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Amazon Andy Jassy shouldn’t make RTO decisions in echo chamber of CEOs feelings

150 points by pg_1234 3y ago

archo 3y ago
https://archive.is/eebu2 https://archive.is/eebu2
foobarian 3y ago
Unless it's a thinly veiled layoff, in which case it makes perfect sense.
- flaminHotSpeedo 3y ago
  Or if there's some other ulterior motive like promises to local government
  - pkaye 3y ago
    I think its a combination of over hiring over the pandemic, higher interest rates and an opportunity to reduce salaries for future hires.
    - ochoseis 3y ago
      Reduced salaries for future tech workers is going to be a double whammy because I doubt tech stocks are going to continue growing like they did in the past decade. It really boosts your income when your equity doubles or triples in value during the vesting period.
- ryaneager 3y ago
  So people should be screwed out of their severance? Just lay people off, you hired them be an adult and fire them.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    That's the whole point. Why fire people and pay them severance when you can get them to quit instead? Of course, you're going to lose the people with talent who can find other jobs - and retain the ones who can't. But seems like a trade they are eager to make.
    - conductr 3y ago
      They are well versed at meat grinder operations.
    - aeyes 3y ago
      Why even lay off with mutual agreements paying severance? Just fire people and deal with the consequences.
      - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
        > Why even lay off with mutual agreements paying severance? PR > Just fire people and deal with the consequences. Or why not reduce headcount and not deal with the consequences? That's what they're trying to do. Everyone has been bitter of tech workers for the better part of a decade. You're not going to lose points with the public for treating tech workers like normal workers.
      - rdtsc 3y ago
        Why deal with the consequences when they don’t have to?
    - alfalfasprout 3y ago
      Yeah, the problem is the people most willing to just leave are the ones that can get something else reasonably fast (which end up being your better employees). AWS has been in decline in terms of quality for years now. They aren't innovating well and even higher turnover will only make things worse. Notice how Amazon is really far behind in LLMs despite having so many research scientists on staff.
  - throwawaysleep 3y ago
- Abroszka 3y ago
  I don't think that makes sense. You can just go back and not work. Learn a new skill or something while in the office. You basically fire people who physically can't come back or people who are not afraid of losing their job. You probably don't want to fire based on that.
eastbayjake 3y ago
Was expecting this to be about AWS's Recovery Time Objectives!
politician 3y ago
It was explained to me by local non-profit folks in the know that Amazon's RTO decisions need to be understood in the context of downtown Seattle real estate politics. Amazon brings a lot of people downtown -- fueling local businesses -- and as a consequence the city council provides Amazon a huge amount of leeway and power -- even siding with Amazon against the community. Consequently, if Amazon doesn't continue to publicly advocate for RTO, then the city council will have no reason to continue with the red carpet treatment which, concretely, means increased taxation and compliance requirements. So, there is a significant game theory component to Amazon's RTO position that can't be discussed publicly.
- sharemywin 3y ago
  Plus, it's hard for execs to lie to your face over a recorded zoom call. I'm sorry I mean be wrong about the details.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  I imagine Amazon could downsize their downtown Seattle footprint to match their current needs, face increased taxes, and still come out ahead. This seems like mostly an attrition play. The capital class also despises the labor class. I wouldn't down-play the pure spite motive, either.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    These sort of red carpets go far beyond taxation. Things like some executives wife gets pulled over drunk and the police give her a ride home and a warning. The son gets caught holding and the case disappears. Homeless people in their neighborhood get told to move along to your neighborhood. That sort of thing.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
      That's basic inequality. Amazon execs will remain rich regardless of whether Amazon has a higher city tax bill.
captainkrtek 3y ago
Either way, they’re getting what they asked for: either folks back in the office with poor morale or resignations. Has reached a new level of low morale and distrust in leadership.
Racing0461 3y ago
RTO is filled with ulterior motives. Layoffs by another name, local city government want their tax base back, Real estate companies (not mom and pop stuff, real holding companies with reits etc) want to keep real estate from "crashing", ny/ca/ma type states don't want their white collar workers moving to low tax states and working from there , middle managers want to be seen and "preside over their kindgom" etc. The only group not benefitting from RTO are the actual workers.
- jzb 3y ago
  I'd add that underlying all that / in addition to that is the fear that people aren't putting their jobs first. That's what drove all the "quiet quitting" bullshit. The pandemic made people stop and take stock of their lives. A lot of people realized that they were putting work first and life is too fucking short to put everything else second to work. The tech layoffs have further emphasized the futility of putting work first. You might have put your career first but your employer sure as shit wasn't putting you first. Why live far from the rest of your family in a high cost-of-living area to have your life dominated by work if BigCorp is just going to throw you overboard at the first sign of a dip in profits? Not even a cut to save the business, just a cut to ensure that activist shareholders and top-line execs preserve obscene profits, bonuses, and salaries. RTO is there to remind you that they control your life, right down to where you live. Be thankful to have a job or they'll take it away from you and your health insurance, too.
  - borroka 3y ago
    RTO is there to remind you that despite claims of talent shortages and after taking into account the fact that a substantial portion of the workforce is okay with returning to the office, for many companies the supply of talent is greater than the demand for talent.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      It is more convenient to attempt to unionize in person I suppose.
imoreno 3y ago
But he will.
gumby 3y ago
All these companies have leases burning a monthly hole in their pockets. So I guess they figure they should get people into those buildings. It's a foolish sunk cost fallacy.
- LanceH 3y ago
  A more savvy (or less short term) take is that these places are able to negotiate favorable leases right now. Once office space fills up again, those prices will go up again. I think the real reason lies between "butts in seats" and layoffs. I also feel like there is a class of management that feels good about themselves by having subordinates observe them with all the trappings of their office. These are the people that want a dress code and spend money to look good at work even if nobody ever sees a customer. They have to have the bigger office -- not out of need -- to demonstrate their position. Bigger desk. They might have a better computer than developers even though they never use anything more taxing that Excel (this happened a lot more 20 years ago, less today). These people want to return to office, otherwise nobody knows how much they are in charge of.
- washywashy 3y ago
  Companies also get tax incentives based how many butts are in seats. So, it’s not just a sunk cost fallacy at play here
finitestateuni 3y ago
Return To Office in early 2023 caused many people hired during the pandemic to uproot their family and move closer to their assigned office. Some of these folks are now being told that the office they moved closer to is not a “Hub” for their organization and that they now need to Relocate To Hub. Most engineering teams will not be colocated even after this relocation as there a multiple hubs. There is a strong belief that Amazon will have a 5 days in office policy starting after the holidays and further Relocate To Team initiatives. The delay is to mitigate the risk of attrition affecting Peak and to get people to move before they’re told they need to be in the office 5 days (sunk cost). A textbook lesson in how to boil a frog courtesy of McKinsey. Hopefully customers enjoy the taste of boiled frogs.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- DebtDeflation 3y ago
  >There is a strong belief that Amazon will have a 5 days in office policy starting after the holidays It's not just a belief and it's not just Amazon. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that "mandatory 3 days/wk RTO" will quickly morph to "recommended 5 days/wk RTO" which will then morph to "mandatory 5 days/wk RTO". The endgame is very much a return to status quo ante, i.e. full time in office; hybrid was always intended to be transitory despite the messaging.
hoppersoft 3y ago
Andy Jassy is showing 1M+ Amazon employees that Amazon has become a "Day 2" company.
- rescbr 3y ago
  That’s what I wrote on my farewell email - just a little more corporate-speaky :)
costanzaDynasty 3y ago
Do what ever you want CEO's but don't be surprised when you have to bend over backwards for talent in other ways while advanced economies populations get smaller every generation and the up and coming areas need to be remote. But don't get it twisted, everyone sees through your HR cornballs pretending a food truck coming by once a week is worth a 2 hour commute everyday.
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  > and the up and coming areas need to be remote. Looking around the world, all the up and coming areas are mega-metro areas from Tokyo to Bangalore and from Sao Paulo to Shanghai. Or are you generalizing from a tiny handful of Americans who may be going to midwest / rockies after Covid?
  - costanzaDynasty 3y ago
    Japan and China are not up and coming, they have worse demographics decline in their future than America. Vietnam is up and coming. You will need remote as a part of your Megacorp. Driving from the suburbs in most American areas to a city is an hour each way.
AlbertCory 3y ago
Not one person here even admits the possibility that some WFH people are not really working. Or at least Jassy believes that. Marissa Mayer ended WFH at Yahoo for exactly that reason: https://money.cnn.com/2013/02/25/technology/yahoo-work-from-home/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2013/02/25/technology/yahoo-work-from-... If you're CEO of a company that's shitty to work for, you have to suspect that everyone except the middle managers and suckups is just phoning it in. Literally. Edit: all you people taking issue with this are just preaching to the converted (each other). I'm talking about what CEOs think, not what actually is.
- baq 3y ago
  As if people actually work in the office. Please.
  - jfghi 3y ago
    The amount of 2 hour birthday lunches people get dragged to after in-person meetings not even relevant to their job is off the charts wasteful.
- jnwatson 3y ago
  Many, many folks that come into the office are not really working. WFH didn't change that.
  - geodel 3y ago
    Yeah, but they get hassled by RTO, so some win for employer.
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  This is bullshit. If you can get away with "not really working" remotely, you will also get away with "not really working" in the office.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  You have never seen hours long discussions of Game of Thrones, Bachelor, sports, etc? Professional water cooler jockeys who transit from conversation to conversation to eat up the majority of work hours? I once read a claim that all work is done by the square root of the total company head count. Honestly, that does not feel too far off from reality.
nxobject 3y ago
I'll chip my vote in for "stealth layoff". Phrasing research in terms of "why do you prefer hybrid work over 'fully remote'?" is misrepresenting what's under debate – mandatory RTO policies.
- burgos_thrw 3y ago
  So the amount of the people that report internally that they were given 30 days to relocate or to "voluntary resign" makes this very plausible. Now, I have been called from several competitors to leave AWS for the couple of years, but I was happy with the company, projects, prospects, etc. The clusterf*ck of decisions the company made in the past several months made me finally reach out to them when the RTO was announced, and I finally quit. I am going to work from the office (hybrid) on the next job, but at least I'm not going to work for Amazon. And that sparks joy.
say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
What is the sentiment of the investment community? Researchers covering Amazon and majority shareholders influence the decisions that Jassy is making. He's not taking a hard line just because he's a tough guy who doesn't care about employees. Focus on the situation.
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  Ooh - nice observation! Large investors are motivated to carefully examine the issue, with a singular focus on the company's performance w.r.t. their fund's goals. Presumably those fund managers are somewhat dispassionate about the managements' and employees' takes on the topic, excepting for how they'll affect the company performance.
- mr_tristan 3y ago
  Well, as an employee of Salesforce, I witnessed operating margin goals of activist investors drive a layoff this year. (And Salesforce just met those goals last week.) Part of me wonders if that's just broad inflationary concerns and uncertainty about the world economy, pushing for profits over everything else. Really seems short-sighted, but, so did the "hire everything that breathes" era in the 2010s, too.
o1y32 3y ago
My company's CEO used words no other than "we believe collaboration is better in-person" to justify forcing everyone to work in the office three days a week. The usual "revitalize downtown" or "support local business" argument doesn't even apply in our case because company is on a highway. You know this decision is not based on any concrete data but purely on the investment in those useless buildings and wanting to force people out.
- phone8675309 3y ago
  I have never had an in-person joint whiteboard session that was actually productive. I have had several virtual whiteboard sessions that were very productive (thanks cheap graphics tablets!).
  - CoastalCoder 3y ago
    Just a data point, but my experience has been exactly the opposite of yours. And I say this as someone who invested a lot of time and political capital trying to find good (and within constraints) virtual whiteboard solutions.
    - baq 3y ago
      I haven’t found a good one either but imagine iPads with pencils might just be close enough. Haven’t tried though, sounds expensive.
      - o1y32 3y ago
        A base model iPad + Apple Pencil 1 offsets about $400 in MSRP. A more decent setup would be iPad Air + Apple Pencil 2 for $650. And of course there are a ton of software that helps prototyping or organizing ideas collaboratively, online. If any company actually cares about collaboration, they should give every employee a set of these. They cost a fraction of a developer's work laptop and are negligible compared to their salary. There is hardly anything that can't be done online. But of course companies are not going to do that. They are going to instead ask you to drive one hour to the office and pay for the gas on your own money, then write on whiteboard in real buildings so that the money wasted on the lease is worth something.
tracerbulletx 3y ago
The most annoying part about all of this is how smug and proud some of these companies were about announcing that they were remote first and hiring all of these people on promises of being "all in" on a distributed remote workforce which they saw as the future. I get that everyone likes to be able to change their mind at any time, but commitments that affect people's lives need to be honored if there can ever be any sort of working trust.
jatins 3y ago
Unfortunately Amazon is one of those companies which can get away with this. Moats so strong that they could completely fuck over (as they have been doing for a while) their employees but will still end up okay as a business. CEOs with moats as thin as a razor will see this as correlation though and burn their companies to ground forcing their employees to RTO.
CoastalCoder 3y ago
Is the "80% regret" number misleading? From the Fortune article: > A whopping 80% of bosses reported that they regret their initial return-to-office decisions, according to new research from Envoy, which interviewed more than 1,000 U.S. company executives and workplace managers who work in person at least one day per week. But it's not clear if 80% of the executives... (a) regretted reducing WFH at all, or (b) regretted certain details of how they tweaked the policy, e.g. how they communicated it, the number of in-office days required, etc., or (c) were unhappy about their data's availability, quality, or freshness. Unfortunately the report from Envoy [0] isn't much clearer: > 80% of executives say they would have approached their company’s return-to-office strategy differently if they had access to workplace data to inform their decision-making. This is one case where seeing the original questionnaire would be helpful, but I'm not finding a link to it. So it's really hard to decide if Envoy's conclusions are justified. [0] https://envoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Workplace_Data_Report_Final-Document-Envoy-230808-1.pdf https://envoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Workplace_Data_...
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
> When asked for data to support the move, Jassy lacked a good answer. He said that he spoke to “60 to 80 CEOs of other companies over the last 18 months,” and “virtually all of them” preferred in-office work. Are they colluding to suppress wages/working conditions? These tech companies already colluded in the past to suppress wages.
gaucheries 3y ago
Offices make it easier to control employees and their time.
seizethecheese 3y ago
Amazon is one of the most successful companies of this century. This might be misguided, but let’s actually grapple with why, not just invent strawmen to attack. Surely, Amazon has thought this through and really believes their company will perform better in office.
- disgruntledphd2 3y ago
  One of the things I've learned over my career is that basically everyone is winging it, and successful companies often don't understand what makes them successful. Also, unless you are a saint, your reports are lying to you because of the power imbalance. These two factors combined are the cause of lots of incredibly boneheaded business decisions.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Amazon of ~7 years ago was a great customer experience. Second to none in online retail. I happily had a Prime subscription. I avoid 2023 Amazon like the plague because of multiple bad experiences with their shipping and lack of trust that what I receive will be genuine and fit for purpose. It's basically AliExpress with faster shipping. I think Amazon (at least their retails arm) is largely coasting on its past success at this point. If another retailer came along and offered the 2023 Amazon shopping experience they would crash and burn instead of becoming the dominant e-commerce website.
- cragfar 3y ago
  Jassy and Zuckerberg have both said that new employees (even experienced hires) are underperforming compared the workers who were in an office setting at some point. With a couple of years of turnover, that can compound quite a bit.
  - InitialLastName 3y ago
    Thinking back to when I started working, I somewhat buy that. I would have had a much harder time getting up to speed (both technically and institutionally) in a remote environment, where the barriers to learning from your peers are higher and the feedback processes (especially in a company formed around in-person work) are slower.
purpleblue 3y ago
I personally love working in the office and I hate working from home. I worked at a remote-only company during the pandemic and I never felt so unproductive, twiddling my thumbs waiting to hear back from my coworkers because I didn't know where they were, or they would be MIA for hours on end. However, I don't understand why WFH isn't a discussion entirely between the manager and the employee. Why is this something that's being mandated from high above like the Ten Commandments. If someone wants to WFH and the manager is okay with it, and the employee can justify it with performance reviews, why does anyone care? This should strictly be a performance issue, and if the employee is unproductive at home, then either force RTO on her, or fire her. It feels more like the higher-ups don't trust their own performance review system, but it seems like that's really the answer. If the manager is unproductive because of unproductive employees, then fire the manager as well. This is NOT a hard problem to solve, what it requires is accurate attention to performance on all levels. It shouldn't be a blanket edict because this is 2023 and we've already shown that WFH can definitely work for many people.
shadowtree 3y ago
All the bragging about working multiple jobs or just clocking 20hours at most on so many forums like Blind, etc. is now coming to roost. So yeah, many abused WFH and now the backlash is here. Amazon, Google, Apple, Meta, Zoom, Bloomberg ... all have the same conclusion: you can't trust people, at scale, to work full time from home. These stories were posted here too! You think no exec reads HN?
- karaterobot 3y ago
  > All the bragging about working multiple jobs or just clocking 20hours at most on so many forums like Blind, etc. I don't follow these forums where people are saying this, but your comment struck me because neither of the two things you listed are wrong, as long as the person involved is doing acceptable work. This assumes there are no requirements to disclose other jobs, no enforceable non-compete agreements, etc. The consequences for doing unacceptable work—or not doing any work at all—are well-established from before covid, and would still apply in this case: that is, if they can't do the job, fire them. I agree that it's different and perhaps scary new world for executives, but what about it is wrong?
  - shadowtree 3y ago
    If you're contractor, this is the right mindset - I get paid for a unit of delivered work. Employees get full-time salaries to be available, well, full time. WFH makes people hard to reach - sorry, was out walking the dog, etc. - and all the other stuff that would never fly in an office. Not disclosing your other side gigs is a violation of most work contracts btw.
- bluefishinit 3y ago
  > So yeah, many abused WFH and now the backlash is here. You can't "abuse" WFH. Either you're producing results that satisfy your manager or you are not. Also, any exec making decisions based on Blind posts should be fired.
  - JambalayaJim 3y ago
GiorgioG 3y ago
Maybe folks should quit Amazon Prime en masse to hit them where it hurts (and the only place it matters to them) - the bottom line.
- o1y32 3y ago
  And what will happen is that Amazon employees get paid off with no change in WFH policy.
a2xd94 3y ago
I'm convinced that the main reasoning behind this is that it implicitly keeps employee retention higher than with WFH, where employees are free to learn skills that are beneficial to THEM in their free time, and interview much more easily for new/better roles.
- firstSpeaker 3y ago
  This is one of the primary contributors to the decision, not only the free time/etc. contribute to the higher retention but also the sense of beloning, and friendships that are made in workplaces.
kyle_grove 3y ago
[flagged]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
SilverBirch 3y ago
I think it's really interesting to watch how poor performing CEOs have been through this period. The work from home decisions, and the subsequent hiring of remote workers with no thought of the long term was a massive mistake. It's just a pure example of CEOs operating at a very low level of competence. No strategic plan for what the business looks like in 2 years time, no forward planning of how these decisions might bind your hands. No, the stock market was up because of stimulus so these companies all just threw money out the door. Now we're on the other side of it and they've basically all admitted they just massively fucked up. So what's next? A thoughtful and long term strategic discussion about how we organise distributed teams (because let's face it, most of these teams are distributed geographically even if they're all office based), a serious discussion about how workers are willing to trade some level of flexibility for compensation and loyalty? Nah, instead we're going to insultingly insist that all our workers are lazy assholes and tell them "Forget the deal we made, you can't trust our word. See you on monday". Also, Bonus points as Andy Jassy to just whenever someone points out your doing something with absolutely no evidence it's correct just shout "Yeah well AWS!". Beyond parody.
JSavageOne 3y ago
"Return to office" is all about control. Companies want to control their workers' lives to squeeze every last ounce of work out of everyone. They'd demand employees live on premise if they could get away with it. Forcing employees to commute to the office and have their social circle consist of fellow employees increases company power over the employee. Really what these companies should be doing if they want to lure the minions back into the cages is to entice them with things like benefits and compensation increases. Making ultimatums like this is just terrible for morale, and I imagine many talented employees will leave. I don't use AWS, and hearing this kind of thing makes me less likely to want to use AWS in the future, for the same reasons I prefer not buying clothes made in sweatshops

150 points by pg_1234 3y ago

archo 3y ago

https://archive.is/eebu2 https://archive.is/eebu2

foobarian 3y ago

Unless it's a thinly veiled layoff, in which case it makes perfect sense.

flaminHotSpeedo 3y ago
Or if there's some other ulterior motive like promises to local government
- pkaye 3y ago
  I think its a combination of over hiring over the pandemic, higher interest rates and an opportunity to reduce salaries for future hires.
  - ochoseis 3y ago
    Reduced salaries for future tech workers is going to be a double whammy because I doubt tech stocks are going to continue growing like they did in the past decade. It really boosts your income when your equity doubles or triples in value during the vesting period.
ryaneager 3y ago
So people should be screwed out of their severance? Just lay people off, you hired them be an adult and fire them.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  That's the whole point. Why fire people and pay them severance when you can get them to quit instead? Of course, you're going to lose the people with talent who can find other jobs - and retain the ones who can't. But seems like a trade they are eager to make.
  - conductr 3y ago
    They are well versed at meat grinder operations.
  - aeyes 3y ago
    Why even lay off with mutual agreements paying severance? Just fire people and deal with the consequences.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
      > Why even lay off with mutual agreements paying severance? PR > Just fire people and deal with the consequences. Or why not reduce headcount and not deal with the consequences? That's what they're trying to do. Everyone has been bitter of tech workers for the better part of a decade. You're not going to lose points with the public for treating tech workers like normal workers.
    - rdtsc 3y ago
      Why deal with the consequences when they don’t have to?
  - alfalfasprout 3y ago
    Yeah, the problem is the people most willing to just leave are the ones that can get something else reasonably fast (which end up being your better employees). AWS has been in decline in terms of quality for years now. They aren't innovating well and even higher turnover will only make things worse. Notice how Amazon is really far behind in LLMs despite having so many research scientists on staff.
- throwawaysleep 3y ago
Abroszka 3y ago
I don't think that makes sense. You can just go back and not work. Learn a new skill or something while in the office. You basically fire people who physically can't come back or people who are not afraid of losing their job. You probably don't want to fire based on that.

eastbayjake 3y ago

Was expecting this to be about AWS's Recovery Time Objectives!

politician 3y ago

It was explained to me by local non-profit folks in the know that Amazon's RTO decisions need to be understood in the context of downtown Seattle real estate politics. Amazon brings a lot of people downtown -- fueling local businesses -- and as a consequence the city council provides Amazon a huge amount of leeway and power -- even siding with Amazon against the community. Consequently, if Amazon doesn't continue to publicly advocate for RTO, then the city council will have no reason to continue with the red carpet treatment which, concretely, means increased taxation and compliance requirements. So, there is a significant game theory component to Amazon's RTO position that can't be discussed publicly.

sharemywin 3y ago
Plus, it's hard for execs to lie to your face over a recorded zoom call. I'm sorry I mean be wrong about the details.
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
I imagine Amazon could downsize their downtown Seattle footprint to match their current needs, face increased taxes, and still come out ahead. This seems like mostly an attrition play. The capital class also despises the labor class. I wouldn't down-play the pure spite motive, either.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  These sort of red carpets go far beyond taxation. Things like some executives wife gets pulled over drunk and the police give her a ride home and a warning. The son gets caught holding and the case disappears. Homeless people in their neighborhood get told to move along to your neighborhood. That sort of thing.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    That's basic inequality. Amazon execs will remain rich regardless of whether Amazon has a higher city tax bill.

captainkrtek 3y ago

Either way, they’re getting what they asked for: either folks back in the office with poor morale or resignations. Has reached a new level of low morale and distrust in leadership.

Racing0461 3y ago

RTO is filled with ulterior motives. Layoffs by another name, local city government want their tax base back, Real estate companies (not mom and pop stuff, real holding companies with reits etc) want to keep real estate from "crashing", ny/ca/ma type states don't want their white collar workers moving to low tax states and working from there , middle managers want to be seen and "preside over their kindgom" etc. The only group not benefitting from RTO are the actual workers.

jzb 3y ago
I'd add that underlying all that / in addition to that is the fear that people aren't putting their jobs first. That's what drove all the "quiet quitting" bullshit. The pandemic made people stop and take stock of their lives. A lot of people realized that they were putting work first and life is too fucking short to put everything else second to work. The tech layoffs have further emphasized the futility of putting work first. You might have put your career first but your employer sure as shit wasn't putting you first. Why live far from the rest of your family in a high cost-of-living area to have your life dominated by work if BigCorp is just going to throw you overboard at the first sign of a dip in profits? Not even a cut to save the business, just a cut to ensure that activist shareholders and top-line execs preserve obscene profits, bonuses, and salaries. RTO is there to remind you that they control your life, right down to where you live. Be thankful to have a job or they'll take it away from you and your health insurance, too.
- borroka 3y ago
  RTO is there to remind you that despite claims of talent shortages and after taking into account the fact that a substantial portion of the workforce is okay with returning to the office, for many companies the supply of talent is greater than the demand for talent.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    It is more convenient to attempt to unionize in person I suppose.

imoreno 3y ago

But he will.

gumby 3y ago

All these companies have leases burning a monthly hole in their pockets. So I guess they figure they should get people into those buildings. It's a foolish sunk cost fallacy.

LanceH 3y ago
A more savvy (or less short term) take is that these places are able to negotiate favorable leases right now. Once office space fills up again, those prices will go up again. I think the real reason lies between "butts in seats" and layoffs. I also feel like there is a class of management that feels good about themselves by having subordinates observe them with all the trappings of their office. These are the people that want a dress code and spend money to look good at work even if nobody ever sees a customer. They have to have the bigger office -- not out of need -- to demonstrate their position. Bigger desk. They might have a better computer than developers even though they never use anything more taxing that Excel (this happened a lot more 20 years ago, less today). These people want to return to office, otherwise nobody knows how much they are in charge of.
washywashy 3y ago
Companies also get tax incentives based how many butts are in seats. So, it’s not just a sunk cost fallacy at play here

finitestateuni 3y ago

Return To Office in early 2023 caused many people hired during the pandemic to uproot their family and move closer to their assigned office. Some of these folks are now being told that the office they moved closer to is not a “Hub” for their organization and that they now need to Relocate To Hub. Most engineering teams will not be colocated even after this relocation as there a multiple hubs. There is a strong belief that Amazon will have a 5 days in office policy starting after the holidays and further Relocate To Team initiatives. The delay is to mitigate the risk of attrition affecting Peak and to get people to move before they’re told they need to be in the office 5 days (sunk cost). A textbook lesson in how to boil a frog courtesy of McKinsey. Hopefully customers enjoy the taste of boiled frogs.

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DebtDeflation 3y ago
>There is a strong belief that Amazon will have a 5 days in office policy starting after the holidays It's not just a belief and it's not just Amazon. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that "mandatory 3 days/wk RTO" will quickly morph to "recommended 5 days/wk RTO" which will then morph to "mandatory 5 days/wk RTO". The endgame is very much a return to status quo ante, i.e. full time in office; hybrid was always intended to be transitory despite the messaging.

hoppersoft 3y ago

Andy Jassy is showing 1M+ Amazon employees that Amazon has become a "Day 2" company.

rescbr 3y ago
That’s what I wrote on my farewell email - just a little more corporate-speaky :)

costanzaDynasty 3y ago

Do what ever you want CEO's but don't be surprised when you have to bend over backwards for talent in other ways while advanced economies populations get smaller every generation and the up and coming areas need to be remote. But don't get it twisted, everyone sees through your HR cornballs pretending a food truck coming by once a week is worth a 2 hour commute everyday.

RestlessMind 3y ago
> and the up and coming areas need to be remote. Looking around the world, all the up and coming areas are mega-metro areas from Tokyo to Bangalore and from Sao Paulo to Shanghai. Or are you generalizing from a tiny handful of Americans who may be going to midwest / rockies after Covid?
- costanzaDynasty 3y ago
  Japan and China are not up and coming, they have worse demographics decline in their future than America. Vietnam is up and coming. You will need remote as a part of your Megacorp. Driving from the suburbs in most American areas to a city is an hour each way.

AlbertCory 3y ago

Not one person here even admits the possibility that some WFH people are not really working. Or at least Jassy believes that. Marissa Mayer ended WFH at Yahoo for exactly that reason: https://money.cnn.com/2013/02/25/technology/yahoo-work-from-home/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2013/02/25/technology/yahoo-work-from-... If you're CEO of a company that's shitty to work for, you have to suspect that everyone except the middle managers and suckups is just phoning it in. Literally. Edit: all you people taking issue with this are just preaching to the converted (each other). I'm talking about what CEOs think, not what actually is.

baq 3y ago
As if people actually work in the office. Please.
- jfghi 3y ago
  The amount of 2 hour birthday lunches people get dragged to after in-person meetings not even relevant to their job is off the charts wasteful.
jnwatson 3y ago
Many, many folks that come into the office are not really working. WFH didn't change that.
- geodel 3y ago
  Yeah, but they get hassled by RTO, so some win for employer.
surgical_fire 3y ago
This is bullshit. If you can get away with "not really working" remotely, you will also get away with "not really working" in the office.
0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
You have never seen hours long discussions of Game of Thrones, Bachelor, sports, etc? Professional water cooler jockeys who transit from conversation to conversation to eat up the majority of work hours? I once read a claim that all work is done by the square root of the total company head count. Honestly, that does not feel too far off from reality.

nxobject 3y ago

I'll chip my vote in for "stealth layoff". Phrasing research in terms of "why do you prefer hybrid work over 'fully remote'?" is misrepresenting what's under debate – mandatory RTO policies.

burgos_thrw 3y ago
So the amount of the people that report internally that they were given 30 days to relocate or to "voluntary resign" makes this very plausible. Now, I have been called from several competitors to leave AWS for the couple of years, but I was happy with the company, projects, prospects, etc. The clusterf*ck of decisions the company made in the past several months made me finally reach out to them when the RTO was announced, and I finally quit. I am going to work from the office (hybrid) on the next job, but at least I'm not going to work for Amazon. And that sparks joy.

say_it_as_it_is 3y ago

What is the sentiment of the investment community? Researchers covering Amazon and majority shareholders influence the decisions that Jassy is making. He's not taking a hard line just because he's a tough guy who doesn't care about employees. Focus on the situation.

CoastalCoder 3y ago
Ooh - nice observation! Large investors are motivated to carefully examine the issue, with a singular focus on the company's performance w.r.t. their fund's goals. Presumably those fund managers are somewhat dispassionate about the managements' and employees' takes on the topic, excepting for how they'll affect the company performance.
mr_tristan 3y ago
Well, as an employee of Salesforce, I witnessed operating margin goals of activist investors drive a layoff this year. (And Salesforce just met those goals last week.) Part of me wonders if that's just broad inflationary concerns and uncertainty about the world economy, pushing for profits over everything else. Really seems short-sighted, but, so did the "hire everything that breathes" era in the 2010s, too.

o1y32 3y ago

My company's CEO used words no other than "we believe collaboration is better in-person" to justify forcing everyone to work in the office three days a week. The usual "revitalize downtown" or "support local business" argument doesn't even apply in our case because company is on a highway. You know this decision is not based on any concrete data but purely on the investment in those useless buildings and wanting to force people out.

phone8675309 3y ago
I have never had an in-person joint whiteboard session that was actually productive. I have had several virtual whiteboard sessions that were very productive (thanks cheap graphics tablets!).
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  Just a data point, but my experience has been exactly the opposite of yours. And I say this as someone who invested a lot of time and political capital trying to find good (and within constraints) virtual whiteboard solutions.
  - baq 3y ago
    I haven’t found a good one either but imagine iPads with pencils might just be close enough. Haven’t tried though, sounds expensive.
    - o1y32 3y ago
      A base model iPad + Apple Pencil 1 offsets about $400 in MSRP. A more decent setup would be iPad Air + Apple Pencil 2 for $650. And of course there are a ton of software that helps prototyping or organizing ideas collaboratively, online. If any company actually cares about collaboration, they should give every employee a set of these. They cost a fraction of a developer's work laptop and are negligible compared to their salary. There is hardly anything that can't be done online. But of course companies are not going to do that. They are going to instead ask you to drive one hour to the office and pay for the gas on your own money, then write on whiteboard in real buildings so that the money wasted on the lease is worth something.

tracerbulletx 3y ago

The most annoying part about all of this is how smug and proud some of these companies were about announcing that they were remote first and hiring all of these people on promises of being "all in" on a distributed remote workforce which they saw as the future. I get that everyone likes to be able to change their mind at any time, but commitments that affect people's lives need to be honored if there can ever be any sort of working trust.

jatins 3y ago

Unfortunately Amazon is one of those companies which can get away with this. Moats so strong that they could completely fuck over (as they have been doing for a while) their employees but will still end up okay as a business. CEOs with moats as thin as a razor will see this as correlation though and burn their companies to ground forcing their employees to RTO.

CoastalCoder 3y ago

Is the "80% regret" number misleading? From the Fortune article: > A whopping 80% of bosses reported that they regret their initial return-to-office decisions, according to new research from Envoy, which interviewed more than 1,000 U.S. company executives and workplace managers who work in person at least one day per week. But it's not clear if 80% of the executives... (a) regretted reducing WFH at all, or (b) regretted certain details of how they tweaked the policy, e.g. how they communicated it, the number of in-office days required, etc., or (c) were unhappy about their data's availability, quality, or freshness. Unfortunately the report from Envoy [0] isn't much clearer: > 80% of executives say they would have approached their company’s return-to-office strategy differently if they had access to workplace data to inform their decision-making. This is one case where seeing the original questionnaire would be helpful, but I'm not finding a link to it. So it's really hard to decide if Envoy's conclusions are justified. [0] https://envoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Workplace_Data_Report_Final-Document-Envoy-230808-1.pdf https://envoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Workplace_Data_...

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

> When asked for data to support the move, Jassy lacked a good answer. He said that he spoke to “60 to 80 CEOs of other companies over the last 18 months,” and “virtually all of them” preferred in-office work. Are they colluding to suppress wages/working conditions? These tech companies already colluded in the past to suppress wages.

gaucheries 3y ago

Offices make it easier to control employees and their time.

seizethecheese 3y ago

Amazon is one of the most successful companies of this century. This might be misguided, but let’s actually grapple with why, not just invent strawmen to attack. Surely, Amazon has thought this through and really believes their company will perform better in office.

disgruntledphd2 3y ago
One of the things I've learned over my career is that basically everyone is winging it, and successful companies often don't understand what makes them successful. Also, unless you are a saint, your reports are lying to you because of the power imbalance. These two factors combined are the cause of lots of incredibly boneheaded business decisions.
AlexandrB 3y ago
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Amazon of ~7 years ago was a great customer experience. Second to none in online retail. I happily had a Prime subscription. I avoid 2023 Amazon like the plague because of multiple bad experiences with their shipping and lack of trust that what I receive will be genuine and fit for purpose. It's basically AliExpress with faster shipping. I think Amazon (at least their retails arm) is largely coasting on its past success at this point. If another retailer came along and offered the 2023 Amazon shopping experience they would crash and burn instead of becoming the dominant e-commerce website.
cragfar 3y ago
Jassy and Zuckerberg have both said that new employees (even experienced hires) are underperforming compared the workers who were in an office setting at some point. With a couple of years of turnover, that can compound quite a bit.
- InitialLastName 3y ago
  Thinking back to when I started working, I somewhat buy that. I would have had a much harder time getting up to speed (both technically and institutionally) in a remote environment, where the barriers to learning from your peers are higher and the feedback processes (especially in a company formed around in-person work) are slower.

purpleblue 3y ago

I personally love working in the office and I hate working from home. I worked at a remote-only company during the pandemic and I never felt so unproductive, twiddling my thumbs waiting to hear back from my coworkers because I didn't know where they were, or they would be MIA for hours on end. However, I don't understand why WFH isn't a discussion entirely between the manager and the employee. Why is this something that's being mandated from high above like the Ten Commandments. If someone wants to WFH and the manager is okay with it, and the employee can justify it with performance reviews, why does anyone care? This should strictly be a performance issue, and if the employee is unproductive at home, then either force RTO on her, or fire her. It feels more like the higher-ups don't trust their own performance review system, but it seems like that's really the answer. If the manager is unproductive because of unproductive employees, then fire the manager as well. This is NOT a hard problem to solve, what it requires is accurate attention to performance on all levels. It shouldn't be a blanket edict because this is 2023 and we've already shown that WFH can definitely work for many people.

shadowtree 3y ago

All the bragging about working multiple jobs or just clocking 20hours at most on so many forums like Blind, etc. is now coming to roost. So yeah, many abused WFH and now the backlash is here. Amazon, Google, Apple, Meta, Zoom, Bloomberg ... all have the same conclusion: you can't trust people, at scale, to work full time from home. These stories were posted here too! You think no exec reads HN?

karaterobot 3y ago
> All the bragging about working multiple jobs or just clocking 20hours at most on so many forums like Blind, etc. I don't follow these forums where people are saying this, but your comment struck me because neither of the two things you listed are wrong, as long as the person involved is doing acceptable work. This assumes there are no requirements to disclose other jobs, no enforceable non-compete agreements, etc. The consequences for doing unacceptable work—or not doing any work at all—are well-established from before covid, and would still apply in this case: that is, if they can't do the job, fire them. I agree that it's different and perhaps scary new world for executives, but what about it is wrong?
- shadowtree 3y ago
  If you're contractor, this is the right mindset - I get paid for a unit of delivered work. Employees get full-time salaries to be available, well, full time. WFH makes people hard to reach - sorry, was out walking the dog, etc. - and all the other stuff that would never fly in an office. Not disclosing your other side gigs is a violation of most work contracts btw.
bluefishinit 3y ago
> So yeah, many abused WFH and now the backlash is here. You can't "abuse" WFH. Either you're producing results that satisfy your manager or you are not. Also, any exec making decisions based on Blind posts should be fired.
- JambalayaJim 3y ago

GiorgioG 3y ago

Maybe folks should quit Amazon Prime en masse to hit them where it hurts (and the only place it matters to them) - the bottom line.

o1y32 3y ago
And what will happen is that Amazon employees get paid off with no change in WFH policy.

a2xd94 3y ago

I'm convinced that the main reasoning behind this is that it implicitly keeps employee retention higher than with WFH, where employees are free to learn skills that are beneficial to THEM in their free time, and interview much more easily for new/better roles.

firstSpeaker 3y ago
This is one of the primary contributors to the decision, not only the free time/etc. contribute to the higher retention but also the sense of beloning, and friendships that are made in workplaces.

kyle_grove 3y ago

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SilverBirch 3y ago

I think it's really interesting to watch how poor performing CEOs have been through this period. The work from home decisions, and the subsequent hiring of remote workers with no thought of the long term was a massive mistake. It's just a pure example of CEOs operating at a very low level of competence. No strategic plan for what the business looks like in 2 years time, no forward planning of how these decisions might bind your hands. No, the stock market was up because of stimulus so these companies all just threw money out the door. Now we're on the other side of it and they've basically all admitted they just massively fucked up. So what's next? A thoughtful and long term strategic discussion about how we organise distributed teams (because let's face it, most of these teams are distributed geographically even if they're all office based), a serious discussion about how workers are willing to trade some level of flexibility for compensation and loyalty? Nah, instead we're going to insultingly insist that all our workers are lazy assholes and tell them "Forget the deal we made, you can't trust our word. See you on monday". Also, Bonus points as Andy Jassy to just whenever someone points out your doing something with absolutely no evidence it's correct just shout "Yeah well AWS!". Beyond parody.

JSavageOne 3y ago

"Return to office" is all about control. Companies want to control their workers' lives to squeeze every last ounce of work out of everyone. They'd demand employees live on premise if they could get away with it. Forcing employees to commute to the office and have their social circle consist of fellow employees increases company power over the employee. Really what these companies should be doing if they want to lure the minions back into the cages is to entice them with things like benefits and compensation increases. Making ultimatums like this is just terrible for morale, and I imagine many talented employees will leave. I don't use AWS, and hearing this kind of thing makes me less likely to want to use AWS in the future, for the same reasons I prefer not buying clothes made in sweatshops