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Take this with a grain of salt but I read on a similar Reddit post the return to office is mainly due to the tax incentives the city/county/state provided Amazo

Take this with a grain of salt but I read on a similar Reddit post the return to office is mainly due to the tax incentives the city/county/state provided Amazon for having their offices located there. The Reddit user made a claim which Amazon could only receive those tax benefits if their workers actually worked in person at the location. --- I can see this being a valid argument for return to office for a lot of corporations, if its actually true. The tax benefits are too good to pass up and in office has been the status quo forever.

burnte 2y ago
> I can see this being a valid argument for return to office for a lot of corporations, if its actually true. The tax benefits are too good to pass up and in office has been the status quo forever. Holding on to what is now an outdated view of worker utilization might help them for a couple years with these tax incentives, but they're going to get a lower quality of worker, and incur a lot of retraining costs as people quit. They're going to have to pivot to having less commercial real estate eventually.
- supportengineer 2y ago
  The executives must look out and see a bottomless supply of cheap engineers. And I doubt they plan on training anybody at all. It’s just a race to the bottom at this point.
  - burnte 2y ago
    They'll be gone in 3 years. This will juice the stock price as investors will be happy with gaining additional tax benefits. By the time the problems bubble up from a weakened foundation it'll be the next guy's problem.
    - snoman 2y ago
      Amazon already had very high turnover before Covid. Many people don’t stick around (willingly or otherwise) after the year 2 hiring bonus cliff.
  - GenerocUsername 2y ago
    As long as shipping in whole floors of indians is a viable strategy it will continue. As soon as they cannot shio them in, they will ship the jobs to India. We need tariffs and controls to maintain quality of living standards above the global median
- Aurornis 2y ago
  > but they're going to get a lower quality of worker, and incur a lot of retraining costs as people quit. This gets repeated a lot online but statistics don’t really support it. They will lose some number of employees but the significant majority of people just go along with RTO policies. All of the headlines claiming employees will quit if their companies mandate RTO are based on self-reported surveys where people are asked hypothetical questions. When reality hits and people are forced to choose between their large FAANG comp or quitting, it turns out barely anyone quits.
  - pteraspidomorph 2y ago
    It probably depends on whether there have been hundreds of thousands of severances in the industry in recent years or not... People would probably quit if they didn't have to compete with an insane amount of people to get a job at this time.
    - kmonsen 2y ago
      Which is why we are seeing return to office right now.
  - marcus_holmes 2y ago
    The people who are there to solve interesting problems quit [0]. The people who are there for the cash stay. The vast majority of any large organisation are in the second category, so your statement is 100% correct. Whether the organisation loses something because the first category leaves, is open to debate. I think they would. [0] because they now have the experience (and option at other organisations) of working from home full-time, which reduces their exposure to corporate bullshit and pointless meetings.
    - dnissley 2y ago
      To be fair not all people who are there to solve interesting problems prefer remote, so they would only lose some subset of those folks.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
shagie 2y ago
It's a very reasonable argument. And even if it isn't something now (where Amazon gives Seattle the bird... wait, that's San Francisco that got the bird from the bird), it is something that would impact their ability in the future to negotiate tax breaks with cities. There's also the question of even if remote work was more productive on the whole (and I believe this to be true) and that these productivity gains come from the more senior workers who are able to identify tasks that they need to complete and effectively shut the door on the office and focus ... while also being able to handle other things at home (being more productive because you can put a load of laundry in at noon or being able to get something to eat without having to go all the way to the break room)... So, grant that on the whole productivity is higher with WFH for mid level and senior level individual contributors ... junior ICs may be suffering quietly without more direct mentorship, the listening in on ad-hoc hallway meetings, managers being able to pick up on work stress more easily. It would be very easy to imagine a conversation at some director level (where I'm making up the numbers)... "From 2020 to 2024, we've seen the number of junior ICs advance to mid level drop from 20% to 16% compared to 2016 to 2020. This is a declining trend and when looked at year over year 2020 to 2021 had 8% advancement while 2023 to 2024 only showed 4% advancement. Furthermore, the senior ICs are comfortable in their role and the number of them moving up to management has dropped from 5% to 3% in the 2020 to 2024 time frame. If this continues, we may be looking at a lot of unsatisfied junior developers who are not progressing and a lot of satisfied senior developers and leads who would traditionally shift to the management track... well, not take that step in their career progression." Yes, that's a just-so story. I find it to be a believable one. So even if everything is great with remote work currently for productivity, some trends may be showing a problem years down the road where people are not improving and the company as a whole is stagnating (even more). ---- (edit / addition) - from last year, that tax revenue thing with some numbers: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/community/amazon-return-to-office-downtown-seattle-revival https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/community/amazon-return-to-...
- Plasmoid 2y ago
  I think that's a pretty plausible idea, but it has one flaw. If it was true, then companies would be announcing this as the cause. They'd be shouting it from the rooftop if they had any data to support it.
Aurornis 2y ago
> The Reddit user made a claim Did they provide any links or evidence at all? Reddit is a hotbed of misinformation and claims like this proliferate and grow on Reddit with little basis in reality all the time. Unless someone can find compelling evidence that this is both true and a substantial tax credit, I would assume it’s just another product of the Reddit misinformation machine. Even if it is true, the majority of the RTO is a transition from hybrid to 5 days onsite. I doubt they would have allowed hybrid to begin with if it impacted some hypothetical giant tax breaks.
- shagie 2y ago
  How many tax credits do you want? https://goodjobsfirst.org/amazon-tracker/ https://goodjobsfirst.org/amazon-tracker/ It isn't necessarily about the historical tax credits... but also those potential ones in the future. Notice Seattle not having tax credits for 2022, 2023, or 2024.
Olreich 2y ago
Usually the tax incentives are relatively minor and are long term as well. The more important thing with the real-estate strategy is that there's a lot of capital and personal clout wrapped up in these massive building projects and investments. Amazon recently had 2 shiny new buildings built in Arlington, VA. They have a bunch of buildings that were built in Seattle. There's definitely tax incentives involved, but those tax incentives are tiny compared to the billions of capital poured into the buildings.
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  If anything there are tax penalties. SF makes companies pay a tax per person in a seat working in SF, so it incentivized companies to move offices elsewhere and go remote
- grigri907 2y ago
  Is this just a sunk cost fallacy then, or do they expect some other benefit?
shusaku 2y ago
There’s no shortage of conspiracy theories online trying to explain return to office policies, when the simplest explanation “managers like being in the same room as employees” has sufficient explanatory power.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Do they? Even when I was in office at the tail end of COVID all my meetings were on Zoom anyway. Regardless, such a trivial whimsy like that is a horrible way to place company wide decisions.
  - immibis 2y ago
    Managers like being able to see you at your desk looking busy. Otherwise they assume you're slacking off. They lack object permanence.
raverbashing 2y ago
I doubt it, and actually, with NYC it's the exact opposite
hackernewds 2y ago
Not to mention, Amazon has vested real estate that is massively depreciating along with the entire corporate real estate market
- tempestn 2y ago
  Having people back in the office doesn't change that. Sounds like a bit of a sunk cost fallacy.
ipaddr 2y ago
They wouldn't need the tax breaks if they didn't have the big office. Chicken and egg.
- dangus 2y ago
  Right. They're blowing money on real estate. Getting a little bit of it back in the form of a tax rebate isn't going to reverse that fact. You'd think that capitalists would be beyond excited to make the workers pay for their own workspace. Strange that they aren't.

burnte 2y ago

> I can see this being a valid argument for return to office for a lot of corporations, if its actually true. The tax benefits are too good to pass up and in office has been the status quo forever. Holding on to what is now an outdated view of worker utilization might help them for a couple years with these tax incentives, but they're going to get a lower quality of worker, and incur a lot of retraining costs as people quit. They're going to have to pivot to having less commercial real estate eventually.

supportengineer 2y ago
The executives must look out and see a bottomless supply of cheap engineers. And I doubt they plan on training anybody at all. It’s just a race to the bottom at this point.
- burnte 2y ago
  They'll be gone in 3 years. This will juice the stock price as investors will be happy with gaining additional tax benefits. By the time the problems bubble up from a weakened foundation it'll be the next guy's problem.
  - snoman 2y ago
    Amazon already had very high turnover before Covid. Many people don’t stick around (willingly or otherwise) after the year 2 hiring bonus cliff.
- GenerocUsername 2y ago
  As long as shipping in whole floors of indians is a viable strategy it will continue. As soon as they cannot shio them in, they will ship the jobs to India. We need tariffs and controls to maintain quality of living standards above the global median
Aurornis 2y ago
> but they're going to get a lower quality of worker, and incur a lot of retraining costs as people quit. This gets repeated a lot online but statistics don’t really support it. They will lose some number of employees but the significant majority of people just go along with RTO policies. All of the headlines claiming employees will quit if their companies mandate RTO are based on self-reported surveys where people are asked hypothetical questions. When reality hits and people are forced to choose between their large FAANG comp or quitting, it turns out barely anyone quits.
- pteraspidomorph 2y ago
  It probably depends on whether there have been hundreds of thousands of severances in the industry in recent years or not... People would probably quit if they didn't have to compete with an insane amount of people to get a job at this time.
  - kmonsen 2y ago
    Which is why we are seeing return to office right now.
- marcus_holmes 2y ago
  The people who are there to solve interesting problems quit [0]. The people who are there for the cash stay. The vast majority of any large organisation are in the second category, so your statement is 100% correct. Whether the organisation loses something because the first category leaves, is open to debate. I think they would. [0] because they now have the experience (and option at other organisations) of working from home full-time, which reduces their exposure to corporate bullshit and pointless meetings.
  - dnissley 2y ago
    To be fair not all people who are there to solve interesting problems prefer remote, so they would only lose some subset of those folks.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

shagie 2y ago

It's a very reasonable argument. And even if it isn't something now (where Amazon gives Seattle the bird... wait, that's San Francisco that got the bird from the bird), it is something that would impact their ability in the future to negotiate tax breaks with cities. There's also the question of even if remote work was more productive on the whole (and I believe this to be true) and that these productivity gains come from the more senior workers who are able to identify tasks that they need to complete and effectively shut the door on the office and focus ... while also being able to handle other things at home (being more productive because you can put a load of laundry in at noon or being able to get something to eat without having to go all the way to the break room)... So, grant that on the whole productivity is higher with WFH for mid level and senior level individual contributors ... junior ICs may be suffering quietly without more direct mentorship, the listening in on ad-hoc hallway meetings, managers being able to pick up on work stress more easily. It would be very easy to imagine a conversation at some director level (where I'm making up the numbers)... "From 2020 to 2024, we've seen the number of junior ICs advance to mid level drop from 20% to 16% compared to 2016 to 2020. This is a declining trend and when looked at year over year 2020 to 2021 had 8% advancement while 2023 to 2024 only showed 4% advancement. Furthermore, the senior ICs are comfortable in their role and the number of them moving up to management has dropped from 5% to 3% in the 2020 to 2024 time frame. If this continues, we may be looking at a lot of unsatisfied junior developers who are not progressing and a lot of satisfied senior developers and leads who would traditionally shift to the management track... well, not take that step in their career progression." Yes, that's a just-so story. I find it to be a believable one. So even if everything is great with remote work currently for productivity, some trends may be showing a problem years down the road where people are not improving and the company as a whole is stagnating (even more). ---- (edit / addition) - from last year, that tax revenue thing with some numbers: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/community/amazon-return-to-office-downtown-seattle-revival https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/community/amazon-return-to-...

Plasmoid 2y ago
I think that's a pretty plausible idea, but it has one flaw. If it was true, then companies would be announcing this as the cause. They'd be shouting it from the rooftop if they had any data to support it.

Aurornis 2y ago

> The Reddit user made a claim Did they provide any links or evidence at all? Reddit is a hotbed of misinformation and claims like this proliferate and grow on Reddit with little basis in reality all the time. Unless someone can find compelling evidence that this is both true and a substantial tax credit, I would assume it’s just another product of the Reddit misinformation machine. Even if it is true, the majority of the RTO is a transition from hybrid to 5 days onsite. I doubt they would have allowed hybrid to begin with if it impacted some hypothetical giant tax breaks.

shagie 2y ago
How many tax credits do you want? https://goodjobsfirst.org/amazon-tracker/ https://goodjobsfirst.org/amazon-tracker/ It isn't necessarily about the historical tax credits... but also those potential ones in the future. Notice Seattle not having tax credits for 2022, 2023, or 2024.

Olreich 2y ago

Usually the tax incentives are relatively minor and are long term as well. The more important thing with the real-estate strategy is that there's a lot of capital and personal clout wrapped up in these massive building projects and investments. Amazon recently had 2 shiny new buildings built in Arlington, VA. They have a bunch of buildings that were built in Seattle. There's definitely tax incentives involved, but those tax incentives are tiny compared to the billions of capital poured into the buildings.

aprilthird2021 2y ago
If anything there are tax penalties. SF makes companies pay a tax per person in a seat working in SF, so it incentivized companies to move offices elsewhere and go remote
grigri907 2y ago
Is this just a sunk cost fallacy then, or do they expect some other benefit?

shusaku 2y ago

There’s no shortage of conspiracy theories online trying to explain return to office policies, when the simplest explanation “managers like being in the same room as employees” has sufficient explanatory power.

johnnyanmac 2y ago
Do they? Even when I was in office at the tail end of COVID all my meetings were on Zoom anyway. Regardless, such a trivial whimsy like that is a horrible way to place company wide decisions.
- immibis 2y ago
  Managers like being able to see you at your desk looking busy. Otherwise they assume you're slacking off. They lack object permanence.

raverbashing 2y ago

I doubt it, and actually, with NYC it's the exact opposite

hackernewds 2y ago

Not to mention, Amazon has vested real estate that is massively depreciating along with the entire corporate real estate market

tempestn 2y ago
Having people back in the office doesn't change that. Sounds like a bit of a sunk cost fallacy.

ipaddr 2y ago

They wouldn't need the tax breaks if they didn't have the big office. Chicken and egg.

dangus 2y ago
Right. They're blowing money on real estate. Getting a little bit of it back in the form of a tax rebate isn't going to reverse that fact. You'd think that capitalists would be beyond excited to make the workers pay for their own workspace. Strange that they aren't.