The headline in the link is incorrect. The first line of the article states:
“Amazon is instructing corporate staffers to spend five days a week in the office, CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a memo on Monday.”
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Can confirm this is true. My SAS manager had to relocate to TX to get to one of the Amazon buildings that SAS managers can work out of. He’s living with a friend for now to try it out. If he’s not happy he’s leaving Amazon.
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Good for them. I think a work from home type arrangement might work for some people/companies, but for a big company you generally want everyone to follow the same policy and when there’s teams involved having everyone in the same place usually results in better productivity.
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As someone who has managed large teams in the past, WFH repulsed me when it first started around 2007 in my past life.
I hated having people at home but I got used to it because the output was unaffected, and in fact, I think those that were on the program got more done for whatever reason.
Maybe they were just more productive at home or maybe they wanted to go the extra mile to ensure they kept the benefit of being able to WFH.
I think it really depends on the person. IMO, those that can handle it and perform, should be allowed to. On the profitability side of things for a business, it’s a benefit to be able to have smaller internal spaces.
I’m old school but still believe WFH is appropriate in many situations, even 100%.
Times have changed, technology has changed. Why should someone have to drive to a building to do the same thing they can do at home? It’s also better for the planet, for those that are into that sort of thing.
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Having always run groups which were teams, I believe you lose an essential part of getting the work done when the only team building is artificial.
WFH destroys natural teams and all you get are human resource driven drones.
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Kinda, The way I read the announcement was “Return to pre-covid rules.” so still very flexible. But yeah, they want to use the office space they are paying for.
Edit to add link and quote:
To address the second issue of being better set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other and our culture to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business, we’ve decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID.
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It also depends on the work.
If 98% of your day is just responding to emails and attending in office zoom calls, there is no need to drive into the office. People writing code don’t necessarily sit down in a confrence room and write code on the white board
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It does depend, but if you’re going to have a one size fits all policy (which big companies like Amazon typically have) I think forcing people to be in the office is better overall.
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And then there was the coder who wrote an AI bot to complete his work while he sat on the beach drinking Coronas …
... but then ... ?
Fictional but probably in the back of every Amazon CEO’s mind … unless his coder has gifted him with his very own AI work bot …
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If someone could code an AI bot to do their job as well or better than they were doing it in the first place, and without any falloff in their work performance while they developed the bot, I’d say that person deserves a few paid days on the beach. I’d also say they deserve better beer.
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Mr Papy has been WFH with the same company since 2008. When the pandemic made everyone WFH, he offered experienced insight into how to make it truly work.
- His department has a 9am “stand up” meeting daily.
- When they aren’t in meetings, they’re usually in casual video chat sessions, like being all around the same conference table but working independently.
- He says he and the other managers/executives are so much more accessible than when everyone was/is in the office, he has better tabs on where his team is organically without artificial steps like “status reports,” and he has better access to other teams/departments.
- Everyone is forced to consult his schedule and work queue before just popping in with a question, and
- Any tickets have to go through the process and people, not direct to Mr Papy (“the fixer of all things”) via drive-by hallway ask.
But these folks are in the tech/comms/financial industry, doing all the backend things to make the Big Names look good.
So maybe they are just naturally better at making tech actually work for efficiency, productivity, and team building, than some others?
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Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
I’ve read it, and re-read it, and I give up! What part is incorrect?
I can see where the first sentence under the headline might cause confusion, but I’m reading “work out of the office” the same as “work out of your home,” which I assume is what was intended.
So, as usual, I’m confused. 
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Well, if the boss (my wife) demands me to work in the office 5 days a week, I am going on strike … as a man has to do what a man has to do to protect his playtime in the garage.
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When I copied the link, this is how it pasted on SAS:
“Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is instructing corporate staffers to work out of the office five days a week.”
“…out of the office…” To me, that means away from the office. But Jassy actually wants workers in the office, not out of the office.
It confused me too so I went back and double-checked the headline of the story on CNBC, The story headline is correct but when I copied and pasted it the wording had changed. Ahh, fun with the internet.
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There is a core component that depends on the job, where the time and resources wasted in the commute and social interactions can be far more detrimental to the overall outcome. An example is my neighbor who was an architect, he saved 2 hours a day not commuting long before the pandemic and traded half that time for work. The company got an extra workload out of it, the employee got 5 hours of time and both saved on the commute.
There is nothing he needs to do in person that cannot be done virtually.
My wife is in finance. She does not need to helicopter over her subordinates to bolster, enhance, or supervise them as they are all professionals capable of managing their time and seeking help when needed. They all are far more productive by every measurable metric, after they lost their commute than before COVID pushed this down on the organization.
Her organization offered this to all accounting/finance employees before Covid because the building needed renovation so they started remote work 6 months before covid, and the productivity skyrocketed as it was made clear the entire floor would be sold off if the productivity was increased. Her department noted most people logged more hours because they did not need to make the ferry/subway/rideshare/train/etc, cutting projects short for the next work day.
While many jobs and employees require direct supervision, I assert many professionals are less efficient/productive/profitable, and are simply wasting time to placate managements fear of someone getting a nooner instead of making a powerpoint or TPS report.
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If that was an Amazon coder and the bot was as good as they were, that bot would still be unacceptable.
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My commute is almost 2 hours each way. I work from home whenever I can.
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Imagine the lost productivity at 2 hours a day. I also bet nobody had to manage your commute or team build it for you either lol.
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Exception. Not rule.
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For now…
" As of August 2023, 12.2% of U.S. workers are fully remote. More than 4.7 million U.S. workers are remote at least half of the time. Only 11.1% of private sector businesses are fully remote. 65% of workers want to be remote all the time, while 32% prefer a hybrid work schedule."
When you subtract out those that do not ever work in an office like an electrical lineman, oil worker, etc. the percentage of office workers drops dramatically by comparison.
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