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Comment by dbish | Hacker News Reader

As an ex-amazonian myself I agree with the first part about data driven and writing culture and that much of the way this is presented is very non-amazonian, but I'm not getting how rto is a "cookie cutter" example of day 2 behavior. Given that many startups are pushing for in person recently (at least publically, I'm not weighing in either way), how is going in person clearly something that means amazon is past the day 1/early culture?

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How leadership has handled rto is more what makes it the peak example. The bureaucracy, the company's stagnation, the crippling slow response to a modern market and digging their head into the sand. Rto is the peak example because it has exposed how when it matters the executives (L10+) abandon LPs, refuse factual discussion, and are choosing paths that aren't good for customers or employees. It's exposed all of their current efforts for employee connection is a farce and pointless. It contradicts Amazon's core company culture that employees are "leaders" and shows how delusional these people are as they have started calling employees who don't want to rto "selfish."

Eh, the bureaucracy was creeping in many years ago, RTO has nothing to do with that imho. Amazon has never really cared what's good for employees, and that's both a strength and a weakness, since it allows them to decide what's best for the company with no pretense of some human good like the infamous "don't be evil" motto of another giant, though I did hear that shorly after Andy took over there was an LP added that might make what I just said wrong. I think fully or mostly remote companies are doing to be slower then their competitors anyway, and you're seeing this sentiment shift across the startup ecosystem (and if amazon is going to dust themselves off, looking to more dynamic/earlier stage company cultures is probably the right way), for example: https://twitter.com/zebulgar/status/1660722639420137496?s=20

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