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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

#291

Post by smileysteve »

manuelabeledo wrote: post #180
dfxm12 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data probably suggests they should lay off a bunch of people & that this might be best way for them to do so, in terms of not legally needing to offer severance, legal issues, PR, stock prices, etc.

I have read this reasoning from time to time, but how does it make sense? Wouldn't most of the high performers who don't want to go back to the office, just quit and get a better job, while low performing individuals would stick as long as possible since they could keep slacking as long as they go to the office three days a week?

A layoff can easily target the incorrect people; and the echos of the layoff will also result in higher performers searching for new jobs.

So you don't really gain much precision with a layoff versus making work more difficult.

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

#292

Post by smileysteve »

RestlessMind wrote: post #266
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #128

I find the push for "back to the office" one of the most astonishing things to come out of corporate America. We've basically been moving to a model where people can work from home for a few decades. We're reached a point where it's not only feasible, but it's senseless to do otherwise for many positions. And then, suddenly and out of the blue, a lot of CEOs and upper management started demanding that employees go ba…

> data has proven over and over that people can work more productively from home. Citation needed. Not my experience at all.

https://healthworkerburnout.com/is-working-from-home-more-pr...

Happy workers are more productive, research shows | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)

New Survey Shows 47% Increase In Productivity: 3 Things You Must Do When Working From Home (forbes.com)

The Ultimate List Of Remote Work Statistics – 2021 Edition (smallbizgenius.net)

Remote Workers Are More Productive – businessnewsdaily.com

The productivity pitfalls of working from home in the age of COVID-19 | Stanford News

Study Finds Productivity Not Deterred by Shift to Remote Work (shrm.org)

66% of U.S. Employees Are Working Remotely at Least Part-Time During the COVID-19 Pandemic (prnewswire.com)

*used the first source from the chat response I received from a search engine

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

#293

Post by rdtsc »

slothtrop wrote: post #278
HelloMcFly wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most "middle managers" want to WFH. It's more senior management driving RTO.

What would their incentive be, versus middle management?

I would guess wanting to align with the CEO. One day they hope to be a CxO of some sort. So that means reading the mind and following the example of the current CEO. They won't get further up the pyramid by advocating against the explicit (or perceived) wishes of their dear leader.

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

#294

Post by gingerrr »

peteradio wrote: post #287
mjoneill wrote: post #245

If this (or a similar policy) affects you and you suspect that it is an attempt by your employer to get you (and others) to quit in order to avoid having to pay severance, unemployment, etc... Understand what "constructive dismissal" is. It may help if you need to file unemployment claims.

Does constructive dismissal retorts apply at all in the US? I assume the vast majority of those affected are in the US...

It's something usually managed at the state level, so depends where they are in the US. In California constructive termination standing is very much a thing.

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

#295

Post by vanjajaja1 »

ninthcat wrote: post #98
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…

The "disagree and commit" leadership principle is supposed to represent a situation where the manager is the one who disagrees with a subordinate but trusts the subordinate's judgement enough to commit to going along with their idea (this also works for a peer relationship). The relevant LP for the subordinate is "earn trust". Simply following orders is not an LP. Of course there is enough vagueness in the LPs that J…

In my experience as a bar raiser this is not correct. 'Disagree and commit' was about creating space disagreement/discussion, until a critical point where you need your team to align with upper level direction.

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

#296

Post by LiquidSky »

RestlessMind wrote: post #265
LiquidSky wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, then share that evidence. The problem is all these royal decrees to return to the office never come with even a shred of actual data to explain them. Once it became clear that they couldn’t show WFH harmed productivity, their arguments became increasingly abstract (e.g., “office culture”) and finally we’ve arrived at simply “because I said so”.

Why should RTO need data? That was the setup until 2020 and it worked. Especially for the leadership who have grown up in that requirement. Onus is on the pro-remote side to provide data that that works. Sample size of 1 - at my company, remote sucks even if we tried to go all-in on fully remote. I simply cannot have trusted relationships with my colleagues since everything has to be writing or is possible being reco…

>That was the setup until 2020 and it worked. Especially for the leadership who have grown up in that requirement.

And people were very happy with carriages until cars came along. Things change, the world changed, WFH became the new reality. Being stuck in the past way of doings just because it was done in the past is idiotic. Leadership is especially bad about adapting to change because it means actually having to learn and try new things, which 100% explains their resistance to WFH.

Much easier to glance at badge swipe-in times and go chew out some peon than to figure out how to actually do the work of management.

>Onus is on the pro-remote side to provide data that that works.

Sure, and that's already been shown. In 2020 there were dire predictions of productivity drops when WFH was implemented on a large-scale. Turns out, that didn't happen. All attempts to determine the effects of WFH show no-to-positive effects on productivity.

Ergo, it works.

So, again

>Why should RTO need data?

Because, as noted above, there hasn't been any measurable drop in productivity due to WFH. This is why in my first comment I said that the justifications used by management have become increasingly abstract, because there is nothing concrete they can point to as support for their decisions.

Sorry you work in such a harsh environment, consider changing jobs.

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

#297

Post by peteradio »

gingerrr wrote: post #294
peteradio wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does constructive dismissal retorts apply at all in the US? I assume the vast majority of those affected are in the US...

It's something usually managed at the state level, so depends where they are in the US. In California constructive termination standing is very much a thing.

Excellent, any other states this might apply in?

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

#299

Post by rchaud »

salawat wrote: post #124
jtode wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am incredibly in favour of unions in all industries, but this one I have serious doubts it will ever happen. I'm gonna be un-PC and reach for a metaphor involving slavery - not because I am comparing tech workers, of which I am one, to slaves, but because I think it's the best real-world example of how oppression is distributed by hubristic figureheads of feudalistic systems. If you ever saw Spike Lee's "Malcolm X"…

You aren't that far off. Much of what is in the realm of "management theory" is rehashed from the heady days of slavery if you trace it's inspiration back far enough, at least in the United States. Basically, if you aren't an independent trades/craftsperson, you're being handled by the same corpus of institutional knowledge that kept ye olde plantation running smoothly. Less outright violence. Still there though.

Modern management science pulls heavily from WW2 organizational tactics in western militaries when conscription was common and the idea of conscientious objection was not well received.

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

#300

Post by SilverBirch »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #239
SilverBirch wrote: post #176

To be honest I think 3 days a week in the office is a perfectly reasonable requirement. It gives enough opportunity for people to get face to face time and to build the relationships they need to build whilst still offering flexibility. Should it be combined with some flexibility for edge cases? Sure, managers will always turn a blind eye when it makes sense. And part of that is you can only have flexibility if the b…

Your comment seems to be addressing employees that were temporarily virtual and now are required to go into the office. That's not the issue at hand here. Amazon hired employees with jobs that were explicitly stated as being permanently remote and would not be revoked. They have "Virtual Office" listed in the company directory. Those virtual employees are now being asked to relocate to areas where they must also come…

Oh I totally agree - I'm actually someone who changed jobs during the pandemic and now works for a company that wants to be 100% office but hired me basically 100% remote. It was a massive fuck up, they never should've offered that. It doesn't change the fact that they are going to insist everyone comes back though, and good luck ever holding senior leadership accountable for anything. They should've thought through the implications of telling people they can literally move out into the wilderness in 2020 and what that would mean if things changed in the future. But they didn't.
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