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Amazon tells managers they can now fire employees who won't come into the office 3 times a week
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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It's all about unused office space and it's value.
I left a job in France (the base company is American) partly because of this stupid rule (3 days at the office) they tried to push. Our contracts give us the right to 2 days only. There was absolutely no need at all to do it but the managers were all on it like flies on a turd. 4 days was like their wet dream.
IMO it was all about control locally, but the USA base company "asked for it" which means way different things in the USA and the EU (in France you can't just order people around that way or fire them 'on a whim'), but they sure jumped on it like it was free abuse day for psychopaths.
Helped me leave that toxic environment though, gotta see the silver lining right!
I keep hearing people making this argument.
Is the assumption that Amazon is ignoring their finance dept and that this is driven by the sunk cost fallacy? “We dumped a bunch of money into this, therefore we should continue to move forward with it.”
I ask because the appraised value of property is based on what other’s will likely pay for it. If no one else is wants to pay a lot of money for my office space, it doesn’t matter if I have 1 employees or 10,000 employees in that building.
A lot of companies have long-term contracts for these office spaces that they can't get out of, so whether or not their workers are using the space, they have to pay for it. They should really just write it off as a loss, but I'm not too familiar with how that works. Maybe they can't.
Yeah, that’s kind of what I was getting at with the “sunk cost” thing. “We’re stuck paying for it, so we should use it.”
Even if using it make people less productive, make recruiting harder, and forces tech companies to pay expensive regional Silicon Valley salaries.
I think you have the right idea but came to the wrong conclusion. Why would anyone buy office space if there is no value in employees coming to the office? Hint: they wouldn't.
Edited to add: these properties may become a liability on their books which would impact their ability to apply for or pay for loans, as well as other negatives for the company.