9 ms·

Amazon exec: it's time to 'disagree and commit' to office return despite no data

76 points by softwaredoug 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
JoeAltmaier 3y ago
Asshole asking everybody but himself to do a hard thing, because he feels like it. This tone-deaf entitled management bullshit is so, so exhausting. There's no way to answer his empty argument - "I just know its right". Well, good for him. The real reason I believe? He's worried his bonus will be impacted, so he makes the easy call - casually screw everybody so he can sleep easier about his $1M christmas check.
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  Management makes decisions without data all the time. I understand people are personally invested, but sometimes it feels like people can't think about it, and it's all just motivated / wishful thinking. It's a bet in a way, if they're wrong, they will be "punished" by market forces.
  - consp 3y ago
    > they == Everybody who does not want to go to the office, the shareholders and others involved but NOT the one making the decision based on nothing.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    > if they're wrong, they will be "punished" by market forces we live in age of monopoly, market forces no longer punish. in 1990's there were twice as many companies registered on the stock exchange as today
    - secstate 3y ago
      Disappointed this was downvoted initially, you got my +1. Corporate reality in 2023 is creeping ever closer to a Weyland-Yutani plutocratic government where "market forces" are unable to put a dent in shitty corporate behavior. I have to fly Delta home. They cancelled my connecting flight, moved it to a day later and say "sorry, you can sleep at JFK!" The next time I fly, I've got 1/3 odds Delta will be the only one flying where I need to go. Rinse and repeat for online merchants. This will have ZERO effect on Amazon's ability to function because employees have ZERO clout in management meetings.
      - colpabar 3y ago
        What are you, a communist? The free market will fix that, any day now!
        antisthenes 3y ago
        Unironically, millions of people still hold that viewpoint pretty strongly. Many Libertarians make a point of stating it in discussion as some kind of flex even. I have no idea why, as it is basically a declaration of one's own economic ignorance, but there you have it.
    - josefritz 3y ago
      People forget how much it's changed but I think that's spot on.
  - TheCleric 3y ago
    No I think we’ve seen clearly that management making bad decisions ends up with regular employees getting laid off. There is no punishment for the individuals making bad bets.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Some execs feel their employees are less productive when remote. There isn't a non-gameable way to measure productivity. I can tell you with certainty who on my team is getting the most stuff done any given week or across a year, but I can't provide data as to why.
  - groos 3y ago
    If you can't actually show it from concrete evidence, then your certainty may actually be an illusion. I have worked with busy-beaver devs who created as many issues as they fixed, in effect making no impact to the quality of the product, and with three-toed sloth types as well, who took a while to get the work done but after it was done, it stayed done.
    - hot_gril 3y ago
      I can show you what they got done and walk through my reasoning, but again that isn't data. The busy-beaver's metrics will probably look better despite doing nothing useful.
      - peteradio 3y ago
        I think we should bid hours on tasks. If you want to undercut your teammate because they are a sheister, then you can bid it down and call their bluff. You'd need buy-in to automate the obvious stuff so sheister isn't doing make work. And you'd need buy-in to veto bad projects that shouldn't be done to begin with, aka sheister bait projects.
        hot_gril 3y ago
        You can't have a team function this way normally, because everything you do relies at least indirectly on your teammates cooperating.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 3y ago
    For me it's very easy to measure. When working remotely, I do all my tasks, and if I finish before the en of sprint, I sometimes add something from the backlog I planned to do anyway. When working from the office, I do zero tasks, because the moment someone mentions RTO I change jobs.
- helij 3y ago
  This is exactly what it is in some cases. Bonus. I know about a company where execs bonuses are now based also around how many people they can get back to the office. Of course they are pushing for it.
  - politelemon 3y ago
    OK I'm being naive here so educate me - surely the company wants people to produce more, so they need to create those conditions. If they bring people in, some will leave and impact productivity. So management should be careful about pissing off workers - especially with language like this exec has used - they should be doing what works and letting people have flexibility and choices. As I said I'm being naive, so I am missing something from their way of thinking.
    - medvezhenok 3y ago
      The deep Twitter cuts were a prime example of number of employees / productivity being orthogonal metrics. Sure, they lost a lot of advertisers and suffered some technical issues because of the transition, but it wasn't nearly as bad as everyone had predicted (myself included). The advertiser loss might turn out to be fatal, but I would argue that was more due to a change in the direction of the company (and leveraging it up with much more debt) rather than personnel loss, per se.
    - helij 3y ago
      They are cooking the frog. First 1 to 2 days, then as long as you're in 50% in a month. Now 3 days. Most of the people rant but give up at the end and some go elsewhere. The ones who do what they want and work from home do just that. Execs are happy when they can show 50% compliance overall so they get the bonus.
- snird 3y ago
  Something is very wrong with Amazon management. They have an employee who has been with them for years, currently kidnapped by Hamas to Gaza[1]. They won't even acknowledge it. It's a crazy thing not to acknowledge, not even in internal forums. 1: https://www-geektime-co-il.translate.goog/amazon-aws-employees-for-sasha-trufanov/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-geektime-co-il.translate.goog/amazon-aws-employe...
- bicepjai 3y ago
  Reminds me about how India 2016 demonetization https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetisation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonet... where the argument was this will curtail black money with no data to support over a decision that affect billions of people. There were deaths related to this “I think so” moments
pinewurst 3y ago
(August 3, 2023)
cushpush 3y ago
Define "office"
coolbreezetft22 3y ago
As someone who commutes into Seattle, the Mondays and Friday where amazon people don't go in are the best
dacracot 3y ago
So why isn't this an environmental/climate change issue. These corporations that want employees that can work from home to burn fuel and emit CO2 in order to travel to the office unnecessarily should be shamed for their lack of compassion and vision. These same corporations claim to be driving toward carbon neutral while simultaneously pushing for CO2 increase via their employees travel.
- softwaredoug 3y ago
  It’s an issue about this for sure. But also affordability, time to commute, rearrange lives, etc and other burdens to go into an office that the C-suite doesn’t contend with. RTO/WFH becomes kind of obvious given a certain distance to the office. If I live 10-20 mins from office, I probably go all the time. If I live 90+ minutes a visit to the office upends my life. Only a small subset of people live close to offices. In part because cities have been poorly designed and housing costs are insane right now.
  - 303uru 3y ago
    My company is forcing a one day a week RTO (badge scan requirement). I have been firm with them. My day will not be any longer and travel time is coming out of it. At home I get on at 8am and sign off at 5pm. So on my RTO day I leave home at 8am, travel to the office, scan and take a meeting or two, then head home. I still sign off at 5pm. All told, they lost an hour plus of productivity from me. All around it's so obnoxious. Ya, my CEO doesn't mind RTO because he has grown kids, has a driver, has a home chef, etc...
    - ath3nd 3y ago
      I always find it fascinating the amount of large scale time waste corps are willing to commit themselves to just to prove to themselves that they are the ones running the show. Ammoral out of touch douches like this deserve all their workers to quit and show them they are nothing without us making them all their money.
- lnxg33k1 3y ago
dmitrygr 3y ago
Interviewing around, there's been no shortage of remote offers with good comp over the last few years. Idiots like this guy are just costing his teams good engineers. If you assume that X% of good engineers prefer WFH, no matter what you think the value of X is, he is costing his teams them, and placing them at a strategic disadvantage compared to smarter competition.
- jonfw 3y ago
  Is good comp amazon level? I am under the impression that there are not a whole lot of companies who are salary competitive w/ amazon outside of FAANG, and most of FAANG is pushing RTO
  - ghaff 3y ago
    People make decisions and prioritize what's most important to them.
  - rilindo 3y ago
    IIRC, Amazon wages weren't that great to begin with.
    - jonfw 3y ago
      levels.fyi shows amazon total comp within a few percent of google's for comparable roles
  - throwaway428934 3y ago
    I left Amazon (b/c they wanted me to move to Seattle) for a remote job at a smallish startup paying 10% more. So, yes.
    - jonfw 3y ago
      That's great to find one but if somebody told me they were cross shopping a bunch of full remote offers on target w/ amazon total comp I'd be surprised
FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
[flagged]
ParseItAgainSam 3y ago
> have [a] backbone, disagree, and commit If you had a backbone and disagreed, doesn't that mean you should defy them?
- wccrawford 3y ago
  Standing up and saying something is wrong still requires a backbone, even if you take it no further. There are a lot of people who won't even go that far.
  - happytoexplain 3y ago
    Yes, but the word backbone isn't being applied to disagreeing - the people being addressed are already disagreeing. The word is being applied (dishonestly, disrespectfully, and antagonistically) to "committing".
    - ghaff 3y ago
      The wording isn't really optimal. I think the intent is that you should show backbone and disagree with a plan if you don't agree with it but you should then commit if the decision ultimately goes against you. The basic formulation originally comes from Intel. The idea is that if you don't get your way you shouldn't constantly try to force a re-examination of the decision as often happens.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- slipshady 3y ago
  It comes from Amazon's Leadership Principles (LPs) [1] which honestly feel like the vestiges of the company's heyday. The two new ones (at the bottom) were added by Andy Jassy when he took over and are a joke within the company. But here's what this post's title is referring to > Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit > Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly. [1] - https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-principles https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-...
bin_bash 3y ago
I suspect the real reason is pressure from local governments missing out on tax revenue.
karaterobot 3y ago
Well, given that Amazon execs have made so many bad decisions with data, it might be he's right to call for this one without any supporting evidence whatsoever.
catchnear4321 3y ago
> I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better. well, if that’s the new bar… don’t have data to back it up, but, i know that not only is he wrong, he’s a sociopath.
draw_down 3y ago
[dead]
softwaredoug 3y ago
IMO with layoffs and RTO these companies have shown us their priority is to manage towards mediocrity and predictable business model over excellence/innovation. Those who can will leave. But that won’t hurt the company IMO, who will get plenty of “good enough” folks to join the ranks to keep the lights on. I suspect eventually this will bite them. It already bit Google with ChatGPT who decided their priority was executing on a search business over other ways of accessing information. But these are juggernauts companies that can f around a long time before they find out.
- CSMastermind 3y ago
  > IMO with layoffs and RTO these companies have shown us their priority is to manage towards mediocrity and predictable business model over excellence/innovation. To be clear: that's always been the case. Large enterprises prioritize predictability over excellence. That's the entire point of bureaucracy: you add a floor a the expense of also having a ceiling.
  - softwaredoug 3y ago
    For sure. Though pre-covid, I wouldn't say many of these companies (at least perception wise) thought of themselves in those terms. They were perceived as the cool-hip tech companies that constantly disrupt industries... Now that veil has lifted.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Google fell behind ChatGPT well before they laid anyone off, forced RTO, or anything like that. They fell behind Zoom before the pandemic even happened. Having an "engineer-driven" company doesn't mean it executes well on products.
nightshadetrie 3y ago
“I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better”
vemv 3y ago
The phrase "Disagree and commit" only makes sense when two peers (or groups thereof) agree in discussing a decision in equal terms, and committing to whatever the decision is. Of course, the way it's used here is a perversion of an otherwise useful principle.
- injb 3y ago
  >>> The phrase "Disagree and commit" only makes sense when two peers (or groups thereof) agree in discussing a decision in equal terms, and committing to whatever the decision is. Where does the "disagree" part come in to it then?
  - vemv 3y ago
    You disagree while discussing, but (ideally) you agree in advance that there will be a) a mechanism for making a decision (e.g. voting, coin flipping) and b) there will be a commitment to work on the decided approach as if it were one's own. The opposite tends to result in endless discussions: people don't get to work in their full capacity - they still seek rebuttal, sneaking in their preferred approach, etc.
  - xboxnolifes 3y ago
    Two peers is maybe too small a group. Take 5, 4 of which think one way and 1 another. A decision must be made by end of day. By the end of the day, the outlier may not be convinced, but they should "disagree and commit" to working toward whatever the decision is.
- vidarh 3y ago
  "Disagree and commit" is also the core of Lenin's "democratic centralism" (there with a claim of adhering to the idea of discussing it on equal terms first). As you say, it can make sense in small groups, but in larger groups it quickly becomes a means to demand compliance by controlling when the debate is shut down (conveniently when you have the upper hand)
- drewcoo 3y ago
  Exactly, it's a tool for forming consensus when consensus cannot be reached.
banannaise 3y ago
Every message of this sort gives me the distinct impression that I'm being lied to. I can't shake the feeling that they have a reason, but they're not willing to tell it to us because we would dislike that reason even more than no reason at all.
- asylteltine 3y ago
  That’s because if you are talking to an executive, you are being lied to
- hot_gril 3y ago
  If there's an unsavory reason, I think it's one or both of: 1. Employees slack more on average working from home. Employers want people stuck in a work-only place where they're monitored. Same as how open offices replaced cubicles "for cost reasons." I've seen evidence of this at my job. 2. They're heavily invested in physical offices in particular cities already, so much that they alone can sway the same real estate market they're invested in, and it's not a sunken cost yet.
  - Cyberdogs7 3y ago
    Talking to many CEO's of mid size companies, it seems to be an extension of point 2. They have received many tax incentives from the cities in which they are located, based on the employees they have there. With WFH, the cities are threatening those tax incentives. Typically the tax incentives are deductible property tax, except sales tax, or some type of city provided R&D subsidy to help with state level taxes. We received these back in 2010 with a 175 person game studio and we had 3 different cities pitching for us to move there. I have received outreach on even just a 5 person company. I can only imagine what cities will do with large employers.
    - hot_gril 3y ago
      That's an interesting anecdote. I had no idea mid-sized companies were working with cities like that.
    - 3y ago
s17n 3y ago
People ascribe all kinds of bad motivations (ego, stupidity, etc) to execs who want a return to office but there's a much more obvious and reasonable explanation - if your job consists of sitting in meetings all day, work is much, much more enjoyable if you're in office. No amount of money (that anyone would be willing to pay me) could get me to sit on Zoom all day.
- giomasce 3y ago
  I'd rather solve this problem by organizing the work day so that it's not meetings all day long, rather than requiring people to go to the office to waste time in presence.
  - s17n 3y ago
    Meetings all day is the job for execs, though. That's why they all favor return to office.
    - giomasce 3y ago
      Really? They don't have anything better to do? What a poor career choice! In my naivety I had assumed that an exec's job was to help a company run smooth, and instead they have to sit through meetings all day long. Life is really hard on some people... /s
- ghaff 3y ago
  Except that in any size of company, your meetings are going to be conference/video calls (at least for some of the participants) anyway. Fortunately, I'm mostly not but a lot of the people I work with are on video calls most of the day.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > if your job consists of sitting in meetings all day, work is much, much more enjoyable if you're in office. But is that someone else's problem?
  - 3y ago
jechamt 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20231129174929/https://fortune.com/2023/08/03/amazon-svp-mike-hopkins-office-return/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231129174929/https://fortune.c... First time posting an archive / access link. If this link doesn’t work for anyone, feel free to hide this post. I’ll monitor and delete if it’s failing / not helpful.
- water-data-dude 3y ago
  Worked great for me! Thanks!
dekhn 3y ago
Well, at least he's honest
CrimsonRain 3y ago
No issues with this. Get a full remote job somewhere else if you dont want to go to office. Source: 10y+ remote exp
- tazu 3y ago
  "This doesn't immediately impact me so I have no issues with this"
  - fallingknife 3y ago
    It does impact him. His employment opportunities are just as restricted by in office policies as everyone else in the industry.
  - CrimsonRain 3y ago
    Follow the site guidelines and refrain from bull** replies.
- hughesjj 3y ago
  Would you be mad if your employer forced you to move and revoked remote work? Because that's exactly what's happening to the thousands of COVID era Amazon employees hired under a full time remote contract. It's fully within Amazon's rights to change the terms of the contract, just as it is with your employer, but that doesn't mean the people impacted can't complain about it, and it definitely has an effect on reputation for the stability of employment agreements Amazon offers.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    I wouldn't exactly be mad, I'd quit. So far haven't had to, but I had Amazon and other offers ready in hand last year in case that was needed.
  - CrimsonRain 3y ago
    If my employer pays me more salary to compensate for the things/times I will lose by going to office, I might say yes. Else I'll find another job. They'll have to pay me severance/give notice period etc too. Don't join companies like Amazon who will _never_ go full remote. Just because you joined a company _at a time_ when it was _forced_ to remote by external circumstances (act of God or biolab), doesn't mean you can expect that way of work to remain as it is once that circumstance is resolved. Just like working remote has a lot of benefits, it has tons of issues. I know because I've worked 95% of my career remote. I would _never_ recommend remote to any Junior or even Senior SDE. It is bad for your career+skill growth (for some it is opposite; like me; but that's a tiny minority). And this is just one issue. And no. No reputation/stability is harmed for companies like Amazon for this. There are plenty of people who knew these companies will RTO sooner or later; in fact it is surprising they didn't do it sooner.
baz00 3y ago
If they're doing this with no data they are probably doing everything else with no data. Based on the fucking clown show I see behind the scenes at AWS from a big customer perspective, it appears it's squeaky noses and big feet right up to the top. Edit: they have data they're just ignoring it because it doesnt support their conclusio.
dangasaurus 3y ago
[flagged]
- hughesjj 3y ago
  I think it's perfectly fine to bring it up given how much green washing these companies perpetuate. Amazon paid a boatload of money to rename 'ket arena's to the 'climate pledge arena' after all. It's relevant to investors too imo because spending a boat load of money to increase goodwill and then ruining the trust your goodwill represents doesn't seem like a wise investment strategy imo.
  - dangasaurus 3y ago
    [dead]
tonetheman 3y ago
[dead]
r0ckarong 3y ago
"Because I said so" is the beloved argument of narcissists throughout time. Get in line folks, office rush hour is gonna be a doozy.
28304283409234 3y ago
And that from the same companies that insist on open office spaces? Shocker! /s
qkeast 3y ago
Wielding cultural values as a bludgeon from a position of authority weakens all of a company’s cultural values.
28304283409234 3y ago
And I agree: I perform certain tasks better when occasionally doing that face to face. My employer does not however own some form of magical right for my “best performance every day all of the time forever and ever”. Suck it up employer.
jechamt 3y ago
https://www.aboutamazon.com/about-us/leadership-principles https://www.aboutamazon.com/about-us/leadership-principles > Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly. In this context, “leaders” is (at least) aspirational, and meant to include all employees. I have a good deal of experience with the LPs, though I can’t claim to be an expert in evaluating the merits of their various applications. Particularly with this one, as it appears to be sort of encouraging situations that are more likely lead to discord and conflict. I would venture that, in my experience, this one is one of the more highly prone to differing interpretations among individuals. The times I have seen it used, or examples broadcast of its value, it is used in the spirit of starting or engaging in a good faith discussion, and at some point concluding a time box to the discussion by one party asking another to disagree and commit. In other words, two well-intentioned parties that both have meaningful contributions to the discussion (and represent that they understand the other party also has meaningful contributions) reach an impasse and know they need to get past it. By invoking disagree and commit, they both agree to commit their full energy and attention to the same concluded direction, work to see the success of that path, and (usually) discuss as an after action lessons learned, so that future disagreements of a similar nature can point to the data / conclusions to make better decisions. Again, I don’t know I have the best understanding of this LP, and it has not come up often for me personally, so I welcome feedback here from others with experience. This is completely independent from my opinion on this particular issue, which I will omit. It does differ somewhat from the representation in the reporting: > In other words, once any company decision is made, workers are expected to fall in line, even if they disagree with it
loudin 3y ago
There's so many issues with large companies demanding people to return to the office, so it's at least somewhat refreshing to hear "do it because I said so", but this just isn't going to work in the long run. The toothpaste can't be put back into the tube. And this is because anyone who worked in-person at the office of a large tech company knows it's markedly worse. For meetings, the process typically was: 1. Try to book a meeting room for a group large enough, succeed about 80% of the time and scramble at the last minute other times. 2. Wait for someone to finish up their call. If someone super senior was in the room, my meeting was guaranteed to start whenever they felt like ending their meeting, which would be 5-10 minutes late. 3. Inevitably dial into a video conference because at least one member of the team is working in a different office, so not even everyone was in person anyway 4. Run out of time at the end and having to dash to my next meeting room late. And this doesn't even account for the fact that getting quality heads-down time in an open office floor plan was nearly impossible. Just take the good with the bad. Make in-person meetings mandatory for important events that require in-person collaboration like design sprints, brainstorming, launches, etc.
devn0ll 3y ago
I believe we are seeing the last few "twitches" of "Office work". Work from home (for office type work) is here to stay and will never leave. I feel loneliest, when I'm at the office. Even if just one person for a meeting is at home, EVERYONE just logs in for the online meeting. It's handier, better organized, make meeting notes together, etc, etc. So beeing in the office for such meetings means I need to find a quiet spot, or alienate everyone in the call with a noisy mic. And when I'm actually trying to get work done, I remember why open floor office's are hell. No sorry, WFH is here to stay. In fact, I do believe we have crossed a threshold where it just cannot be stopped anymore.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
This is from August, c'mon
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago
  Lots more recent discussions: 2 months ago I moved states just before the return-to-office order at Amazon, so I quit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37641660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37641660 2 weeks ago Amazon to staff: Come into the office or your promotion is at risk https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38278074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38278074
rhelz 3y ago
In a way, we should be thrilled that the perception is that in-office work is better: less outsourcing. If i can work remove from Indiana, I can work remote from India. I'm very surprised that the takeaway from COVID wasn't just to have people work remotely from the lowest-wage countries in the world.
- glimshe 3y ago
  In general this is not the case and that's exactly why it hasn't happened significantly for companies that embrace remote. This is one more of the remote work myths that keep getting repeated. As someone who works in a very remote team, it's much harder to collaborate with people in very distant time zones. You can do remote work and have PLENTY of interaction over video, chat, audio etc. But you lose all of that when all the interactions are very slow and fully asynchronous. Additionally - and that's a separate problem - doing remote work with people in other countries has an entire different set of problems. Work culture, legislation restricting hours, language barrier (even with India), etc. These problems are unrelated to remote work in general are related to outsourcing work.
  - RestlessMind 3y ago
    > In general this is not the case and that's exactly why it hasn't happened significantly for companies that embrace remote. Anecdote of one, but my company is fully embracing Canada and UK. We had multiple rounds of layoffs and all the new headcount is in those 2 countries. > timezones, Work culture, legislation restricting hours, language barrier None of that applies to Canada. And I can tell you first hand that Canadian salaries are lower than even the cheapest parts of the US. Canada is also rolling out red carpets to IT people around the world including H1B refugees, so worker supple is not an issue. Even for UK, only the timezone matters. It is very much compatible with the and work culture.
    - glimshe 3y ago
      Canada offers limited outsourcing opportunities from the US perspective. Population is only a bit over one tenth of the US and there is already a significant brain drain to the US due to higher salaries and ease of moving. Canada also has strict labor regulations and a "union problem" which aren't very appealing to US companies. The UK suffers from similar problems on top of the timezone issue. The company where I work has an office in both of these countries, but they only have a fraction of the US-based employees (and not growing in either). Most of the growth in the company is happening in the cheaper parts of the US instead.
yafbum 3y ago
People need to stop using data as an excuse for making decisions, or apologizing for not having data, or arguing about the lack of data as an excuse for maintaining a status quo. As entrepreneurs, as managers, as individuals we make decisions with no perfect data all the time. It's called dealing with risk. Sure you could get a sense for how much active coding time or whatever BS metric you can track, and look at correlation with WFH, but that stuff is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. How's new grad onboarding affected? How's team culture and conflict management affected? How is dealing with difficult health challenges affected? Working remotely is a big shift with likely long term longitudinal effects on an organization that are hard to predict. You can't A/B test or analyze your way out of every single decision there. So I respect people making decisions without data on this, that's what they're being paid the big bucks for. As I'm sure they will respect my decision to leave the minute the terms of the arrangement no longer suits me, which will add a data point of N=+1 somewhere. It's ok to ask to see the data if you're curious. But people are often asking for data not out of curiosity but just because they disagree with the consequences of a decision that affects them. I think that's disingenuous. You could deploy a team of data scientists to tell me that the org will definitely be 5% more productive if everyone worked from some office an hour away, and it wouldn't really matter to me. I still prefer having a remote work option and I won't commute more than 40 min to work. We don't need to ask for data about things we don't like, we can just disagree and either commit or create the attrition outcomes that will drive different behaviors in the future.
kjsingh 3y ago
Disagree and Commute
joeman1000 3y ago
I’d like to see this asshole waste 2h every day in public transport and get less work done because of a noisy open-plan office.
- buzzert 3y ago
  I suspect he drives to work. Or is driven to work.
hurrrr 3y ago
The reality is: they have the data and the data shows that productivity is more or less the same. However, they (the execs) prefer to have everyone back in the office to keep tax incentives, real estate value and probably also because they (old school executives with strong people skills) genuinely think that in office is better.
ryandvm 3y ago
What I don't understand is all these companies are having their best profits ever since the pandemic with their employees mostly working from home. Why exactly are they looking for ways to screw that up?
analognoise 3y ago
Another day, another reason to tell Amazon recruiters to pound sand.
Tommstein 3y ago
[flagged]
disambiguation 3y ago
Amazon sucks. I worked there years ago and it was terrible. AWS is over priced garbage and Prime offers nothing of value. Bezos was smart to cash out when he did.
znpy 3y ago
Classic corporate bullshit, smellier than usual since it comes from a company that claims to be data-driven.
x86x87 3y ago
> I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better. Yup. Sounds about right. Data-driven to hell and back. Once the employment market recovers Amazon is going to be screwed big time.
alienicecream 3y ago
If you have no choice, you have no choice and that's too bad. The bright side is that eventually the job market will come back and there will be plenty of remote positions again, the cat's out of the bag and when the job market is hot they'll have no choice but to complete for talent. So if you have to go back, just go back until the next cycle and then dump this turd of a company for a better one.
TheCleric 3y ago
Just like I knew it was right to decline an Amazon interview. Except I have data like this.

76 points by softwaredoug 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Asshole asking everybody but himself to do a hard thing, because he feels like it. This tone-deaf entitled management bullshit is so, so exhausting. There's no way to answer his empty argument - "I just know its right". Well, good for him. The real reason I believe? He's worried his bonus will be impacted, so he makes the easy call - casually screw everybody so he can sleep easier about his $1M christmas check.

The_Colonel 3y ago
Management makes decisions without data all the time. I understand people are personally invested, but sometimes it feels like people can't think about it, and it's all just motivated / wishful thinking. It's a bet in a way, if they're wrong, they will be "punished" by market forces.
- consp 3y ago
  > they == Everybody who does not want to go to the office, the shareholders and others involved but NOT the one making the decision based on nothing.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > if they're wrong, they will be "punished" by market forces we live in age of monopoly, market forces no longer punish. in 1990's there were twice as many companies registered on the stock exchange as today
  - secstate 3y ago
    Disappointed this was downvoted initially, you got my +1. Corporate reality in 2023 is creeping ever closer to a Weyland-Yutani plutocratic government where "market forces" are unable to put a dent in shitty corporate behavior. I have to fly Delta home. They cancelled my connecting flight, moved it to a day later and say "sorry, you can sleep at JFK!" The next time I fly, I've got 1/3 odds Delta will be the only one flying where I need to go. Rinse and repeat for online merchants. This will have ZERO effect on Amazon's ability to function because employees have ZERO clout in management meetings.
    - colpabar 3y ago
      What are you, a communist? The free market will fix that, any day now!
      - antisthenes 3y ago
        Unironically, millions of people still hold that viewpoint pretty strongly. Many Libertarians make a point of stating it in discussion as some kind of flex even. I have no idea why, as it is basically a declaration of one's own economic ignorance, but there you have it.
  - josefritz 3y ago
    People forget how much it's changed but I think that's spot on.
- TheCleric 3y ago
  No I think we’ve seen clearly that management making bad decisions ends up with regular employees getting laid off. There is no punishment for the individuals making bad bets.
hot_gril 3y ago
Some execs feel their employees are less productive when remote. There isn't a non-gameable way to measure productivity. I can tell you with certainty who on my team is getting the most stuff done any given week or across a year, but I can't provide data as to why.
- groos 3y ago
  If you can't actually show it from concrete evidence, then your certainty may actually be an illusion. I have worked with busy-beaver devs who created as many issues as they fixed, in effect making no impact to the quality of the product, and with three-toed sloth types as well, who took a while to get the work done but after it was done, it stayed done.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    I can show you what they got done and walk through my reasoning, but again that isn't data. The busy-beaver's metrics will probably look better despite doing nothing useful.
    - peteradio 3y ago
      I think we should bid hours on tasks. If you want to undercut your teammate because they are a sheister, then you can bid it down and call their bluff. You'd need buy-in to automate the obvious stuff so sheister isn't doing make work. And you'd need buy-in to veto bad projects that shouldn't be done to begin with, aka sheister bait projects.
      - hot_gril 3y ago
        You can't have a team function this way normally, because everything you do relies at least indirectly on your teammates cooperating.
- dvfjsdhgfv 3y ago
  For me it's very easy to measure. When working remotely, I do all my tasks, and if I finish before the en of sprint, I sometimes add something from the backlog I planned to do anyway. When working from the office, I do zero tasks, because the moment someone mentions RTO I change jobs.
helij 3y ago
This is exactly what it is in some cases. Bonus. I know about a company where execs bonuses are now based also around how many people they can get back to the office. Of course they are pushing for it.
- politelemon 3y ago
  OK I'm being naive here so educate me - surely the company wants people to produce more, so they need to create those conditions. If they bring people in, some will leave and impact productivity. So management should be careful about pissing off workers - especially with language like this exec has used - they should be doing what works and letting people have flexibility and choices. As I said I'm being naive, so I am missing something from their way of thinking.
  - medvezhenok 3y ago
    The deep Twitter cuts were a prime example of number of employees / productivity being orthogonal metrics. Sure, they lost a lot of advertisers and suffered some technical issues because of the transition, but it wasn't nearly as bad as everyone had predicted (myself included). The advertiser loss might turn out to be fatal, but I would argue that was more due to a change in the direction of the company (and leveraging it up with much more debt) rather than personnel loss, per se.
  - helij 3y ago
    They are cooking the frog. First 1 to 2 days, then as long as you're in 50% in a month. Now 3 days. Most of the people rant but give up at the end and some go elsewhere. The ones who do what they want and work from home do just that. Execs are happy when they can show 50% compliance overall so they get the bonus.
snird 3y ago
Something is very wrong with Amazon management. They have an employee who has been with them for years, currently kidnapped by Hamas to Gaza[1]. They won't even acknowledge it. It's a crazy thing not to acknowledge, not even in internal forums. 1: https://www-geektime-co-il.translate.goog/amazon-aws-employees-for-sasha-trufanov/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-geektime-co-il.translate.goog/amazon-aws-employe...
bicepjai 3y ago
Reminds me about how India 2016 demonetization https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetisation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonet... where the argument was this will curtail black money with no data to support over a decision that affect billions of people. There were deaths related to this “I think so” moments

pinewurst 3y ago

(August 3, 2023)

cushpush 3y ago

Define "office"

coolbreezetft22 3y ago

As someone who commutes into Seattle, the Mondays and Friday where amazon people don't go in are the best

dacracot 3y ago

So why isn't this an environmental/climate change issue. These corporations that want employees that can work from home to burn fuel and emit CO2 in order to travel to the office unnecessarily should be shamed for their lack of compassion and vision. These same corporations claim to be driving toward carbon neutral while simultaneously pushing for CO2 increase via their employees travel.

softwaredoug 3y ago
It’s an issue about this for sure. But also affordability, time to commute, rearrange lives, etc and other burdens to go into an office that the C-suite doesn’t contend with. RTO/WFH becomes kind of obvious given a certain distance to the office. If I live 10-20 mins from office, I probably go all the time. If I live 90+ minutes a visit to the office upends my life. Only a small subset of people live close to offices. In part because cities have been poorly designed and housing costs are insane right now.
- 303uru 3y ago
  My company is forcing a one day a week RTO (badge scan requirement). I have been firm with them. My day will not be any longer and travel time is coming out of it. At home I get on at 8am and sign off at 5pm. So on my RTO day I leave home at 8am, travel to the office, scan and take a meeting or two, then head home. I still sign off at 5pm. All told, they lost an hour plus of productivity from me. All around it's so obnoxious. Ya, my CEO doesn't mind RTO because he has grown kids, has a driver, has a home chef, etc...
  - ath3nd 3y ago
    I always find it fascinating the amount of large scale time waste corps are willing to commit themselves to just to prove to themselves that they are the ones running the show. Ammoral out of touch douches like this deserve all their workers to quit and show them they are nothing without us making them all their money.
lnxg33k1 3y ago

dmitrygr 3y ago

Interviewing around, there's been no shortage of remote offers with good comp over the last few years. Idiots like this guy are just costing his teams good engineers. If you assume that X% of good engineers prefer WFH, no matter what you think the value of X is, he is costing his teams them, and placing them at a strategic disadvantage compared to smarter competition.

jonfw 3y ago
Is good comp amazon level? I am under the impression that there are not a whole lot of companies who are salary competitive w/ amazon outside of FAANG, and most of FAANG is pushing RTO
- ghaff 3y ago
  People make decisions and prioritize what's most important to them.
- rilindo 3y ago
  IIRC, Amazon wages weren't that great to begin with.
  - jonfw 3y ago
    levels.fyi shows amazon total comp within a few percent of google's for comparable roles
- throwaway428934 3y ago
  I left Amazon (b/c they wanted me to move to Seattle) for a remote job at a smallish startup paying 10% more. So, yes.
  - jonfw 3y ago
    That's great to find one but if somebody told me they were cross shopping a bunch of full remote offers on target w/ amazon total comp I'd be surprised

FooBarBizBazz 3y ago

[flagged]

ParseItAgainSam 3y ago

> have [a] backbone, disagree, and commit If you had a backbone and disagreed, doesn't that mean you should defy them?

wccrawford 3y ago
Standing up and saying something is wrong still requires a backbone, even if you take it no further. There are a lot of people who won't even go that far.
- happytoexplain 3y ago
  Yes, but the word backbone isn't being applied to disagreeing - the people being addressed are already disagreeing. The word is being applied (dishonestly, disrespectfully, and antagonistically) to "committing".
  - ghaff 3y ago
    The wording isn't really optimal. I think the intent is that you should show backbone and disagree with a plan if you don't agree with it but you should then commit if the decision ultimately goes against you. The basic formulation originally comes from Intel. The idea is that if you don't get your way you shouldn't constantly try to force a re-examination of the decision as often happens.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
slipshady 3y ago
It comes from Amazon's Leadership Principles (LPs) [1] which honestly feel like the vestiges of the company's heyday. The two new ones (at the bottom) were added by Andy Jassy when he took over and are a joke within the company. But here's what this post's title is referring to > Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit > Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly. [1] - https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-principles https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-...

bin_bash 3y ago

I suspect the real reason is pressure from local governments missing out on tax revenue.

karaterobot 3y ago

Well, given that Amazon execs have made so many bad decisions with data, it might be he's right to call for this one without any supporting evidence whatsoever.

catchnear4321 3y ago

> I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better. well, if that’s the new bar… don’t have data to back it up, but, i know that not only is he wrong, he’s a sociopath.

draw_down 3y ago

[dead]

softwaredoug 3y ago

IMO with layoffs and RTO these companies have shown us their priority is to manage towards mediocrity and predictable business model over excellence/innovation. Those who can will leave. But that won’t hurt the company IMO, who will get plenty of “good enough” folks to join the ranks to keep the lights on. I suspect eventually this will bite them. It already bit Google with ChatGPT who decided their priority was executing on a search business over other ways of accessing information. But these are juggernauts companies that can f around a long time before they find out.

CSMastermind 3y ago
> IMO with layoffs and RTO these companies have shown us their priority is to manage towards mediocrity and predictable business model over excellence/innovation. To be clear: that's always been the case. Large enterprises prioritize predictability over excellence. That's the entire point of bureaucracy: you add a floor a the expense of also having a ceiling.
- softwaredoug 3y ago
  For sure. Though pre-covid, I wouldn't say many of these companies (at least perception wise) thought of themselves in those terms. They were perceived as the cool-hip tech companies that constantly disrupt industries... Now that veil has lifted.
hot_gril 3y ago
Google fell behind ChatGPT well before they laid anyone off, forced RTO, or anything like that. They fell behind Zoom before the pandemic even happened. Having an "engineer-driven" company doesn't mean it executes well on products.

nightshadetrie 3y ago

“I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better”

vemv 3y ago

The phrase "Disagree and commit" only makes sense when two peers (or groups thereof) agree in discussing a decision in equal terms, and committing to whatever the decision is. Of course, the way it's used here is a perversion of an otherwise useful principle.

injb 3y ago
>>> The phrase "Disagree and commit" only makes sense when two peers (or groups thereof) agree in discussing a decision in equal terms, and committing to whatever the decision is. Where does the "disagree" part come in to it then?
- vemv 3y ago
  You disagree while discussing, but (ideally) you agree in advance that there will be a) a mechanism for making a decision (e.g. voting, coin flipping) and b) there will be a commitment to work on the decided approach as if it were one's own. The opposite tends to result in endless discussions: people don't get to work in their full capacity - they still seek rebuttal, sneaking in their preferred approach, etc.
- xboxnolifes 3y ago
  Two peers is maybe too small a group. Take 5, 4 of which think one way and 1 another. A decision must be made by end of day. By the end of the day, the outlier may not be convinced, but they should "disagree and commit" to working toward whatever the decision is.
vidarh 3y ago
"Disagree and commit" is also the core of Lenin's "democratic centralism" (there with a claim of adhering to the idea of discussing it on equal terms first). As you say, it can make sense in small groups, but in larger groups it quickly becomes a means to demand compliance by controlling when the debate is shut down (conveniently when you have the upper hand)
drewcoo 3y ago
Exactly, it's a tool for forming consensus when consensus cannot be reached.

banannaise 3y ago

Every message of this sort gives me the distinct impression that I'm being lied to. I can't shake the feeling that they have a reason, but they're not willing to tell it to us because we would dislike that reason even more than no reason at all.

asylteltine 3y ago
That’s because if you are talking to an executive, you are being lied to
hot_gril 3y ago
If there's an unsavory reason, I think it's one or both of: 1. Employees slack more on average working from home. Employers want people stuck in a work-only place where they're monitored. Same as how open offices replaced cubicles "for cost reasons." I've seen evidence of this at my job. 2. They're heavily invested in physical offices in particular cities already, so much that they alone can sway the same real estate market they're invested in, and it's not a sunken cost yet.
- Cyberdogs7 3y ago
  Talking to many CEO's of mid size companies, it seems to be an extension of point 2. They have received many tax incentives from the cities in which they are located, based on the employees they have there. With WFH, the cities are threatening those tax incentives. Typically the tax incentives are deductible property tax, except sales tax, or some type of city provided R&D subsidy to help with state level taxes. We received these back in 2010 with a 175 person game studio and we had 3 different cities pitching for us to move there. I have received outreach on even just a 5 person company. I can only imagine what cities will do with large employers.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    That's an interesting anecdote. I had no idea mid-sized companies were working with cities like that.
  - 3y ago

s17n 3y ago

People ascribe all kinds of bad motivations (ego, stupidity, etc) to execs who want a return to office but there's a much more obvious and reasonable explanation - if your job consists of sitting in meetings all day, work is much, much more enjoyable if you're in office. No amount of money (that anyone would be willing to pay me) could get me to sit on Zoom all day.

giomasce 3y ago
I'd rather solve this problem by organizing the work day so that it's not meetings all day long, rather than requiring people to go to the office to waste time in presence.
- s17n 3y ago
  Meetings all day is the job for execs, though. That's why they all favor return to office.
  - giomasce 3y ago
    Really? They don't have anything better to do? What a poor career choice! In my naivety I had assumed that an exec's job was to help a company run smooth, and instead they have to sit through meetings all day long. Life is really hard on some people... /s
ghaff 3y ago
Except that in any size of company, your meetings are going to be conference/video calls (at least for some of the participants) anyway. Fortunately, I'm mostly not but a lot of the people I work with are on video calls most of the day.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> if your job consists of sitting in meetings all day, work is much, much more enjoyable if you're in office. But is that someone else's problem?
- 3y ago

jechamt 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20231129174929/https://fortune.com/2023/08/03/amazon-svp-mike-hopkins-office-return/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231129174929/https://fortune.c... First time posting an archive / access link. If this link doesn’t work for anyone, feel free to hide this post. I’ll monitor and delete if it’s failing / not helpful.

water-data-dude 3y ago
Worked great for me! Thanks!

dekhn 3y ago

Well, at least he's honest

CrimsonRain 3y ago

No issues with this. Get a full remote job somewhere else if you dont want to go to office. Source: 10y+ remote exp

tazu 3y ago
"This doesn't immediately impact me so I have no issues with this"
- fallingknife 3y ago
  It does impact him. His employment opportunities are just as restricted by in office policies as everyone else in the industry.
- CrimsonRain 3y ago
  Follow the site guidelines and refrain from bull** replies.
hughesjj 3y ago
Would you be mad if your employer forced you to move and revoked remote work? Because that's exactly what's happening to the thousands of COVID era Amazon employees hired under a full time remote contract. It's fully within Amazon's rights to change the terms of the contract, just as it is with your employer, but that doesn't mean the people impacted can't complain about it, and it definitely has an effect on reputation for the stability of employment agreements Amazon offers.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  I wouldn't exactly be mad, I'd quit. So far haven't had to, but I had Amazon and other offers ready in hand last year in case that was needed.
- CrimsonRain 3y ago
  If my employer pays me more salary to compensate for the things/times I will lose by going to office, I might say yes. Else I'll find another job. They'll have to pay me severance/give notice period etc too. Don't join companies like Amazon who will _never_ go full remote. Just because you joined a company _at a time_ when it was _forced_ to remote by external circumstances (act of God or biolab), doesn't mean you can expect that way of work to remain as it is once that circumstance is resolved. Just like working remote has a lot of benefits, it has tons of issues. I know because I've worked 95% of my career remote. I would _never_ recommend remote to any Junior or even Senior SDE. It is bad for your career+skill growth (for some it is opposite; like me; but that's a tiny minority). And this is just one issue. And no. No reputation/stability is harmed for companies like Amazon for this. There are plenty of people who knew these companies will RTO sooner or later; in fact it is surprising they didn't do it sooner.

baz00 3y ago

If they're doing this with no data they are probably doing everything else with no data. Based on the fucking clown show I see behind the scenes at AWS from a big customer perspective, it appears it's squeaky noses and big feet right up to the top. Edit: they have data they're just ignoring it because it doesnt support their conclusio.

dangasaurus 3y ago

[flagged]

hughesjj 3y ago
I think it's perfectly fine to bring it up given how much green washing these companies perpetuate. Amazon paid a boatload of money to rename 'ket arena's to the 'climate pledge arena' after all. It's relevant to investors too imo because spending a boat load of money to increase goodwill and then ruining the trust your goodwill represents doesn't seem like a wise investment strategy imo.
- dangasaurus 3y ago
  [dead]

tonetheman 3y ago

[dead]

r0ckarong 3y ago

"Because I said so" is the beloved argument of narcissists throughout time. Get in line folks, office rush hour is gonna be a doozy.

28304283409234 3y ago

And that from the same companies that insist on open office spaces? Shocker! /s

qkeast 3y ago

Wielding cultural values as a bludgeon from a position of authority weakens all of a company’s cultural values.

28304283409234 3y ago

And I agree: I perform certain tasks better when occasionally doing that face to face. My employer does not however own some form of magical right for my “best performance every day all of the time forever and ever”. Suck it up employer.

jechamt 3y ago

https://www.aboutamazon.com/about-us/leadership-principles https://www.aboutamazon.com/about-us/leadership-principles > Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly. In this context, “leaders” is (at least) aspirational, and meant to include all employees. I have a good deal of experience with the LPs, though I can’t claim to be an expert in evaluating the merits of their various applications. Particularly with this one, as it appears to be sort of encouraging situations that are more likely lead to discord and conflict. I would venture that, in my experience, this one is one of the more highly prone to differing interpretations among individuals. The times I have seen it used, or examples broadcast of its value, it is used in the spirit of starting or engaging in a good faith discussion, and at some point concluding a time box to the discussion by one party asking another to disagree and commit. In other words, two well-intentioned parties that both have meaningful contributions to the discussion (and represent that they understand the other party also has meaningful contributions) reach an impasse and know they need to get past it. By invoking disagree and commit, they both agree to commit their full energy and attention to the same concluded direction, work to see the success of that path, and (usually) discuss as an after action lessons learned, so that future disagreements of a similar nature can point to the data / conclusions to make better decisions. Again, I don’t know I have the best understanding of this LP, and it has not come up often for me personally, so I welcome feedback here from others with experience. This is completely independent from my opinion on this particular issue, which I will omit. It does differ somewhat from the representation in the reporting: > In other words, once any company decision is made, workers are expected to fall in line, even if they disagree with it

loudin 3y ago

There's so many issues with large companies demanding people to return to the office, so it's at least somewhat refreshing to hear "do it because I said so", but this just isn't going to work in the long run. The toothpaste can't be put back into the tube. And this is because anyone who worked in-person at the office of a large tech company knows it's markedly worse. For meetings, the process typically was: 1. Try to book a meeting room for a group large enough, succeed about 80% of the time and scramble at the last minute other times. 2. Wait for someone to finish up their call. If someone super senior was in the room, my meeting was guaranteed to start whenever they felt like ending their meeting, which would be 5-10 minutes late. 3. Inevitably dial into a video conference because at least one member of the team is working in a different office, so not even everyone was in person anyway 4. Run out of time at the end and having to dash to my next meeting room late. And this doesn't even account for the fact that getting quality heads-down time in an open office floor plan was nearly impossible. Just take the good with the bad. Make in-person meetings mandatory for important events that require in-person collaboration like design sprints, brainstorming, launches, etc.

devn0ll 3y ago

I believe we are seeing the last few "twitches" of "Office work". Work from home (for office type work) is here to stay and will never leave. I feel loneliest, when I'm at the office. Even if just one person for a meeting is at home, EVERYONE just logs in for the online meeting. It's handier, better organized, make meeting notes together, etc, etc. So beeing in the office for such meetings means I need to find a quiet spot, or alienate everyone in the call with a noisy mic. And when I'm actually trying to get work done, I remember why open floor office's are hell. No sorry, WFH is here to stay. In fact, I do believe we have crossed a threshold where it just cannot be stopped anymore.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

This is from August, c'mon

ChrisArchitect 3y ago
Lots more recent discussions: 2 months ago I moved states just before the return-to-office order at Amazon, so I quit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37641660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37641660 2 weeks ago Amazon to staff: Come into the office or your promotion is at risk https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38278074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38278074

rhelz 3y ago

In a way, we should be thrilled that the perception is that in-office work is better: less outsourcing. If i can work remove from Indiana, I can work remote from India. I'm very surprised that the takeaway from COVID wasn't just to have people work remotely from the lowest-wage countries in the world.

glimshe 3y ago
In general this is not the case and that's exactly why it hasn't happened significantly for companies that embrace remote. This is one more of the remote work myths that keep getting repeated. As someone who works in a very remote team, it's much harder to collaborate with people in very distant time zones. You can do remote work and have PLENTY of interaction over video, chat, audio etc. But you lose all of that when all the interactions are very slow and fully asynchronous. Additionally - and that's a separate problem - doing remote work with people in other countries has an entire different set of problems. Work culture, legislation restricting hours, language barrier (even with India), etc. These problems are unrelated to remote work in general are related to outsourcing work.
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  > In general this is not the case and that's exactly why it hasn't happened significantly for companies that embrace remote. Anecdote of one, but my company is fully embracing Canada and UK. We had multiple rounds of layoffs and all the new headcount is in those 2 countries. > timezones, Work culture, legislation restricting hours, language barrier None of that applies to Canada. And I can tell you first hand that Canadian salaries are lower than even the cheapest parts of the US. Canada is also rolling out red carpets to IT people around the world including H1B refugees, so worker supple is not an issue. Even for UK, only the timezone matters. It is very much compatible with the and work culture.
  - glimshe 3y ago
    Canada offers limited outsourcing opportunities from the US perspective. Population is only a bit over one tenth of the US and there is already a significant brain drain to the US due to higher salaries and ease of moving. Canada also has strict labor regulations and a "union problem" which aren't very appealing to US companies. The UK suffers from similar problems on top of the timezone issue. The company where I work has an office in both of these countries, but they only have a fraction of the US-based employees (and not growing in either). Most of the growth in the company is happening in the cheaper parts of the US instead.

yafbum 3y ago

People need to stop using data as an excuse for making decisions, or apologizing for not having data, or arguing about the lack of data as an excuse for maintaining a status quo. As entrepreneurs, as managers, as individuals we make decisions with no perfect data all the time. It's called dealing with risk. Sure you could get a sense for how much active coding time or whatever BS metric you can track, and look at correlation with WFH, but that stuff is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. How's new grad onboarding affected? How's team culture and conflict management affected? How is dealing with difficult health challenges affected? Working remotely is a big shift with likely long term longitudinal effects on an organization that are hard to predict. You can't A/B test or analyze your way out of every single decision there. So I respect people making decisions without data on this, that's what they're being paid the big bucks for. As I'm sure they will respect my decision to leave the minute the terms of the arrangement no longer suits me, which will add a data point of N=+1 somewhere. It's ok to ask to see the data if you're curious. But people are often asking for data not out of curiosity but just because they disagree with the consequences of a decision that affects them. I think that's disingenuous. You could deploy a team of data scientists to tell me that the org will definitely be 5% more productive if everyone worked from some office an hour away, and it wouldn't really matter to me. I still prefer having a remote work option and I won't commute more than 40 min to work. We don't need to ask for data about things we don't like, we can just disagree and either commit or create the attrition outcomes that will drive different behaviors in the future.

kjsingh 3y ago

Disagree and Commute

joeman1000 3y ago

I’d like to see this asshole waste 2h every day in public transport and get less work done because of a noisy open-plan office.

buzzert 3y ago
I suspect he drives to work. Or is driven to work.

hurrrr 3y ago

The reality is: they have the data and the data shows that productivity is more or less the same. However, they (the execs) prefer to have everyone back in the office to keep tax incentives, real estate value and probably also because they (old school executives with strong people skills) genuinely think that in office is better.

ryandvm 3y ago

What I don't understand is all these companies are having their best profits ever since the pandemic with their employees mostly working from home. Why exactly are they looking for ways to screw that up?

analognoise 3y ago

Another day, another reason to tell Amazon recruiters to pound sand.

Tommstein 3y ago

[flagged]

disambiguation 3y ago

Amazon sucks. I worked there years ago and it was terrible. AWS is over priced garbage and Prime offers nothing of value. Bezos was smart to cash out when he did.

znpy 3y ago

Classic corporate bullshit, smellier than usual since it comes from a company that claims to be data-driven.

x86x87 3y ago

> I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better. Yup. Sounds about right. Data-driven to hell and back. Once the employment market recovers Amazon is going to be screwed big time.

alienicecream 3y ago

If you have no choice, you have no choice and that's too bad. The bright side is that eventually the job market will come back and there will be plenty of remote positions again, the cat's out of the bag and when the job market is hot they'll have no choice but to complete for talent. So if you have to go back, just go back until the next cycle and then dump this turd of a company for a better one.

TheCleric 3y ago

Just like I knew it was right to decline an Amazon interview. Except I have data like this.