Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
(cnbc.com)1498 points by jbredeche a year ago
1498 points by jbredeche a year ago
People have different work preferences; some thrive working from home, while others do better in the office. I think the strong opinions about mandated office days stem from the fact that the job doesn’t necessarily require employees to be physically present.
While jobs maybe not require someone been physically present. So far over the last 2 years seeing multiple businesses do return to office, productivity sky rocketed. Sure a few people who didn’t want to return to the office left, but turns out they weren’t that productive. People are easy to replace now.
Before the pandemic, everyone was working in-office 5 days a week. The pandemic is now over. Why is it so controversial to return to what everyone was already doing previously?
Kudos to Jassy for being a leader in this space.
Because as humans progress, so must our working conditions. The onus of working in the office is ALL on the employee:
- getting to the office (commute time is never paid time)
- figuring out a mode of travel (parking, gas are rarely paid, transit sometimes)
- child / senior care (major cost for parents)
- biology issues (quality of bathrooms, quality of kitchen, bringing items to/from work, flatulence, illnesses)
> Why is it so controversial to return to what everyone was already doing previously?
One reason is that they aren't returning to what they were previously doing: many companies have sold off office space and have removed dedicated work spaces in favour of hybrid-friendly environments and 'hot desks'.
Because working in an office at most tech companies sucks, and now that it isn't the norm, there's no good reason to accept that it should be.
If you work in-office for an American tech prime, there's a good chance your office is in one of the following cities: SF, LA, Seattle, NYC, Chicago, Houston, DC. Commuting in all of these cities is absolutely miserable. It benefits neither you nor your employer to spend multiple hours per day not working, not tending to personal matters, but simply getting to and from a job you could just as easily do at home.
If you're a parent, working from home makes it easier to be present as a parent. Commuting can be exhausting, and the energy saved by working from home can be put towards your kids.
It makes the logistics of everyday tasks easier. Because I no longer piss away 20 hours a week on the L going into downtown Chicago, I now have 20 more hours per week to work out, do the laundry, buy groceries, and cook healthy meals. This is a flat-out benefit of remote work that simply cannot be offered by any employer that demands in-office work. Paychecks can't buy time.
Tech companies are also are prone to the most backwards forms of "modern office design," which universally result in a distracting and uncomfortable work environment. There's also research to suggest that they result in higher rates of illness among workers [1]. So, even if your commute doesn't suck, there's a good chance your office does suck.
None of this is to say that you shouldn't be allowed to work in an office if you want to. I sure as hell don't. I'm happier, healthier, and more productive than I ever was in an office environment.
> Before the pandemic, everyone was working in-office 5 days a week. [...] Why is it so controversial [...]?
Because it is a lie. Teams managed themselves and trusted their members.
People who were virtual employees, or whose team was in a different location than theirs, have been let go at different points of the layoffs/RTO mandates, when they existed before the pandemic.
This is a regression to a point that never existed in Amazon's history.
because its a regression. WFH is better for a lot of folks. It saves time and money. Being forced back to office is like taking a pay cut as well as wastes 2 hours each day.
I’ve seen all the sides of remote work now.
The only people that are offended by Musk’s comment are the being he was talking about.
“You can pretend to work somewhere else”
Remote work is awesome for some people. But if you don’t admit that a great number of people are scamming it - then your opinion is just as invalid as their obviously defensive position.
Nah. I wrote critical boot code for brand new silicon from home. Took my team from "behind" to "changing how people did chip bringup." Without ever seeing them in person for literal years.
Can be done. And yeah, that comment rubs me the wrong way.
Yea, cool.
You aren’t the point.
If you can’t see and admit the massive abuse from most people - obviously except for you - then there is no discussion.
Everyone is always so quick to say how great THEY are and can’t ever even sort of discuss the reality of abuse because that position threatens their goal.
It is obtuse self-interest and disingenuous. Those comments rub me the wrong way.
> It is obtuse self-interest and disingenuous. Those comments rub me the wrong way.
That is pretty much all arguments for WFH. It's always "oooo I'm so much more productive" and occasionally "I can do errands and stuff now"... but never does it get more reflective than that. It might be great for the individual but for the team level and higher, it's probably not great at all.
Plus... I personally know a non-trival number of people who made some seriously boneheaded short-term real estate purchases in the peak 2020 insanity assuming they'd be doing this WFH forever. The amount of privilege these people had doing that while so many non-tech people got screwed over by their governments... makes it very hard for me to really feel sorry for people having to go back into the office. It was always supposed to be temporary no matter what anybody told them.
This seems obviously wrong - the least you expect is of course for them to accomplish the goals of their position. If that requires physical presence, then obviously that's part if the deal implicitly. But for tons of jobs, that's part of the "above and beyond" bucket. I.e. things like after-hours availability, that may improve outcomes, but actually have downsides that mean they could be net negatives depending on the specific job and the specific individuals.
Aside from such executive blindness, the only other reason anybody alive still thinks of commuting and in-office work in more innocent terms is because up until very recently (generationally speaking) they were simply a physical necessity for nearly 100% of jobs, so there was nothing to be gained by dwelling on it. That changed, so the acceptance of petty suffering changed. Also, the fact that the ratio of life improvement to hard work has steadily decreased since those times motivates employees to find other means of maintaining sanity.
I always find it amusing, reading comments from all these people who claim to be more productive working from home, or think that it works better. It proves they work in silos and contribute little.
But HN is like “no WFH good, WFO bad, me downvote you cos I fink I know wat I talk bout”