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Comment by snapcaster | Hacker News Reader

I have yet to see metrics cited by any of these announcements. Do people think that's because:

a). They don't have metrics, and all the cynics are right about this being vibes based

b). They actually do have the data, and it's very grim for how poorly people on average perform when WFH but don't want to share it due to sensitivity or something

Like, i'm actually pro Work From Office (don't yell at me, i joined a company with this culture in place already on purpose) so i tend to believe that it's more productive for myself and the population on average but if that's true why has nobody proved it? why aren't any of these companies able to show data?

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You forgot

c). They don't feel strongly about WFH vs remote, but getting a bunch of employees to quit is a great way to reduce headcount and then fill any necessary positions from the pool of endless candidates likely to work for less. Normally this is a poor move because they would lose employees who are already onboarded, and hiring is typically more expensive, but Amazon has always been more than happy to let go of experienced employees as part of their sacrifices to the pip gods. Normally this would also be a bad idea because the employees you lose would be the employees who are in highest demand, so likely their best employees. But with 50 candidates waiting in the wings for every rockstar they lose, they figure they'll likely be able to pull more diamonds out of the rough, and even with hiring and onboarding, their long-term expenditure will be less than if they hadn't triggered an exodus.

Forced attrition is definitely a goal with this. Markets cared little about previous cuts so doing it silently.

d) tax incentives?

Considering how much negative publicity companies see every time one of they require RTO, and yet not one has published metrics? They absolutely don't have any.

Yeah, i guess that just leads to the question of "why not?"

Pretty obvious when all of these CEO reports lean on nebulous “culture” benefits.

It's almost certainly not b. There has been enough published research showing WFH to be somewhere between a significant productivity boost to a modest decrease that such data would be a significant outlier.

More likely the policy is being pushed for some combination of:

- Increased attrition

- Intangibles that management believes in

- Expected modest productivity gains they think are worth the downsides

- Reducing worker leverage

Amazon already openly stated that there is no data to support RTO:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-andy-jassy-no-data-re...

https://fortune.com/2023/08/03/amazon-svp-mike-hopkins-offic...

My company did a survey on this. Comparing 2021 to 2023, WFH had 15-20% more supporters than WFO, as per last year's results. They simply ignored this statistic and mandated a return to office anyways.

98% of the people responded negatively to the change in our remote work flexibility when we heard about it. Higher management continues to ignore that 98% of its productive workforce is not happy and the good engineers WILL leave the company.

c) They don't have metrics and will never have, because the only thing they have is "of course the real intent is to quietly forcing people to quit. what else do you think is happening here?"

What are you basing this on? Just the perception from the outside? that's my view too and while what you said makes a certain sort of sense but is also so overly complicated compared to just doing layoffs (which they have done, so not like they always avoid them)

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/company-heads-ho...

Among many other articles.

A simple search would have given you the answer.

I loathe going to the office I'm a critic, it's (A) vibes

Do you think they have metrics showing the opposite? or just nobody even wants to look into it since leadership wants it badly?

No one has metrics on anything. High performers perform well at home and in the office, but if they prefer home they'll jump ship as soon as there's an opportunity. Low performers perform badly at home and in the office, but will cling in to their position as long as possible.

If they had metrics they would not hesitate to show them, parading those in front of employees like a victory banner.

Amazon does stack ranking, they are not really concerned with sensitivity anything.

They have no metrics. Metrics are for the underclass. The Leadership decides based on what they want.

Nobody looks into it because leadership wants to assert dominance. If some top floor, corner office, personal assistant type of person wants to see people suffering, they get to see people suffering. Cubicles, hot desking, howling ventilation and all. Commutes don't matter - the CXO might even have a driver.

In software engineering we still haven't developed a good metric for output of our work, so it's hard to see how they could even have decent data. It's an open question how we can measure productivity when each task is substantially different from previous tasks.

Do you honestly believe that if all the studies and research showed performance goes down when WFH that executives wouldn't be screaming it from the rooftops and shoving it down our throats to get us to come back in? Most people don't want to commute.

Right, so presumably the data indicates the opposite? Or they knew better to not look for it? Confused by the whole thing

So why do something irrational that is not in the company’s best interest? Must be they want to reduce headcount, but even then, this is a poor way because the people with options will leave.

> but if that's true why has nobody proved it?

It'd be extremely difficult to study properly; there _have_ been studies, giving answers in both directions, but they're very easy to poke holes in due to confounding factors.

Or maybe c) They actually do have the data, and it's inconclusive or d) They actually do have the data, and it shows a positive impact on productivity and they don't care, or d) They don't care about data at all here?

They're not sharing the data because the data says people are on average more productive from home.

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