Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 345 posts

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#211

Post by jedberg »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #196
jedberg wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work at Amazon too. I also refused to go in (even though the office was only a 15 minute drive) because I signed up for a remote role and I wanted to keep that flexibility. > I wonder if Amazon would check the Slack+Chime logs to see how the activity drops before and after RTO mandate. They already have and they found that productivity was way down. They don't care. They made this decision from the gut, des…

> > I wonder if Amazon would check the Slack+Chime logs to see how the activity drops before and after RTO mandate. > They already have and they found that productivity was way down. They don't care. They made this decision from the gut, despite claiming to be a data driven company. When anyone called Andy on it he just said "sometimes we make decisions that we know are right" blah blah. Respectfully, do you know thi…

Because in a meeting with the CEO (which was publicly leaked so this isn't internal information I got it from outside sources myself I wasn't in the meeting) someone called out that the data doesn't support this decision and that was his response.

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-andy-jassy-no-data-re...

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#212

Post by rurp »

abadpoli wrote: post #156
smrtinsert wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost any value is worth it. On your death bed you will never say I'm glad I spent those years of my life commuting for Amazon instead of everything else I could have been doing.

It’s not so clear cut. If I stay at my RTO job for a few more years, I can probably retire at 35-40, versus taking a pay cut and retiring sometime in my late 50s. I’d say that’s worth the commute.

I guess it depends on what you find fulfilling. Having new and interesting experiences in your 20s and 30s can have a pretty different effect on your life than leasure time in your 40s+. In my experience there is minimal overlap between people who maximized working hours in their younger years and have an exciting life outside of work later on. But I'm sure that's partly a reflection on my social circle and everyone is different; there's no one-size-fits-all life advice.

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#213

Post by akkad33 »

luch wrote: post #89
melenaboija wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What tools are needed for better remote management?

a videoconfering system that is reliable and easy to use is essential to remote management. You need to have as little friction as possible to propose a 1-1 or a 15 min roundtable to quickly brainstorm something orally. Then you need remote "telemetry", meaning access either to chat messages, email, tickets, etc. and a way to process it at scale (without reading everything) in order to defuse sticky situations based…

> Then you need remote "telemetry", meaning access either to chat messages, email, tickets, etc. and a way to process it at scale (without reading everything) in

So tools to spy on your employees?

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#214

Post by mrweasel »

timmg wrote: post #170
mrweasel wrote: post #59

So research is finally coming to the same conclusion that a lot of people, myself included came to over a year ago. Well managed companies don't care where you work, it simply doesn't matter. The problem is that management is a lot harder than many thought, but you could sort of hide the fact that you're bad at it when everyone is at the office. There simply isn't enough talented managers around. We're not solving th…

> The problem is that management is a lot harder than many thought, but you could sort of hide the fact that you're bad at it when everyone is at the office. There simply isn't enough talented managers around. I feel like this is true for so many jobs these days. Like I think that a lot of people (in high skill jobs) are really not good enough for their jobs. But we simply don't have enough good people for all the jo…

That's true, but at least most of the developers have some training. Many people are thrown into management or wants to be managers, but never put any effort into building the skill set required.

There are remarkably few people who are just born as talented managers, probably the same number that are just naturally talented developers. All of the best managers I've had have all had some level of management training. Some got training while I worked on their teams and the improvement from no training to just a few months of training is pretty remarkably.

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#215

Post by DiggyJohnson »

luch wrote: post #89
melenaboija wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What tools are needed for better remote management?

a videoconfering system that is reliable and easy to use is essential to remote management. You need to have as little friction as possible to propose a 1-1 or a 15 min roundtable to quickly brainstorm something orally. Then you need remote "telemetry", meaning access either to chat messages, email, tickets, etc. and a way to process it at scale (without reading everything) in order to defuse sticky situations based…

Are you proposing that my management should be able to see my chat messages and email ad hoc and without approval or assistance from IT, legal, or their management? That seems bonkers to me.

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#216

Post by shortrounddev2 »

ExpendableGuy wrote: post #190
alberth wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. Stop using email. It's the worst format of online communication. Slack, MS Teams, etc. The difficulty with this, is that work can spiral quickly into just spending the whole day responding to chat (slack/teams/etc) and no one ever gets any actual work done.

Thank you. I will fight this new trend of 100% Slack/Teams/Etc. as long as I possibly can. Email provides a barrier between you and the work -- email isn't a real time form of communication. Chats, meanwhile, imply immediate response. Hell, these apps even show when you're active -- I've gotten passive-aggressive messages like, "I know that you have DND on, but can you confirm you're seeing these messages?" chats out…

My problem with email is the amount of spam makes it unusable, and I don't just mean unsolicited advertisements. I get spam from work in the form of notifications and unnecessary CC's, so I'm accustomed to ignoring all emails.

I think it may also be generational: at my previous job, I get chewed out by my manager for not responding to some question another coworker had sent me. I was confused because I don't remember getting any questions from them, and I was told that he had emailed it to me. He's in his 40s and I was 26. I told him I get so many useless emails I never check work email. And the best way to reach me is via slack. Still, some on the team continued to use email

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#217

Post by fnordpiglet »

TylerE wrote: post #98
fnordpiglet wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my prior ultra mega corp we meticulously capture telemetry on everyone’s work habits super big brother like. We had been for 5 years before covid and ramped up considerably with covid. Our sample size was over 300,000 knowledge workers. We found an average 20-30% productivity improvement and nearly 40% morale improvement with remote work. When our elderly CEO decided enough was enough and forced everyone back into…

Actually, funding every employee to buy a really kick ass ergonomic chair for home office is use is probably dollar for dollar one of the best benefits most companies could offer, and may even make financial sense - less missed days for surgeries, happier healthier employees, etc.

Most companies did at some point and many still do. But as with any decision making process run by accountants, that’ll ultimately disappear.

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#218

Post by y-c-o-m-b »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #196
jedberg wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work at Amazon too. I also refused to go in (even though the office was only a 15 minute drive) because I signed up for a remote role and I wanted to keep that flexibility. > I wonder if Amazon would check the Slack+Chime logs to see how the activity drops before and after RTO mandate. They already have and they found that productivity was way down. They don't care. They made this decision from the gut, des…

> > I wonder if Amazon would check the Slack+Chime logs to see how the activity drops before and after RTO mandate. > They already have and they found that productivity was way down. They don't care. They made this decision from the gut, despite claiming to be a data driven company. When anyone called Andy on it he just said "sometimes we make decisions that we know are right" blah blah. Respectfully, do you know thi…

They have a tool at Amazon called "connections" which is a super annoying mandatory survey you must interact with every day. It measures a lot of things like whether our teams have certain internal processes in place, job satisfaction, tools satisfaction, etc. The surveys provide a list of fixed answers you can choose or if you rank something "negatively", you can select an option to describe why you ranked something poorly. Some of us have indirect access to the larger data through senior-level middle management who will either show us the connections data in private Slack DMs (if you're lucky enough to have a friend up that high) or they will blatantly tell us what the data shows in meetings. For example the job satisfaction one has been down below 50% satisfaction since RTO and management has explicitly stated it's due to RTO because that's what people are writing in as the reason.

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#219

Post by monknomo »

w4 wrote: post #210
monknomo wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind, and to a lesser degree HN, seem to actively dislike IC-type workers, if not the work itself. I feel like this is a cultural shift for hn, and I'm curious about where it comes from

> I feel like this is a cultural shift for hn, and I'm curious about where it comes from My gut feeling - without data to back it up - is that HN has shifted from a forum mostly for founders and hackers to a forum mostly for FAANG employees who would have gone into finance or consulting in the 2000s. This mirrors the shift in the tech industry at large.

Yeah, that tracks. Wonder where the founders and hackers are hanging out these days

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#220

Post by LiquidSky »

ahtihn wrote: post #163
LiquidSky wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except no one can actually measure or confirm these apparent hordes of lazy slackers that are totally out there. Just legions of secret non-working people.

How do you know that no one can measure ? Maybe all the big companies have measured and all concluded that on average WFH is less productive. Individual productivity of office workers is nearly impossible to properly measure but aggregate productivity is easier though certainly far from perfect.

>How do you know that no one can measure ?

Because they haven't. Again, every study on this issue hasn't shown a drop in productivity.

>Maybe all the big companies have measured and all concluded that on average WFH is less productive.

And yet curiously neither the companies themselves nor any outside actor has been able to produce any of those measurements supporting such conclusion after years of trying.

I guess every company, government agency, and private entity in the world are all colluding to hide the evidence of lower WFH productivity despite desperately, desperately wanting to show that that's the case to support their RTO demands. Who can stop this nefarious conspiracy?

Post reply on HN