Comment by shagie
It's a very reasonable argument. And even if it isn't something now (where Amazon gives Seattle the bird... wait, that's San Francisco that got the bird from the bird), it is something that would impact their ability in the future to negotiate tax breaks with cities.
There's also the question of even if remote work was more productive on the whole (and I believe this to be true) and that these productivity gains come from the more senior workers who are able to identify tasks that they need to complete and effectively shut the door on the office and focus ... while also being able to handle other things at home (being more productive because you can put a load of laundry in at noon or being able to get something to eat without having to go all the way to the break room)...
So, grant that on the whole productivity is higher with WFH for mid level and senior level individual contributors ... junior ICs may be suffering quietly without more direct mentorship, the listening in on ad-hoc hallway meetings, managers being able to pick up on work stress more easily.
It would be very easy to imagine a conversation at some director level (where I'm making up the numbers)... "From 2020 to 2024, we've seen the number of junior ICs advance to mid level drop from 20% to 16% compared to 2016 to 2020. This is a declining trend and when looked at year over year 2020 to 2021 had 8% advancement while 2023 to 2024 only showed 4% advancement. Furthermore, the senior ICs are comfortable in their role and the number of them moving up to management has dropped from 5% to 3% in the 2020 to 2024 time frame. If this continues, we may be looking at a lot of unsatisfied junior developers who are not progressing and a lot of satisfied senior developers and leads who would traditionally shift to the management track... well, not take that step in their career progression."
Yes, that's a just-so story. I find it to be a believable one.
So even if everything is great with remote work currently for productivity, some trends may be showing a problem years down the road where people are not improving and the company as a whole is stagnating (even more).
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(edit / addition) - from last year, that tax revenue thing with some numbers: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/community/amazon-return-to-...
I'm sure that the numbers indicate that, but it's quite a leap to pin WFH as the driving reason that the juniors not moving up and the seniors not moving into management. It's a good story, and I'm sure that's the sort of thing that top leaders in big tech are using. Except for the reporting that 60-80 CEOs got together and just decided to move, and that they aren't willing to share those concerns of low IC improvement in the communications.
If the story were true, then that'd be a reasonable thing to share in broad terms and would reduce the impact to morale as there's at least some shared, reasonable argument. Instead we get vague reasoning about energy of the workforce and spreading the corporate culture.
Everything I've seen aligns on three pillars:
* Real-estate strategy (lots of contracts and promises to commercial real-estate as well as local governments)
* Quiet layoffs (if they leave on their own, then we aren't firing!)
* Disconnection with reality (upper-management's job is harder remotely or they're bad at it, and having face-to-face conversations is really important for politics, their primary job)