Amazon postpones return to office until January 2022
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
I miss the delineation between work and home. I've lost it.
I'm thinking this is where companies will be headed. For employees who want to work remotely, let them. For everyone else, either rent them small offices or allow them to come to the office as they choose.
Let's be honest, most of us didn't have a problem with the office, most of us had a problem with the open office and the commute, both of which are solvable. This remote work trend will peak (I don't know when, but it will), and we will come full circle back to offices again, and the ones that offer an office with a door will reap the rewards. Hopefully by then America has also figured out the infrastructure issue.
We are planning to start 2 days in the office in September. I'm hoping it gets delayed. I would love to have an office with a door again but I'm just happy we don't have a giant table with an open floorplan like some of my friends.
I kinda agree with this. at least, I wouldn't mind going to the office if it was a pleasant ten minute walk from my home. but how is the commute a solvable problem? many offices are located in suburban office parks. no one wants to live there. and desirable neighborhoods within walking distance of good employers are, well, desirable. you can't pay everyone enough money to live in the same nice places where everyone else also wants to live.
By holding politicians feet to the fire when they've acted like infrastructure is their number one priority for the past 30 years. We should have high speed rail connecting every major city at this point but for some godforsaken reason we don't. We should have light rails and cable cars, and other green forms of transportation lightening the car load, and down the road, heavier investment in driverless technology (as well as supporting infrastructure) can almost eliminate congestion.
Sounds like a lot, but America has done more in less time. We just have allowed cynicism and paralysis to take over.
I agree with both perspectives and not sure what I prefer but do think the team should be consistent (all remote or all in person). I don't want to have standup with 8 engineers in person and 1 engineer remote on VC.
On gameday several members of the coaching staff for football teams are in skyboxes in the stadium removed from the players and coaches on the field. That is because they prefer to have an aerial view that allows them to see the game better. It works better for them and therefore it works better for the team. Your analogy doesn't provide the obvious answer you think it does.
Anecdotally, my company had an office team and a remote team split about 50/50 before and unrelated to COVID, and it was tricky. We don't have a lot of meetings, but when we did, it was hard to have a physical group in a conference room with a remote group on a screen. We solved that by effectively going fully remote for meetings that involved remote employees - everyone who was physically in the office would connect to a video call at their individual desks. I was personally fine with it, but some people definitely prefer (and work better in) that physical conference room setting.
All of that to say, the way one person works might be a forcing factor for others, even if they don't intend for it to be. Tricky problem.
>We solved that by effectively going fully remote for meetings that involved remote employees
Yes, this is the process that teams within my extended team mostly follow.
I'm enjoying working from home along with the sights and sounds, except for leaf blowers. I can look out my window and watch squirrels play. Luckily I only have one neighbor with a dog and it doesn't bark much. But this comment makes me wonder why you bother having a dog if you don't even like the sounds they make.
And I'm not ready for spending 3 hours in a car everyday. That's a slow suicide
The real sticking point seems to be attendance requirements.
Having to go somewhere every day even if it takes 3 hours to get there and back, whether you're more productive there or not.
Having to be there certain hours, even if a slight shift in hours would save you thousands of dollars a year in childcare expenses.
Having to sit at the desk until 5 pm (or longer) for show, even if you're a salaried employee, are fried from numerous meetings or an intense thinking job, and spent other time -- not at the desk -- thinking about work problems.
Having to work all of your 8-10 hours in a row, even if you would be more productive if you broke it up into 1-4 hour bursts spread throughout the day.
On the other hand I work with extroverted young folks that are sitting on the edge of their bed all day in a stuffy bedroom with one window so they can work from the top of their dresser in an apartment with three other roommates.
Ideally, for me, I'd be in office two days a week (and no more). I'm much more productive on my technical tasks at home.
Disclaimer: I realize not everyone would share that point of view (and clearly having an office in the woods is working well for you), but that's my perspective on it.
This is what the 75min/direction commute to SF would do to me
I'm chill and think I respect the "WFH forever" crowd a lot. I just would love to be able to have my home office be for my hobbies again and it was hard to even mention this at work without someone aggressively jumping on me because I'm a shill for the big tech executive caste that wants us all "trapped" in the office again. I changed employers recently because of this to a company that has more of an office culture.
This is one of the sticking points in this discussion, I think.
(Leaving aside the issue of long commutes.) Why do people's actual hours sitting at the desk need to policed?
I think in a great office culture people are going to the office because they want to, or because they are more productive there. In my experience this is what will happen once a bunch of people are already at the office and remote people can't catch up or feel left behind on some stuff. Also on meetings when there's like four or five people on a room the people on videoconference just can't work at the same level and it's very hard to accommodate for them.
I think it's ok if some companies don't want to go back to the office, but I just think colocated teams perform better. I'd rather be on the teams that perform better. I think maybe for a giant like Google letting everyone go home is not a bad idea, but if you want a tiger team to skunkworks something up for you I think WFH won't cut it. Maybe a few days a week or every other week if you need to a lot of alone work, but not all the time.
God. Damn. Right.
And because it is most certainly apparent no loyalty exists and now I have to factor in the risk you let me go (a.k.a. fire) me in 6 months if the right opportunity arises. To hell if I want to keep working in a place where I'm always needing to watch my back and be ready to find something else anyways. Good riddance!
Going to office has been the best possible thing for me. I can see my coworkers, understand the expectations set for me, get instant help from coworkers (and often provide instant help). My anxiety is better and my health is better. I'm not distracted by the 10,000 things around my house that I either want to do or need to do.
That being said, that's only my experience. I think the research shows that remote work is just as productive, if not better. It's better for people who really need to take care of personal things during work hours. The opposition to remote work is far too forceful, especially when companies don't even intend to back up their threats (like in your case). Leadership in many companies seems against the idea for WFH for all the wrong reasons. They need to understand it's a real risk trying to force employees to come back to the office, and you can certainly lose some very important talent by doing that.
The whole reason FANG companies hire new grades is because a small fraction will become superstars in a few years. And a small handful of those superstars will stay out of loyalty/comfort/inertia. New grads are basically deep out of the money, long-dated call options. Companies aren't going to care whether it takes them 3 months or 6 months to get acclimated to the org's culture.
Plus reading here about certain companies' interest in pruning people ruthlessly...
I could see why morale among new hires would be problematic in this rather chaotic time.
That's all done in chat now. Which on a personal level, that's how I've done it for a quarter of a century, but it's like that at work now too.
Additionally, someone who's new is much easier to spot and thus be reminded of when they're physically proximate. Someone new on chat who doesn't have much to contribute yet can very easily vanish, so while they may be able to pull information from others, much less information will be deliberately pushed their way.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but we have millennia of culture and evolution built around in-person interactions.
I haven't seen that. What type of conversations that used to be public are you seeing being moved to private now that things are done through chat?
So if today's new grads are telling you "I'm drowning" and two years ago they weren't... maybe you should listen.
And measured productivity is only half of it if a sizable fraction of those frustrated new grads leave much sooner than they would otherwise.
Or if "new grad" experiences also tend to match "new hire" experiences even for experienced folks...
It's absolutely vital to recreate the same onboarding experience (seeing someone all day, being there whenever a question is asked, etc) virtually, and that means putting in the extra effort in making onesself available, checking in, and being proactive.
I was a new grad in the analog world. The same kind of uncertainty existed for me. Sometimes a coworker who was supposed to help me just didn't talk to me. Many managers were just as poor then as they are now, in person or online, at setting and communicating expectations.
And there were additional problems in person that don't exist in the same way online. Particularly for women ... bullying and inappropriate attention from the men; envy and criticism from the women.
Also, early on in this pandemic, people and companies were scrambling in general. So, the chaos of onboarding may not have been a problem with onboarding per se, or even with companies not handling it "well" but just a shared difficulty.
You helped your company by saving senior engineers' precious time.
Nurturing early career engineers in a remote setting is definitely something companies need to get better at.
So essentially, the workers at the remote site have been working (tada) remotely for over 13 years. And they do a great job. We communicate via email, by Teams/Webex, and there's no real difference.
And then COVID comes along and we all WFH for the last 18 months. Now when things appear to be getting better, mgmt is all in a rush to "RTO."
So not only have we proven that we can work well remotely in non-COVID times, but under the immense pressure of COVID, we had record profits.
So now we're going with the worst of all worlds for my team; hybrid. We're allowed to work 1-3 days a week remotely, but the other days we'll be in the office in desk hotels. Sounds like so much fun.
It really boils down to old school VPs/Managers who think butts in seats is how you get work done. And I say this as someone who's closer to retirement age than most.
If a person is equally productive but happier, why not let 'em be happier?
Let's start with statistically significant proof of the correlation between working from the open office and company profits. That game cuts both ways.
Or, simply let everyone work as and where they wish and apply the same evaluation and retention criteria to everyone. No need to discrimiante against one group.
Are these concerns of being careful of what we wish for too premature?
Does that worry you?
Is this necessarily bad? No, but be prepared for more competition and maybe needing to move to an even lower cost area than you’d imagined.
Canada or Central or South America, on the other hand... could be a lot of opportunity for people there.
It's not very professional, but I feel like I have to say, "do X or I'm going to quit". Not very professional, and probably wouldn't go over well, but saying it politely doesn't seem to get the message across.
Just go find what you think will make you happy.
I don’t think the solution here is for every company to become “remote-friendly.” I think it’s for remote companies like Automattic, Gitlab, and Invision to exist, and for remote-desiring engineers to get jobs there.
How many tech companies will just let their offices go when the lease is up? Or begin the process of subletting?
Many tech companies have started a full remote hiring swing, and they won't let these employees go when things return to "normal". It wouldn't make sense to lay them off if they're productive talent.
I could see small WeWork-style hubs working for companies that want to support small clusters of remote workers, but not full offices.
This will probably put a lot of downwards pressure on our $300-500k compensation packages as we begin to hire from middle and southern US states, where wages never reached west coast levels.
Any of them which have learned how to produce as much value working remotely as they did working in an office, less the cost of renting the office.
Ha, who am I kidding? It won't be a rational choice.
The companies that will continue demanding in-office work will be those driven by a company culture that _distrusts their employees_. I expect that if sufficiently many companies opt to remain fully WFH and abandon offices altogether that those which demand office presence will be viewed suspiciously by prospective employees.
As suspiciously as one should view a potential employer who demands to install rootkit spyware on your personal computer when conducting an interview.
To many companies, real estate is money parking or even speculation.
Alpha of course was the problem (being the first COVID19 variant that was "better" than the original). But only Delta was actually "better" than Alpha. Everyone has completely forgotten about Beta (aka: South Africa variant), despite it being hugely in the news a few months ago.
Lambda isn't spreading very much. There's a "Delta-Plus" variant going around, but it seems like "Delta-Plus" is no "better" than the original Delta.
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We drew the short straw on this one. Back in the 1918 pandemic, the flu evolved into a less-dangerous form. In this COVID19 situation, we got unlucky twice, and the virus evolved twice (first to Alpha, then again to Delta).
There's no reason to assume that the virus will continue to "get better", so to speak. Aside from the fact that it did so twice in the past year... the next step it takes forward could be backwards. Evolution cuts both ways, its not always a straight path towards improvement.
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EDIT: Looking at the list: Beta, Gamma, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, and Kappa are all "variants of concern" but no one gives a care. Only Delta is giving us issues right now, and only Alpha gave us a major issue before Delta.
Most 'Greek letter' conversations I've had just ignore this and say "Alpha" when they mean the original.
For what it's worth, there is some evidence that Delta is less deadly than the original strain, although by how much is difficult to say, especially with vaccination as a confounding measure.
Ex: Why are we calling a variant "Delta-plus" ?? Shouldn't it just take the next Greek letter?
Wasn't the second wave of the 1918 pandemic the most deadly?[1] To be sure, the current flu variants are much less dangerous than anything from that time though.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Deadly_second_wave...
I admit that I forgot about the 2nd wave in 1919. But my understanding is that in 1920 or so, the virus mutated again into a less-virulent form, allowing the pandemic to end.
One is probably dropping off soon (technicalities about where I live, etc., create uncertainty about the duration of that).
One is very expensive, but I love that gym, but it's less conducive to the workouts I want to do if I'm wearing a mask.
The cheaper one is closest to my house and the easiest for me to program with a mask.
I'm trying to figure out whether to pay the cancellation fees or hope for better times soon. It seems likely that I'll pay the break-up fees and keep the one gym membership because.. I agree with your prognosis. But I don't want to agree with that prognosis.
If you're waiting for 'normal', I think you're already soaking in it. At least for the next 18 months or so, which is effectively forever in terms of flexible change.
Some said April, some stated June or July. One outrageous bet was January 2021 which we all took as a bit of a joke. No way would this last that long. "People will wear masks and isolate and we'll beat this".
We made the same bet in March 2021, laughing at our previous bad estimates. The furthest out was again January next year. That was a ridiculous suggestion we thought. "The vaccine is here it should be over soon".
I wonder how 2022 will go.
Most of the population has been vaccinated.
50.4% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-trac...
If this stretches past the end of 2021, WFH will simply be a feature of the white collar economy. Companies are already finding it hard to break inertia and get people back into the office; after another 6 months of this they’re not even going to try.
There's a lot of ways to nerdsnipe that argument, ex. "just move back!"...it's too late, those social connections are gone
There are also a lot of places to make social connections that aren’t work.
You're, of course, right that work isn't the only place to meet people, but that's trivially true in a way that feels insulting - my intent was to point out the other side of the coin is being trivialized, and it's on me that I wasn't clear on the that. And earnestly, is there really a ton of places to make social connections available right now?
Being remote does not mean working from home. Being remote does not mean never going out, quite the opposite actually, you just need to be intentional about it.
Still, to expand on the issue of WFH, I absolutely see no problem with it and I even advocated for it before the pandemic. I just wish everyone who wants to go back to the office for legitimate reasons (because they like to see their co-workers, because they have bad working conditions at home and what not) were able to if vaccinated.
I don’t think there’s political appetite to lock down things again. The left won’t go along with lockdowns this time; they’re too bitter at the right for causing this to drag out.
But, it's not: if you moved from a smaller city to one of the expensive FAANG areas the past few years, you were trading remote work for getting to work with people. My mental state is...not great...with the isolation of leaving behind my social circle to move here, and now not having a social circle built up here. I almost feel cheated that I moved to work here, this is _exactly_ what I ran away from: remote work, coworkers with no incentive/forcing function to collaborate, and detached management "managing" problems by rote bon mots that don't actually fix anything.
I mean, I think Delta (at least in the US, I won't speak to/for other countries) has proven this incorrect since we have multiple instances of hospitals filling up right now even though (IIRC) we just hit the 70% first shot mark (for 18+).
Also we haven't yet, and I hope we never, see a variant that not only causes lots of breakthrough cases but also results in higher rates of hospitalization/ICU/vent/death even for the vaccinated.
What we can't afford is to continue to put up with the unvaccinated. My state, just a few hours ago, announced that 70%+ of our hospitals are now collectively going to require the vaccination to continue working there and it's my fervent hope that more and more private sector companies do the same (as have at least a few major manufactures in my state). I'd actually prefer to see something akin to what NY just did. I understand the privacy concerns with having to prove vaccination status but the alternative (what we did for the last 1.5 years+) is not something I'm willing to put up. I'm so incredibly tired of having the people who refuse to do the bare minimum drag the rest of us down.
It seems especially reasonable when going somewhere (like a conference or an office that allows continued WFH) is pretty much optional. Of course, it's more complicated if, say, you're in sales and it's customers who impose the requirement.
"Either way, we will be wearing masks, for example, and avoiding crowded places. I’ll call this the immediate pandemic period. For a few years after we either reach herd immunity or have a widely distributed vaccine, people will still be recovering from the overall clinical, psychological, social, and economic shock of the pandemic and the adjustments it required, perhaps through 2024. I’ll call this the intermediate pandemic period. Then, gradually, things will return to “normal”—albeit in a world with some persistent changes. Around 2024, the post-pandemic period will likely begin"
Seriously, I think 90% of every good idea I've ever had has come to me in situations like the above. I don't wanna force people to come back to the office with me, but I'm just surprised that more people aren't feeling like they've lost something important without it. Yes, I can informally start off a chat with a colleague over Slack, but it just doesn't work for me. People think too much before they write something. All the good ideas die if people weigh their words too much :-(
After 2 months our team lead realized that we were having problems so he organized 2 meetings a week but there is no status taking. It is all "What problems are you having and let us try to collectively debug it." Share your screen, other people draw on it, give control of your screen to a coworker and let them try a command.
It has actually been great. I have gotten to know 4 of the remote people really well now. I hope to meet them in person some day and have a beer with them.
I'm doing semiconductor design, not software in case anybody is wondering.
Extrovert vs introvert bias here as well. If you are introverted & trying to get focussed work done, open floor plans full of extroverts and shoulder tapping is the reason most of your commits happen after 7pm when the office is empty or you are coding at home after-work.
Wife & I went into our offices for a partial week recently and had same experience - I got nothing done, spent hours on zoom anyway, am completely exhausted, and everyone just seemed to be there to socialize (hey lets get lunch! / hanging out by the coffee machine).
Ideas vs implementation thing here too. Spitballing ideas is great, but actually having the time to implement them (not chopped up into 30min blocks between meetings & interruption) is another.
I'm assuming most people already have a strong social circle that they've been able to rely on during this, but as someone who moved to a new city to work as a young professional in his late 20's and no friends in the area, it's been rough.
The breakthrough cases (quantity, severity) plus ability of vaxxed to spread, anecdotes of everyone knowing people getting sick, where we are with cases vs last summer, plus % unvaxxed in certain demographics within cities makes RTO seem quite untenable now.
Vax seems to protect against hospitalization & death from delta, but can very easily be laid up a week or two sick and have non-trivial respiratory issues.
Went into office last week 1st time, stunned to see 2019 style maskless floor with full density occupancy of desks. Attendance is being centrally coordinate & desk reservations required, so this was no coincidence or accident...
I go 18 months without eating indoors, shopping for groceries w/o mask, getting on a plane, etc and now I'm gonna sit on a crowded open office floor at 100% occupancy maskless 5 days/week? WTF.
NY offices seem to be ignoring that even if 80% of white collar staff they employ are vaccinated, the outsourced/building services staff are not. Not to mention the place you pickup lunch, coffee, and the cross section of people on public transit.
Some actual numbers from recent NYTimes/City official stats for even having 1 shot yet:
* NYPD 45%
* Black Bronx residents ~36%
* South Williamsburg ~35%
* MTA subway & bus staff ~45%
* NYC teachers (whose union demanded to be front of line but refuse a mandate) ~60%
* NYCHA ~38%
NY seems to be dragging their heals on this, some combination of BdB - Cuomo feuding, Cuomo busy with impeachment defense, return of in-person schools, and the Commercial RE/Bank/Dining industry pressures. As soon as City/State put an indoor mask mandate in place, it puts indoor dining, schools and offices into question all over again. So the tail is wagging the dog, as they say.
Considering how not especially deadly covid is, I personally don't see masks and distancing as a long-term solution, but a lot of people disagree and seem perfectly happy spending the decade getting meals delivered and working from home.
What % chance of being sick for 1-2 weeks are you OK with?
What % chance of permanent lung capacity loss are you OK with?
What % chance of death are you OK with?
Are you OK with your employer making that decision on your behalf?
You have to feel bad for Amazon Warehouse workers reading this headline though.
Putting it on employers is yet another sign of cowardice in our leadership.
Each business shouldn't have to sort this out... it's too complex of an issue.
If there's going to be a mandate, make a real mandate.
People misunderstood my point. I don't think this should be on employers. I think that's bad for a lot of reasons.
It should be on governments.
BUT... bigger picture, it's not like these vaccine cards are hard to fake. I was vaccinated in March, but I have no way of proving that. I didn't bother to save my vaccine card. It was just a generic piece of paper with the company's logo and two hastily written vaccine lot numbers though. Again... nobody checked my ID. No real way to prove you were vaccinate. It's a mess.
Should have tied stimulus grants to getting vaccinated. Should have set up a vaccine registration system. Nope... government fucked up, and is now passing the buck on to businesses.
Let's say the vaccine does give us all tails in 20 years... can I sue my employer? I sure can. The government isn't even giving businesses any protection.
Total joke. Worst possible way to do this on every front.
Because it would never hold up in court? Even in countries outside the US their mandates are bordering on illegal. If the federal government mandated vaccines, who is going to enforce it anyhow? You can't. Local law enforcement is not under federal jurisdiction. Even if the Federal government had some sort of strong law enforcement arm, it wouldn't work. A lawsuit would immediately be filed, and at best it would go straight to SCOTUS and (rightfully) shot down or it would sit at trial for months/years.
The easiest and best way is through employer mandates because 99% of people are not going to lose their job over a shot and they have total legal authority. Monetary incentives are vastly more legal and moral.
To the contrary on your point, a federal mandate on all citizens is weak/awful leadership considering it would never work and would immediately be revoked by the courts. That decision would likely also be bipartisan. The same is probably going to happen with the eviction moratorium; Biden's extension is on incredibly shaky legal grounds and is probably going to be overturned.
I feel that returning should be optional but only available for the vaccinated. That enables choice whereas no one allowed to return at all does not enable choice.
Personally I have friends outside of work, so I haven’t been in.
Sort of. Once you have a cohort back in the office, they probably should be meeting over video because having a group in a conference room and a group remote in their home offices doesn't work well. Of course people in the office mostly won't do that and communications will be worse than fully remote.
This is why I don't think hybrid will work.
I am far more upset by the idea of continuing this indefinitely. Desperately want to be back in the office.
People who want to return to work should be allowed to do so. Those who do not should be allowed to do so. May the most productive employees win.
I think that both sides of this issue should be allowed to do whatever they want to do, and we'll find out what the result is.
I am vaccinated, however, my young child is not. If I get a breakthrough case, I don't want to spread it to my kid. I know this is anecdotal, but... my wife's office just closed because of a breakthrough case, and another friend was recently exposed to someone with a breakthrough case.
Its amazing to me how people have thrown their bodily autonomy out the window when there is suddenly a new risk.
Freedom of speech doesn't cover shouting "fire" in a crowded movie theatre.
Personal liberty at the expense of the liberty of others is a sick joke, and to pretend that the vaccine conversation is anything else is hysterically naive.
People do have an autonomous choice: get your shot, or find another way to stop endangering those around you.
Alcohol kills plenty of people each year, and often it’s not the drinker. Should we ban alcohol? (I hear you, but employers can ban drinking at work!) Sure, but the equivalent would be forcing someone to not drink outside of work. After all, can you turn the vaccine off when you leave the office?
I’m fine with an employer mandating masks, they can be removed after your shift.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
Assuming the first, I guess we'll have to wait for the data. Assuming the second, I haven't ever been assumed sick until proven healthy. I've been sick many times in my life, and I voluntarily self-isolate to protect others. But suddenly this is considered selfish. I must prove health or be exiled until I conform.
Are you not worried about losing your freedom? Or was this a freedom you never valued? The specific freedom I mean was choosing what goes in your body.
Thank you for your honest response. Most people just downvote and scroll on.
Employers routinely ask blue collar workers to piss in a cup, or undergo medical examinations. I don't see why white collar workers should be treated much differently.
Those of us who are vaccinated have done our part. Now, it's up to those that aren't to do theirs.
COVID-19, unfortunately, is here to stay, and by looking at all the people that could get vaccinated and decide not to, and unfortunately all the people around the world that would like to get vaccinated but can't, I have hard time seeing a "going back to normal" anytime soon.
Also, we have to hope that the virus does not mutate in more aggressive forms that could defeat the efficacy of current vaccines.
Companies small/medium/big should make piece with their mind and accept the fact that remote working is here to stay, it is a viable option and they should stop expecting people to work from an office just for the sake of having people around.
I think the only solution is to engineer a benign variant of the virus... one that spreads easily but doesn't make people sick, and yet gives full immunity to those who are infected with it. Then gather all the anti-vaxxers by offering them free concert, pizza and beer, and secretly release the benign variant on them!
This is the only way to immunize the entire country. Once infected with the benign variant, the anti-vaxxers can be encouraged to go to concerts, crowded places, not wear masks, and so on. The benign variant will soon be the dominant variant, displacing all other variants!
Well, no. No need to hate on each other.
We need a better way -- which is to convert the virus itself into a vaccine, which will then spread automatically in a community.