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Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

cnbc.com

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Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

#241

Post by VBprogrammer »

_heimdall wrote: post #222
VBprogrammer wrote: post #152

So any time Amazon make any noise about doing something "for the environment" you can basically just point out they are full of shit. It probably takes a dozen electric cars to offset the carbon saving of just not going into the office.

That's a really difficult comparison to nail down and is heavily dependent on assumptions you make of the alternate reality you compare against. Does Amazon shutdown all of their office buildings completely? Do employees still leave home and work out of shared office spaces that they prefer to home or the Amazon campus? How do you factor in things like HVAC costs for individual home offices versus a main campus build…

Yes, it's was pretty flippant. I didn't expect a series analysis.

Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

#242

Post by rurp »

snapcaster wrote: post #87

I have yet to see metrics cited by any of these announcements. Do people think that's because: a). They don't have metrics, and all the cynics are right about this being vibes based b). They actually do have the data, and it's very grim for how poorly people on average perform when WFH but don't want to share it due to sensitivity or something Like, i'm actually pro Work From Office (don't yell at me, i joined a comp…

It's almost certainly not b. There has been enough published research showing WFH to be somewhere between a significant productivity boost to a modest decrease that such data would be a significant outlier.

More likely the policy is being pushed for some combination of:

- Increased attrition

- Intangibles that management believes in

- Expected modest productivity gains they think are worth the downsides

- Reducing worker leverage

Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

#244

Post by pcthrowaway »

snapcaster wrote: post #87

I have yet to see metrics cited by any of these announcements. Do people think that's because: a). They don't have metrics, and all the cynics are right about this being vibes based b). They actually do have the data, and it's very grim for how poorly people on average perform when WFH but don't want to share it due to sensitivity or something Like, i'm actually pro Work From Office (don't yell at me, i joined a comp…

You forgot

c). They don't feel strongly about WFH vs remote, but getting a bunch of employees to quit is a great way to reduce headcount and then fill any necessary positions from the pool of endless candidates likely to work for less. Normally this is a poor move because they would lose employees who are already onboarded, and hiring is typically more expensive, but Amazon has always been more than happy to let go of experienced employees as part of their sacrifices to the pip gods. Normally this would also be a bad idea because the employees you lose would be the employees who are in highest demand, so likely their best employees. But with 50 candidates waiting in the wings for every rockstar they lose, they figure they'll likely be able to pull more diamonds out of the rough, and even with hiring and onboarding, their long-term expenditure will be less than if they hadn't triggered an exodus.

Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

#247

Post by apwell23 »

colmmacc wrote: post #190
pknomad wrote: post #117

Genuine question for the folks over at Amazon: What is the value of working at Amazon (or even just AWS) these days? Every now and then I get a ring from a recruiter gauging my interest and sometimes I get the itch to just to go through the process so that I can have a FAANG in my resume. I've heard from others that Amazon could be an amazing place to work, citing fantastic colleagues and work opportunities. But then…

I've worked at Amazon (and AWS) for over 16 years and have made many friends, and it's how I met my wife. What's always kept me here is that it's been fun the whole time, with meaningful problems and opportunities that move the needle for so many customers. So many modern experiences that are built into our improved quality of lives; apps on phones that can know my tastes and preferences, hailing a cab virtually, a b…

> choose your team and manager very carefully

how can an outsider possibly do this?

Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

#248

Post by ixfo »

keeptrying wrote: post #234

[flagged]

My experience is that working in an office is _much_ worse for distraction. Even if you're lucky enough not to be in open plan, the shoulder taps and quick chats easily demolish any chance of focus for me. At home I can knuckle down for a few hours and deal with something complex easily.

Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

#250

Post by tdeck »

snapcaster wrote: post #87

I have yet to see metrics cited by any of these announcements. Do people think that's because: a). They don't have metrics, and all the cynics are right about this being vibes based b). They actually do have the data, and it's very grim for how poorly people on average perform when WFH but don't want to share it due to sensitivity or something Like, i'm actually pro Work From Office (don't yell at me, i joined a comp…

In software engineering we still haven't developed a good metric for output of our work, so it's hard to see how they could even have decent data. It's an open question how we can measure productivity when each task is substantially different from previous tasks.
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