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Amazon CEO tells staff to work in office three days a week or look for another job
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
505 points (98.8% liked)
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Someone make this make sense.
I'm a software developer. I need three things in order to do every aspect of my job on a day-to-day basis:
Most of my coworkers are in other states and even other countries. The closest physical office is an hour away, and has 0% of the people I work with most of the time. If I go to the office, it's for one of only two possible reasons: To attend a team event where others have flown in, or to see a couple very specific coworkers who it's helpful to see in person, but I only have a reason to interact with them once every few months.
At home I have a comfortable desk to work at, a door I can close, my "coding music" playlist, and no one breathing down my neck or asking me for anything. I'm productive, I'm happy, and when my work day is done, I can just step out of my little office area and... I'm home. And on days when I have no meetings, I can take my laptop to a coffee shop and work in an ambiance I find relaxing and fun.
Presumably, Amazon's developers feel the same. And especially after almost three years away from the office and 100% remote hiring, many of their teams consist of people who don't live anywhere near an Amazon office.
So... Why in the everloving fuck would Amazon want to do this?!?
Easy way to thin your workforce while and an easy scapegoat for future issues.
They are probably right, unfortunately.
My gut feeling is that the economy is sluggish and companies like Amazon and Zoom want to force this now because they know they'll shed employees without having to announce layoffs and hurt their stock price.
Warning: conspiracy theory incoming. Imagine you are an investor, one of those big guns that are on top of a few big companies. You have a lot of money, but because you're smart you don't invest it all in tech companies. Some of it goes to, let's say, real estate. Now imagine what would happen to that money if companies no longer needed offices, those huge and expensive offices... Also, you invest in an overseas company. There's lots of profit there because you pay cheap to your employees. Now those employees can start working directly to US companies for cheaper than in US, but still more than is paid in that country. Now if want people working for you, then you need to pay more than these remote workers receive. There goes your extra profit And the way this happened really shows that companies were really hoping to change the way of working after COVID, but someone didn't allow that.
They probably don’t want the office space they’re paying leases for to be empty. At least I’m pretty sure that’s most of why the company I work for settled on 3-2. They wanted everyone in 5 days a week and then they started to lose some fairly impactful people and ratcheted back their stance.
They claim it’s for “community” and “meetings” and “ease of collaboration”. But I think they just don’t want to look bad.
Almost sounds like the perfect setting for a timed logic bomb