this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Nothing like a cloud provider being part of the problem rather than the solution
If companies like Amazon and Zoom are pushing people back into the office, maybe they are finding issues with full remote work.
It's got to be on a spreadsheet somewhere, but whoever's got it isn't showing it to us.
I feel like, even if they showed it, no one hear would want to believe it.
That's assuming rational leadership. That's pretty rare.
I'm not expecting rationality, but I'm expecting a somewhat consistent strategy. If a company makes decisions the same way five times, I expect them to make decisions the same way the sixth.
But you're not pointing out anything about consistency? You just implied Amazon and Zoom making the same decision means they had some level of knowledge about undefined "issues."
I've said Amazon and Zoom likely have internal data driving this decision.
Also, per a lot of documentation, Amazon focuses a lot on efficiency with metrics and will do whatever to make those metrics go up. So, in Amazon's case, I can't imagine the company making a decision to push efficiently metrics down just to fill an office.
So yeah, you're making a lot of assumptions that they're making rational decisions based on data. That's what I said to begin with.
Amazon is doing this to reduce headcount. They know a lot of people will resign over this.
They've also gone through rounds of layoffs.
If full remote workers can be cheaper for Amazon, why is the company choosing to make this a criteria for remaining employed?
It's a loyalty purge, if you're willing to lick the boot and RTO you're sufficiently loyal to the Bezos and can keep your lower than market value job.
At least you've proposed a possible reason that would make sense in some companies.
However, Amazon has routinely burnt out employees and hired replacements. Loyalty doesn't seem to be rewarded at Amazon, so I don't know why they would institute a loyalty test now.
It's like the old saying about how fascists cannibalize themselves, even if Amazon leadership hasn't shown that they value loyalty it's probably still a very sought after trait among their employees since the loyal ones grumble the least, true believers are always the biggest enablers in cults, and HR operates very similar the part of cult leadership that maintains cult discipline and beliefs, they're the corporate true believers, and loyalty is always the most sought after trait in cultists.
But hey it's just a theory, I don't work for Amazon and I doubt I ever would, but I do know quite a few people who do and from their stories they make it sound very similar to places like Walmart in terms of culture and not giving a fuck about their employees.
Yeah, but at least your theory makes more sense than people saying that Amazon executives feel the need to fill office space due to "reasons".
Eh, but even some of those reasons can be absolutely plausible, for instance the theory behind RTO being about middle management trying to justify their existence, because most middle management positions are just glorified babysitters with too much power and time on their hands. Another plausible one is the narcissism of the executive class, there's plenty of executives writing about how their "people" provide them with "energy" and that they feel lost without their involuntary audience. Then there's the plausibility of the point about property values, companies that own their properties understand that the property itself is an investment, and in business your entire goal is to reach that almighty ROI, return on investment, so not only do empty unused offices harm that, but so do falling property values.
There's almost always an inkling of plausibility in any theory, that's one of the reasons why so many people fall to the attraction of conspiracy theories, but at the end of the day you have to remember that these are just people, and people are often selfish and not always selfish for the same reasons, we all have things that are more important to us than aren't as important to others.
But then you can also say that companies want people back because they are secretly harvesting their skin cells at work to see to alien larvae. It is a theory.
The problem with Amazon choosing to do this compared to nameless companies is that a lot of Amazon's work culture has been written about, and not all of that written about them is positive.
Amazon as a company is obsessed with driving down costs holding managers accountable to well defined metrics which filters down to everyone. This is the reason why warehouse people let others die in the warehouse.
The argument that Amazon, this company obsessed with metrics, is going to tell people to come into the office even though they are more productive at home, doesn't make sense.
They don’t reward loyalty. They profit from it. Their greed is catching on to them though. They have mostly gone through all the available workers for warehouses and they know they are running out of people willing to give them a chance. Most people know it’s a shit place for engineers as well.
Remote worker are probably much cheaper in the long run, but these companies typically lock in long-term leases in commercial real estate. The benefits might not be realized before 5-10 years.
Most commercial leases are 3-5 years. Even then, why would a CEO tolerate killing productivity to use a resource people don't need?
This is probably very country specific. Here, there is no way you're getting a lease for anything less than 5 years.
That is the US. Typical leases are 3-5 years. There are longer ones, but they are generally rare.
Given that Amazon's policy affects mainly US employees, I assume that is the case with Amazon.
There are zero things I need in the office to do my job and I get everything done when I WFH in a timely and efficient manner. So what if I also get to watch old movies while I do it? I get it done and I do it well. Bosses just want to monitor your life because they think if you take so much as a minute off, you're costing them money and it's utter bullshit.
Shame they never actually produce the supposed evidence of this. Just vague statements and platitudes that wax poetic about years gone by.