Switching to work from home was, without exaggeration, one of the best decisions of my life. I did it a little less than a year before COVID made it pretty much mandatory, so I probably didn't need to quit that old job. But it's okay. Now that I am not exhausted from commuting 90 minutes through hellish traffic, and spending my limited introvert energy dealing with people all day, I feel like a million bucks. I don't have to hunker down all weekend, recuperating from the last week, and preparing for the next. I don't just get back my commute time, it's like I get two extra days every week, during which I am actually capable of enjoying my life.
I recently turned down a very exciting recruiting effort from an old boss, because it would have required me to commute at least two days a week. I cannot think of anything that could entice or threaten me to go back to the office at this point.
Lucky you. IT / Tech sector is at 6% unemployment and the worst its been since the dotcom bubble burst. Remote work would be awesome. Operations, even Dev-Ops and Business Development level is hard to find for remote, and the market is pretty bad. Haven't seen or noticed what its like for the return to office culture, but, I'm not driving from one computer spending my gas to sit down in front of another computer. Preposterous.
I turned the consulting just to keep my schedule; it's ..an interesting change of pace. I think people are lucky to be having remote work at this moment.
6% unemployment is a pretty normal rate for an economy. Historically the US is usually above 5% [1], and the current rate is 4.2%, so 6% is only slightly above the national rate.
I don't doubt that you've had trouble finding work, but I don't think the unemployment rate is the reason, or even the symptom. Particularly since it sounds like you are looking for remote only, and the ratio of seekers to jobs (a sort of "unemployment" measure, given that people may settle for in-office jobs if they can't find a remote one) for remote software may be very different than a 6% rate.
I used to commute 90 minutes each way to and from work, back in the 1990's. One day I added up all that time I was spending sitting in traffic and it totaled an entire month of my life just sitting in traffic. My year was essentially 11 months long, not 12. I told my boss "In two weeks I'm not coming in to the office anymore". He said I could work from home, back when 56k modems were the fastest available. The company went out of business about 6 months later, so maybe he knew about that or maybe not, but those 6 months were amazing. I found another job that was a 15 minute bus ride away, and went back to an office but it was a far better situation. Oh, I also gave up driving completely, the city actually towed away my shitty car because it hadn't been driven in 6 months. Good riddance! I didn't drive for about 20 years, until I met my wife who had a car. I got a license so I could drive her around. I still don't own my own car, and now I've been working at home for almost 5 years. I'm never going back to an office if I can avoid it at all.
>>I added up all that time I was spending sitting in traffic and it totaled an entire month of my life just sitting in traffic. My year was essentially 11 months long, not 12.
Even with people using WFH to drop/pick up kids from school, even with afternoon naps, WFH turns out to be a more productive option just for this reason alone- commute/transit.
Commute time, and overall office shenanigans pretending to be productive or busy when you are clearly not(often just sitting in meetings saying nothing) are the top reasons why most people prefer WFH.
Am luckily in a postition where my org is 100% remote (for the time being), and I am cherishing it for as long as it lasts.
Many (most?) HN posts that discuss WFH seem to be from the POV of the employer/management, with topics such as:
* ensuring employee vigilance
* reducing employee wasted cycles (with the corner case provided often being workers with multiple side gigs)
etc...
(side note: seems like those comments are coming from temporarily-embarrased CEOs-in-waiting)
OTOH, looks like reviews of WFH from the IC level are often pushed aside in HN, and it may show a skewed appreciation for the true popularity and benefits of WFH.
While it may not be for everybody, for a great many of us, WFH is the best thing since sliced bread.
And to have that removed for X reasons (whether legitimate or not) will incur a significant pain for those of us who have aligned to (what I consider) an optimal productivity lifestyle. Let that pain be heard, rather than pushed aside as invalid.
As an engineering manager, I found it quite easy to see the contributions of remote engineers and had no trouble evaluating what was going on. I wonder about the structure of some companies
I bike to work every day (40 min one way) and drop off my kid at school on the way to work. Ironically my commute is about the best part of my day (and I learned during the pandemic that it's hard for me to establish that kind of habit without a forcing function).
I totally get that folks don't want to back to the office, but my advice is that, if you have to, try to turn it into something enjoyable (noting that I specifically moved to an area that's bike friendly).
Personally I do not enjoy any geographical constraint, and anyway I do not enjoy biking when it rain, when it's too hot/humid-cold etc. So I have ZERO reasons trying to "enjoy" something imposed just to keep up the urban model needed by big capital...
WFH allow spread living, allowing a more human society of SMEs, the only who die in this models are the giants, and that's will (not would) be good riddance.
Is it a bit isolating? It is for me, and it’s a concern, but that’s outweighed by everything you mentioned. It would be nice if there was some happy medium. But what is that?
I see this sort of question whenever this topic comes up, and I think it's interesting that there's a baseline assumption of a false dichotomy between "in-office interactions with employees of the same company" or else "isolation", as though those are the only two options (which is understandable, since American culture is pretty skewed towards defining people by their jobs -- the classic problem where people tend to answer "what do you do?" by talking about their job).
I've been working hybrid or fully-remote on and off since about 2009 (with "fully-remote" being my state since about 2019). I get quite a lot more time to spend around people who are close to me -- friends, family, my community -- precisely because I'm not driving 60 miles round-trip every day anymore.
Encountering this same type of dichotomy in my adult context is kinda amusing to me personally, since I encountered it often as a kid, too; I grew up homeschooled, and heard the same baseline assumption (but with "employees at the same company" swapped out for "students at the same school") presented in another frequent question: "but how do you kids ever socialize with other people?"
In reality, I was often involved in daytime extracurricular activities (and weeknight/weekend ones) that had me working, volunteering, field-tripping, or just hanging out alongside multiple groups of adults and other kids on a regular basis.
Living in community can happen by choice, not just by [employer || school] coercion; it just requires that you make that choice.
There is something that happens though when you’re in the same space day after day. You feel a deeper level of connection and bonding. Like being at school and seeing your classmates everyday. It defies logic.
>Living in community can happen by choice, not just by [employer || school] coercion; it just requires that you make that choice.
As other replies have pointed out, the school/work bonds more often than not fade as soon as the coercion is removed. Why is that?
One possible explanation is that those bonds were not genuine or desirable bonds, but were artificial or unwanted-but-required ones. In this case, is it really better to enforce artificial, unwanted constant association?
A different possible explanation might be that the replacement of one enforced -day-to-day coercion with another one leaves no room for the previous-coerced-context's bonds. In that case, is it really better to strangle out all your previous connections by unnecessarily forcing you to inhabit a new space on a constant basis?
This brings up the question again of the false dichotomy between "enforced connections with a single artificially-constructed-and-destroyed community away from home" or else "isolation"; I still think _chosen_ connections with a _multiplicity_ of communities that are _close to home_ is a better option.
I wasn't going to encounter some of my coworkers at the 60-mile-roundtrip job outside of work context _ever_ unless I made a point to suspend my non-work life so that I could go all the way "over there" and away from my family and my local community. Encountering them at the park, or in downtown, and having a casual conversation, or even having them over for dinner -- that sort of thing wasn't going to happen (at the very least, not without a sufficiently-significant amount of planning and commute-time sacrifice as to make it extremely rare).
I recognize that remote work comes with a similarly-high "minimum intentionality requirement" for building connections. I just also recognize, from having worked in the all-too-common situation of "commute to/from the office means driving over an hour each way", that in-office work is not much better than remote work in that regard; it just means that you're spending all your time together in the business-activities rather than in the contexts of what each person actually cares about. When I spend time with friends who live nearby -- like taking a walk with them in the middle of the day, because we're both already close to home -- we're not talking or faux-bonding about the latest deliverable or project, because our relationship isn't defined in those terms, and we're not in an office context that's _framing_ our relationship in those terms.
But the costs that in-office work brings compared to remote work are way higher than the marginal benefit of "now we're in-person more, free to mostly talk about work together while we're in this artificial environment that the company controls, until the company decides to can either of us."
I've been working remotely since 2015 essentially and here's my perspective on overcoming the feeling of isolation. In order from highest to lowest impact:
- Not commuting gave me more time to do physical activities socially. Tennis with neighbors / friends in my town. A group spin class.
- More time to embrace serendipitous hobbies in person with friends (or excuse to meet strangers in my town). New Nepalese restaurant with promising reviews? Randomly go with a friend on a Wednesday. New coffee shop? Try out their pourover to see if they know what they're doing!
- Try working from near home. Coworking space, coffee shop, etc. Workbar offered pretty affordable part-time coworking rates last I checked? Cal calls this "work from near home" - https://calnewport.com/thinking-outside-the-home/
- Meet a life partner who also works from home 1-2 days a week! We've enjoyed random 3 PM walks, making breakfast together, etc.
- Do 1 completely casual Zoom meeting with a coworker every week, even if you don't directly work together.
The 9-5 commuting lifestyle makes it easy to "bundle together" lots of habits that solve for isolation, time to wind down / prep for the day, and for many a workout routine (workout before or after work in a nearby gym).
When you work from home, these are all "unbundled" so you have to re-assemble the things that matter to you yourself. More freedom but more responsibility :)
One thing I tried at first was to organize a shared workspace for friends, where we'd get an office somewhere near our homes, rather than downtown, and come in to the same shared space so we could hang out and shoot the shit. It was very hard to settle on the right location that wouldn't just create a new commuting challenge for everyone, and office space (and parking) is not cheap. I eventually found an okay spot, but COVID quarantining put an end to that. I imagine office space is cheaper now, but I have not had a strong urge to try again.
I do agree that it's isolating. But only during work hours. After work, and on the weekends, I see people a lot more than I did when I was in the office. Overall, I feel like I get more social time than before, but it's with people and in situations I choose. And I also get a lot more breaks in between, which I like.
You could always take the time you save by not commuting and go outside for walks or a drink at a bar or what not. I make a point of walking to the local farmers' market a couple times a week now to spend some time around people, get a meal, etc.
A dirty trick for Amazon is to reduce the workforce as layoffs at large corporations are regulated. Once enough people quit, they will allow either a hybrid or fully remote option again.
Soon after Oakley was acquired by Luxottica, they hired a guy to make our lives miserable and let us quit. After he did what he was hired for, they filled the vacant positions with contractors. I still feel sorry we didn't respond with a class action lawsuit for the blatant and widespread harassment - they really deserved it!
Are there jurisdictions that allow this? In my jurisdiction, that would be considered a constructive dismissal and legally treated the same way as a layoff with the same employer obligations.
I just checked mine and I don't see a provision that says I have to be in office 5 days a week anywhere. I've even seen a few folks that even had a contract that specifically said remote pre-pandemic, which the company "converted" to in-office post RTO announcement
It seems like such an approach would cause the most skilled and in demand workers to leave first. The ones that stay would be the ones that are unable to find a job elsewhere.
Since Luxottica operates by having a monopoly on eyeglasses and charging exorbitant rates, expensive skilled workers are probably not high on their list of needs.
Exactly! This was Oakley's legacy they wonted to get rid of. We had some of the best web designers, and it used to be a dream workplace with many, many exceptions. When I first went to work there, the entire huge room was completely dark, everybody had his own light, some people had their own minifridges stocked up with beer. I wrote above, we also had a bar. Supposedly, it was employee-run with various beer on tap, which ("supposedly" again), was supplied by employees... but that wasn't exactly true. :)
They didn't care. They had one person supporting the old platform, which was written in a weird mix of Ruby on Rails and PHP, which also had the entire copy in code, so every single promo was code and needed a code push. Anyway, I was hired to migrate to Magento Enterprise. We first migrated Ray-Ban in no time, then migrated some other online properties, and then finished migrating the Oakley site. Rarely would you see the migration of a large e-commerce website happening so smoothly, as Oakley had a lot of requirements that needed custom code, but it was done on time and budget. But, I guess the Italians decided they are just an eyewear manufacturer. They chose (without telling us) to eliminate Oakley's Web Team, responsible for most Luxottica brands' online presence. So, they engaged the entire organization and we had more than a month of reviewing different enterprise e-commerce platforms, then we had to vote after we carefully reviewed all platforms, had long Q&A sessions with the vendors, etc. So, the votes overwhelmingly picked vendor A. But the manager-from-hell told us unofficially that he doesn't have only platform B on his resume, and he overwrote the voting for tens of people. Then, he presented a close-to-him consulting company, which used people on work and L1 visas to reimplement everything into platform B. When I said "harassment," I meant even physical harassment, making comments about people's looks and posture, verbal abuse, calling people offensive names, etc. So, one by one and in groups, everybody left. I was checking the various properties - it took them over 3 years to finally implement the new platform; meanwhile, they were using the old, buggy, and maintained by a single-person platform!
Oakley used to a dream place to work! We had a secret bar inside (called "The Engine Room"); we had a Russian armored personnel carrier, which we called "tank", which was driving employees around the HQ; we had all kinds of competitions, some sponsored by Red Bull, too, huge employee discounts for eyewear and apparel (which included all Luxottica brands, including some of the super expensive brands). I remember one iconic employee was leaving, and he was very much into boats, so Oakley bought a boat, created a small pond, let the boat float in the pond, and then ran it over with the APC just for fun! Oakley used to wave the Jolly Roger flag and was getting fined monthly by the city of waving it above the US flag. If I'm not wrong, the fine was more than $5,000. We also used to have a gun and shoot it across the road into the wilderness. In the outside cafeteria, some crazy scientists were melting and burning all kinds of metals - I think once they managed to burn a huge hole in the concrete even. It was crazy, but after Luxottica took over, slowly, all this went away! I found this website, which captures some of the old Oakley [0].
What's not spoken about is that Amazon engineering is 80%+ h1bs. They will not push back against RTO, which is why these policies can be pushed through. American workers are pushed out to companies with better working conditions. The impact of foreign workers on corporate culture cannot be underestimated, this will ripple across corporate America. We are all worse off
Wikipedia says in 2022 there were 4.4 million software developers in the USA. H1bs are ~85,000 added per year. Say over the last 20 years, every h1b slot was filled (by software developers), they never left the USA, and remained on h1b without becoming permanent residents or citizens. That would be 1.7 million H1b software developers currently working.
In reality a large amount become permanent residents or leave. However, FAANG and FAANG-adjacent are probably only around 1 million employees (not including Amazon's non-AWS workforce, but including non-USA employees). Still, FAANG+ are unlikely to be typically anywhere near 80%+ active H1b visa employees. Maybe AWS is a standout exception.
Now, how many software developers in FAANG+ are not born in the USA might be a very different story.
My n-1 firm was a household name in cybersecurity. We had a _lot_ of contractors but almost no visa-based positions. I worked with two of the few who were, and they became citizens to stay with the company permanently.
Yeah this person is just making things up, the majority are not H1Bs. Also, there's this popular idea (usually on places like reddit) that H1Bs at big tech are paid "slave labor wages" because "They can't leave". This is just not true, they get the same salary and stock ranges as everyone else.
Source: was H1B (worked at a couple of big N, but not Amazon) until I got my green card (and then citizenship).
When American corporations have an endless amount of applications from China and India, American workers have no bargaining power. Which makes working conditions worse
Specifically, it's that these foreign workers are not afforded the same protections as American workers. If they were, it would be a much more even playing field, and corporations would not have a "second-class" set of workers they could so easily bully.
Not OP, but my take is that it’s really not great for American workers or immigrants.
For immigrants, their ability to stay in America is predicated on maintaining a good relationship with their employer. If they have a spouse in the US who isn’t American, an interruption at work is a huge problem. And navigating the legal immigration system (USCIS) is a nightmare.
As an aside, when people list “immigration” as an election issue, I wish they were talking about USCIS. It sucks. They are slow, unresponsive, and their instructions are ambiguous. People pay thousands of dollars to lawyers to help them navigate it. Oh and you have to send everything via snail mail.
For American workers, the main problem is that our ability to organize depends on the threat of withholding labor. If companies can prevent unionization it makes it pretty much impossible to negotiate with companies. Working conditions and salary are two of the main things workers would collectively negotiate but can’t.
Also, there are many instances of H1B workers being paid far below market rate. You can check H1B salaries online. One blatant example I found was an “AI scientist” being paid $75k in San Jose, CA by Zoom. San Jose is basically Silicon Valley and has one of the highest COL in the US, and an AI Scientist is an expert who should be paid handsomely.
More broadly there was an investigation by the EPI on this trend of underpaying workers below prevailing wages:
It's kind of how scabs destroy the bargaining power of a union. When you have a group of people desperate enough to work under conditions others won't do, you can optimize for that group of people and just ignore complaints.
One of my happiest days of my life was when I quit my office job and got a new job where I could work from home with a boss that trusted me to do work at the time that's best for me. Since then, life is much better.
That's the trick, "At a time that's best for me". If I could work like 2 hours in the day and 4-5 at night, I'd have killer productivity, both home and work life.
I quit programming and became a photographer and writer. I'd just look everywhere. I've found the key to being happy in a job seems rather unrelated to the work and more related to the work conditions.
Plus, I still get to use programming at my job to do random tasks like code small wordpress plugins and generated some automated HTML. It's a lot more fun than maintaining large codebases for me.
It is all a house of cards. A bunch of people in the city became dangerously levered bagholders, and the city is pushing people to come unnecessarily. It is a huge amount of waste of time and resources for the sake of an economy.
Amazon already sounded like the worst FAANG to work for due to the way they sculpt reviews to avoid options vesting, combined with lower salaries than the other FAANGs. But with this? Yup, 100%. I don't see why someone would consider Amazon unless they have no other options.
I know they do but in my case it is the other way round: most top-paid positions are remote only, so if someone starts getting strange ideas, I won't wait for long.
I've been working since I was 12, and working from home since I was 19 (32 now). I can't imagine ever going back to an office, especially now that my wife is pregnant. I'd rather learn a new profession than doing that.
You're lucky you're in a position where you have that choice. Many will be forced to find a different company that offers remote or will actually suck it up back into the office.
Layoffs are bad for the public image, stockholders, etc.
If people quit themselves, they can get rid of a lot of workforce without having to lay them off.
They lose the chance to choose who stays and who goes, but if your bonuses are tied to quarterly results, it doesn't really matter for a quarter or two.
RTO mandates are a way to cut the best talent. In a previous job, team was delivering on initiatives and running smoothly. Then came the soft RTO policies and then mandated RTO policies.
Best/good people on the team dropped. Myself included after 3 on-shore devs self “retired”. Team then consisted of soldiers, and a couple of off shore devs that did the bare minimum (ie, on shore fixed many of their mistakes, releases taking much longer than usual). Velocity of team sharply dropped. Organization and team turn over increased greatly.
Occasionally, get a ping from hiring manager to see if I’m interested in rejoining. But, RTO is still in effect so I decline any further discussion
Plus this should disproportionately target the disabled and working parents without triggering any discrimination lawsuits. Those groups have higher healthcare costs so even more savings.
To be honest forcing your employees into the office looks really desperate. It makes me think Amazon is in real trouble if they can’t create a website remotely and need to physically force employees into a big building to try to get them to produce.
That’s not good for public image and if I were a shareholder I’d be planning for an exit.
> To be honest forcing your employees into the office looks really desperate.
To some of us, but not everyone. It may look less desperate than layoffs. It can be postured as happening for any number of strong-handed reasons and be called an act of powerful leadership, even if it's just desperate and stupid. Besides, other huge companies have done it already.
Dell did RTO earlier this year and all the coverage I saw made their leadership look weak - the coverage was all about most employees rejecting leadership's push. I didn't see any positive coverage.
My thoughts exactly, we actually _maintain_ a website, not create one!
Jokes aside, I work at Amazon and complexity varies between teams.. but there are few things that can’t be done remotely. Imo the hybrid model works best.
They get rid of people who might need extra considerations for working, and they keep the employees who they can reliably push around or will compromise in favor of the company. Of course they also lose out on top talent that will go where someone gives them flexibility. But I think they prefer obedience to talent.
Not only that, but Amazon is of such a scale and such a segment, that hording high end intellectual capital is not likely to have any great impact on their results in any case. They're the closest thing in today's world to what would be in any sci fi dystopia world a global company that runs everything from taxis to health care. There just are not any other companies like Amazon, with the exception of Alibaba which is like Amazon on steroids.
At this point, the use of companies like Amazon or Alibaba is kind of necessary to get by for most people. Even those who don't use it, are using it indirectly. Via using apps and sites running on Amazon. Via going to stores supplied by Amazon. And on and on and on. The tentacles are everywhere.
Amazon doesn’t “run” (control) any market. They have a hand in retailing, logistics, web services, media, etc, but in each one, there are notable competitors.
Not unlike other conglomerates, like Berkshire. But AWS’ big profit margins give Amazon a big upside.
Yes and no. For unskilled labor, probably it doesn't matter that much. For complex projects such as in AWS you need months or sometimes years to onboard new talent and make them catch up with the rest of the team (assuming there is a "rest").
There are loads of employees in orgs like Professional Services/Solution Architects and other Sales orgs that were hired remotely and live in locations far from any office. This is clearly intended to increase attrition.
What is the point because I guess I'm missing it. Is a union winning more work from home days for workers as opposed to not having a union and not getting those days not a win in this situation?
Are they? I don't know any factory workers but I have friends outside of tech and they can all relate to "arbitrary rules from management that make my job harder are frustrating".
The people who spend the most time sneering at 'the laptop class' that I'm aware of are independent, ie, non-unionized, tradespeople who operate as sole proprietorships - emphatically not factory workers. The arbitrary, unproductive distinction between 'real' physical labour of the kind carpenters, roofers, drywall technicians, etc, do and 'laptop labour' is increasingly being seen as exactly that.
If there are fewer cars on the road because the people who can work at home are doing so, then the commute becomes smoother for anyone who can't work from home.
Then they are short-sighted, because other people WFH would be better for them too. The US culture can be staunchly individualistic and bordering on revenge-oriented, so I can't say I'm surprised.
I’m pretty pro WFH. It’s undeniably great from an employee’s perspective.
However I’m pretty annoyed and disappointed by the lack of honesty around its costs. There’s significant costs and benefits to remote work.
COVID was a little bit of a cheat code for WFH. We all built up relationships and repertoires during office work which made the transition to remote much much easier.
Remote work is particularly difficult for onboarding new members and especially for juniors. Slack and Zoom are vastly inferior to face-to-face.
Remote work is great for talented seniors. But there is an undeniable cost to the team.
Of course there are spectacular benefits to remote work. For example being able to hire people you couldn’t otherwise hire!
I’m not anti-WFH. But I am annoyed at all the internet threads that act like remote work is all roses with zero costs. And especially annoyed at folks who only look at how impacts themselves and not the team. It’s totally reasonable for WFH to be net benefit in some cases and net negative in others.
I expect downvotes for this. But that’s super lame. Would rather people engage thoughtfully. Alas.
I feel similarly.
I've been pure remote since COVID.
I used to complain about having to come into the office just to stare at a screen quietly next to people.
Being remote has been great in some ways, but I've really noticed the reduction in connection to coworkers and the major decline in informal collaboration. I've also had to dedicate a room of my house as an office (have kids, so working from any common space is fully impossible).
My life just feels smaller now, when most days instead of traveling through the city on a busy train to meet up with dozens of collaborators, discuss, eat together, I start my day by sitting down in a small room by myself in front of a screen.
Work is what I do with most of my days. I'd like it to be as engaging and as socially connective as possible. I don't like commuting, but I'm planning for my next job to be in person.
I tend to agree with this. The spontaneous face-to-face opportunities, like "Hey, what do you think about..." are what I miss the most. I didn't realize how much I learned just interacting with my coworkers so frequently. Also, there's something to be said about keeping your home space completely separate from work. That being said, I still love WFH, and don't think we have to be completely black or white on the matter. I personally would love a 2/3 or 3/2 day split between office and home, assuming my coworkers were on the same schedule. Or even an every other week toggle between office and WFH.
> I really wish we could avoid this tone of petty superiority.
I wish it wasn't an effective strategy to minimize downvotes. But my anecdotal experience is that it helps! My comment was in the negatives when I edited to add that line.
> I expect downvotes for this. But that’s super lame. Would rather people engage thoughtfully. Alas.
You'll never hear some of these downvoters say it out lot but a lot of people made some really poorly thought out real estate transactions during the pandemic assuming that their WFH gravy train would keep going forever. I know many people who up and sold their house and moved way out into the sticks thinking "this is the new normal". Not sure what these people were thinking, but then again there wasn't a whole lot of thinking going on anywhere during that time.
It's kind of hard to feel sorry for these folks either. They were incredibly privileged that a "once in a lifetime global pandemic" granted them such ability. If the government declared all their cushy tech jobs "non essential" (which most tech companies are) and forced them all into unemployment like the average working person, I'm pretty sure their entire take on the last 4 years would be entirely different.
I think this comment really highlights the costs and culture around RTO. You're essentially admitting that going RTO can easily be the equivalent of a 50%+ reduction in Salary.
I've found that typically RTO proponents are not very honest about the true cost of their position. Not the cost of driving, the cost of lost time, and especially not the cost of high COL areas that offices are typically in. I think some of this dishonesty stems from self-preservation. As in if they admit the cost, they have to admit they're getting shorted, and nobody wants that for themselves.
If moving "to the sticks" was such a viable cost saving strategy, it seems to me you're burning Salary for the sweet, sweet opportunity to join a Teams call in the office. If anything, these types of comments illuminate the potential hard benefits of a WFH job.
Companies know the tech job market is awful right now, there simply aren't the number of jobs there used to be pre-pandemic or even a year into the pandemic. Hell I haven't even had a raise in 3 years, and while that kind of sucks, I don't have much leverage because my boss knows the job market sucks. I've been WFH for almost 5 years now, and thankfully I don't work for a company that wants us to return to the office.
Seeing this is Amazon corporate, as warehouse and delivery people never worked from home, probably most of them (if they weren't dumb with their Amazon salaries).
I read about an Amazon SWE that was trying do as little as possible to not get fired or just get a severance. I wonder if this is the most effective way to weed out all those.
With 300K employees they likely have thousands of zombie wfh employees.
The point isn’t that high performers want to wfh and low performers want to rto. The point is that for the high performers who want to wfh, an rto mandate will make them consider other options.
I can't read the story, but I've noticed that there's a lot of vague terminology in these discussions. Does back to office mean an open office? Does it mean all day where others can bother you? Does it mean the boss can tell you to have a meeting in their office in ten minutes? Does it mean you have to ask permission to take the afternoon off to visit the dentist (and wouldn't you have to do that with WFH)?
I'm of 2 minds on this. Not everyone can compete remotely and some jobs genuinely require in person collaboration, but whether or not this is a good idea really depends on Amazon's strategy, which most of us might not be privy to. We can assume a company of this size and this portfolio should be able to compete with remote workers, but that might only be true for a certain period of time.
But from many employee's point of view, none of those considerations matter. They have become aware of how awful and soul-sucking offices can be and the impact that has on their lives even outside of work. That's what matters to them, as it should.
Of course, a company can have any policy they want, and people who can't live with those policies have no choice but to seek employment elsewhere.
From a cold business perspective, the real question Amazon and such have to answer is if the loss of those employees is something that they are OK with. It sounds like Amazon's answer to that question is "absolutely yes".
Companies or their managers sometimes get a reality check after some confident answer like this. Not as often as we employees would like, but still. Remember those people who tought there was a worldwide market for about 5 computers? Or those who invested with SBF, because playing computer games during high level meetings is proof of... something?
Well, in some ways WFH made offices more soul-sucking because it's a lot of shared desks now. Personal desk, locker, plants, other custom office clutter, a door and so on were nicer.
Many RTO mandates are worst of both worlds: hot-desking, lots of Zoom calls. I'm not sure where Amazon lies on that scale, but if I was forced back into the office just to Zoom from there, I'd be pissed.
The issue is Amazon is a huge company, so even if you're working in an office you're still practically "remote" from most other workers. So when you need to work together, you have to do it the remote way, ala zoom.
You can be of 2 minds but fortunately employees have a choice and companies too. I will never work for a company that requires me to come to their (probably open-plan) office, period. Those who insist, lose senior staff, period.
Are you implying that people who prefer work remotely are deadwood? Are introverts deadwood? Are people who prefer not to commute 3 hours a day deadwood?
The afore-alluded to severance packages and unemployment insurance increases. Those insisting on WFH are apparently going to help mitigate those costs.
> RTO is about protecting commercial real estate. It has nothing to do with productivity.
I keep seeing this claim. Over and over and over.
I don't see any evidence, though. All is see is "because of course it is", with a side order of conspiracy ("them" are doing it - sometimes more explicit, "the administration").
So in your claim, you say you're someone who is leaving a full remote role for an in-office one. You don't say that you know anything about commercial real estate. You don't say that you have any evidence. You don't hear that you caught one of the higher-ups admitting that this is the reason. No, your basis for knowing is just that it's happening to you.
That's not enough. That's not evidence; it's conjecture.
And that's all I ever see on this claim. Why am I seeing this claim so often when there's nothing to back it up? Is the conspiracy theory that prevalent? Or is it just a few people endlessly repeating the same claim, because that's their particular hobby horse?
I guess this sounds fairly harsh. But this is about the 4th time I've seen this claim today, always as if "of course it's true", always with no evidence, and it's getting annoying.
My instinct (yes, I also do not have actual evidence) is that the people making these decisions and the people who actually own commercial real estate are different people, with different interests. They aren't some monolithic "they". I could actually be persuaded, but it's going to take more than repetition and "of course it's true" to do it.
There are many businesses that depend on foot traffic of office workers.
There are also many land leeches that need bodies in office.
There may not be an explicit agreement where RTO earns a tax break but it certainly gives a company more leverage in negotiations with local government and businesses.
This to me is obvious. What's not obvious is how it increases productivity to force people into an office.
Well, this is better than most of the comments on the subject. You actually propose a mechanism - tax breaks, maybe with a wink and a "you know what we want". It could happen just that way.
Now, do you have any evidence that it actually is happening this way? Because, while you have motive, and a plausible mechanism, you still haven't shown any evidence that the crime actually happened this way.
Think of all that time spent commuting that could be used delivering share holder value... Now it's wasted, just so that people can come in to the office. SO MUCH WASTED POTENTIAL SHARE HOLDER VALUE
ITT : people confusing personal productivity (I finished my given set of tasks) vs company productivity (collaborate to bring new ideas into market) and most modern university educated won't get it
I recently turned down a very exciting recruiting effort from an old boss, because it would have required me to commute at least two days a week. I cannot think of anything that could entice or threaten me to go back to the office at this point.