Backlash over Amazon's return to office comes as workers demand higher wages
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Why does there need to be something "driving the decision"?
You may as well ask why I want my cleaner to descale the bottom of my taps. There may well be no reason beyond aesthetic preference.
Maybe it's not more profitable or less profitable. Maybe it's within margin of error, and maybe the people running Amazon for the most part prefer working in an office.
I believe this is the truth. I worked for a startup 20 years ago and the founder told us all to come in early in the morning and look as busy as possible, because key investors were touring the office. He told us that they wanted to see where their money was going and we need to play our part.
Normally we worked nights and weekends at home and in the office, but the management class actually want to see us sweat IRL.
Another part of this is the management class has a herd mentality. If they see another dominant manager with some modicum of success do something, they will mindlessly copy it.
"I want you to return to the office."
"Why?"
"Just do."
Is so unfulfilling a response that it's stupid on the part of management to not have even a noble lie explaining why it's so.
I can make up reasons - I can say, it looks better because it's more visually ordered, it's shiny and it looks nice, family and friends I invite over have this arbitrary bias too and so they'll look more kindly on me... etc.
But at the end of the day I just want the taps descaled and my cleaner does it for me.
It sounds really as if what it comes down to is that you want more ownership over your job than what is being offered. Amazon are saying, explicitly, this is our decision, agree or disagree, we're doing it.
For what it's worth. I tend to agree that most explanations of desires are post hoc rationalization or justifications. It's nice to encounter someone who's honest with themselves in that way.
I deliberately use the cleaner example because - I'm hiring a person to clean my tap. They might disagree with my reasoning for cleaning it. At the end of the day, I don't care what your opinion is on tap descaling, I want it done, so you either do it or I'll find someone who will.
The management doesn't owe you a reason for preferring in-office work. It's not an unreasonable request, it's not illegal, they're not assaulting you or degrading you or something like that.
This isn't an opinion shared by everyone, which in my opinion is a good thing. Some people prefer all-remote teams, some people prefer a mix, and some prefer to work on teams where remote work is not allowed. I think everyone should find a workplace that is suited to what they want.
At the scale of Amazon, it's hard to pass up even a single-digit increase in productivity. Furthermore, they're in a position where they have the clout and prestige to attract the workforce they need.
Remote work is still probably a good decision for smaller companies, where they might struggle to hire if they don't offer remote work. A less productive worker is still better than not hiring a worker at all.
I watched a replay of a billionaire summit/conference once. They get these ideas in those echo chambers and bring back anecdotal evidence to the company and represent it as empirical fact.
> Is there that much solid evidence that they get more value out of people in the office rather than home?
Nope
> Or are there other reasons like tax incentives that encourage in-person work over remote?
In the corporate real estate sector, there were grumblings about incentives to companies. Basically, if you stay or extend the contract then we will improve the space “for free” or reduced rate.
> Is this just a control thing or or there a compelling argument that I am missing?
Some say it has to do with future layoffs. There are hints that AMZN is going to layoff people anyways but instead of having to pay out severance. They put these shitty policies in place to nudge people towards leaving on their own accord and thus paying out severance package.
Have seen this at a previous company. Unfortunately the people that do leave tend to be the people that you really want to stay. Almost the “anchor beings” of the team so to speak. Those people tend to find new jobs relatively quickly and the people you are left to work with simply just cannot replace those that left.
Velocity decreases. Management rushes to hire and push through the ranks with not so qualified individuals. Velocity further decreases because of the increased training and onboarding of a very inexperienced persons. People get annoyed all over. Veterans begin to slowly drop every month. New people begin to leave as well (within a year). Management then hires the worst off shore contractors. Velocity decreases further. Regression bugs, new bugs increases. Stability of application or platform is questionable.
Honestly these B-grade MBA losers are just clueless. This is all just a game to them every quarter so they can get their precious golden parachute or minimally meet the boards bonus requirements. These same losers then get rotated through various companies.
See CrowdStrike CEO, and Google CEO
CRE firm lobbies local politicians that remote work is killing Main Street.
Local politicians attach tax breaks/incentives for companies with office workers.
Companies mandate RTO to save some tax money while unwittingly being a toadie for commercial real estate.
The key difference being that the people mandating RTO aren't biased because of their own investments in CRE.
Has that actually happened?
And will this affect productivity and morale? Yes. But the C-Suite don't care as long as they make their $10 mil vest next quarter. This is a problem lower level managers should handle automagically.
To answer your question though: the number of people who are motivated and disciplined enough to be productive remotely is in the minority. Most managers don't know how to manage remote teams (they need to micromanage or they can't fall asleep at night). Most people do the bare minimum at the office and do even less from home.
This is fine when the times are good, but when times are difficult, then everyone feels the squeeze.
At both the union and non-union stores there was a perception that union dues were used by union officials more for their own enrichment than for the benefit of members. Having worked at the non-unionized store first, the better wages and benefits easily outweighed the cost of union dues, but some of that could also have been due to the location in a more affluent area.
Amazon ordered a return to the office – but research says they'll backtrack
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41580488
Amazon employees: 'I'd rather go back to school than work in an office again'
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41570981
Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
1. Software developers have been paid very good money, and have seen little else to complain about.
2. Software developers have been paid excessive flattery, and think they merit and achieve more individually than a union could get them.
3. Software developers have been hopping jobs so fast, never anywhere long enough to think they need a union.
The economic calculus is pointing against unions: effectively every trade union creates tenure-based pay structures, which don't reward high performers and punish people who change jobs. This makes it hard to retain high performers as they can get better offers from non-unionized companies, and selects for the low performers that stand to benefit under a tenure-based pay structure.
Furthermore, unions routinely block advancements that improve efficiency, because it would reduce the amount of workers required. This is beneficial for the union, which has its membership artificially inflated. But it's bad for society as a whole. Unionized workplaces are routinely the least efficient companies on account of this. For instance, longshoremen's unions in the US have widely blocked automation at ports. The result? American ports are some of the least efficient in the world, despite costing on par with other developed countries. We all bear the cost of this inefficiency in terms of more expensive supply chains, which in turn makes products throughout the country more expensive than they should be.
I'm not sure how that turned into "economics aren't a factor." Maybe you can explain how that happened?
> It's a thought, but ceteris paribus, software engineers seem to have a particular scorn for unions beyond the calculus of economics. In other words, there is a personality/sub-cultural disdain for unions.
> It's a thought, but ceteris paribus, software engineers seem to have a particular scorn for unions beyond the calculus of economics. In other words, there is a personality/sub-cultural disdain for unions.
When one writes "software engineers _______", without any sort of qualifier, the typical interpretation is that the statement applies to the majority of the group.
It's a very different thing to write "software engineers seem to have a particular scorn for unions beyond the calculus of economics" and "a handful of software developers seem to have a particular scorn for unions beyond the calculus of economics".
I'm not sure what you're arguing about anymore. It changes with every response. You seem to be bent on arguing with me and I'm not sure why.
The way you're portraying yourself reads as if you have an emotional reaction to unions that goes beyond merely the economic yourself. If you don't think that's the case, then you might want to consider changing the way you write. It's working against the argument you're trying to make.
* Unions tend to push for seniority based pay schedules that fail to reward based on performance.
* Unions maintain membership be deliberately opposing efficiency gains that would allow for more work to be done with fewer personnel (because fewer personnel means fewer union members).
These trends are economically bad. Both for software developers themselves and for society as a whole. The majority of software developers who reject unions do so, entirely on these sorts of economic grounds. That's my position, and I don't see where it's changed throughout this conversion.
On the other hand, I'm still not sure about the scope of your statement "software engineers seem to have a particular scorn for unions beyond the calculus of economics". An unqualified statement "X group believes Y" would normally indicate that this applies to the group, broadly. But in a later comment you wrote "all it takes is one counter-example" to prove this true - suggesting that you intended this to apply very narrowly, potentially to just one person.
My claim is that the majority of developers are anti-union for entirely economic reasons. Maybe you do or don't agree, since the scope of how many developers you are stating harbor anti-union for non-economic reasons remains ambiguous.
Something like the National Press Photographer's Association [1] is a valuable organization. They provide resources like contract templates, and can help if a customer doesn't pay the agreed royalties and whatnot. But membership isn't mandatory. A software developer's association and a software developer's unions would be to vastly different groups.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Press_Photographers_A...
I...love this idea. And end-users could pay them dues, excuse me, fees for the service.
A tech worker union could fight for non-salary things, things that tech workers care about. There's no law saying it can't.
This isn't a "bad stereotype", this is purposely pushed propaganda, and it sits on the shelf next to the training video you watch about how horrible unions get in the way of you negotiating with the company all by your lonesome, and the poster that says "Don't give a union $300, buy an Xbox instead"
The reason that tech workers hate unions is that it's a highly middle class male employee field, and they were targeted hardest by anti-union propaganda for a century.
Take the NYTimes tech worker union, for example (previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41504026). It really only has 2 objectives on its platform: indefinite remote work, and "pay equity". Notably, their objective is for pay equity regardless of different representation across different jobs. So not even "equal pay for equal work" but rather "equal pay for different work".
You are correct that unions are also incentivized to increase membership, that's why unions often oppose more efficient work practices. More efficiency reduces the number of personnel needed to perform the job. An example of this is the longshoremen's unions in the US. They have consistently rejected the automation that most other developed countries have long-since adoped [1]. The result? American ports are some of the least efficient in the world, despite also being quite expensive [2].
1. https://apnews.com/article/longshoremen-strike-pay-automatio...
2. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstrea...
But if employees at Amazon wanted to unionize, I think the company could make several good guesses why, all of them true.
You're not always going to be in charge.
As for the return to office aspect: if employees - especially those with families that live in homes that are only affordable or available further away - have to lose 1-2 hours commuting each way, then yes they do deserve additional compensation to make up for the RTO policy. I’m sure Andy Jassy won’t recognize that or offer it up though. He and Jeff Bezos share a view that work life balance is “debilitating” (https://www.savvydime.com/jeff-bezos-believes-work-life-bala...) and Bezos has used code phrases before that suggest he favors young workers - which may be why this policy will hurt older workers and those with children the most.
The truth is, they’re masters of taking credit when it benefits their public image. When a company backtracks on an unpopular decision, it’s often due to public outrage or fear of bad PR, but the unions will still swoop in and claim victory. They act like they’ve led the charge, when in reality, they were sitting on the sidelines, waiting for someone else to force management’s hand. It’s a performance, and a poor one at that, designed to justify their existence. And let’s not even start on how little they’re actually doing to protect workers in an increasingly precarious job market. They’re loud when they want to be heard but silent when it truly counts. The whole thing is a farce, and it's time we stopped pretending unions are still the powerful advocates they once were. They're not. They're out of touch, ineffective, and quite frankly, taking advantage of the very people they’re supposed to be defending.
The problem is how you are accounted for doing work. By tasks or by time spent in office... I saw people in office doing nothing, just talks on kitchen or answering emails.. When asked about tasks.. Im working hard sir.. heh.
Its a bit complicated matter, because when you are more efficient, boss usually will attach new tasks so you have to work harder or be even more efficient. And those who are less efficient dont get new tasks.. Not smart..
"Why aren't you efficient at the office? We've optimized it for efficiency" or "Okay well we'll budget in making you more efficient in office so that you're even more productive here".
Another could be the argument that you need to be highly available during core hours, you shouldn't potentially not be available during the core 8 hour work day of your location, and the best way to force that is you being visible in office by management.
The root of the issue is we value our time, and commuting is basically a loss of time and is not compensated. If we don't make enough money when commuting to make up for how much we value that time, we're losing. Most of us are comparing our salaries to what we used to make before this was the norm, and its not that different from before. So when going back to the "norm" we are losing part of what we consider our compensation packate -> more free time.
I spend some time pottering about and doing chores during the workday when I wfh. But I also spend lots of time goofing off while at the office. The difference is that while at the office, I have to be constantly vigilant about how I'm perceived by others, so time spend goofing off isn't nearly as rejuvenating and reinvigorating as it would have been at home.
Isn't it pretty normal to only have a few hours of real-work capability per day?
They'd rather pay you to do NOTHING.
You are also not using the office, not commute and pollute.
Companies also put workers through the stress of working in inadequate workplaces - open plane offices to cram as many workers per square feet, like caged hens.
System will not balance itself, as people are just few missing pay checks from being homeless, so nobody is going to risk going against their master, sorry employer.
It will also not come from the government as these are as corrupt as they get.
The system will simply collapse at some point. Most likely the rich will be "hanged" and the cycle will start over.
It's not remotely true. Child care is a full time job. You might be able to move laundry around while tests run but that's about it.
If people are neglecting their jobs enough to take care of kids then they're giving ammo to the management class to argue that they can't trust us.
I can get up early and work an hour, then get the kids ready for school, then work five hours, then take them to my sister's place after school, then work two hours, then have dinner and read them stories before bed, then work another hour.
Can't do that from an office with an hour commute each way.
Ideally we should should hold employees to the work they produce but I still cringe a little when someone calls into a meeting because they had to run an errand. I want management to believe wfh isn't being abused. It's exclusively about the optics. The lack of interruptions is a net positive.
If we miss a deadline, it makes it easy for management to start blaming people not being at their desk. We shouldn't be giving them ammo
You can't use the argument of "being able to do things other than work" as an argument because its easily trumped. The best arguments are those having to do with lost time and increased stress due to commuting. Being able to more quickly transition to housework and looking after kids, or just being closer to them in general during your breaks/lunches, etc. You are losing time which is in itself compensation by being forced go to an office for a job that shouldn't necessitate it.
Another is health benefits: more easy access to preparing food at home. Less stress as mentioned. Easier to go to a gym or workout at home. etc.
Someone somewhere got in their excel that loss of productivity from RTO is lower than potential loss of the property investments.
https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/reits-to-capital...
Whilst these are not direct examples, they show the commercial estate market is in deep trouble if people are not going to return.
Not sure where this idea came from
If company cannot fill the office, it will be looking at downsizing and breaking the lease. If there are many companies like this, then landlord may not find a new tenant at existing rate and they'll either have to lower the rate or sit with empty property. If they have mortgage on it, it is a tough cookie to swallow.
It's similar story for companies who own the buildings. It becomes an asset that is losing value.
With less middle managers, the executives are probably thinking they'll need individual contributors physically present in order to monitor them effectively.
I still can't imagine why anyone agrees to work at a place that treats it's employees like children.