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>Their in-office perks were pretty much legendary

Google and Facebook's in office perks were legendary. Amazon's in office perk was free bananas. This is a meme on Blind.

>So it shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody that they are pushing for full attendance back in the office.

Yeah except for the part where the CEO has publicly flip flopped on this issue several times in the past few years:

Late 2021 - "We're going to let individual teams decide": https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/workplace/amazon-offering-t...

September 2022 (less than a year ago) - "I don't really believe that we're going to end up coming back to the office" https://www.cnet.com/tech/amazon-has-no-plan-requiring-worke...

I don't think wanting your employees and teams back in office is necessarily unreasonable, but the public back and forth on this is bad. People might have made long term decisions with huge financial consequences based on your statements. It's definitely not in line with one of the company's core leadership principle of "Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer."

"Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer"

In my 30 years of vacuous corporate principles that were clearly not followed or cared about by management or the employees, that has to be a new high bar.

Which is hilarious given that Amazon tries to "raise the bar" in every hire, although in practice of course that means they keep making the interview process more abusive and degrading in the usual one-upmanship cycle that is hazing.

Wow, you're right, it was instituted in July 2021. In that time three of my friends have fled Amazon and told me nothing but nightmares about it.

I applaud Amazon for fervently raising the bar on at least one aspect of their business: completely morally bankrupt "corporate principles". I anticipate continued success in this arena in the future.

Did Amazon ever fix their restroom issue? Yeah, I wouldn't want to RTO if it's a literal s-show.

https://www.geekwire.com/2015/amazon-employees-biggest-compl...

I'm surprised they didn't simply charge to use the bathroom

with a lower price if you purchase a reserved instance

There's a free tier where you can use the bathroom stalls for nothing, but you will get kicked out if a paying user comes along.

> Historically, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc were very office-centric.

What's ironic about this, is that when I worked at Google in Mountain View about ten years ago, easily 80-90% of my meetings were via video conference. Even folks who worked on the same campus preferred to book a conference room and dial in, rather than walk or bike over to another building. Not to mention my colleagues in Zurich, Dublin, etc. (SRE teams at Google are split across timezones, to make on-call less painful.)

The office has become a real hot potato. The crux of it is that demand is down and staying there, and cities, companies and individuals are all winners or losers, but the losers can try to lose less by passing the cost on to someone else.

And big tech has the cash to absorb the blow of forcing everyone back to the office, but it marks them permanently as a dinosaur firm, a place where there used to be A-rank people but they all left for somewhere more flexible.

In the previous era it was hard to avoid pursuing a high capitalization play - either building or merging into a more consolidated firm - because the low interest rates meant that if you didn't do it, someone else would borrow up to do it and weaponize that against the little guys. And real estate was part of that, it was an added-value benefit to build out a bespoke campus with a huge parking lot and to bus in your employees. This is more of a "tide's going out, see who is swimming naked" environment where marginal cost structure dominates and you can opt to have only a small office in a downtown core and get the fire-sale prices and the benefits of public infrastructure, or just go all remote.

Facebook/Google had ALLEGEDLY good office space. For google I think it was just good food.

Otherwise, let's look at the nitty gritty:

OPEN FLOOR PLAN: absolutely sucks. It's amazing that people are nostalgic for cube farms over floor plans, cube farms were a massive downgrade from actual offices. Basically, take mass distraction from people around you coupled with a paranoia that you can't do anything non-work related (and remember, the vast amount of office jobs are busywork per recent HN stories) without fear of it being seen and judged.

CATTLE-LIKE BATHROOMS: People never talk about this. You know what I REALLY like about WFH? Taking a shit on my own toilet. Taking a shit next to someone else sucks. If you are a remorseless public bathroom shitter, I take my hat off to you, but I think it sucks. I'll do it if I have to, but still. But I don't like cleaning up the toilet seat from some other asshole who left it in terrible shape, or figuring out if the neighboring shitter had curry for dinner last night.

FOOD: The food you have at home will probably beat any Google food options practically speaking. Might not be good for the waistline. For your typical corporate cafeteria, I'll take my fridge. Oh yes, I have my own massive personal fridge at home. I mean, I have a fucking kitchen, with all the spices/cooking pans/etc. No one stealing your food and all that sociopathy. Ok, maybe Google has a leg up on this, or at least they did at one point.

PARKING: The commute thing is obvious. But if you live in a northern climate with a serious winter, parking is the worst part of going to the office. These companies make GIGANTIC office buildings, but don't build underground or heated parking. Instead, concrete slabs and have people trudge through zero degree weather, and get in their cars both ways. It makes commuting 3x worse. If I WFH, guess what? Don't even deal with that. I have a garage.

I mean, an office isn't torture, obviously. But if businesses can't figure out how to at least make them a bit more appealing after what amounts to decades of steady degradation in the experience (I watched my mom at Bell Labs go from her own office, to an office with several people, to a cube farm, and I went from various flavors of cube farm (your own cube with high walls to cube shared with 2-4 people with high walls, to the low wall cube, to "open floor plan") then those investments will turn into writeoffs.

And of course other things died along the way: corporate fitness centers, lockers, office supplies, ability to print, etc.

Honestly the commute trumps all of this for me. Sure open office is a pain but whatever I’ll make it work. Can pack a lunch if necessary, and shit at home.

Two hours one way? I’m not sure I can do it. Could I at least be located in the office closest to my house? No, that won’t be possible, how could you possibly communicate with your team. Just a giant middle finger.

When did Amazon have office perks? Afaik the intention was always to have the worst possible office experience in the name of frugality, thus the door desk

Check this out: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/amazon-offices/amazon-emplo...

I wouldn't call it the worst possible office experience.

Not a single picture of an actual working area.

Door desk?

Corporate mythmaking extols the cheap desks Bezos et al would construct out of sawhorses and reclaimed doors. IIRC -- or at least, as I was told -- they actually tried to mass-produce "door desks" when they first moved into their new offices, but the price was, somewhat ironically, exorbitantly more than buying something from Hermann Miller. (See also the windows that opened to reduce A/C costs, which also increased facilities costs.)

> Corporate mythmaking extols the cheap desks Bezos et al would construct out of sawhorses and reclaimed doors

I did a 'virtual internship' at Amazon during COVID, and the mythmaking is just as strong of a koolaid at any Muskcorp... these billionaires are the height of hypocrisy (Elon Jet, and Bezo's Yacht contradict thier talking points) but make it a priority that thier underlings must accept as gospel and makie it a talking point in the ethos of what makes these companies what they are.

The traditional Amazon desks are typically a piece of wood cheaply fastened to four legs. Think less ornate wood desk and more something a beginner might do as a one day diy project to get into woodworking.

A table is a table though, as long as it’s at the right height. How are the chairs, that’s what really matters.

> Historically, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc were very office-centric. Their in-office perks were pretty much legendary and they always tried to instill the company culture built around being together in an office space.

The in office perks of Amazon are legendary? Free bananas and lukewarm coffee is more insulting than nothing. It's like tipping a waitress two dimes.

It is especially horrible for new Amazon employee because of their tiered stock vests. You might have left your great job because Amazon offered you half million signing bonus but you won't last long enough to get even 30% of that.

You certainly still could collect that half million by going into the office.

That's not how Amazon's comp works. The sign-on bonus is prorated over the first two years to fill in the "gap" before hitting the normal RSU vesting cadence. Someone hired one year ago leaving today would "only" vest 5% of their RSUs, but they would have received ~35% of their initial RSU value in cash over the last 12 months. Someone hitting their second anniversary would "only" vest another 15% of their RSUs, but they would have received another ~25% of their initial RSU value in cash over the last 12 months.

I don’t know if my experience was far outside the norm but I don’t really think of legendary office perks from Amazon. We had free drip coffee (not espresso) from Starbucks and that was it.

> believing that they will be able to work remotely forever.

A lot of people turned the pandemic into what they wanted it to be. Some people wanted movie theaters to die, some people wanted to wear masks forever, some people wanted to believe in a conspiracy that they'd be forced to wear masks forever, and some people wanted to never have to work in an office again.

But the pandemic was always going to be a temporary situation, and should have been treated as such, no matter how much people wanted it to become their pet transformation of society.

I don’t know. I decided it meant WFH forever. I am WFH forever.

> no matter how much people wanted it to become their pet transformation of society.

they are allowed to use this pandemic as a trigger for transformation. Some of the transformation, such as WFH being an accepted trait, is a good one.

Just like how the black plague transformed society in the past, the pandemic is doing so too - just with more deliberate focus.