Amazon CEO Andy Jassy threatens employees to return to office or "things are probably not going to work out for you"

Joust said:
As a manger of people, my first-hand experience is that some people were markedly LESS productive at home, while others were just fine. This fiction that people are WAY productive remotely…I simply cannot believe it is accurate overall.

Ultimately, I brought everyone back in.
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I enjoy seeing the disconnect from reality some employees have. You were hired to do a job. If your job was in the office M-F and you went remote. Get back in the office. If you were hired as a remote worker, there is a leg to stand on.
Ultimately the boss is the boss and tells you what to do. Don't like it? Quit. You're not in charge and are replaceable. I used to see this a lot with my former employer. Management made a decision, and the workers were so upset they slow quit. And then they'd stand on their soapbox and moan and groan. If you dislike the job, and how you need to do it...why do it? Quit. Or since you know better, start your own company and see how that goes.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I can't speak specifically to any Amazon worker, but research on this subject has shown that people are generally more productive when working from home than they are in the office, provided they are in a role that lends itself to remote work, which makes actions like these from employers even more insane.
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Company like Amazon would have much better data on this (for what they do) than the studies and I think this is much more debated now:
https://fortune.com/2023/07/06/remote-workers-less-productive-wfh-research/

Maybe at first, but the effect on inferior mentoring of new employee would have took time to show up.


View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kqbngD8pemqxAkZmWCOQ32Yk6PXK9eVA/view
Fully remote work is associated with about 10% lower productivity than fully in-person work.
Fully remote working appears to lower average productivity by around 10% to 20%. Emmanuel
and Harrington (2023) use data from a Fortune 500 firm which had both in-person and remote
call centers pre-pandemic. The firm shifted all workers to fully remote in April 2020 at the onset
of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the always remote call-centers as the control group they find
an 8% reduction in call volumes among employees who shifted from fully in-person to fully
remote work. Gibbs, Mengel and Siemroth (2022) examine IT professionals in a large Indian
technology company who shifted to fully remote work at the onset of the pandemic. Measured
performance among these workers remained constant while remote but they worked longer
hours, implying a drop in employee productivity of 8% to 19%. Atkin, Schoar, and Shinde
(2023) run a randomized control trial of data-entry workers in India, randomizing between
working fully in the office and fully at home. They find home-workers are 18% less productive.
Some of the early study that showed a productivity boost had error in them
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/06/28/the-working-from-home-delusion-fades
Unfortunately for the believers, new research mostly runs counter to this, showing that offices, for all their flaws, remain essential. A good starting point is a working paper that received much attention when it was published in 2020 by Natalia Emanuel and Emma Harrington, then both doctoral students at Harvard University. They found an 8% increase in the number of calls handled per hour by employees of an online retailer that had shifted from offices to homes. Far less noticed was a revised version of their paper, published in May by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The boost to efficiency had instead become a 4% decline.

Some of the those employers have proven themselve to be the best allocator of capitals in the world, save a lot of money if their employee would work from home instead of needing an office and have excellent employee production metric usually, if they ask for a return it could be for some job is more fun with an office reason to please management, but they are the best placed in the world to have the best opinion on the matter and they have to pay a fortune to have office and on location employees so it is an high stake position, a lot of people with opinion have 0 prize to pay, many even would want it to be otherwise.

Just remember how much you gained by working physically with good experimented people when you started versus starting in a fully remote work your very first job....

Has for the current subject, seem 100% ok for employer to want or not people to be in office, seem 100% ok for employees to want to be or not, pure private workforce conflict with no bad-good guy or reason for it to be news in particular (would it not be a public company with public stockholder).
 
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Darunion said:
I think that is a really big key. I like to 'feel' at work, but just within my home. I put a cheap computer on my workbench cuz I could remote in to my pc at work if i needed to do renderings that needed more power. But it was really good having a place to be in when working versus never moving from a singular spot.
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Yeah, I need to feel like I am at work, I need to be surrounded by work things, so I can focus on work, but when I have a <cough> small pile of unpainted minis, god only knows how many consoles, discord blinking, and a bombardment of game icons all over its hard to get into a work mindset and I just drift and my productivity tanks.
 
Joust said:
As a manger of people, my first-hand experience is that some people were markedly LESS productive at home, while others were just fine. This fiction that people are WAY productive remotely…I simply cannot believe it is accurate overall.

Ultimately, I brought everyone back in.
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The actual research on the topic is a little more nuanced.

This story goes into it in some detail:
https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/the-one-room-commute/

There was a big travel agency with several thousand employees which was concerned about their office space arrangement, and if they could move to a work from home model to avoid having to get more real estate.

They did a randomized study among 500 volunteer employees where half worked from home, and half worked from the office, and then switched it off.

The company assumed they would lose productivity, but the intent of the study was to see if the loss of productivity was outweighed by the savings in rent.

The actual results they got were unexpected, as they found that on average productivity in the "work from home" pool went up by 13%. Some individuals were less productive, but some were WAY More productive, resulting in this 13% increase on average. Of those 13% they found that about one third of it was attributable to increased productivity per minute, presumably due to fewer distractions, etc. The rest presumably came from people voluntarily putting in more time as it was easier to do so when they didn't have a commute. Turnover also dropped by 50% resulting in less costs associated with recruiting and training.

After this result they decided to make work from home voluntary for everyone in the company.

There were some negatives too. Despite being more productive at home, they found that those who worked entirely from home had a lower promotion rate, as they simply werent as visible in the office. There is also some evidence that these early 13% productivity benefits wane over time, but don't completely go away. Some people also are initially positive about working from home, but later decide voluntarily that they'd rather be back in the office.


Overall economy wide though, some 70% of employers have suggested that the whole work from home thing worked out much better than anticipated. I fall into this category. When I heard we would be moving to a work from home setting in March 2020, I though "oh shit, there goes our productivity", but in reality it has worked out really well for us.

But as with everything else, YMMV.
 
Lakados said:
Yeah, I need to feel like I am at work, I need to be surrounded by work things, so I can focus on work, but when I have a <cough> small pile of unpainted minis, god only knows how many consoles, discord blinking, and a bombardment of game icons all over its hard to get into a work mindset and I just drift and my productivity tanks.
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Westwood, I need you to wait around for a phone call or email. Be sure to wait at your desk.

ya. I'll get right on it.
ghdhdfhddd - Copy.png
 
Offices are essential for many jobs certainly but let’s be real here.. Commercial real estate and the absolute collapse of that racket by too many businesses having too many remote would make too many billionaires less cheddar so it’s butts in seats people! The natural thing to happen is as tools and technology increase productivity , workers can achieve the same productivity in less time. Meaning less time toiling away for the company and more enjoying life.
 
Lakados said:
Yeah, I need to feel like I am at work, I need to be surrounded by work things, so I can focus on work, but when I have a <cough> small pile of unpainted minis, god only knows how many consoles, discord blinking, and a bombardment of game icons all over its hard to get into a work mindset and I just drift and my productivity tanks.
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I keep my personal PC off while I am working from home, to avoid the temptation of getting distracted on tangents. I also clear my desk of all non-work things.

I won a high end laptop dock in the Visiontek Mystery Box which has proven to be very helpful, and something I likely would otherwise never have bought.

This seems to work for me, but everyone is different.
 
hity645 said:
I enjoy seeing the disconnect from reality some employees have. You were hired to do a job. If your job was in the office M-F and you went remote. Get back in the office. If you were hired as a remote worker, there is a leg to stand on.
Ultimately the boss is the boss and tells you what to do. Don't like it? Quit. You're not in charge and are replaceable. I used to see this a lot with my former employer. Management made a decision, and the workers were so upset they slow quit. And then they'd stand on their soapbox and moan and groan. If you dislike the job, and how you need to do it...why do it? Quit. Or since you know better, start your own company and see how that goes.
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When you have a shift in expectations from employees though, you may find it very difficult to hire the people you need unless you shift to match.

The workplace is changing whether we like it or not.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
When you have a shift in expectations from employees though, you may find it very difficult to hire the people you need unless you shift to match.

The workplace is changing whether we like it or not.
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The position of the worker is declining rapidly as the economy - and hiring - has receded. I am highly confident that big tech - or however you call it in that industry - as zero difficulty replacing personnel.

Is there a cost? Oh yeah. Definitely. Real difficulty? Nah.
 
Different industries will have to tackle this in different ways for sure. My old department took that hardline approach and said “hey come back in or hit the road.”” Guess what ? About half of the best talent in the department did just that. My old boss found a new job which is 90% wfh at a new company for 50% more money. Myself and 10 of 50 people all left the department less than a year after return to office. Basically anyone who could jump did. The majority of the people left in that department are a few years from retirement and riding it in or just have no other option/skills to leverage and get out. The place is an absolute shit show now and even the bottom performers can’t be fired because they can’t keep headcount to get essential duties covered.

Edit. So yeah go ahead and do the old our way or the highway and see which workers stick around and what the talent pool looks like. The good people will find places where they are treated decently and it’s a win win situation.
 
TheHig said:
Different industries will have to tackle this in different ways for sure. My old department took that hardline approach and said “hey come back in or hit the road.”” Guess what ? About half of the best talent in the department did just that. My old boss found a new job which is 90% wfh at a new company for 50% more money. Myself and 10 of 50 people all left the department less than a year after return to office. Basically anyone who could jump did. The majority of the people left in that department are a few years from retirement and riding it in or just have no other option/skills to leverage and get out. The place is an absolute shit show now and even the bottom performers can’t be fired because they can’t keep headcount to get essential duties covered.

Edit. So yeah go ahead and do the old our way or the highway and see which workers stick around and what the talent pool looks like. The good people will find places where they are treated decently and it’s a win win situation.
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Yea if a company is really that easily able to write off their staff, the employees were never essential to them to begin with. Always work where your company values you and you value them and it is the best place to be at.
 
TheHig said:
The good people will find places where they are treated decently and it’s a win win situation.
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That depends. Some people have imposter syndrome or just low self esteem, despite being high performers. Especially in a mostly introverted space like, say, Software Engineering. The best people don't always find themselves in the best companies. I would say it's the overly confident people with enough ego that more easily switch companies and keep getting more money.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
That depends. Some people have imposter syndrome or just low self esteem, despite being high performers. Especially in a mostly introverted space like, say, Software Engineering. The best people don't always find themselves in the best companies. I would say it's the overly confident people with enough ego that more easily switch companies and keep getting more money.
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More corollaries to the Dunning-Kruger effect, which are very unfortunate.
 
Like anything, I don't think there is a one size fits all solution here. You'll always get a segment of employees whose ability to be productive can and will be even better when working from home and not having to deal with the BS that is commuting, office distractions, etc.

That said, I am sure there are plenty of employees who also used WFH to completely slack off and mostly be unproductive.

And then there are the employees themselves where a segment loathes going into an office for jobs that absolutely can be done fully remote, while others crave that physical work/home separation and social aspect of office work. And both these categories can fit into the productive/unproductive types mentioned above.

I guess this is where I hate blanket rules that say either everyone has to come back in, or else everyone has to come back in certain days a week, etc.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
I think this is true for low wage easily automate jobs. If people get more expensive, automation and streamlining will reduce the dependence on workers.

Artificial price floors (minimum wage) and price ceilings (rent control, limits on gas prices, etc) always have unintended consequences. Fighting against the forces of supply and demand never works. 100% of everyone who has tried has failed. They are just a bandaid. Societies would be well advised to focus on solving root causes rather than trying to apply bandaids, but that is often harder to do, and more expensive, and thus unpopular. People want easy fast solutions. Those usually aren't realistic.

That said, I don't think quality of life improvements like working from home fall into this category. Why shouldn't technology make skilled employees lives better? If you think of it commuting to and from an office is time consuming and expensive. And it's not just for employees. Office space costs a lot of money which can be saved by a competent leader who can figure out the correct balance. Not to mention that you can no recruit people almost anywhere, introducing a level of liquidity into the labor market we have never seen before in human history.

There are always going to be jobs that don't lend themselves to remote work. You can't cast a foundation for a new building remotely. But why should that hold back those who can work remotely from much needed quality of life improvements?



When in the 1930's? Certainly not during the great depression? Do you mean during the war economy? Because that certainly inst a good representative example either.



Gen X here too. (Albeit very late Gen X)

The truth is the U.S. got an unrealistic boom in the 2-3 decades following the war too, as everyone else's economy was bombed to shit, leaving ours to supply the world with goods. This drove up the value of labor in the U.S. Wages were further inflated in the early part of that era due to the Marshall plan taking lots of competent U.S. employees and sending them to Europe, resulting in a mismatch between labor demand and supply on the U.S. job market.

So it's unrealistic to expect 50s through 70's economies forever.

FIAT currencies are not perfect, but they have solved more problems than they have created, as they allow for monetary policy by a strong central bank which smoothes out the boom and bust cycles, which is great for just about everyone, except the extremely wealthy able to make big gambles on the volatile stock market. Quite frankly, moving off the gold standard was the best thing that ever happened to the U.S. and world economy. We're all Keynesians now.

I agree with you that something is wrong when it comes to costs and wages. Typically throughout history improvements in worker productivity have been shared between employees and employers, but from ~1970 through today this hasn't kept up. Wages have stagnated compared to both productivity and inflation. I think there are many deep seated root causes, including the collapse of labor unions, creative businesses intentionally misinterpreting the intent of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and classifying way more people than intended as "exempt" as well as our failures to educate our workforce by systemically under-funding and under-valuing education for a hundred years, and bit by bit chipping away at essential regulations keeping businesses abuse of labor in check. None of these have anything to do with getting off the gold standard though.

It is notable that highly skilled labor is in short supply, with extreme demand, while unskilled labor (with the exception of the ~2 years following the pandemic) is a dime in a dozen, replaceable, and not valued. The way to solve this is not to force businesses to pay above market value for that unskilled labor which will drive more automation, but it is to try to move more and more of those in the unskilled labor bucket into the highly skilled labor bucket.
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Wow you had all that time to tear apart my Highly lowly informed opinions. Haha
 
The reason they want employees back in the office is because office buildings are vacant and cities are losing tax revenue over this. Why have an office when nobody shows up? That and employers can't tell if you can be more productive. Not that you're not productive, but if the job becomes easy for you then they want to put more work onto you. From an employees point of view, working from home is really good. You don't have to drive and waste hours commuting. No wear and tear on your car. No gas spent. No tolls or public transportation. You sit home, probably in underwear, and do what needs to be done. Not to mention that during the pandemic a lot of people bought homes far away from their jobs, so the commute is now worse for them. This is why the housing market exploded, because people got out of cities to move into their dream home in the suburbs or even in rural areas. Asking people to work from home is like asking them to give up their dream home which they probably got a great permanent low interest rate on to move back into the city where their job is. A lot of people also forget that working from home is good for the environment.
 
I had exactly the same problem. I had an employee who wouldn't come at the office because of some laws made in France against it during Covid times. Further there were laws that prevent people to come to office on behalf of climate change and some stupid behaviour that I had to prove he needs to be at the office. Which I proved at the prud'hom tribunal and I could fire the guy without any compensation.

So even in France you cannot force your employer to leave you doing half of your job at home. Because this is how it works. The work is rushed, never in time, plenty of excuses. Hearing the baby crying while having a serious meeting...
I had two employéees, The second one which came back as expected double the quality of his job when he was back.

Working at home, apart if you're working for yourself, is a BIG NO !!! The boss has to watch their employees work and has to press them and make them work together full time. No boss, no work well done in time.
Even at the office, if you're not there, the work won't be done. The employees are lazy by nature.
This is how it works in France.
 
So not to get too political... This actually gives me a little bit of hope here. I've been hearing on various podcasts that lockdowns are coming again, and that the current administration is going to be ramping up the vaccine mandates and mask mandates around mid-to-end September. But if even Amazon is like "nuh-huh, y'all are coming back to the office" in the wake of this, then maybe nothing will happen?
 
dont we have a "get back to work or else" thread in soapbox, where this should be?
job says get back in the office, get back in the office or find a new jerb.
fuckitty fuck fuck.
 
Give them de boot, AFAIC scAmazon can fuck off, but they have the right to tell their monkeys to get back to their cages at HQ.
If the monkeys don't like, then they can look elsewhere for work. Tho those hired with the condition they can work from home should be grandfathered in, maybe offer them a little extra money to switch them to office workers.
 
jbltecnicspro said:
So not to get too political... This actually gives me a little bit of hope here. I've been hearing on various podcasts that lockdowns are coming again, and that the current administration is going to be ramping up the vaccine mandates and mask mandates around mid-to-end September. But if even Amazon is like "nuh-huh, y'all are coming back to the office" in the wake of this, then maybe nothing will happen?
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Where, in the US? I don't think that'll fly well here, especially in Florida.
pendragon1 said:
dont we have a "get back to work or else" thread in soapbox, where this should be?
job says get back in the office, get back in the office or find a new jerb.
fuckitty fuck fuck.
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I wouldn't know, I don't have a subscription, just spent money on MOR tech to feed my addiction, so me pockets be bare captain.
 
1_rick said:
Could be a way to reduce the workforce. Get people to quit, no severance.
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Exactly want to lay off unionized employees that’s a big deal, want to make a subtle change that gets those who already have 1 foot out the door to quit… that’s a whole other issue.
 
JavaLava said:
It is astonishing on how hard it is to fire someone these days. Work at home only made this harder...how do you know they aren't working? What is your definition of unproductive? Are there KPI's that are being missed? What state/country do they live in and what laws are around firing? HR will usually have you document these "failings" and then make you put them on a 90 day performance plan. Etc etc.
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What are you talking about? Most states are at-will, you can be let go for any (non-discriminatory) reason.
 
There's no doubt in my mind that people, on average, are less productive at home versus an office setting. There may be exceptions and it may vary on the specific type of work but broadly speaking, people tend to take advantage of these opportunities. If businesses believe it's in their best interest to have their employees onsite versus spread out everywhere remotely - I would simply have to trust them on that. I don't believe their reasoning is arbitrary.
 
MavericK said:
What are you talking about? Most states are at-will, you can be let go for any (non-discriminatory) reason.
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Depends on who you’re dealing with for employees. Some will just walk out of the door. Other have the time, interest, and money to make things quite miserable for you.
 
There are many jobs out there that DO NOT require being in a physical office. For those positions, it makes a ton of sense to keep those people remote. Less commuting, more productive hours, happier employees. The blanket thought that everyone needs to come back to work is categorically wrong and an inefficient use of resources.

Amazon needs to focus less on bring people back into the office and more on getting my packages here in the promised 2-days.
 
techie81 said:
There are many jobs out there that DO NOT require being in a physical office. For those positions, it makes a ton of sense to keep those people remote. Less commuting, more productive hours, happier employees. The blanket thought that everyone needs to come back to work is categorically wrong and an inefficient use of resources.

Amazon needs to focus less on bring people back into the office and more on getting my packages here in the promised 2-days.
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There is no doubt that most jobs do not require being in the office. As an employer, there is also no doubt most people are not responsible enough to actually do their job when not in the office. I want my employees to be happy, but frankly their happiness is secondary to their ability to be productive. All of my employees would be happier if we had a 2 day work week - but I don't do that because it wouldn't make the company more money.

You have to realize that you are an outlier by the very fact you can write in complete sentences, can build a computer, and can afford decent things. Congratulations, you've hit the genetic lottery and are smarter and more responsible than most people. Therefore, you are capable of doing things that the majority of the population is not - like responsibly working from home.

It's not a one size fits all thing, and I do let some people WFH. But when we were full WFH, entry level people were a total disaster.
 
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