oh, it is so unprofessional to let the wonder of being alive ever interrupt the demands of efficiency and a steady stream of taxes to the IRS. Imagine the nerve of that co-founder who destroyed the startup for unprofessional things like having children! My accountant will make a very stern frown when I tell him. Please corporate working Americans if you read this: It is okay to have romance in the workplace! Life is too short. All the rest of the world does this and knows it is natural and healthy.
jjtheblunt 4y ago
mostly agree, but for some work at a workplace was more coherent and peaceful than working from home
wildrhythms 4y ago
Unpaid commute... I know lots of folks in the Bay area spending hours per day commuting (and NOVA/DC area, if you live there you know). I'm not sure why it isn't considered stolen wages.
- sneak 4y ago
  Stealing implies unilateral and without consent. People opt-in to jobs and the associated commutes completely voluntarily and consensually.
  - itake 4y ago
    Also, your commute time is your commute time. Your employer does not control how you go to your work nor what you do while traveling. Your employer also doesn't choose your housing.
    - bcrosby95 4y ago
      > Also, your commute time is your commute time. Your employer does not control how you go to your work nor what you do while traveling. Not necessarily true. Some employers offer company buses to/from certain cities, with wifi, and they count that as working hours.
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        > Some employers offer company buses to/from certain cities, with wifi, and they count that as working hours. Yes, effectively your company is choosing to send your worksite to (a place closer to) your home, so that you can start working sooner and stop working later.
    - Teever 4y ago
      I bet that if employers were legally mandated to pay their workers for the time they commute that those employers would suddenly appreciate the importance of effective public transit and increased urban density.
barbazoo 4y ago
Just a couple of hours ago I was kicking off a build that would take about 20 minutes. It's a slow sprint so I went and put the laundry in the dryer and then had a quick coffee with my partner before going back to work just in time for the build to finish. It's heaven. This is the best work life balance I've ever had in my career and I love it. I can't think of anything right now that would get me back into an office in the city.
- Breza 4y ago
  I feel the exact same way, I run a data science team from my basement. At 4:30, I walk to my daughter's daycare and we play together in the time that I used to spend commuting. I never want to go back to an office.
- kylehotchkiss 4y ago
  sounds like you need to run your build on a m2 max!
- ttul 4y ago
  How about a $10K pay cut?
  - lsaferite 4y ago
    You could easily spend 10k on commuting. That's only about $40/day. Between fuel, maint, tolls, and maybe food, you can easily bust $40/day in the Bay Area. That's not even considering the _time_ spent commuting.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      And the morbidity/mortality risk. Driving is the most risky thing most Americans do.
      - soiler 4y ago
        I already hated cars, but since I began WFH I've become really averse to driving unnecessarily. Getting killed by a car is one of the absolute stupidest ways to go. My dad smoked all his life and still made it past 60; my brain could hit pavement tonight if I run out of milk. And the worst part is that it wouldn't have to be my fault at all, and it wouldn't even require somebody to do something extraordinarily reckless. Driving too fast through my neighborhood is typical, because it happens to offer the shortest path from A to B for many people, and the road is wide thanks to bike lanes that I have never seen bikes in (because: cars drive too fast). I'll cut myself off here before this becomes an overly long screed.
nostrademons 4y ago
Edifice complex: http://www.ipglossary.com/glossary/edifice-complex/#.Y9hFf-wa6Lo http://www.ipglossary.com/glossary/edifice-complex/#.Y9hFf-w... As I was visiting the new space-age buildings at Meta, Google, and Apple in 2021 (and reading about Amazon's new HQ), I was thinking "Wow, all 4 are building new headquarters. I wonder if this means we're at the high point of Big Tech." Seems like that was prescient.
notyourwork 4y ago
> hour plus commutes Commuting is my biggest complaint with forcefully going back to office. If I have a bus or train that requires no brain power for me to get to office, I am more tolerable to it. Perhaps this will be a kick in the improve US public transportation for the masses? It is the only silver lining I can think of here.
- monksy 4y ago
  Just wait till you get a mayor who has decided to kill public transit. Trains/buses don't show up, they're packed with homeless using it as a bed and a toliet, and gangsters who smoke it up. On top of that they're not running the schedule, but "keeping the schedule intact". That's what's been happening in Chicago. (Thanks Lori "we're a car city" Lightfoot)
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    I'm not sure you can blame Lightfoot for that. I've lived in Chicago on-and-off for 30 years -- never with a car -- and the CTA has always been like that. That's why some L cars have a "hobo corner," and why there's (was?) a homeless shelter at the O'Hare airport Blue Line station. The CTA may be smelly, but it beats getting shot at by thugs on the expressways.
    - monksy 4y ago
      It was never this bad. It's gotten worse over the last 2 years. https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-cta-riders-on-delays-safety-filth-smoking/00289237-4e60-4d9a-b355-8923fe433449 https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-cta-riders-on-delays-sa... Also, traffic has gotten a heck of a lot worse as well. Also the homeless have moved into the airport. [At the baggage areas,https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/zm4emb/homeless_people_at_ohare/ https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/zm4emb/homeless_pe... ]
- CuriousCosmic 4y ago
  This is really the kicker. I would have no problem commuting 1+ hours into the city for work if I could actually make use of my time. I can't do anything while driving beyond listen to music. An audiobook is either going to get my full attention and I'll be distracted while driving or I'm going to miss 30-40% of the book trying to stay alert on the road. At that point I might as well just not listen to the audio book at all if I care about the contents. However if I could just take trains/buses into the city, provided they actually run regularly (i.e. they don't turn a 40 minute drive into 6 hours), I'd have 1-4 hours a day I could allocate to reading, listening to an audio book, watching TV, playing a game, working on personal projects, or continuing my education. Sure it might be a long commute but I could do the things that I'd otherwise barely have time for so it's not really lost time. Doubly so if I could actually do work on a company device while I commute (no surprise team meetings if you aren't actually on site yet meaning work would actually get done).
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
> Once people got a taste of WFH life they were never going back to the hour plus commutes, weird social structures and power dynamics, noisy environment, lack of privacy. Unless managers/directors/VPs/SVPs/C-suite executives get even more strict and companies around the country band together to not offer remote work closing any/all openings, forcing people back to work. 3 options: 1. get lucky enough to find a job that allows work from home 2. be unemployed 3. suck it up and work for a company that demands you work in the office unless you can find an alternative (aka a remote job) if you can't find a remote job, you're out of luck. whether this breaks down in reality (aka... what % of open jobs right now after all of these layoffs are in person vs hybrid vs full remote) is it a fairytale dream that there's a ton of remote jobs out there? especially with microsoft + google + apple + amazon being relatively against remote work.
- noddingham 4y ago
  No, it isn't a fairy tale. I think because you're posting on HN you're only thinking about the popular stocks first. BLS says there's just shy of four million IT jobs out there. I'd say your chances are pretty good you can find one that doesn't have a shitty commute and/or allows remote/WFH options.
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    The number of them fully remote has been dropping fast, at least based on what I see in my feed on various job sites like indeed, and linked in Hybrid seems to be more popular with 2 or 3 days of WFH Even the fully remote alot of them are requiring people to be with in 1-2 hour of a company office signalling that maybe they will be going hybrid as well
- ghotli 4y ago
  Don't worry about it, seriously. If you'd like to work remotely then do so. It took a little bit of work a decade back to find a great paying remote job. These days it's so much more simple even with some of the largest tech employers forcing people back into the office. I'd argue you don't want to work somewhere that "does remote since the pandemic". Apply at remote-only companies and if you're employable they'll find you a spot since they're dealing with brain drain too. Hot take, but I've done this remote engineer thing for a long time. Feels like we're in the golden age of remote work compared to my experiences a decade back. Find the position in the world wherein you both enjoy your work and how/where you do it. It's out there, guaranteed.
deleted 4y ago
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somethoughts 4y ago
When I read the article it seems to be more about going from "Everything via Amazon Prime" to "Return to Physical Stores" versus going from "WFH" to "Return to Office"? "Amazon in October 2021 paid $123 million for the 29-acre property in Milpitas, California, part of a strategy to lock up real estate near big cities that could be used for new warehouses and facilitate future growth." Seems kind of crazy to buy an office complex and raze it for an Amazon warehouse/distribution center.
NotYourLawyer 4y ago
If they can outsource your job to your home, they can outsource it to India.
remote_phone 4y ago
Both me and my wife hate working from home. She is forced to but I elected to go into the office once it was available. The work life balance is better, sure, but my productivity plummeted and I was stuck doing nothing for hours every day waiting to hear back from coworkers. The stress involved especially during a recession is more than the benefit of no commute for me.
ibejoeb 4y ago
Maybe we'll collectively consider return to "office" again, as in a real office. Nobody wants to be in a bullpen, no matter how clever the PR is around open-plan. We all know it's just being too cheap to build walls.
ClassyJacket 4y ago
Making people work in the office is cruelty for the sake of cruelty. I will not accept any job in future that makes me go into an office. There's no reason for it. It's power tripping.
tinus_hn 4y ago
Or it has nothing to do with the work-from-home dream and everything with the 18000 jobs they’re cutting.
deleted 4y ago
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enos_feedler 4y ago
I worked at the Googleplex pre pandemic. It was bustling. I quit during the pandemic but biked through it for fun. Ghost town. I still bike through and it’s still a ghost town. Office space went from being a problem to a burden.

perfecthjrjth 4y ago

Property Address: 1001 S Milpitas Blvd, Milpitas, California https://www.google.com/maps/place/1001+S+Milpitas+Blvd,+Milpitas,+CA+95035/@37.4191792,-121.8931441,15.51z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x808fcec8f1a5fe6b:0x7409cbe802759562!8m2!3d37.418303!4d-121.8923699 https://www.google.com/maps/place/1001+S+Milpitas+Blvd,+Milp...

oldstrangers 4y ago

For every company forcing a return to the office, there will always be the smaller company that can't pay as well offering fully remote roles. I'll gladly take a pay cut to never be confined to an office again.

charlie0 4y ago
This. If I really care about purchasing power, I'll take the lower salary and move to a lower cost area or country. I'm not going back to an office unless it's my dream job.
- mvc 4y ago
  As someone who lives in a "lower-cost area", consider that the grass may not be greener on the other side. My sister just bought a place in the city. Tiny compared to mine up north. And almost as much. But if the next 10 years are like the last 10, she could likely sell hers and buy my whole street.
  - eYrKEC2 4y ago
    So, live in a shoebox in the city and then what? Completely sever all contact with your in-person social network and start from scratch in a place where you can live like a king? I know that's a choice some folks make, but it seems odd to me.
    - ed25519FUUU 4y ago
      Stay in the city while your existing friends group fractures and people slowly move away from you as their family grows.
      - eYrKEC2 4y ago
        That's probably true. I just wouldn't wait to move out of the city for my shoebox to appreciate.
  - 4y ago

cheriot 4y ago

Sadly building offices in places that prohibit new housing will not make sense. Your staff will have a hellish commute and/or extremely high housing prices. The hardest possible sell to employees accustom to WFH. Love the Bay Area, but we've plucked the golden goose.

muzz 4y ago

The title now says "as Sales Growth Cools" instead of "as Return to Office Stalls"

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
It is my bad. Please see the source below[1]: [1]https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/amazon-milpitas-property-possible-sale-17744872.php https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/amazon-milpitas-propert...

btbuildem 4y ago

That's a bit of reassuring news, it's nice to see a tech giant forced by circumstances to pump the brakes / perhaps even reconsider the whole RTO thing.

at-fates-hands 4y ago

I work for a huge health care company. Throughout the early 2000's they were busy buying up multiple large commercial buildings to house all of their employees. Then Covid hit and we went through several iterations trying to get people back into the office. The company spent tens of millions renovating the majority of their buildings to open office concepts less than 18 months before Covid hit and was still in the middle of finishing several of the buildings when C19 hit - thus having people back in the office was a huge risk without cubes and people using "hoteling" and they immediately went to assigned areas and desks to try and get people to come back in. First it was in two week shifts of A and B with assigned seating. Clean, rotate, repeat. Then it was VP's who wanted everybody back in the office and wanted badge reports so they could go after the people not coming in. They got a metric TON of pushback from managers who were telling their people not to come in if they didn't feel safe. In the end, the executives relented and approved full-time telecommuting to a majority of the employees. The company has already sold off four of its buildings to out-state real estate companies and over the last year have been consolidating everybody down to one or two of the larger buildings. I've been about half and half. Its a good break to just to get out of the house once in a while and have lunch with the other devs who are essentially doing the same thing.

ed25519FUUU 4y ago
Ironic that they converted to open-office, one of the most-hated methods to organize a workspace. Gee I wonder why nobody wants to come in? Maybe if they built cubicles they’d get some people interested.
- postalrat 4y ago
  Is open-office really hated more than working in endless hallways and doors? Almost like working in a hotel.
  - baggy_trough 4y ago
    Certainly by most anyone that needs to concentrate for a living.

gweinberg 4y ago

Did anyone else parse "Stalls" as a plural noun rather than a verb at first?

barbazoo 4y ago
I did and just assumed that that's how they make people work there now. I think that's what comes after open concept offices or whatever they call it.
diggernet 4y ago
Yes. Amazon is returning to office stalls. Which I interpret as workplaces that look like this: https://i1.wp.com/stablestyle.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Beautiful-airy-stall-fronts.jpg https://i1.wp.com/stablestyle.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04... Edit: On second thought, that pic is way too nice. It'd be an upgrade from my current cube. I was really imagining something more like this: https://i.pinimg.com/1200x/24/64/1b/24641b4dbede7e32232ebdab7a493046.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/1200x/24/64/1b/24641b4dbede7e32232ebdab...
meindnoch 4y ago
Wouldn't be too out of character for Amazon.

rootusrootus 4y ago

I'm so torn on RTO. I really miss working with my team. I don't miss commuting. I enjoy the flexibility WFH adds to my day.

space_fountain 4y ago
Yeah, these people who are so all in on remote work are a bit foreign to me. Before trying it I too thought it would be great, but I can see what it's done to company culture and my engagement with work. I'm sure there are people it's better for, but there are definite downsides especially if you aren't 40 with partner and kids
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  As someone in my 40s with kids, I'll say for sure that the only reason I've survived this WFH experience is because of that. The very few times I tried remote work when I was in my 20s, living alone, it made me stir crazy in a matter of days. But surviving is all I can say for it. I worked with people that I would call friends, who I haven't seen now in a couple years. I don't want someone to tell me they weren't really friends, either. They were.
  - sylens 4y ago
    This is what I don’t understand. What is keeping you from seeing them without being compelled into the same office together? I’ve had coworkers who were friends that I have not seen in an office since 2019, but we have made plans to meet for lunch on the weekend occasionally to compensate.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      There are a couple of these friends that I do make time to go out for beer with. So I haven't lost all of them. It's just that there is a group of people that I think are more than coworkers, but are still activity-based friendships where the activity is work. We're in the same department, we work in the same space, on projects which are adjacent but not necessarily joined. Take the office environment away, and the relationships fade. Yes that means they don't have the same value as a close friendship. But I still feel the loss.

narrator 4y ago

>Amazon Is Selling Its 29-Acre Bay Area Property as Return to Office Stalls So you're telling me Amazon is trying to sell us on a new office concept where we work in stalls like we're horses? /didn't read the article

GaryNumanVevo 4y ago
I thought I was crazy when _my_ office started handing out feed bags to go around our necks

jahewson 4y ago

Looks like Bloomberg has invented a new reason why Amazon is selling this property. It's not RTO after all! who knew!? The title is now "Amazon to Sell Bay Area Office Complex as Sales Growth Cools".

dpcx 4y ago

Near the beginning of the pandemic (May/June '20) I interviewed with AWS, specifically in the Lambda space. Before even speaking with the hiring manager, I made it clear that I wasn't interested in relocation, but they pushed for it anyway. After I reiterated my statement, I was told that WFH wasn't an option, and they moved on to other candidates. I'm glad to hear they're coming to their senses.

Moissanite 4y ago

Doesn't make sense to me. $123M is a lot of money, but not to Amazon. Surely keeping the property as a long-term investment would make sense? It's not like California is suffering terminal decline. Perhaps it is the ongoing cost of keeping it, like the taxes?

inasio 4y ago

I wonder what's going to happen in the new Vancouver office. Amazon bought the old Post office building that spanned two half-blocks in downtown Vancouver and built two massive towers inside it. Seems hard to imagine they'll need all that real estate

jurassic 4y ago

FWIW, all the startups (series B-ish) I'm currently in talks with to join are full-remote, and I did not specifically set that as a criteria when choosing which roles to go for. I think smaller companies see office space as pure overhead. They don't have the sunk costs of these large companies that have invested hundreds of millions building out luxurious workspaces that are hard to justify without regular use and are hard to divest from given the glut of office space on the market.

jsz0 4y ago

People working from home for the first time over the last few years are still in the honeymoon period where it seems 100% positive with no downsides. After 10+ years of working remotely I can tell you it's not as great as it seems. First unless you have an active social life outside work you are setting yourself up for a life of extreme social isolation. Second when your boss and co-workers don't see you in human form often there is a tendency for them to start treating you like a stranger with less trust and empathy. Third your work/life balance will never be the same. First you will be guilty you're not working hard enough then you'll be resentful you're working too hard. In my experience hybrid is the ideal setup so you can maintain good human relationships with your co-workers.

ed25519FUUU 4y ago
Hybrid loses huge proximity benefits. Rather than living in a low COL/low tax area or close to family, you’re back paying through the nose for Bay Area housing.
- rowanajmarshall 4y ago
  Although remote-heavy hybrid expands your reasonable commute distance quite a bit. a An hour-a-way commute is is pretty bad doing it every day, if you're only doing it once a week, or once a fortnight, it becomes a lot more bearable.
- babypuncher 4y ago
  That's a good and a bad thing. Some people actually want to live in a high COL area. Ubiquitous WFH could mean many of us are stuck moving to rural towns when we'd prefer to live in big cities.
babypuncher 4y ago
Yeah for me it's been a mixed bag, for the exact reasons you specify. I've moved to a hybrid work environment. I go into the office twice a week, which helps with these issues tremendously. It also means that my employer has to keep paying salaries that are livable within driving distance of our headquarters (I live about 20 minutes away). My biggest fear about WFH is that employers will wise up and start only hiring people willing to live in the middle of nowhere because they can live just as comfortably on half the salary.

bradenb 4y ago

Officially, my employer has moved on to three common "in office" work days per week (T-Th). Unofficially, that's a goal and people still often work from home during those days. But it's nice to at least have a compromise. It isn't the one I'd prefer (1 or 2 days only), but it acknowledges that employees want to keep it, and similarly employees acknowledge that for our particular industry we do sometimes need in-office or in-lab time. It also allows employees to push back on any in-office meetings on non-common days per official policy.

ttul 4y ago

Before the Industrial Revolution, companies would farm out production tasks to individuals who would churn out work at home. As office work became less physical and more knowledge-based, companies forgot to go back to the old model that worked well before. The pandemic just reminded companies that working from home is a natural, efficient way to produce output when you don’t require special facilities or equipment that you don’t happen to have in your house.

squokko 4y ago

Remote work is going to do a real number on any US software engineering talent that's not extremely competent, and a big boon to engineers in Europe, Latin America, and to some extent India and China (although timezones make that a bit tough)

neilparikh 4y ago

> Dermody Properties LLC, a commercial real estate developer based in Reno, Nevada, is buying the property and will convert it into warehouse space Is more warehouse space really the most efficient/needed use for land in the Bay Area?

renewiltord 4y ago
Efficient as in benefit / (cost to deliver)? Yes, far and away. Efficient as in benefit / land used, maybe not, but definitely once you apply the filter of (achievable given capital costs). Though I can see why locals would prefer Amazon pay property tax and leave the property unused.