[DaveFr]

Per the NYPost article on this,

> During the meeting, which is known in internal Amazon lingo as a “fishbowl” meeting, Jassy declined to share data that motivated his decision to require employees to return to the office. The CEO told his charges it was a “judgment” call.

Could some brave soul please leak whatever data these guys are seeing? Reports, statistics, even just emails where they whine about empty offices? Something tangible that gives us mere mortals actual perspective.

The conversation is dominated by conspiracy theories about real estate investments and 'CEO vibes', it feels untethered and fact-free.

[dfxm12]

The data probably suggests they should lay off a bunch of people & that this might be best way for them to do so, in terms of not legally needing to offer severance, legal issues, PR, stock prices, etc.

[mdgrech23]

100% this. Employers know they can turn up the heat so to speak by making the workplace less enjoyable and more people will leave b/c of that. That saves them from having to lay off people. I think it's important to note layoffs tend to push stock prices down and that's what these folks specifically care about b/c that's what's good for their pocket book.

[RestlessMind]

> it's important to note layoffs tend to push stock prices down

citation needed. Not my experience at all. Anecdotal example: META.

[tacker2000]

Yea sometimes the share prices even go up bc the market sees “efficiency”

[Detrytus]

Not "sometimes", most of the time.

[manuelabeledo]

I have read this reasoning from time to time, but how does it make sense?

Wouldn't most of the high performers who don't want to go back to the office, just quit and get a better job, while low performing individuals would stick as long as possible since they could keep slacking as long as they go to the office three days a week?

[dfxm12]

The premise here is that they're holding off a layoff, or at least minimizing the layoff. A benefit of not doing a proper layoff: when you tell people you're just enforcing a new policy, you can make exceptions.

So, if this doesn't reduce the workforce enough, a proper layoff will soon follow. We saw Google enforce "return to the office" in April 2022 followed up by layoffs in January 2023. Microsoft had similar timings WRT to return to the office and layoffs as well.

And again, the premise here is about layoffs, letting a large number of people go. Amazon can fire individual slackers if they want to without playing these games.

[RestlessMind]

For truly high performers who are indispensable and a flight risk, the company will always make exceptions. But those are truly rare (<5%) and even among those, some want RTO, some want WFH and some want a hybrid.

[kaibee]

> Wouldn't most of the high performers who don't want to go back to the office, just quit and get a better job, while low performing individuals would stick as long as possible since they could keep slacking as long as they go to the office three days a week?

Maybe, but that sounds like a problem that isn't guaranteed to happen and isn't one that you'd be personally held responsible for, since everyone else was doing the same thing... how could you have known? No one ever got fired for buying IBM and all that.

[Terr_]

"We already successfully exclude low-performers due to Stack Ranki--er, Unregretted Attrition--so this policy will only be impacting the insufficiently dedicated." /s

[smileysteve]

A layoff can easily target the incorrect people; and the echos of the layoff will also result in higher performers searching for new jobs.

So you don't really gain much precision with a layoff versus making work more difficult.

[notatoad]

>The CEO told his charges it was a “judgment” call.

is it really an untethered conspiracy theory when the CEO is straight-up saying his decision is based on vibes?

[rchaud]

"judgment call" is what I'd say if I knew the data wasn't nearly as conclusive as I'd need it to be to call it a "data driven" decision.

[michaelt]

If the CEO has a wealth of data and it says with remote working Metric A has gone up which is good, and Metric B has gone down which is bad, they have to make a judgement call about which metric to rely on even though they're making an evidence-based decision.

[LiquidSky]

Great, then share that evidence. The problem is all these royal decrees to return to the office never come with even a shred of actual data to explain them.

Once it became clear that they couldn’t show WFH harmed productivity, their arguments became increasingly abstract (e.g., “office culture”) and finally we’ve arrived at simply “because I said so”.

[RestlessMind]

Why should RTO need data? That was the setup until 2020 and it worked. Especially for the leadership who have grown up in that requirement. Onus is on the pro-remote side to provide data that that works.

Sample size of 1 - at my company, remote sucks even if we tried to go all-in on fully remote. I simply cannot have trusted relationships with my colleagues since everything has to be writing or is possible being recorded when on video. In person, both parties can share candid thoughts in person without any fear of being recorded for ever.

[kyleee]

Sounds like you work in a kind of cut throat place. Is yours a common worry? I have never worried about anything like this in the last ~7 years of working remotely

[RestlessMind]

I also worked at some of the nicest environments (Google) and still, it was drilled into our minds that anything in writing can be used against us or company. In various formal and informal trainings, we were explicitly told to carry out sensitive conversations in person.

[ghaff]

If there's no evidence a call is being recorded, I'm very comfortable that it is not.

That said, I do think it's harder to establish solid working relationships purely virtually. Possible but harder. During the pandemic a lot of people probably coasted based on prior relationships and we're likely starting to see some of capital running out.

[LiquidSky]

>That was the setup until 2020 and it worked. Especially for the leadership who have grown up in that requirement.

And people were very happy with carriages until cars came along. Things change, the world changed, WFH became the new reality. Being stuck in the past way of doings just because it was done in the past is idiotic. Leadership is especially bad about adapting to change because it means actually having to learn and try new things, which 100% explains their resistance to WFH.

Much easier to glance at badge swipe-in times and go chew out some peon than to figure out how to actually do the work of management.

>Onus is on the pro-remote side to provide data that that works.

Sure, and that's already been shown. In 2020 there were dire predictions of productivity drops when WFH was implemented on a large-scale. Turns out, that didn't happen. All attempts to determine the effects of WFH show no-to-positive effects on productivity.

Ergo, it works.

So, again

>Why should RTO need data?

Because, as noted above, there hasn't been any measurable drop in productivity due to WFH. This is why in my first comment I said that the justifications used by management have become increasingly abstract, because there is nothing concrete they can point to as support for their decisions.

Sorry you work in such a harsh environment, consider changing jobs.

[RestlessMind]

> All attempts to determine the effects of WFH show no-to-positive effects on productivity.

Nope, we had a different experience. For the first few months, we all coasted on our prior relationships. Also, it was a pretty unique moment in the history and there was a "let's rise to the challenge" feeling.

Later on as employees churned and new ones joined, as well as the remote fatigue set in, we saw a drastic drop in productivity.

> Because, as noted above, there hasn't been any measurable drop in productivity due to WFH.

There has been, in our company. Management is wondering why we have less output when our workforce has more than doubled in the remote setting. To their credit, they literally went all in on remote. But one key thing they didn't realize is that remote needs rewiring of the entire communication culture. Much easier said than done.

[ChildOfChaos]

Trust me bro...

[antisthenes]

> Could some brave soul please leak whatever data these guys are seeing? Reports, statistics, even just emails where they whine about empty offices? Something tangible that gives us mere mortals actual perspective.

Yeah, the "Gut" dataset, gathered from "My ass", and filtered by "bullshit" column.

We have to stop playing this game and pretending like RTO is some hidden innovation-building gem that no one is aware about that turns failing businesses into Fortune 100 powerhouses.

People in the 90s had it figured out - if you want people to get together to discuss important issues, it's called a business trip. No, you don't need to do it for every sprint or feature proposal. Do it in moderation, 2-3 times a year, and let people live where they want to live (usually next to their families).

[hgsgm]

Amazon built the entire company on two decision-making systems

1. A/B testing and multi-armed bandits.

2. "jeff_said", a special macro in the website that overrides the decisions of automated A/B testing and multi-armed bandits.

[thebigspacefuck]

I just imagine everyone there is using Chime and it’s not working that well

[LiquidSky]

>The conversation is dominated by conspiracy theories about real estate investments and 'CEO vibes', it feels untethered and fact-free.

One might think the fact that they don’t readily offer concrete evidence to support their actions is itself evidence that these “conspiracy theories” are on the right track.

The conversation is dominated by such talk because, as you said, no evidence otherwise has been offered to explain the fervent desire of those at the top for returning to the office.