Companies are now in a cycle where they want to lay off ~5% of their employees every year. Why? To suppress wages. And to get people to do more work for the same money. People in fear of losing their jobs aren't going to demand raises or say no to extra work.
RTO mandates are cheaper and easier than severance.
This has been the case in Corporate America for decades at this point. The rude shock for many on HN is that the veneer of Big Tech being rogue disruptors is gone. Working for Big Tech is getting increasingly indistinguishable from working for Boeing, Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman.
And it's only going to get worse.
Bezos said in an all hands one time amazon would go out of business in 50-60 years and that is happens to every company eventually. I think you get too big and too bureaucratic where everyone is just looking out for themselves because you are more worried about getting laid off or fired than you are building great products.
Just like the government: you are more worried about your re-election campaign than serving your constituents. Where those two align, great, but the priority is remaining in office.
That’s a weird thing for him to say because a) it’s patently false and b) he might still be alive at that point and would need to liquidate his AMZ holdings before everyone else who believes his prediction does.