Amazon ordered a return to the office – but research says they'll backtrack

https://fortune.com/2024/09/18/amazon-andy-jassy-ordering-full-time-return-to-office-rto-research-backtrack/

by Melchizedek • 2 years ago

57 77 2 years ago

teqsun• 2 years ago

call me cynical, but this feels like the sort of idea that Amazon would purposefully disseminate. Announce an unpopular measure, then seed the idea "but don't worry, we don't actually mean it" to shift the balance of power back to them (i.e. employees who might otherwise immediately start seeking other employment will instead 'wait and see')

jamies• 2 years ago

To me, these RTOs are nothing but silent layoffs. Their best and probably most expensive talent, who have the skills to land remote gigs, will depart. Amazon's smart enough to know this; I understand from friends who worked there they believe everyone is replaceable. I disagree.

lnsru• 2 years ago

It worked very well as a layoff for me. The contrast between open office with 15 tables and quiet room dedicated for work was dramatic. I will not work in places with open offices anymore for sure.

kayodelycaon• 2 years ago

Many companies work on the assumption everyone is replaceable because upper management doesn’t know or/and doesn’t care who is valuable.

Most of the downsides of losing critical staff aren’t visible short term. The opportunity cost and loss of sustainability is never factored in and later attributed to employees not working hard enough.

lanstin2• 2 years ago

management can't tell who is valuable. I am senior IC but even with cloning people's repos it isn't particularly easy to tell how good someone is.you have people who speak very confidently but don't make good code, in those subtle details that make the difference between 90% chance of serious bugs per project and 25%. Nor the difference between able to fulfill a one sentence requirement with specific technical language vs needing ,"add this to that function and this to that function then make a configuration item to control it." And maybe all the shy smart coders aren't usable with some management styles and some great managers can coax excellent work out of all sort of people.

vineyardmike3• 2 years ago

Nearly everyone is replaceable. There is some cost, some transition pain, but everyone is replaceable. Irreplaceable employees is a management failure. This is totally going to drive out employees. But I do wonder if we have data on who is actually quitting over RTO. Is it actually their top-performing employees?

This move absolutely will drive out some of their best talent… but the job market isn’t great. Genuinely, are there many desirable workplaces left that are remote? Amazon pays extremely well, I can’t think of many organizations that can afford to compete.

fnfjfk2• 2 years ago

Facebook has full time remote, Airbnb too.

turnsout• 2 years ago

Genuinely, are there many desirable workplaces left that are remote?

Are you serious? Try the entire tech industry except Amazon and Apple.

calebio• 2 years ago

Stripe

joshstrange3• 2 years ago

Is it actually their top-performing employees?

People who are top-performing often have a lot more choice and flexibility, taking that away isn't going to sit well. I'm sure there will top-performers that prefer the office and they will happily go back but the others? They will start looking for new jobs.

This move absolutely will drive out some of their best talent… but the job market isn’t great

I hear this a lot and I've interviewed a number of people who said as much. Here's the thing, the people that mentioned the market wasn't good were people that we didn't hire. Not because they mentioned the market wasn't good but because they didn't pass our tests. So I'm skeptical of how much this holds true when we are talking about "top performers".

Genuinely, are there many desirable workplaces left that are remote?

This is a silly statement. You must be in a bubble to think this. Money is not the only driving factor for people.

Root_Denied2• 2 years ago

Amazon isn't really a growth company anymore, they don't need the highest talent individuals to maintain market dominance. To that end they probably don't care about the "best" talent leaving for other places anyway.

atherton33• 2 years ago

This move absolutely will drive out some of their best talent

IMHO, from my personal insider experience, this is actually the goal in some places.

Best talent is often not the most cost effective talent, especially in parts of the business where the company has switched from innovating to maintaining.

BobaFloutist• 2 years ago

How about this: Anyone is replaceable. Everyone is certainly not replaceable, at least not without significant pain.

It's not about the one guy that's the only guy that knows how to do something. It's about how if you decimate your workforce, cracks may very well start to appear.

eikenberry• 2 years ago

Nearly everyone is replaceable.

At scale.

Genuinely, are there many desirable workplaces left that are remote?

Smaller companies don't have this mindset and are great places to work. To them you are a person and have value unique to you, what you know and what you can provide. Everyone being a replaceable cog is an enterprise mindset that is avoidable as long as you don't require top tier pay. And small to mid-sized companies have been some of the biggest adopters of remote work and it has stuck there.

Have7878forever• 2 years ago

Replaceable which screwed up the company and replaceable and continue same productivity are 2 different thing. The former is real and happened for millenia, the later only exist in CEO's and Wallstreet mind. When I buy stock I look out for changes to their staff (some engineers and mid managers are worth keep track of to indicate companies growth projection). Warren also famously did so. You can investigate Intel and Boeing staff movements over the years...I can guarantee you 300% their talented staff left and hence gameover for them.

jerojero• 2 years ago

I imagine if there's an employee that's super valuable there is possibly arrangements that can be made with them; these cases would be handled individually.

The rest of them though? Yeah, they can quit.

cmrdporcupine• 2 years ago

That's why they've waited to do this until the job market is at a downturn and it's getting harder to find positions. Especially for people at the upper end of the seniority bracket at FAANGs who are used to a very high compensation package.

I walked away from my Google job 3 years ago knowing I could comfortably go wherever (and work remote, too), and took months off in-between, too. I wouldn't take that risk now.

encoderer• 2 years ago

The best and most expensive have always been accommodated. They still will be. And they will still hire for fully remote roles.

But there are probably thousands of engineers who think they are the best..

y-c-o-m-b2• 2 years ago

There is no shortage of "yes men" overachievers in FAANG that are fully capable of replacing another person. I have at least one on my team. They will happily take on multiple projects, more responsibility, and work over-time without fuss. Even then, it doesn't really matter much as Amazon and others are also banking heavily on generative AI to replace workers (no matter how unachievable this is currently). Andy Jassy will continue to make many millions of dollars regardless of what he does here. It's not going to matter to him if he loses a hundred top notch engineers because the products have already been built and they can always pull a Twitter and just keep things afloat as-is with plenty of people willing to come into the office 5 days a week. They simply don't give a shit.

ssahoo• 2 years ago

I think the goal is to shed some resources organically.

With full RTO they should guarantee no work after office hours.

petra303• 2 years ago

I leave my computer at my desk. Anyone contacting me gets the reply of “i don’t have my computer, I will look at it in the Morning”. When I worked from home I had no problem jumping on a call for 10 mins after hours.

ta1243• 2 years ago

If your company abuses you, I'm not sure why you'd answer your phone outside of contracted hours at all.

Zelphyr• 2 years ago

I love what Scott Hanselman said about this:

So, Amazon wants everyone to return to the office. Does that mean they also want us to return to the mall and supporting small local businesses?

https://x.com/shanselman/status/1836140762075210102

esafak• 2 years ago

No, because remote work is ostensibly a productivity and management problem. It's a pretense, of course.

LinuxBender3• 2 years ago

I don't think so. My personal and very unpopular belief is that RTO is largely based on tax breaks that cities give to companies for their buildings being a percentage occupied and thus bringing more tax revenue to local businesses.

SSJPython• 2 years ago

This might be a naive question but what's to stop a company from telling a city or municipality that they meet the percentage? Not like there's any way the city can verify.

lotsofpulp2• 2 years ago

A tax "break" by a city to businesses for requiring their employees to work in an office building in the city would be public information, available on any city's website. Do you have any links?

xenospn• 2 years ago

The loss of productivity/time from added congestion alone would make this unprofitable for everyone involved.

nickpp2• 2 years ago

I really didn’t get this tweet. I go to the mall anytime I need to. Support local businesses every day. What’s the connection with going to the office?! Can anybody explain?

JoshTriplett• 2 years ago

Amazon has, for many people, completely replaced malls, local shopping, and similar, with the much more convenient alternative of remote-shopping. This tweet is observing that the same pattern applies to remote-working, and asking if there should be a "return-to-local-shopping" the way Amazon wants a "return-to-local-office".

Or, in other words, it's an observation of hypocrisy on Amazon's part.

KittenInABox• 2 years ago

This feels very much like a Yahoo Inc move.

kypro• 2 years ago

What are you referring to by this? Were Yahoo's working conditions particularly bad?

y-c-o-m-b2• 2 years ago

In 2013, Marissa Mayer banned remote work at Yahoo and this cascaded to other big tech companies (like Intel, where I was at the time). RTO is not new unfortunately, it's been going on for decades.

rqtwteye2• 2 years ago

I don't understand the mandate for 5 days at the office. I am fully remote and I'll admit that it would probably be better if I was at the office once or twice a week. I miss the random conversations with people and I am often a little out of touch with what's going on. On the other hand I get way more focused work done than when I was at the office. I think hybrid is the perfect compromise. One to three days at the office is more than enough for collaboration and the days at home are for deep work.

Full RTO makes no sense to me. Especially if people work in an open office talking to team members all over the globe on Zoom.

vineyardmike3• 2 years ago

There are so many caveats and variations in jobs that it’s basically impossible to truly talk about any one job from another.

At my current job, everyone I talk to sits next to me. It’s meaningfully easier IRL than over zoom. We still work hybrid. But that wasn’t true for me in 2022, when I would’ve been much happier to be remote 24/7, because my team was global.

Not to stir the specter of laziness, but I’ve noticed our recent college hire gets nothing done when he’s remote. Then on Tuesday morning, he comes in with a TON of questions. So it’s clear we haven’t figured out how properly share knowledge in a remote setting. This is (probably) an organization/management failure, not an individual’s fault. But in the short-term, RTO would improve productivity.

Amazon is famous for churning through employees. I’m guessing a significant percent of the org has a tenure under 24mo, and many are college hires. They probably see value in oversight and training by RTO. (And I’m sure the attrition doesn’t hurt their bottom line either)

swozey2• 2 years ago

I haven't found a replacement yet, because it shut down after being bought a few months ago, but my team really enjoyed using Multi which is your run of the mill webcam/screenshare team app (like slack huddle) except it had rooms that stayed open and people could hop in and out.

We had a room for my team, and other teams, and we did a lot more "sit beside one another" type work/conversations with that.

If anyone knows another app with the rooms, and hopefully that lets multiple people screenshare at the same time please let me know.

antisthenes• 2 years ago

Not to stir the specter of laziness, but I’ve noticed our recent college hire gets nothing done when he’s remote. Then on Tuesday morning, he comes in with a TON of questions.

You're making some wild conclusions off of N=1, especially N=1 of a recent college graduate. Do you even remember your first job? I would have had a ton of questions regardless of being remote or in-office.

And why even mention laziness? For a recent college grad who's learning the job, "getting nothing done" is an expectation for at least 20% of the working days, it's just for learning.

But in the short-term, RTO would improve productivity.

Why would it make a difference? A question asked remotely vs a question asked in-person should take roughly the same amount of time to answer.

So it’s clear we haven’t figured out how properly share knowledge in a remote setting.

That's really sad that after 4 years of a pandemic some people haven't figured out how to type out a question in Teams or whatever. Or maybe they were so beat down by the corporate culture that they are afraid to do so?

fnfjfk2• 2 years ago

I am fully remote and I'll admit that it would probably be better if I was at the office once or twice a week.

Yeah, probably. The thing is, why should a remote worker care? Even if in office is somewhat more productive, how does that benefit the workers? Why should they care? Maybe the stock price goes up a bit? But my impression is it’s way more impacted by market forces or exec decisions than anything a measly IC peon does.

So, if you add “for the company” after “better”… yes. But is it better for the worker? Not really?

happyopossum• 2 years ago

Why should they care?

So expand this out a it for me - at what point do you care about doing your job well? Or do you just want to do the bare minimum to keep your job?

rqtwteye2• 2 years ago

I am in it for the money. And usually the best way to make more money is to get promoted. And to get promoted it’s best to have visibility within the company. And the easiest way to get visibility is to be at the office and chat with the right people.

tmaly• 2 years ago

For me, the sweet spot would average to 1.5 days a week in the office.

But right now, I have a mandatory 3 days in the office a week.

swozey2• 2 years ago

Can something like this happen in the EU with its stronger worker protection laws? Can a company fire you after telling you that you're allowed to relocate then force you RTO?

Someone1234• 2 years ago

It depends.

I've read some people online who were hired full remote by Amazon and are now grouped into the full RTO, and that may be illegal in the EU since you're changing their terms of employment without consideration.

However, people hired full in-office, then who went remote, and are now RTO, it seems like there may be less grounds unless they got it in writing that they're now considered full remote.

While the EU is absolutely better for employee rights/protections, it isn't absolute. It depends what you're contracted for.

fy202• 2 years ago

It's not an EU wide thing, it depends on the country - but quite a few countries now have laws that effectively allow you to work where you choose, putting the burden on employers to prove why you need to be in the office.

Also the worker protection laws in the EU are not that strong. If you feel you are unfairly dismissed you find a lawyer and take the case to an employment tribunal, and if that doesn't work, to court. All of this of course takes a long time and is expensive. And the actual payouts if you win are not that great (half a years salary if you are lucky).

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

Amazon employees: 'I'd rather go back to school than work in an office again'

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41570981

Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41558554

paxys• 2 years ago

One point that's always lost in all the back and forth WFH/RTO discussion is that due to tech hiring patterns over the last 4 years very few teams all work in the same location anymore. Before Covid if you scheduled a meeting ~everyone on the invite would physically be in the same room. The fabled hallway/watercooler conversations could happen because entire business units and cross-functional teams were in the same section on the same floor. There was real value in everyone coming together.

Today the vast majority of tech employees I know who have ben mandated to go back to the office do exactly what they do at home – join Zoom meetings and talk to teammates in other offices/homes, just with lots of added inconvenience like commuting, not being able to find an open desk or meeting room and working in a loud environment.

fy202• 2 years ago

One of my friends works for a bank and her entire team are in a different country. She still needs to go to the office...

Amazon ordered a return to the office – but research says they'll backtrack

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