“Jassey deflected questions on what data or information led him to make this decision. Jassey, seemingly losing patience, eventually warned employees that if they don’t return to the office, they may have to find employment elsewhere.”
So he doesn’t have a good reason, and when asked about it he started to “lose patience”? How dare anyone question the all mighty CEOs plans /s
People get annoyed when they are weak. In this case, the weakness is that he has not reason he can publicly say, so he gets angry. What a loser.
I really wish they’d give a real reason for it. Just say “When we built our offices we negotiated with the city to have lower taxes and if you don’t come back we’ll lose that.” Or “We don’t want the value of our commercial real estate holdings to go down.”
At the very least the workers could be mad at the right thing. Instead Amazon is going to lose its best folks to fully remote jobs first, then backfill with people who aren’t able to get a WFH job or have to pay people a huge premium to attract remote workers back to the office.
That will hurt them worse than the taxes or real estate devaluation, but that will happen over years instead of by next quarter, so they don’t care.
we are going back to the office at least three days a week, and it’s not right for all of our teammates to be in three days a week and for people to refuse to do so.
Not very compelling
The problem is that commercial real estate has pretty much always been a staple underpinning of stock portfolios.
And now that it’s not needed, their portfolio could tank.
I work at Amazon, and for many people this is what annoys people the most.
Rightly or wrongly, a lot of people like Amazon because it pushes the narrative that data is king. If you want to do something, you need the right data and figures to justify it.
Since Jassy took over, Amazon mimicked other tech companies by becoming a belief-driven company, instead of a data-driven company. The reason he’s losing patience is because his belief is being questioned, at a time where his leadership is either being questioned or being followed right to the top.
Data at Amazon has never been king, it was lip service at best and in most case it was only ever to be used to attack someone else’s position, never to support your own.
He’s just continuing the tradition
FWIW, I fully agree, and I’ve seen countless examples of managers using LP’s as a weapon to fuel URA or to promote their own views.
The view is distorted in that the people that Jassy is pissing off are those that benefited and thrived under the reign of Bezos. IMO, he would’ve done the exact same thing, but that doesn’t stop the Amazon cult from remembering “the good old days”.
Had an interview for an amazon fulfilment center desk job. It went great, I was a perfect fit, except they wanted me to work in the office 4 out of 5 days a week. (It wasn’t clear in the job listing)
When I asked which part of the job requires a physical presence it turned out none of it. Zero. Nada. They told me an employee must be an exceptional asset to get authorization for full remote work.
I got an offer, but refused as it was too much commuting. The recruiter contacted me afterwards if I would give it another thought, but refused again.
“it’s not in the job description to WFH”; “Ops needs you present just in case”; “Because I tell you so”…
My last job was super flexible. I could work 1-5 days from home if I wanted to. It was great as the office was 90 min drive from my place.
So we get a new leader, who is super enthusiastic and introduces himself as best buddy/superboss. Fast forward 6 months and 4 office days are mandatory and 1 home office is allowed if you schedule it a week in advance.
Reason? He thinks we perform better, but the real reason was he wanted to keep an eye on us. Fast forward two more months and I was the third person handing in the resignation.
Boss man is still convinced it’s the lack of support from the head office which drives the people away.and it has nothing to do with mandatory office days.
Self reflection is often poor. I am not allowed working from home. Even when proving that I am more effective if everyone leaves me alone and just work. Too many distractions in the office.
I got a new job that has no remote possibilities because we run a defense SaaS thing that’s cut off from the internet, so, a real reason for it
I’m paid 2.5x my old wage for it and everyone keeps leaving despite the insane pay. We’re about to hire a software guy that didn’t know what grep or curl was
Granted there’s a few more hurdles (applicants must speak english fluently and make as few mistakes as possible writing in a country that’s hardly bilingual, top of the chain tech stack that might give people the feeling that they’re not qualified, …) but 2.5x the pay? I’m gonna get enough to straight up buy a house with cash in like two years
If I made 2.5x my current salary, which would be almost 400,000 a year, I would seriously consider returning to the office. Then I would retire in something like 10 years which is way earlier than I’m currently looking at. For that, RTO would actually be worth it.
It wasn’t even a bad salary beforehand, it was way above average for my city and I was able to save and invest about 40% of my paycheck, now it’s almost as if all I do is saving since my living expenses are such a small part of the salary
I thought 2.5 meant 2.5 when going in, but it’s more like an 5x on disposable income so it feels completely different
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There’s a lot of stuff in defense contracts that aren’t killing people in europe
Procurement, borders, visas, terrorism intel, …
I just make very boring CRUD software for international agencies to make national services interoperate better
It’s only defense related because it necessarily has sensitive strategic information transitting through our databases
Return to the office so we can all jump on Zoom calls with people in other offices? What a fucking joke. “Return to office” is just a giant grift.
Whoa whoa whoa. It’s not zoom. It’s some vaporware called Chime last time I checked
Please keep forcing people back into the office. My company has embraced WFH and I got over 150 resumes for a senior position that was historically hard for me to fill given where we’re located. I had my pick of who to hire rather than being stuck with whoever was willing to move here.
I wish there was a directory of WFH friendly companies somewhere. I have done the math and work from home saves me a ton of money and time. Plus, it seems like an enormously beneficial choice if you care about global climate change. Small companies that are willing to figure out how to maintain a good culture while working from home have a huge hiring advantage.
I think in time the most efficient companies will be the ones that don’t spend too much in office buildings and will also be the ones that attract more talent.
In 10-15 years the remote work debate will be over and we will reap the benefits
Unfortunately it stopped being a buyer’s market years ago. If these companies don’t succeed, they’ll just shape the laws so that others can’t either.
real estate investment says you’re wrong, it’s saying you’re wrong right now
Is it? Yeah, real estate investors want people back in the office but how many back to the office success stories are we seeing? It’s generally not working out for the employers pushing it.
It won’t be easy but in the end the slaves will win…
If dying from heatstroke and starvation is winning, then yeah, I guess you’re right.
the major banks publicly having major concerns about their portfolio of commercial mortgage backed securities says you’re wrong right now. its too soon to call this one. hundreds of billions are on the line, and so are the work/life balances of a rising generation of workers who don’t believe what the baby boomers did.
No, he’s not. Have you looked at commercial real estate especially around dedicated business districts in cities such as London, Paris and Frankfurt? Long story short, a lot of businesses (big ones such as HSBC) are moving to city centers and into smaller offices.
When do we just start calling out that it’s about their commercial real estate holdings? I’m an engineer at a large fortune 500, and while my part of the company has made it very clear to leadership that we are going to remain remote, they made this whole huge deal about RTO for the rest of the company. They said it was about culture, but it’s very obviously about real estate. The CEO is very ego driven and likes his big buildings. I was really hoping someone would have the balls to call him on that in one of the many comical public meetings they had about RTO.
I was really hoping someone would have the balls to call him on that in one of the many comical public meetings they had about RTO.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Like i said, I’m not going back to the office, and my part of the company is openly defiant about it. Most of us are independently wealthy and they know we can just walk.
It’s not just about liking the big buildings. It’s also very much tired to company evaluation numbers and stock price.
Real estate is a huge part of company asserts and they reflect in the stock price.
Why do you think these huge mega companies publicly traded have these trillion dollar campuses and stuff? Private companies would find that a little bit crazy, when they are more focused on having actual cash in the bank.
The real estate isn’t an ego thing, it’s protecting and growing the price of company stock
The Real Estate is usually subleased from holding companies owned by Board members or their family.
This would still count as company assets, though?
Does apple lease their campus?
A lot of companies with large campuses have gotten concessions from local government, since the workers will increase economic activity in the area. So part of it is also that city governments are putting pressure on companies to get people in, and they might lose millions in tax breaks they got for building in their city.
It’s about liking big buildings in this case.
That doesn’t make logical sense, though
In my experience, big corporations frequently do things that don’t make any logical sense.
You just don’t understand them. They make perfect sense when you educate yourself
Don’t forget they also invest in companies that buy/own buildings too…it’ll hurt their bottom dollar across the board
I’m not convinced the bottom dollar is as relevant as the stock price.
These companies make baffling dollar decisions, like having these trillion dollar campuses, that would make no sense at all to the bottom dollar.
It would seem wasteful. But for the stock? Well that seems like a different story. What does having trillions in real estate holdings under a company name do to the stock?
well it helps the book value as an asset but it hurts the available cash and the liquidity of assets and the return on assets although the depreciation is a big write off. its not a great use for most companies to sit on brick and mortar that aren’t generating revenue. but whats the point of having a high floor corner office if nobody is around to pretend to care?
But, couldn’t the company sell their real estate and pay that out to shareholders while retaining the same profit potential?
They can also sell product to customers, but often over stock items for the same reasons.
Showing trillions of dollars in assets, with inflated inventory dollar values makes the company look more valuable, which impacts the stock price.
I’m sure there are a dozen ways to skin that cat, but this is how C-Suite execs seem to prefer to make their stock go up
My previous employer put on a handout that was supposed to make people feel good about RTO that Denver was chosen as a hub because of a $7 million tax break. So it’s about real estate but there could also be other bullshit reasons for it as well, none of which actually have to do with collaboration or culture.
If this article hadn’t mentioned the name of the company or CEO, I would swear it was talking about the executive team where I currently work since they’ve been saying the bullshit and our RTO mandate is about to go into effect. Nevermind that every single one of my teammates is located in a different time zone, sitting on Zoom and Slack in an office will magically make me more productive and innovative.
Same. My strategy is basically to stay at home until enough other people come in that they can single people out. It’s not like they can fire the entire office.
When they were really amping up the “mandatory” rhetoric, we had a tornado rip through the parking lot and total the cars of everyone who actually complied with the work from work mandate. Then they refused to pay for the vehicle repairs.
Way to guarantee that nobody comes in.
We have to work at the office (software) meanwhile non tech people are working from home fully. Some aren’t even in the same city at all. Fascinating.
lEaDeRShIP
I don’t think companies are going to listen until they feel consequences of RTO policies. It’s going to take strike level activity and solidarity for office employees before they are going to see the real risks and impacts. I just don’t see people being that committed to pushing back. I would love to be wrong.
Horrid Company to work for regardless.
and buy from; i wish there was a viable alternative.
I actually buy from brick and mortar stores’ websites. That’s the viable alternative. Otherwise you can order directly from Amazon Sellers’ websites if they exist.
I can’t even buy yo-yos from Yomega anymore. They just redirect their page to Amazon. The options are rapidly dwindling, sadly. Shit, even PepBoys ditched their storefront and just do jiffylube stuff now.
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you don’t need to eat from Tacos El Tajin or Whole Foods everyday
Plenty of remote work that does pay well also…
Plus because you’re not paying to commute you have more money for tacos
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Or fight the Mercer mess starting at 3:30pm every damn day.
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I always have the remote work filter turned on when searching for jobs… I guess I don’t have to worry about amazon job postings clogging up the feed :)
The company I work for is very lenient regarding working from home. They’ve said people should be at the office at least three times a week, but I don’t believe this is actually enforced in any way. I’ve returned to the office because I like working from there, but I also appreciate the flexibility to work from home when I need/want to.
