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

Interesting discussion here. I'll first say, I think leadership messaging on a lot of this RTO stuff is terrible and tone deaf. I also think it's indefensible to hire someone in an explicitly remote role, then require they come to the office or be terminated -- that isn't RTO, because that person was explicitly remote, there's no "return." But, Amazon's gonna Amazon, and corporate C-suites are going to be out-of-touch rich f--s.

With that out of the way, I will say, there is an inconvenient truth WFH advocates always ignore, and that's that a lot of people don't want to WFH. Not everyone is you. Our company has done anonymous surveys, and it's surprisingly even, with something like 30% preferring WFH, 30% preferring in-office, and a broad middle wanting Hybrid. The assumption is always young people want WFH and dinosaurs want the office, but the reality is quite different:

- Younger folks broadly prefer the office. Folks in their 20s tend to be single and historically derive a lot of their socialization from office settings. They tend to live in housing situations where a dedicated office / good WFH setup is not possible (tiny apartment and/or roommates). Learning remotely is bad for most people. Onboarding remotely is bad for most people. Networking remotely is terrible for everyone. And younger folks largely want to live in major cities with lots of social, dating, and nightlife opportunities.

- Mid-career professionals with active family lives largely prefer WFH. Particularly if they are the "do your work then live your life" type and not ladder climbers / networkers. These folks are also likely to desire larger homes and lower COL, so the tradeoff is worth it. This makes perfect sense of course.

- Ladder climbers / hyper career focused folks prefer the office, because humans gonna human, "saw you recently" bias is a thing, and folks in office will inevitably have a leg up for higher level opportunities.

- Introverts who need quiet and whose roles involve large amounts of focused work prefer WFH.

- Everyone values flexibility (take morning meetings from home, ability to WFH when needed, etc).

Using myself as an example, I'm 42, single, extroverted, and while I love to WFH as needed, and value being able to do it occasionally, I generally much prefer the office. I actually do my best work in an environment where other people and some noise are around. There's plenty of folks like me. I get our preferences aren't everyone's. I get that satisfying my preference means someone else is less happy.

What I ask is that the WFH folks recognize the same. I'd honestly never take a full remote job. I'd find a new job if my company went full remote. But I'm also not interested in coming to an empty office. So when lots of folks don't ever come in, it negatively impacts my work experience.

So clearly there's got to be some give and take on both sides here, as there's lots of opinions on this. I think this is how most leaders arrive at Hybrid.

I advocate for the abolishment of capitalism, which happens every time someone sits on their ass and collects dividends.

I'm willing to explore the way we would do that on a practical level, but bottom line for me, if someone is sitting in a room somewhere doing nothing that has fuckall to do with my project, fuck them if they get any of the take. I don't care whose daddy their daddy got fucked with a broomstick at the mason lodge by.