Amazon exec says it’s time for RTO: ‘I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better’
Amazon exec says it’s time for RTO: ‘I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better’
Tech company has no data.
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.
But I know it's better
Better for whom?
Micromanagers and building owners
Board rooms full of people heavily invested in commercial real estate.
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.
You forgot the governments who gave Amazon $5 billion in subsidies to have offices in their jurisdictions: https://qz.com/amazon-s-5-billion-discount-see-all-its-tax-cuts-and-1849821611
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.
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.
if someone said this to me I'd be like "oh okay great. I won't compromise then. I'm working from home."
If this dude "loved every minute of the 80+ hour work weeks of the early 2000's", feels like I can safely ignore anything he has to say about work
He was in his early 20s based on his stated age, bro-ing out with beers and code, likely making gobs of startup money when you could still reasonably buy a house, which is likely worth 10x what it was then.
Now he makes 700k or more, living in his basically free house, and needs to put on a show for current 20 somethings like that is something good that can still happen to them.
Word. But people change.
Exactly. I reread this twice because I felt like I had certainly read it wrong in the first place... which I had not...
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.
Ew
Every single time some dude writes "females" I see this.
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.
Over the last 15 years these tech leaders have led the charge to offshoring. Now they're telling us we have to work with people on the other side of the world - unless we're in the same timezone. Then we have to be "together" but separated into cubicles. Their logic makes no sense.
It’s because their logic isn’t about what they claim it’s about.
It’s about control.
Gotta keep the poors in line with the knowledge they can be made poorer at any time, with their kids as hostages
Amazon is extremely data-centric at that management level. If he's not showing hard data, then the data he has go against the narrative he's pushing.
Which is confusing to me, obviously working from home tends to be more productive, and I'm sure they've seen that, so why RTO?
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.
Productivity must mean nothing when you've got a giant commercial real estate hole burning in your pocket.
Think of all the wasted money! (For the company, not the workers as they commute, buy lunch, hire nannies, etc)
This is extremely typical for Amazon corporate.
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.
cheap, crowded, loud office space
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.
TIL Fitbit absolutely hates their employees.
The "open office" mindset that supposedly "increases collaboration, reducing errors" blah blah blah.
Because of this nonsense, I reserve meeting rooms every day so I have somewhere to work that's quiet.
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"
The "open office" mindset that supposedly "increases collaboration, reducing errors" blah blah blah.
Because of this nonsense, I reserve meeting rooms every day so I have somewhere to work that's quiet.
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.
'I don't have data to back it up, but I know it's better'
This is exactly the reason why every single one of Amazon's products are shittier today than they were yesterday.
You know what time it is... For Amazon to actually pay taxes.
It's time to flay the skin from Amazon executives. I don't have the data to back it up, but I know it's better.
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."
Bro, trust me bro - dumb AF execs.
Go chat with Google Bard about work from home vs return to office. Bard is not a fan of WFH. Strange!
Bard doesn't truly think, it's just going to be reflective of the most commonly written perspective in its source material
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.
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.
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.
“Source: trust me, bro.”
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.
Umm, no?
Get fukt
Go watch "dope sick". This piece of shit has full sackler energy.
Why are we linking articles from August 2023 like it’s new news?
Maybe, just maybe, we should all just stop showing up.
If the world was fair, steaming turds would have started flopping out of his mouth as soon as he started talking.
Someone has real estate stocks.
Oh look, it's another "my feelings trump your facts" person. See? No one cares [about you].
🤡
I love that the single study that keeps being cited for workers being less productive is based on a random sampling of workers in India. And all these American CEOs (who, by the way, get driven by their chauffeurs or sometimes helicopter pilots to their private offices in the days they feel like showing up) keep using it as evidence without having read it, as if the working environment and economy is the same in India as it is in the US.
We need people to stand up to these boot licking assholes.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Mike Hopkins, senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, reportedly told members in an internal meeting that when it comes to returning to the office, “it’s time to disagree and commit.
Nonetheless, Hopkins added, a return to the office is important because it’s the personal belief of CEO Andy Jassy and other top brass that “we just do our best work when we’re together.”
This time last year, Jassy said Amazon had no plans for a compulsory office return and instead intended to “proceed adaptively.” That sentiment didn’t last, and Jassy soon joined peers Elon Musk and Sundar Pichai in their pro-office enthusiasm, mandating an office return earlier this year (the company does have an exception request process that’s considered on a case-by-case basis).
But Annie Dean, VP of Team Anywhere at Atlassian and Meta’s former director of remote work, told Fortune the whole idea is a misnomer.
Any bosses expecting office presence by itself (rather than a full cultural overhaul) to solve existing problems of productivity, innovation, or creativity will be sorely disappointed.
Opportunities for mentorship, communication, and learning by osmosis are difficult to replicate over Zoom, particularly for early-career workers or recent hires, a wide swath of research has found.
The original article contains 697 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Uh oh, someone's commercial real estate investments must not be performing as well as they expected.
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.
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.