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I feel like Big Tech management is simply in revenge mode. Managers and executives felt a tiny bit less powerful for a small amount of time due to their worker

• fhdsgbbcaA 2y ago
  Imagine being a billionaire CEO and still having to bend over backwards to give “perks” to entitled engineers! Think of those years and years of suffering that must put a CEO through! To be at the top of the mountain - and still beholden to little people! That is the worst kind of injustice. And the joy - the relief! - of finally being able to treat the engineers with the same contempt you feel for your customers. It must feel GLORIOUS.
  • WorkerBee28474 2y ago
    Do you think that Amazon treats its customers with contempt?
    • CamperBob2 2y ago
      I mean, how else would you explain the product search UX on amazon.com?
    • collingreen 2y ago
      Absolutely! There are many stories of them shutting off services for and then directly competing with their customers in both the software and the retail space.
    • fhdsgbbcaA 2y ago
      Using legal loopholes to avoid accountability for selling people unsafe products from Chinese drop shippers is the height of contempt. https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2019/06/04/528240.htm https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2019/06/04/528240...
  • hashtag-til 2y ago
    Sadly, other CEOs will be quick to follow for more days in the office or full time in office. Much quickier than they followed for salary raises, obviously.
    • fhdsgbbcaA 2y ago
      Yes, and then the market has an inevitable upswing and they’ve tarnished their reputations as highly desirable employers. Coming out of this layoff wave my impression is Microsoft and Meta are static on employer desirability, Amazon slightly less desirable, and Google is now IBM 2.0.
• joshdavham 2y ago
  Yeah I can imagine that there is a bit of that going on. I imagine that there's also a bit of pent-up resentment from the pre-pandemic and pandemic era where tech workers were job hopping every couple months and demanding full remote. Now that the tables have turned, mgmt likely feels pretty emboldened.
• tschellenbach 2y ago
  I don't like this us vs them mentality. Nothing stops you from starting your own business and being on the "manager" side of things. Cost of capital is up, productivity is down. So all companies have to work through options to increase productivity, and/or reduce costs. Companies will take different approaches to this
  • pydry 2y ago
    This idea needs to die. Gone are the days when you can start the next google in your garage. You need capital to compete.
    • outside1234 2y ago
      And lots of capital. Not even Elon Musk has enough in AI for example.
  • mupuff1234 2y ago
    An easy way for "them" to stop that mentality would be to take a pay cut and show solidarity in cutting costs, and yet I don't really see that happening.
  • nateglims 2y ago
    Is productivity down? It seems like it's just growing slower than pre global financial crisis.
  • YokoZar 2y ago
    Productivity growth may be slowing, but it is not "down" in general. It's the highest it's ever been. Is there a specific reason to believe Amazon would have less productivity than the rest of the economy compared with before?
  • insane_dreamer 2y ago
    > productivity is down according to which statistics?
  • ipaddr 2y ago
• AviationAtom 2y ago
  I think it's more the few bad apples that spoil the bunch. Have you heard of over-employment? There are people working 2-3 full-time jobs, pulling over $500k, while actually putting in only a few hours worth of work each week. There are a ton more that are working one job, but likewise giving very little output. It's harder to catch those folks in the act when they don't physically have to be present in the office. While in office can be less productive in a fair amount of aspects it can also be more so in others. It isn't always some sinister plan from above. Labor costs have risen greatly post-lockdowns, so companies expect to see a return on their money, more so in a rapidly tightening labor market.
  • vasilipupkin 2y ago
    they had a 3 days a week in office policy, that should be sufficient to catch the people you are talking abut
  • techjamie 2y ago
    That sounds like a management problem to me. If they can't tell that someone's output is that low, then clearly they need to switch their goals for what they consider "productive."
    • tschellenbach 2y ago
      When you hire managers, some percentage of them won't be solid. And even the best managers have to balance giving someone a chance vs spotting abuse.
      • acdha 2y ago
        Perhaps, but that doesn’t sound like you should lower productivity for everyone else hoping that it’ll reduce the need for managers to do their jobs. I’ve seen too many people spend 8 in the office working mostly on fantasy football or Facebook to think that changing locations is an effective solution.
      • collingreen 2y ago
• DiggyJohnson 2y ago
  > I feel like Big Tech management is simply in revenge mode Doesn’t this sound like tribal, us-versus-them, reductive explanation for the behavior of those you disagree with?
  • LanceH 2y ago
    I've always felt there was a certain amount of us-versus-them going on in the office -- though I don't think that's the main reason here. Right now, I think it's a matter of over-hiring the last couple years. This is both a productivity and loyalty check. Anyone not coming in will either be let go, or recognized as an exception. As for my opinion of there being a level of us-versus-them, I felt it has manifested in things like dress codes. If you're old enough, you might have worked at some place where you wear a suit. That might seem perfectly normal for higher paid management or sales, but it's just keeping people in line at the lower levels. I've worked at a number of places where "rank has its privileges". Managers would have larger desks, offices, better computers, etc... Regardless of what was needed to do the job. I'm certain there is a level of "I have to, so you have to", whether it makes sense or not.
  • nimih 2y ago
    The economic goals of management and labor are fundamentally at odds, so any explanation which isn't us-vs-them is going to be missing a key dynamic and motivating force of the relationship, at least to some extent.
  • lolinder 2y ago
    Tribalism is in, nuance is out. I'm as much a fan of WFH as anyone and will never go back into an office, but posts like OP's aren't getting us anywhere—they just reinforce the idea that WFH is an immature demand of an entitled and antagonistic subset of engineers who they'd be better off losing anyway.
  • PhasmaFelis 2y ago
    If it's obvious that my boss' interests are far out of line with my own and he's fine with that, "us-versus-them" is simply the truth. The fact that he can rattle off a complex-sounding but empty justification doesn't change that.
• hintymad 2y ago
  > Managers and executives felt a tiny bit less powerful for a small amount of time due to their workers pushing for remote and having the leverage to do so. I have a contrarian view on this. People will be efficient remotely and the management can use result-oriented performance management only when the talent density is high. Unfortunately high talent density is the luxury that Amazon does not have. Amazon has hundreds of thousands of employees after all. Otherwise, Amazon's culture should be uniquely suitable to WFH. Case in point, many teams are already distributed across multiple time zones; Amazon rely heavily on writeups and asynchronous commenting; and Amazon discourage discussions with more than a handful of people.
• fsflover 2y ago
  > I feel like Big Tech management is simply in revenge mode. Indeed this is how Cory Doctorow explains it: https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/ https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/
• dookahku 2y ago
  maybe part of it, certainly many reasons for this decision. more likely, it's a constructive layoff and they want to justify real estate cap-ex
• arunabha 2y ago
  Yes,revenge(or rather a desire for reversion to the previous norm) might be part of the reason, however there might be another aspect which makes it more urgent for the execs WFH is overwhelmingly popular amongst employees and has the most potential to be a topic tech workers band together on. Tech employees realizing that collective action can work genuinely terrifies execs. Therefore it's imperative to the moneyed class that RTO be normalized back as soon as possible before people start to organize. The weak job market just makes it easier and the upcoming interest rate cuts might dent that advantage a bit.
  • idiotsecant 2y ago
    Yep, the tragedy is that the average tech worker has 'temporarily embaressed rockstar billionare' syndrome, and they've got it bad. They don't need collective action because their beautiful, perfect mind can do much better bargaining by themselves. Carpenters know that they are labor and labor has value only when it takes it through collective action. Somehow tech workers haven't figured that out yet. When will tech workers catch up to carpenters? Hard to say.
    • ryandrake 2y ago
      Yep, every time an organized labor topic comes up here, all these "Captains Of Industry" show up to HN to tell us how they all think they are making well above their peers' average salary due to their specialized talent and superior negotiation skill, and could not possibly benefit from a union. "Heck, I'll one day be a tech exec myself, and then I'd totally regret supporting unions!"
    • steve_adams_86 2y ago
      I’ve thought we should mirror skilled labours in many ways for a long time but I don’t think we’ve made an inch of progress. The way newcomers get “mentored” haphazardly by random coworkers and google/youtube/stack overflow/AI is absolutely bizarre and exceedingly unprofessional given our work has real world implications. Some sort of apprenticeship model and at least a degree of oversight would make so much sense, but… Well, we’ve got this mess instead. It’s strange. Maybe I only feel that way because I came from skilled labour before I started programming full time. My experience of learning from someone who’d earned their tickets was sooo much better than the self-teaching and cargo-cult leadership I endured in tech. Despite that, I’m extremely grateful to the people who served as good mentors in my career. It made an immense difference. And while I enjoy self-teaching a lot, it’s awful to need to rely on it because your industry is practically structureless in that regard. So many days of trial by fire that could be avoided.
• doctorpangloss 2y ago
  I don't know. Have you acted any differently? Whom have you employed? Did the money come out of your pocket? What were the rules?
• ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
  Thinking like this doesn't help you understand the game, and if you don't understand the game, you can't play it.
• eptcyka 2y ago
  I worked remotely years before the pandemic, and it was great, for the most part. But there are people who definitely hate it. And there are also people who love it, but can't be trusted with it.
• wubrr 2y ago
  > Managers and executives felt a tiny bit less powerful for a small amount of time due to their workers pushing for remote and having the leverage to do so. They are in 'avoid responsibility and blame all misses on circumstances outside their control' mode. Remote work is the perfect excuse for incompetent management in big tech.
  • forgot-im-old 2y ago
    Good theory. Killing remote seems the first line of defense in covering.
    • collingreen 2y ago
      Kind of killing the golden goose though. If this was the plan then it would be better to NOT force a return to office and just keep blaming everything on WFH over and over with a little "millennials/Z just don't want to work anymore" sprinkled in.
      • wubrr 2y ago
        It's middle management mostly directly responsible for IC/team productivity and blaming misses on WFH. Upper management is hearing 'WFH is the problem' from middle management and making the RTO decisions.
  • HDThoreaun 2y ago
    This sounds much more likely to me than the revenge narrative.
• dsugarman 2y ago
  Your feelings are valid and they're doing this to perform better as a business.
• dividefuel 2y ago
  I don't think revenge is the motivation, but it's hard to know what the actual motivation is. I think it's some mix of: - Execs truly believe that culture and productivity are better in office (i.e., what they actually say in their announcements) - An opportunity to force attrition without layoffs - Maintain real estate value / Justify real estate investments - Belief that remote workers are more likely to jump to another company - Opportunity to claw back a perk that can be returned in future negotiations if needed - Big tech companies are mature and no longer need to compete so heavily on brand/perks - Execs personally prefer employees in office for some other reason (e.g., wanting to feel powerful) - Execs have strong data that productivity is higher in an office (seems unlikely, surely they'd have published it by now)
  • clumsysmurf 2y ago
    - Upper management wants to reserve remote perks for themselves. Otherwise what's the point of being upper management without perks.
    • stefan_ 2y ago
      Which is why Jassy bought a Santa Monica home in time for COVID - even that little personal story is of course nonsense
    • sharkweek 2y ago
      Like a private plane to commute from California to Seattle every week to work in office! https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/starbucks-ceo-commute-private-jet/ https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/starbucks-ceo-commute-priva...
  • htrp 2y ago
    it's really an indictment of management, whose inability to learn how to manage a remote workforce means that they default back to the idea of management by walking around that they learned at HBS if your management tree is a bunch of ex MBB consultants, you absolutely have this problem whether you believe so or not
• yodsanklai 2y ago
  > Managers and executives felt a tiny bit less powerful for a small amount of time due to their workers pushing for remote and having the leverage to do so. I don't know about top executives, but many managers work remotely and would rather keep it that way. Most managers are close to the leaves of the hierarchy tree and are just as powerless as ICs.
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• ghaff 2y ago
  In the case of one CEO of a moderately large company who I know pretty well, they honestly do think that the energy and camaraderie of having people in an office is a positive thing and they're probably right. They're also shedding real estate and are pretty resigned to the co-located workers genie not going back into the bottle especially given changes that happened over COVID. Sure, companies can force it but they'll lose a lot of their workforce in many cases and they may not consider that a good tradeoff. I actually don't think it is about conspiracy theories in general but more about executives trying to recreate a past that had some positive features that have evaporated. Even 15 years ago, I spent a lot of useful face-time with people which evaporated with COVID and travel/off-site budget cuts. You can deal with the latter to some degree but a lot of companies really haven't.
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