Dark Jassy says commutes are good for all!

    https://www.geekwire.com/2024/amazon-will-return-to-being-in-the-office-the-way-we-were-before-the-pandemic-ceo-tells-employees/

    Posted by Swimming_Trip7365

    28 Comments

    1. `DISCLAIMER:` I’m not speaking on ReturnToOffice being a good thing or a bad thing, but I’d like to add another angle some people aren’t aware of.

      Just so people know, there is another force pushing for the return-to-office. A whole economy out there of coffee-shops, lunches, buying gasoline, etc. has grown around the fact that hundreds of people were commutting to work everyday. Those major cities have their mayors/political-leaders quietly begging execs of big companies to bring those people back and spend money again.

      I use to work in San Franciso’s Financial district, which is a very good example of an entire ecosystem of bagle & coffee shops, street vendors and the mall that’s dependent on highly paid daily commute people buying their stuff all the time.

    2. BreadfruitThen5535 on

      I am okay with going back daily but just how long do I need to stay there? 2-hours will work?

    3. Don’t they benefit heavily from people sitting around their homes ordering their crap or watching their crap?

    4. Dull_Broccoli1637 on

      *Amazon is also flattening its corporate structure by having fewer managers in each organization.*

      Creative spin on saying you’re doing layoffs.

    5. lost_in_life_34 on

      just wait till the top performers start to leave and maybe take their teams with them. can’t code the next AI if your top phd’s and AI developers have left

    6. I have a few friends at Amazon and the story is morale is so low now. Apparently the corporate culture has disintegrated into endless fighting over business metrics, no one gets anything done. It’s hard not to see this ending up in their numbers at some point.

      Moves like this are an attempt to stitch the day0 culture they had before the pandemic but I doubt it will work. Instead of fighting in person 3 days a week we can now do it all week!

      Feels like the Balmer years tbh. Company is going to go sideways for awhile.

    7. The claim for RTO mandate is that it will facilitate improved ability to invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to drive the absolute best for the business. Taken at face value , this can be interpreted to mean management feels that invention, collaboration, and motivation at the organization has been lacking or poor due to WFH which can also be seen as “weve been able to coast this long on past achievements/revenue streams but time has caught up and we actually have to produce again”.

      This coupled with operating leaner and management reductions suggests get ready for PIP evals while the priveleged few contine to have “extenuating circumstances” from home

    8. These fuckers overhired and ruined the job market already. Now they don’t want to pay severance and drive people to quit and also give an excuse to other braindead execs to enforce RTO.

      Doing shitty corpo things is good for my calls though just hope they don’t make me go to the office ![img](emote|t5_2th52|4260)

    9. Hell yea. Return to Office was a fantastic move in my experience. We had multiple teams suffering from clowns who were showing up once a week, bragging about taking meetings on the beach, and generically not doing a fucking thing.

      Return to office got the company actually moving again instead of just sending out checks to people who thought they deserved them for doing nothing, and took so much pressure off the other people who were being forced to double or triple their output to make up for the people on paid vacation / wfh.

      Im not at amazon, but everyone I know IRL has had similar experiences.

    10. OutsideWrongdoer2691 on

      fuck this. this should be categorically opposed by the workers.

      Or fine, always on office but global push towards 4 day work week. Super majority of productivity gains have gone UP over past 5 decades not down to workers.

      EDIT: dont come commenting here about the “free market” or some libertarian idealistic nonsense.

    11. That’s an awful lot of pollution they will be contributing by making workers commute again. So much for being green. /s

    12. Swimming_Trip7365 on

      This is an indicator AI-hype is all smoke and mirror bullshit. If AI was really meant to help cut back on simple repetitive tasks, one would assume that less time would be needed in the office to accomplish same results and we would be bracing for hybrid life to be new normal.

      If they were changing ratio the other way to more managers and less ICs, we could assume the managers would at some point in time have humans replaced with bots but then you don’t need to be on site.

      It wreaks of over investment and need to claw back expenses quickly to protect future FCF concerns.

      Collectively, layering on slow ROI for AI, a 7% increase on driver wages in the US, a 10% increase in EU factory wages and a wage announcement for US factory workers due out Wednesday, the situation looks dire.

    13. Pettingallthepups on

      My girlfriend has been remote for 5.5 years. Her team is all spread throughout the US. She was just told as a part of this that she has to go into the office. Nobody else on her team does. So now she’s forced go go into the office to sit on zoom meetings with her team, all in different states.
      Absolutely moronic.

    14. Fuck Amazon. I boycott their stock in solidarity with workers. I’ve been pulling my stock out of any company that does these soft layoffs. More for NVDA, who treats their workers right.

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