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Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

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

#791

Post by freilanzer »

billfor wrote: post #649
nvarsj wrote: post #368

I was in the "office is a good thing" camp for a while, but having been forced now to do 3 days, then forced to move to an office an extra 20 minute commute away, I've changed my feelings on the matter. Spending 2-2.5 hrs in commute a day is a terrible experience when trying to balance a high pressure job with the rest of life. I really miss hybrid with 1-2 days in the office. That was the best compromise all around.

I usually read or sleep on the commute because I can take the train. It never really bothered me much because I like to sleep and read. Are all these negative comments about the commuting because you have to drive to work?

I can sleep in my bed and I can read everywhere at home. Being forced to commute is not an advantage just because I can do both of those things in a worse way than at home.

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

#792

Post by rsynnott »

Olreich wrote: post #603
npalli wrote: post #427

The actual announcement https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/ceo-andy-jassy... An equally important update was reducing number of managers which nobody seems to care about :-) So, we’re asking each s-team organization to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of Q1 2025.

Strategic of them to include the 5-day a week to hide the 15% managerial layoffs. 1 in 8 managers need to be converted into ICs. The average manager has around 8 ICs with the "two-pizza team" ideal, so that means 2% overall layoffs. Not huge, but managers generally cost more than ICs, so there's likely outsized salary impact. Organizational changes will surely reduce productivity as everyone gets shuffled too.

I mean, how long does the average manager stay at Amazon? If the average tenure is four years, say, then more or less all they have to do to achieve the above is to stop hiring managers for the next two quarters.

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

#793

Post by goosedragons »

monch1962 wrote: post #789

I work for a consulting company in Melbourne Australia. The Melbourne city council has started petitioning the government to force govt employees to return to the CBD for work. Their reasoning is that CBD-based businesses are somehow entitled to pre-COVID customer levels, which means employees need to start coming into the CBD more often. Apparently this is getting serious consideration. It's not like we home-based w…

Here in Canada the federal government has started forcing federal public servants back to the office. Everybody thinks it's just to prop up the capital city businesses and commercial landlords. Their union has actually called for them to buy local in their neighborhood rather than in downtown. Ottawa has a pretty terrible downtown with many businesses having awful hours like 8a.m-2p.m M-F because they got so used to relying just on civil servants.

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

#794

Post by Peroni »

james_woods wrote: post #768

Citing an article from MIT Sloan Management Review: "But there’s no clear evidence that these mandates improve financial performance. A recent study of S&P 500 companies that was conducted by University of Pittsburgh researchers found that executives are “using RTO mandates to reassert control over employees and blame employees as a scapegoat for bad firm performance.” Those policies result in “significant declines i…

>When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant.

>we’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture;

They believe there are advantages to being fully in-office because they have observed these things. Zero mention of actual data to back up their beliefs and observations despite substantial industry data verifying that remote and hybrid work environments are more beneficial on almost every level.

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

#795

Post by kalleboo »

kwanbix wrote: post #757
mrweasel wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eliminating 2 hours a day of driving and train rides left me with more energy I can expend on my work! Companies forget this. I have had coworkers quit because they couldn't deal with transport. One got stressed out of his mind because our office was close to motorway which frequently has accidents and if that happened he might not be able to pick up the kids on time. Others had to leave clients hanging because the…

I know this might be an "unpopular opinion," but after working fully remote for three years, I found myself feeling really down. I felt like a prisoner in my own home. So, three months ago, I started a new job with an office that’s 45 minutes away, and I’ve been going in every day—and I couldn't be happier! I do have the option to work from home all days if I want, but honestly, I prefer going to the office. Now, I g…

I also get depressed being in my home all day every day which is why I go to coworking spaces, cafes and parks. There is endless variation that still doesn’t have to chained to a certain commute.

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

#796

Post by matthewsinclair »

Terr_ wrote: post #720
matthewsinclair wrote: post #710

I find the “remote vs onsite” debate to be a little bit misguided. I try to reframe it as a balancing act between “broad work” and “deep work”. The difference being that broad work is the kind of thing that needs collaboration and interaction and deep work needs focus and singular attention. As an engineering leader, I have had some success and traction with non-engineers by re-framing the debate in this way. I wrote…

Now that we're in the spiffy sci-fi year 2024 with video calls for all, I find that 90% of the "collaboration" work benefit is achievable remotely. (Like a co-debugging session.) Less task-oriented stuff--general office chatting--doesn't work quite the same though.

I think the main thing you miss with 100% remote working is what I call "corridor creativity" [0]. As good as working from home is (or can be), I do miss the serendipity of walking past someone in a corridor, having a quick chat, drawing something on a whiteboard, and then continuing on about my day. In a fully remote world, I need to organise a meeting (over Zoom) for just about every interaction, which ends up being quite a chore and far less than serendipitous.

[0]: Corridor Creativity: https://matthewsinclair.medium.com/0124-corridor-creativity-...

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

#797

Post by btbuildem »

arendtio wrote: post #788

> pre-meetings for the pre-meetings for the decision meetings This is not a structural problem but a cultural one. Sure, you can address it by changing the org structure, but 15% fewer pre-meetings to pre-meetings sounds like a drop in the ocean. In my experience, pre-meetings are a result of low-trust environments. I wonder where CEOs are getting the input to drive these decisions forward. Has there been significant…

Pressure from local govt to somehow salvage the "downtown tax base", pressure from boards of directors that are inbred with big investment funds holding most of that commercial real estate. The relatively small group of ultra-rich parasites is trying to claw back the inevitable change of decentralization. We would all be so much happier in a scheme where instead of one giant "center" our metro areas were "distributed" ie more commercial centers closer to more residential areas.

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

#798

Post by croes »

kwanbix wrote: post #757
mrweasel wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eliminating 2 hours a day of driving and train rides left me with more energy I can expend on my work! Companies forget this. I have had coworkers quit because they couldn't deal with transport. One got stressed out of his mind because our office was close to motorway which frequently has accidents and if that happened he might not be able to pick up the kids on time. Others had to leave clients hanging because the…

I know this might be an "unpopular opinion," but after working fully remote for three years, I found myself feeling really down. I felt like a prisoner in my own home. So, three months ago, I started a new job with an office that’s 45 minutes away, and I’ve been going in every day—and I couldn't be happier! I do have the option to work from home all days if I want, but honestly, I prefer going to the office. Now, I g…

The point is having a choice

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

#800

Post by rsynnott »

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…

> but if that's true why has nobody proved it?

It'd be extremely difficult to study properly; there _have_ been studies, giving answers in both directions, but they're very easy to poke holes in due to confounding factors.

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