I wonder what drives these decisions? Is there that much solid evidence that they get more value out of people in the office rather than home? Or are there other reasons like tax incentives that encourage in-person work over remote? Is this just a control thing or or there a compelling argument that I am missing?
The management want return to office and that's it.
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.
> The management want return to office and that's it.
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.
Usually peoples' wants are explainable. It's certainly not uncommon to be able to explain one's wants when their implementation affects others, especially in a negative way.
"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.
My desire for the bottom of my taps to be descaled is not explainable.
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.
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. This is a great explanation of your perspective.
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 agree, but I think what it actually comes down to is this -
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.
Why would the threshold be set at assault? It can simply be a battle of preferences and all all parties can use whichever framing devices they want to ensure their will is executed.
Amazon not being on the hook for severance for a large percentage of high salary workers, plus not having them on payroll/benefits for the weeks/months it would take to transition them out via PIP (including the management overhead involved per staffer) usually adds up to just about enough in savings to go out and recruit fresh, RTO-willing, naive talent much sooner.
Amazon doesn't really pay severance for PIP, nor are they required to pay severance for layoff. They would be required to do a WARN notice, but how would that be worse than giving people 4 months of notice about the RTO policy?
It's basically all anecdotal, like most management principles. But there does seem to be a number of managers across the tech industry concluding that in-person work is more effective, that the covid period of remote work was an experiment that did not work.
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.
Rto is really important in dysfunctional organizations. Sometimes the only way forward is to know a guy. Lean on that personal connection, and unblock yourself.
For workers there are usually some tax benefits to home offices, though it's not a huge amount in practice. In the UK you can offset things like partial utility costs, but only for fully remote.
There is certainly no data, even though Amazon has a reputation for being data driven. Amazon has tried hard to not talk about it, but friends who work there said that their internal surveys let any employee see the results, and that Amazon’s own data shows that remote work is actually more productive. So instead of admitting that, the company’s leaders like Andy Jassy have come up with vague claims like the office environment is better for culture or collaboration or brainstorming. In reality, all of this is probably just a boring way to force a layoff without a WARN notice or severance.
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.
I do think there's probably a lot of political pressure on employers to not just abandon downtowns. And some do outright own a lot of real estate which puts them in a somewhat difficult position of probably writing down investments. But my first-hand observation in that employers who lease are just not renewing in at least a number of cases.
Certainly tax breaks related to local employment have been a common thing in the past. Whether this is related to any current RTO activity I have no idea.
There is only one logic: they want to cause attrition.
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.
A small donation to Harvard and we'll get our "study" with supporting data to show how much more productive people are in the office.
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.
