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Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

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Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#41

Post by rhaway84773 »

hinkley wrote: post #24
sokoloff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what it's intended to mean. Until a decision is made, feel free to express your disagreement and arguments in favor of your position. If your ideas/arguments are convincing enough (words that are doing a lot of work, I realize), then it will be chosen. Once the decision is made and communicated, you're expected to follow/implement it. Said differently: what's the practical alternative? If you don't lik…

Why would you persist in disagreeing with an idea if you did not see real world consequences for the wrong solution in your future? If you're dealing with obstructionist people, surely there are other ways to detect and address it than 'disagree and commit'.

Or maybe it’s not obstructionist people and you just have a difference in opinion. Or you might be wrong. Or you’re the obstructionist person.

That’s the whole point of disagree and commit. Most decisions are not clear cut obvious decisions, otherwise it’s unlikely there would be disagreements about them.

Disagree and commit allows everyone to contribute to their max capacity and move forward once deadlock has been reached.

Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#42

Post by sokoloff »

hinkley wrote: post #24
sokoloff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what it's intended to mean. Until a decision is made, feel free to express your disagreement and arguments in favor of your position. If your ideas/arguments are convincing enough (words that are doing a lot of work, I realize), then it will be chosen. Once the decision is made and communicated, you're expected to follow/implement it. Said differently: what's the practical alternative? If you don't lik…

Why would you persist in disagreeing with an idea if you did not see real world consequences for the wrong solution in your future? If you're dealing with obstructionist people, surely there are other ways to detect and address it than 'disagree and commit'.

Why are people people?

For nearly any policy change, you can probably find 20% or more of people who would not have made that same exact choice. Many of them, if left to their own devices, will persist in disagreeing, slow-rolling, being mildly obstructionist, or similar.

If you don't have a clear (and enforced) principle that requires the implementation of made decisions and bars re-opening discussion absent material new information, you'll end up with an organization that lazily drifts towards the new decision instead of aggressively pivots towards it. That's clearly accepted in some companies; it doesn't seem to be accepted at Amazon.

Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#43

Post by rhaway84773 »

taurath wrote: post #40
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #8

I don't know the origins of the "disagree and commit" philosophy, but Jassy's use seems like a self-serving perversion of what is an attempt at dealing with decision deadlock. ... that is, disagree-and-commit transactionally seems like it ought to be between peers. Disagree-and-commit when applied between superiors and reports could be rewritten as just "shut up and follow orders."

I was just disagreeing and committing is the new “just following orders”

That’s a ridiculous comparison. “just following orders” is very much shorthand for following morally heinous decisions because you were asked to. In that case you disagree and quit. If you’re braver than most people you blow a whistle, etc.

Just following orders is not about working arrangements in a corporation. And if you do find working arrangements morally heinous then you disagree and quit.

Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#45

Post by SoftTalker »

oldoracle wrote: post #25

Hilarious to me Oracle has no issue with remote work while Apple, Amazon, Google, all flip out Deals they cut, whether it’s leases or tax breaks, are not my responsibility. Aside from Apple, the only thing the anti-remote places have is brand recognition. The knowledge they possess is worker knowledge. They’re having a hard time justifying valuations since their real social value is corralling workers who are then to…

Next headline: Apple, Google, Amazon collude on revoking remote work options.

Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#46

Post by Shekelphile »

They are afraid of overemployment. It's very easy to slip through the cracks once you're a few years deep in some companies and stop working for months/yeahs before you get terminated. Someone I know is doing exactly that, got a new job anticipating being laid off/RTO from their big company job and still hasn't been terminated, despite not working beyond being present for random emails/meetings in over 6 months.

Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#47

Post by wildrhythms »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #29

Isn’t there anyone that can steelman the WFH situation? Twitter, Amazon, Zoom, others are all ending or limiting their WFH programs. Doesn’t that tell anyone that there MIGHT be facts or at least good research on this that it isn’t producing good work for the money? I get that “corporations are bad maaaan” and all the good people are dreamy socialists… but what if you are wrong and it isn’t more effective?

It's the tax breaks.

>Of the billions in tax incentives granted to US companies every year by cities and states, many agreements require workers to come into the office some of the time, or at least live in the region. For companies receiving these incentives, relaxing in-office attendance could be costly.

>The contracts were crafted in a pre-pandemic era, at a time when commutes to the office were a given. Now governments are deciding whether to crack down or rewrite the rules entirely. In some states and cities, policy changes have already been proposed to account for the new reality of hybrid work.

https://archive.is/eOeIv

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-t...

Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#48

Post by hinkley »

tail_exchange wrote: post #31
shmerl wrote: post #4

Usual dumb management BAU. Worker in the cubicle is the limit of their imagination.

You guys get a whole cubicle?

I remember learning the hard way during the dotcom bubble that the optimal cube size is just big enough for another person to bring a chair in and discuss a problem with you and not smack into each other.

If there's barely space for two workstations, someone will put a second person in there.

You want a cube that could theoretically hold about 1.3 to 1.4 people. Any bigger than that and it might be worth it to the company to redo the cubes for higher density, at which point you will have space for 0.9 people.

Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#49

Post by babyshake »

scruple wrote: post #20
shmerl wrote: post #4

Usual dumb management BAU. Worker in the cubicle is the limit of their imagination.

I mean, I'd love to go back to cubicles at this point. You watch something like Office Space today and it looks like a wonderful degree of privacy compared to the bullpens we're all sitting in today.

The bullpens that are full of distracting off-topic conversation that makes it hard to concentrate, but apparently is some type of secret sauce of what makes for a productive office environment compared to being able to focus in the peace and quiet of our homes or work environment of our choice.

Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#50

Post by 000ooo000 »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #29

Isn’t there anyone that can steelman the WFH situation? Twitter, Amazon, Zoom, others are all ending or limiting their WFH programs. Doesn’t that tell anyone that there MIGHT be facts or at least good research on this that it isn’t producing good work for the money? I get that “corporations are bad maaaan” and all the good people are dreamy socialists… but what if you are wrong and it isn’t more effective?

I guess you could look at the profit/revenue of these companies over the last few years during the WFH experiment, apply some slight multiplier for "this is our first go at WFH at scale and we haven't really committed to it, either", and draw a conclusion based on that. AFAIK, many companies did pretty well during the WFH experiment, and maybe in some cases, they overhired and now this is a convenient lever to pull on to bring the headcount back in check. Speculating wildly though.
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