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I work at Amazon, so I have that bias, but I'm very very skeptical of that line of argument. Remote work has the potential to save companies truly enormous sums

I work at Amazon, so I have that bias, but I'm very very skeptical of that line of argument. Remote work has the potential to save companies truly enormous sums of money, both on real estate, and on reduced salaries. For many companies, being able to freely hire anywhere would absolutely reduce mean compensation, instead of paying massive tech hub salary premiums. The interests of city and state governments, real estate companies, hardly come into it. I find it very easy to believe the straight-forward motive given; that leaders are concerned by the impacts of remote work on collaboration, innovation, mentorship and other kinds of productivity that come through group work. That's been my experience too. At the same time, I think remote work can be very successful, maybe even more effective than traditional office work, but it almost certainly takes skills and practices that are attuned to that way of working. It's not unreasonable to believe that an entire workforce wouldn't simply adapt to that in the long term in just a 3 year time frame driven by a pandemic.

PreachSoup 3y ago
As a follow faang+er I totally understand the need for rto. Im perfectly fine with 3 days rto like my company and many others adopted which is perfect medium for everyone. In my team we get 3 days intense meetings done from Tuesday to Thursday. The devs have at least 2 days alone times for shipping the code. The company sold the buildings and the remaining building utilization is very high therefore the cost saving is also there. Everyone is happy in the end. The question is what's the reason to increase from 3 days to 5 days? My guess is that unlike other tech companies, Amazon has high offline presence especially with a global logistic network. They are pressured by the local governments and other parties that if they don't mandate 5 days rto to prop up the cities, they are gonna lose many benefits or deals. So it's probably cheaper for Amazon choose 5 days rto instead.
- bluefishinit 3y ago
  > Im perfectly fine with 3 days rto like my company and many others adopted which is perfect medium for everyone. It's not the perfect medium because it requires living in some of the most expensive real estate markets on the planet. How much does a house for a family of four cost by your office?
  - PreachSoup 3y ago
    What you are requesting is the fully remote company, that's a totally different story. I don't see which faang company is transitioning into that. With the faang pay you can choose to stay in sf, or move to other offices, or going remote, or leave for fully remote companies. The policy is that Remote workers are still remote. Only non remote workers are required return to office.
    - bluefishinit 3y ago
      > What you are requesting is the fully remote company RTO is a new policy, they could simply have continued to allow employees to work from home.
      - PreachSoup 3y ago
        Yes. As I said in my previous post, remote workers are not required to rto. RTO only applies to non remote workers. Actually remote visits are limited because the offices are kinda full now. Or are you talking about let everyone going remote? That's transitioning into a fully remote company which is not happening
        bluefishinit 3y ago
        > Or you talking about let everyone going remote? That's transitioning into a fully remote company which is not happening This was the state of things before the RTO mandates. The whole company was remote until they started demanding people come in 3 days a week. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/07/andy-jassy-says-he-wont-force-amazon-workers-to-return-to-the-office.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/07/andy-jassy-says-he-wont-forc...
        PreachSoup 3y ago
        Remote work from pandemic period is a totally different story. The companies are forced to let people to work remotely because of the covid, not they really want to go fully remote. My original post was about typical 3 days(hybrid) vs Amazon's 5 days(fully onsite). My stand is that hybrid is fine for certain people and positions if the people think that it's worth it. If you don't like it, that's fine. I never said you have to take non remote positions. I was only commenting on the Amazon's fully onsite issue anyway
- mandevil 3y ago
  If you all are in the office for the same three days a week (Tu-Th) then you aren't saving anything on real estate costs- you still need to have desks for everyone in the company at the same time. The only way you save on real estate costs is allowing flexibility on which days you come in, such that some people are in Mon-Wed and some are in MWF and some are in TuThFri etc. Then you can share desks and save money on real estate, because five people can share three desks. But then every meeting will still have people working from home that day, and so you will be in the office but on Zoom to your regular coworkers. So the two goals are incompatible: saving costs on real estate necessarily means spreading people's WFH days out such that no more than 60% of the company is in the office on any given day, but then you don't really get the 'easy to talk to people, have meetings and build culture' effects that RTO is supposed to kick off.
  - PreachSoup 3y ago
    Tu-Th is my team's arrangement. The only requirement is 3days rto so not all teams are the same
- klardotsh 3y ago
  You enjoy your 3d/wk RTO, but please don't claim it's a perfect balance. To me more than 1 day a month is unacceptable at this point. Why would I want to go into downtown Seattle to do exactly what I could have done from my house deep out in the sticks of Kitsap County where rent is significantly lower for the space and it's nearly dead silent and - most importantly - I'm largely left tf alone? The only reason is social bonding with coworkers, so a day a month or so for that purpose seems sane, and worth the ferry ride over. More than that is incompetent management trying to own and control me and/or being ineffective at managing distributed/asynchronous teams, barring a few specific industries that require on-site development for some reason or another (embedded on highly-specialized hardware, perhaps).
  - RestlessMind 3y ago
    > incompetent management trying to own and control me and/or being ineffective at managing distributed/asynchronous teams, We are looking at the same thing but through different lenses. It is true that most of the current management layers are inept at managing remote workforce effectively. But they are capable of managing an in-office workforce - that's how they got promoted in their positions in the first place (mostly). Guess what is easier decision for the decision makers - change their own skillset and habits, or force everyone back to office?
  - oarabbus_ 3y ago
    So let's say they go full remote for jobs that allow it - why should they hire you, then? Why not hire someone in Vancouver for 80% of your salary, or Mexico for 60%, or Brazil for 40%?
    - o1y32 3y ago
      Surprise, companies have been outsourcing for decades and not slowing down, and WFH or not does not change any of that. My company's current headcounts are almost only in India, yet they are asking people to come in 3 days a week.
      - oarabbus_ 3y ago
6D794163636F756 3y ago
The cities give huge tax breaks to companies based on how many employees they have there. The tax incentives are why Amazon is moving workers from Seattle to Bellevue. Also, Amazon doesn't own most of its offices so the companies they rent from are pushing for it. It's a convoluted mess but there is money to be made from rto.

PreachSoup 3y ago

As a follow faang+er I totally understand the need for rto. Im perfectly fine with 3 days rto like my company and many others adopted which is perfect medium for everyone. In my team we get 3 days intense meetings done from Tuesday to Thursday. The devs have at least 2 days alone times for shipping the code. The company sold the buildings and the remaining building utilization is very high therefore the cost saving is also there. Everyone is happy in the end. The question is what's the reason to increase from 3 days to 5 days? My guess is that unlike other tech companies, Amazon has high offline presence especially with a global logistic network. They are pressured by the local governments and other parties that if they don't mandate 5 days rto to prop up the cities, they are gonna lose many benefits or deals. So it's probably cheaper for Amazon choose 5 days rto instead.

bluefishinit 3y ago
> Im perfectly fine with 3 days rto like my company and many others adopted which is perfect medium for everyone. It's not the perfect medium because it requires living in some of the most expensive real estate markets on the planet. How much does a house for a family of four cost by your office?
- PreachSoup 3y ago
  What you are requesting is the fully remote company, that's a totally different story. I don't see which faang company is transitioning into that. With the faang pay you can choose to stay in sf, or move to other offices, or going remote, or leave for fully remote companies. The policy is that Remote workers are still remote. Only non remote workers are required return to office.
  - bluefishinit 3y ago
    > What you are requesting is the fully remote company RTO is a new policy, they could simply have continued to allow employees to work from home.
    - PreachSoup 3y ago
      Yes. As I said in my previous post, remote workers are not required to rto. RTO only applies to non remote workers. Actually remote visits are limited because the offices are kinda full now. Or are you talking about let everyone going remote? That's transitioning into a fully remote company which is not happening
      - bluefishinit 3y ago
        > Or you talking about let everyone going remote? That's transitioning into a fully remote company which is not happening This was the state of things before the RTO mandates. The whole company was remote until they started demanding people come in 3 days a week. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/07/andy-jassy-says-he-wont-force-amazon-workers-to-return-to-the-office.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/07/andy-jassy-says-he-wont-forc...
        PreachSoup 3y ago
        Remote work from pandemic period is a totally different story. The companies are forced to let people to work remotely because of the covid, not they really want to go fully remote. My original post was about typical 3 days(hybrid) vs Amazon's 5 days(fully onsite). My stand is that hybrid is fine for certain people and positions if the people think that it's worth it. If you don't like it, that's fine. I never said you have to take non remote positions. I was only commenting on the Amazon's fully onsite issue anyway
mandevil 3y ago
If you all are in the office for the same three days a week (Tu-Th) then you aren't saving anything on real estate costs- you still need to have desks for everyone in the company at the same time. The only way you save on real estate costs is allowing flexibility on which days you come in, such that some people are in Mon-Wed and some are in MWF and some are in TuThFri etc. Then you can share desks and save money on real estate, because five people can share three desks. But then every meeting will still have people working from home that day, and so you will be in the office but on Zoom to your regular coworkers. So the two goals are incompatible: saving costs on real estate necessarily means spreading people's WFH days out such that no more than 60% of the company is in the office on any given day, but then you don't really get the 'easy to talk to people, have meetings and build culture' effects that RTO is supposed to kick off.
- PreachSoup 3y ago
  Tu-Th is my team's arrangement. The only requirement is 3days rto so not all teams are the same
klardotsh 3y ago
You enjoy your 3d/wk RTO, but please don't claim it's a perfect balance. To me more than 1 day a month is unacceptable at this point. Why would I want to go into downtown Seattle to do exactly what I could have done from my house deep out in the sticks of Kitsap County where rent is significantly lower for the space and it's nearly dead silent and - most importantly - I'm largely left tf alone? The only reason is social bonding with coworkers, so a day a month or so for that purpose seems sane, and worth the ferry ride over. More than that is incompetent management trying to own and control me and/or being ineffective at managing distributed/asynchronous teams, barring a few specific industries that require on-site development for some reason or another (embedded on highly-specialized hardware, perhaps).
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  > incompetent management trying to own and control me and/or being ineffective at managing distributed/asynchronous teams, We are looking at the same thing but through different lenses. It is true that most of the current management layers are inept at managing remote workforce effectively. But they are capable of managing an in-office workforce - that's how they got promoted in their positions in the first place (mostly). Guess what is easier decision for the decision makers - change their own skillset and habits, or force everyone back to office?
- oarabbus_ 3y ago
  So let's say they go full remote for jobs that allow it - why should they hire you, then? Why not hire someone in Vancouver for 80% of your salary, or Mexico for 60%, or Brazil for 40%?
  - o1y32 3y ago
    Surprise, companies have been outsourcing for decades and not slowing down, and WFH or not does not change any of that. My company's current headcounts are almost only in India, yet they are asking people to come in 3 days a week.
    - oarabbus_ 3y ago

6D794163636F756 3y ago

The cities give huge tax breaks to companies based on how many employees they have there. The tax incentives are why Amazon is moving workers from Seattle to Bellevue. Also, Amazon doesn't own most of its offices so the companies they rent from are pushing for it. It's a convoluted mess but there is money to be made from rto.