7 ms·

How would you even gather data to support this? You can't a/b test company culture.

no_wizard 2y ago
Sure you can. Why can't you? Its lack of imagination and inability for upper management leadership to even consider that the way they "always done things" may no longer be the best way, and they need to evolve with the times. For instance, find a group of teams that work on a similar function, have some of the teams RTO, and have some WFH, and see if there is any tangible difference in the results and what they are. Thats off the top of my head. Never mind that there are actually more scientific approaches that can be used than what I've suggested, and there are researchers that are clamoring to do this as well.
- changoplatanero 2y ago
  > For instance, find a group of teams that work on a similar function, have some of the teams RTO, and have some WFH, and see if there is any tangible difference in the results and what they are. I'm not sure I buy this. In my mind the downsides to permanent working from home are these intangible things like team cohesion, speed of onboarding, effective cross functional collaboration, etc. Some of these issues wouldn't manifest themselves in a measurable way until more than a year later.
  - no_wizard 2y ago
    Firstly, there are better more scientific ways than I what I proposed at thinking about it for maybe 30 seconds. Secondly, you're saying this >In my mind... There's still no objective metric being cited? >the downsides to permanent working from home are these intangible things like team cohesion, speed of onboarding, effective cross functional collaboration, etc. But we can prove these things can work well remotely. If they didn't, remote only companies would have such a higher bar to clear and that would be proven already. Gitlab did great in their IPO, and they're 100% remote. Zapier has grown strong and steady, 100% remote, Deel has grown quickly since 2019, also 100% remote etc. Clearly none of these businesses have issues collaborating. >Some of these issues wouldn't manifest themselves in a measurable way until more than a year later. So measure it as long as it takes. 1-2 years is a blip comparatively, and lots of companies already have internal data they could use to make this determination: look at employee performance and satisfaction rates before they worked from home and compare it to after they worked from home. Lots and lots of people worked at the same place before WFH became far more common, and after it became far more common. I imagine this is true at Amazon as anywhere else it would be. What I find entirely humorous about this is its executives that want hybrid / RTO by a large margin, and comparatively few employees want hybrid / RTO and prefer working from home. Do you think this would even be a conversation if it was the inverse?
    - dgfitz 2y ago
      I don't understand why CEOs and executives who lurk on here don't just come out and say what the deal is. I can only assume because that doesn't happen, they would rather not say, which in turn actually says volumes.
      - no_wizard 2y ago
        Forgive for not understanding, but what do you mean by 'because it doesn't happen'? The studies don't happen or something else? It would be nice for that group to chime in and actually engage in the conversation for once.
        dgfitz 2y ago
        > I don't understand why CEOs and executives who lurk on here don't just come out and say what the deal is. I can only assume because that doesn't happen... Which part of that was unclear?
        no_wizard 2y ago
        Whats the "I can only assume because that doesn't happen..." what are you assuming doesn't happen? I think I might be overly dense, but I still don't follow.
        dgfitz 2y ago
        Why don’t CEOs just come out and actually say why RTO is such a priority. I thought that was clear. I suppose it was not. Thanks for your patience. Edit: to be clear I don’t believe any of the messsging so far. “Collaboration, water-cooler talks” etc. that’s all bullshit.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - paulcole 2y ago
        > I can only assume because that doesn't happen, they would rather not say, which in turn actually says volumes. If a CEO posted on here, “Here’s data that shows RTO was better for us” would that change anyone’s mind here? No, people who hate RTO would continue to hate it.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    It depends a lot. I've worked with people in person quite a lot--some of which admittedly pre-dated current communication technologies. And some of which was certainly augmented by a fair number of face to face meetings that sort of fell off the table between COVID and tech budget cuts. But I'd say that, in general, some amount of meeting people locally (including going into an office if people you work with are actually there) is beneficial.
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  That's the same logical fallacy that makes people think that small scale UBI experimental results apply if rolled out to the entire society. There are systemic and emergent effects that are not accounted for, and the only way to actually do the science is to make a copy of society and only do the change for one of the copies. (which is obviously impossible, which is GP's point)
legitster 2y ago
Even if you did, you couldn't do a proper A/B test without forcing at least some people into the office.
- ouddv 2y ago
  There were some teams that never stopped coming to the office, due to sensitive aspects of their work. And there's a boatload of data from centralized project management and ticketing systems, as well as centralized source repositories. The data was absolutely available for data-driven arguments.
  - regularfry 2y ago
    Unfortunately you'd probably have to discount the teams that never switched to WFH. The same reasons that likely drove that decision would mean they're unlikely to be good comparators to teams that had a choice.
    - AbstractH24 2y ago
      So what you are saying is “there’s no possible way to collect data on this, so just trust me even though I’m bias”
      - regularfry 2y ago
        That's a lot of words to shove in my mouth. At least buy me dinner first.
xyst 2y ago
Let’s just ignore the quarterly employee feedback, historical performance records of employees before, during, and after COVID-19 lockdowns, business performance before, during , after COVID-19 lockdowns; and rates of attrition in across organizations and teams… There is plenty of data to support why forced RTO makes no sense.
- thrw42A8N 2y ago
  How are you so sure this data is favorable to remote work?
  - KerrAvon 2y ago
    because that's what the data says
    - thrw42A8N 2y ago
      Can you show me, please?
      - no_wizard 2y ago
        There's been numerous articles about it: https://www.vox.com/recode/23129752/work-from-home-productivity https://www.vox.com/recode/23129752/work-from-home-productiv... https://www.nber.org/papers/w30267 https://www.nber.org/papers/w30267 https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4443825-telework-produces-a-22-percent-increase-in-employees-productive-work-time/ https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4443825-telework-prod... https://hubstaff.com/blog/remote-work-deeper-focus-fewer-interruptions-study/ https://hubstaff.com/blog/remote-work-deeper-focus-fewer-int... https://atlassianblog.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/lessonslearned.pdf https://atlassianblog.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/0... https://www.opm.gov/telework/documents-for-telework/2023-report-to-congress.pdf https://www.opm.gov/telework/documents-for-telework/2023-rep...
        thrw42A8N 2y ago
kevingadd 2y ago
I feel like the 4 day work week experiments at various companies suggest you could do control/treatment tests for RTO too. https://www.npr.org/2024/02/27/1234271434/4-day-workweek-successful-a-year-later-in-uk https://www.npr.org/2024/02/27/1234271434/4-day-workweek-suc... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/04/microsoft-japan-four-day-work-week-productivity https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/04/microsoft...
ouddv 2y ago
There were countless natural experiments available from teams that had differing levels of in-person attendance; as well as teams that either were or were not colocated, and teams that took steps (or didn't) to align their in-person appearances. After all, there _were_ teams that never pivoted to WFH.
andreygrehov 2y ago
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/09/working-from-home-is-powering-productivity-bloom https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/09/wor...
PittleyDunkin 2y ago
If any corporation has done this, it's Amazon. I suspect they just don't give a damn about the needs of employees beyond how it impacts revenue.
pointkn2 2y ago
[dead]
whaaaaat 2y ago
> You can't a/b test company culture. Trip.com did exactly that, A/B testing fully in office with hybrid work schedules and found that the data strongly supported hybrid schedules. They found zero reduction in employee productivity or career outcomes, and a 35% reduction in turnover in the hybrid cohort. So, yeah, you absolutely can A/B test company culture. (One might argue that Amazon already A/B tests company culture -- the culture within AWS and Amazon Retail are wildly different.)

Sure you can. Why can't you? Its lack of imagination and inability for upper management leadership to even consider that the way they "always done things" may no longer be the best way, and they need to evolve with the times. For instance, find a group of teams that work on a similar function, have some of the teams RTO, and have some WFH, and see if there is any tangible difference in the results and what they are. Thats off the top of my head. Never mind that there are actually more scientific approaches that can be used than what I've suggested, and there are researchers that are clamoring to do this as well.

changoplatanero 2y ago
> For instance, find a group of teams that work on a similar function, have some of the teams RTO, and have some WFH, and see if there is any tangible difference in the results and what they are. I'm not sure I buy this. In my mind the downsides to permanent working from home are these intangible things like team cohesion, speed of onboarding, effective cross functional collaboration, etc. Some of these issues wouldn't manifest themselves in a measurable way until more than a year later.
- no_wizard 2y ago
  Firstly, there are better more scientific ways than I what I proposed at thinking about it for maybe 30 seconds. Secondly, you're saying this >In my mind... There's still no objective metric being cited? >the downsides to permanent working from home are these intangible things like team cohesion, speed of onboarding, effective cross functional collaboration, etc. But we can prove these things can work well remotely. If they didn't, remote only companies would have such a higher bar to clear and that would be proven already. Gitlab did great in their IPO, and they're 100% remote. Zapier has grown strong and steady, 100% remote, Deel has grown quickly since 2019, also 100% remote etc. Clearly none of these businesses have issues collaborating. >Some of these issues wouldn't manifest themselves in a measurable way until more than a year later. So measure it as long as it takes. 1-2 years is a blip comparatively, and lots of companies already have internal data they could use to make this determination: look at employee performance and satisfaction rates before they worked from home and compare it to after they worked from home. Lots and lots of people worked at the same place before WFH became far more common, and after it became far more common. I imagine this is true at Amazon as anywhere else it would be. What I find entirely humorous about this is its executives that want hybrid / RTO by a large margin, and comparatively few employees want hybrid / RTO and prefer working from home. Do you think this would even be a conversation if it was the inverse?
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    I don't understand why CEOs and executives who lurk on here don't just come out and say what the deal is. I can only assume because that doesn't happen, they would rather not say, which in turn actually says volumes.
    - no_wizard 2y ago
      Forgive for not understanding, but what do you mean by 'because it doesn't happen'? The studies don't happen or something else? It would be nice for that group to chime in and actually engage in the conversation for once.
      - dgfitz 2y ago
        > I don't understand why CEOs and executives who lurk on here don't just come out and say what the deal is. I can only assume because that doesn't happen... Which part of that was unclear?
        no_wizard 2y ago
        Whats the "I can only assume because that doesn't happen..." what are you assuming doesn't happen? I think I might be overly dense, but I still don't follow.
        dgfitz 2y ago
        Why don’t CEOs just come out and actually say why RTO is such a priority. I thought that was clear. I suppose it was not. Thanks for your patience. Edit: to be clear I don’t believe any of the messsging so far. “Collaboration, water-cooler talks” etc. that’s all bullshit.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - paulcole 2y ago
      > I can only assume because that doesn't happen, they would rather not say, which in turn actually says volumes. If a CEO posted on here, “Here’s data that shows RTO was better for us” would that change anyone’s mind here? No, people who hate RTO would continue to hate it.
- ghaff 2y ago
  It depends a lot. I've worked with people in person quite a lot--some of which admittedly pre-dated current communication technologies. And some of which was certainly augmented by a fair number of face to face meetings that sort of fell off the table between COVID and tech budget cuts. But I'd say that, in general, some amount of meeting people locally (including going into an office if people you work with are actually there) is beneficial.
Ferret7446 2y ago
That's the same logical fallacy that makes people think that small scale UBI experimental results apply if rolled out to the entire society. There are systemic and emergent effects that are not accounted for, and the only way to actually do the science is to make a copy of society and only do the change for one of the copies. (which is obviously impossible, which is GP's point)

legitster 2y ago

Even if you did, you couldn't do a proper A/B test without forcing at least some people into the office.

ouddv 2y ago
There were some teams that never stopped coming to the office, due to sensitive aspects of their work. And there's a boatload of data from centralized project management and ticketing systems, as well as centralized source repositories. The data was absolutely available for data-driven arguments.
- regularfry 2y ago
  Unfortunately you'd probably have to discount the teams that never switched to WFH. The same reasons that likely drove that decision would mean they're unlikely to be good comparators to teams that had a choice.
  - AbstractH24 2y ago
    So what you are saying is “there’s no possible way to collect data on this, so just trust me even though I’m bias”
    - regularfry 2y ago
      That's a lot of words to shove in my mouth. At least buy me dinner first.

xyst 2y ago

Let’s just ignore the quarterly employee feedback, historical performance records of employees before, during, and after COVID-19 lockdowns, business performance before, during , after COVID-19 lockdowns; and rates of attrition in across organizations and teams… There is plenty of data to support why forced RTO makes no sense.

thrw42A8N 2y ago
How are you so sure this data is favorable to remote work?
- KerrAvon 2y ago
  because that's what the data says
  - thrw42A8N 2y ago
    Can you show me, please?
    - no_wizard 2y ago
      There's been numerous articles about it: https://www.vox.com/recode/23129752/work-from-home-productivity https://www.vox.com/recode/23129752/work-from-home-productiv... https://www.nber.org/papers/w30267 https://www.nber.org/papers/w30267 https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4443825-telework-produces-a-22-percent-increase-in-employees-productive-work-time/ https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4443825-telework-prod... https://hubstaff.com/blog/remote-work-deeper-focus-fewer-interruptions-study/ https://hubstaff.com/blog/remote-work-deeper-focus-fewer-int... https://atlassianblog.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/lessonslearned.pdf https://atlassianblog.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/0... https://www.opm.gov/telework/documents-for-telework/2023-report-to-congress.pdf https://www.opm.gov/telework/documents-for-telework/2023-rep...
      - thrw42A8N 2y ago

kevingadd 2y ago

I feel like the 4 day work week experiments at various companies suggest you could do control/treatment tests for RTO too. https://www.npr.org/2024/02/27/1234271434/4-day-workweek-successful-a-year-later-in-uk https://www.npr.org/2024/02/27/1234271434/4-day-workweek-suc... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/04/microsoft-japan-four-day-work-week-productivity https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/04/microsoft...

ouddv 2y ago

There were countless natural experiments available from teams that had differing levels of in-person attendance; as well as teams that either were or were not colocated, and teams that took steps (or didn't) to align their in-person appearances. After all, there _were_ teams that never pivoted to WFH.

andreygrehov 2y ago

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/09/working-from-home-is-powering-productivity-bloom https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/09/wor...

PittleyDunkin 2y ago

If any corporation has done this, it's Amazon. I suspect they just don't give a damn about the needs of employees beyond how it impacts revenue.

pointkn2 2y ago

[dead]

whaaaaat 2y ago

> You can't a/b test company culture. Trip.com did exactly that, A/B testing fully in office with hybrid work schedules and found that the data strongly supported hybrid schedules. They found zero reduction in employee productivity or career outcomes, and a 35% reduction in turnover in the hybrid cohort. So, yeah, you absolutely can A/B test company culture. (One might argue that Amazon already A/B tests company culture -- the culture within AWS and Amazon Retail are wildly different.)