They have the data because they ask (corporate) employees about their working experience constantly. I’m sure employees love the option to WFH. But they don’t like the data (typical) because they spent billions building cheap, crowded, loud office space around the world.
So what do they do? They pull out the mantra, “Disagree and Commit”, which is Amazon manager speak for “shut up and do what I say.” Ironically, Disagree and Commit is actually “Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit” and is about finding alternative solutions or data when you think the company is doing the wrong things rather than keeping quiet.
Amazon, like most American corporations is an oligarchy and it’s run terribly at the top with dire consequences for their employees, customers, and the world.
Just reading these words hurts. I’ll never forget visiting Fitbit’s offices. They had these extra narrow desks - imagine a regular office desk but without the extra width for that rolly-drawer. They were strung out in long rows, smack up against each other side to side. And the rows were also arranged back to back. When everyone was sitting down, the legs of their chairs would interfere, and they had nowhere to put their backpacks except down in that mess of chair legs. The place was a constant high volume din, and if it wasn’t you’d be listening to the people in either side of you breathing. Need to get up and leave? Prepare to tiptoe through that entire mess for 10-20 desks until you reach an aisle.
Are there stats on how many more sick days people in the office take? I don't really catch anything except from the kids, and I'm almost never sick enough to not at least send a couple emails.
I was just there to give a presentation and walked through the place once. It gave me such heebie jeebies even from just that… I can’t imagine what it must have been like for people working there.
this reminded me of a quote from a tv show i'm watching. "Hell is just the product of a morbid human imagination, The bad news is whatever humans can imagine they can usually create"
Yep. There have been so many people having backbone since this was announced in January. The remote-advocacy slack channel is the third largest opt in channel (pay-equity is the largest opt in, with people posting their salaries anonymously). There have been many protests and many people pushing back.
It’s all about the money to these corporate execs. Tax cuts, real estate value, parking lot payments, etc.
I will say that working in the office with others on your team has benefits. However, I’m not working with my team directly for 3 days a week. We could do a couple design days a few days a month or even a full week a few times a quarter and that would cover the bases. Half my team is on the other side of the US anyways.
Just a reminder that if you commute by car it's probably the most dangerous thing you do every day. This guy is literally saying "I have no data but I want you to risk your lives and waste your money twice a day."
Hey, I worked for this moron and left because of these moronic statements.
Absolutely mind boggling that this company is “run on data” yet there’s no data besides anecdotes to support this backwards idea.
To make it even funnier, here’s an Amazon Director apologizing on LinkedIn because they thought forcing people to come into an office was the right thing to do.
In business, all data are vanity metrics. If they make you look good, you slap that shit on everything; if they make you look bad, you "don't have it".
It's just that sometimes you can use negative data to make decisions that look good to those above you, and sometimes you know that you can't.
Hell, businesses might even keep asking you to keep changing criteria and numbers until they hear what they want to hear. I literally am dealing with this right now for a local retailer; they keep insisting that I keep changing criteria and numbers relating to how many sales they closed until they hear an answer they like. When I gave them the raw numbers, the owner and manager were straight-up in denial about it and said I was wrong and that the data is off because they felt it should have been a different number than presented.
Fucking frustrating and stupid, but that’s how upper management and corporate people can be apparently.
Working from home also had, from my observation, a massive and materially beneficial impact on females specifically working mothers, who bare a disproportionate share of domestic work.
Eh, “bitches” is better now. If only because is can be used to describe friends. I can not see a group of people out on the town calling themselves party “females”.
Compromise is the moment a group has given up on finding the best solution
What a toxic and zero-sum viewpoint. What a stark admission that someone is unable to be willing to consider the possibility that someone else might be right, or at least partially right. If this philosophy was prevalent at Microsoft in 2010+, it would explain a number of Microsoft corporate decisions. Putting a smartphone touchscreen UI on a computer server product (Windows 2012) being just one obvious example.
Strongly agree. If anything, compromise is necessary for finding the best solution for everyone, especially as we’re all different.
That manager thinking that compromise is “giving up” needs to get out of the selfish delusion and come back to reality. Feel sorry for the subordinates!
Doesn’t it also contradict his own decision? Below that quote he also says:
compromises that preserved cohesion were tantamount to “deciding to lose”
Forcing RTO is maintaining the status quo, which itself is a compromise you make to not do anything about the changes that happen as time goes on. He is literally making a compromise to preserve cohesion. But I guess in his mind him making compromises with himself don’t count, the only compromise that matters is the one he has to make with others.
Yep all those countless hours of travel, gallons of gas, car repairs, transit fares, etc we’ve been covering out of pocket our whole working lives has been a free subsidy to commercial real estate companies.
I'm returning to the job market, and I'm honestly thinking of getting a shitty job within cycling distance, rather than be forced into commuting again.
I honestly don't know how much more they'd have to offer me, just to force me back in my car. It certainly won't be nothing or vague promises.
I have very real examples of this being the case where I am. There’s a lot of real estate that if it falls in value it materially impacts the exec leadership. No wonder they are so keen to save Pret.
People who have investments in:
• corporate real estate and companies like Blackrock, Concord Pacific and Amazon who easily own tens of billions of dollars of corporate real estate.
• downtown coffee shops that exist to ripoff serve otherwise stranded office workers.
• car and oil companies because all that rush hour traffic makes them money.
• road construction companies since rush hour traffic jams means easy bribing governments into paying billions for complex and frequently experimental road enhancements.
Here's a fun article from pre-covid about Amazon buying Vancouver's old post office building. They gutted the historic building and left only the outer shell.
Adding an estimated 4.2 million square feet of office space in one of the most expensive cities and pro-WFH cities in the world.
And were only expecting to use 1.1 million of that.
None are doing well. It’s the next big bubble to pop and it’s going to hurt real bad. Bidens plan to convert office space to residential sounds like a savior for commercial real estate but it will take years and not everyone can be at the front of the line.
Bidens plan to convert office space to residential sounds like a savior for commercial real estate
For the owners…
He’s giving them millions (I think actually billions) for them to make those office spaces trendy expensive condos most people won’t be able to afford.
Rather than telling the disgustingly wealthy people that own those offices to pay for it themselves while prioritizing affordable housing for people who need it.
My employer decided to close one of our biggest offices right when the pandemic hit, having everybody work from home. This office housed probably 75% of our engineering staff (software developers, QA, IT, etc). Our CEO made it clear that the plan was to be able to hire the best people from the tech sector that we could find, no matter where in the world they were located, and not have them feel left out by being the only remote employees.
The team that I’m on was all local prior to that decision. It now spans every US timezone and two other countries, and we are very good at what we do. I do miss seeing coworkers in person from time to time, but my employer provides us with all the tools we need to remain productive, including being very flexible about work hours, time off, etc. The company also encourages occasional social get-togethers for employees in the same geographic areas.
I personally haven’t set foot in an office since 2019. The company does now encourage people who are within an hour drive of an office to come in a couple times a month. The closest office to me is 2+ hours away.
I really wish executives like this dolt would actually do some real research on this subject and not just rely on gut feelings. Yeah, I know this wouldn’t work for every company, but ours can’t be the only one that’s quietly succeeding at it.
I read a lot of comments of angry, rightfully angry, people toward Amazon and its exploitative work policy. I do not buy from Amazon since 2012; I’ve thrown away my Kindle and told myself F**k that predator. (You cannot hire workforce that has to live with food stamps because your wage isn’t enough, I mean, how corrupt one must be to do something like that?)
I wonder how many of you are actually boycotting Amazon? Out of curiosity. I’m Italian and I am petrified that here is imported the Amazon model. And I’ll fight with all the energy to stop this Hun who, btw, does not pay taxes. It’s immoral and it’s unexplainable how his business can be legal.
Had my Amazon account with thousands on it stolen by someone. They wouldn’t help and actually recommended I get a new one and re-purchase prime and all my stuff. So no. I don’t think I’ll be going back.
I’m doing the same, but must admit it feels fruitless sometimes. 99% of people will just lap up whatever shit is fed to them and ask for seconds.
Amazon has a serious customer trust issue. Their reviews are fake, their prices aren’t competitive, their shipping promise is routinely broken, and you will likely receive a counterfeit product.
Do not order tech products from Amazon. Co-inventory means you will get whatever item the picker picks, not the store you order from.
Because WFH has shown that large parts of middle management are useless, and those MM people are pushing upper management for RTO before it becomes evident. It’s what MM has always done, suck up to UM and kick down on the workers, without real benefit to the company.
When I worked at Amazon we had data for every little decision we made. Do you want to change the color of a button? Run an A/B test and see if it improves some metric.
Want to stop supporting a 5-year-old device? Go determine the total number of impacted people and figure out some way to compensate them.
Want to get promoted? Get 5 people you worked with to answer specific questions about your work over the last year.
Want to make an entire workforce return to an office after they kept your company afloat during a pandemic? Want to increase commute time? Want to increase cars on the road? Want to make new parents spend less time with their kids? No need for any data, some guy says he knows better.
These days all the data used to inform decisions internally feel like they’re completely made up to support whatever bias the manager already has. This used to be an org dependent problem but it’s everywhere now, AWS, retail, digital.
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