This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
That's one way to thin your workforce after you overhired for the covid boom.
I’m anything but a soothsayer, but we’re already seeing remote work become a pretty important factor in people choosing employers, and it seems like most of the larger players in their respective industries are the ones trying to force people back into the office.
I could see this become a huge boom for low-mid tier companies that are able to put in more affordable offer packages but with work from home options attached and pry away talent from the high tier companies.
This could go a long way towards hopefully rebalancing the scales for quite a few things and hopefully reeling in some of these companies who have been able to take so much for so long.
Big companies pulling employees back to the office isn't pulling them back to the office. It's laying off higher wages and making room for lower wages.
All it does for the industry is lower the barrier for entry. Id take a pay cut to keep working remotely, no problem. 100k jobs at 80k remote means smaller employers can compete.
Being forced back to the office is a paycut itself. It adds commute costs (fuel, wear and tear if you drive) and wastes more of your time you could spend doing other things. It also increases pollution and traffic for no good reason.
I had a headhunter come to me with what they thought was an aggressive offer to pry me away from my current company, but they believed in full office time all the time.
I calculated the commute time + gas + wear and tear into my calculation and it came in under my existing pay.
Went back to him and said unless you’re willing to do much better or move on the remote situation I’d be losing money by taking your offer.
I’ve heard from him a few times since asking if we can discuss it and I always ask, what’s the remote situation? “Oh maybe we can do a couple days a month.” Yea. No. Thanks for the offer, not interested. I recommend your company takes a second look at their office attendance requirements to stay competitive.
I know I’m not the only one as well. And I’m really hoping people start taking the opportunity to stand up to these useless requirements.
US companies have much more "freedoms" to rob their "workers" from benefits. By law we have the following benefits
I could tell a similar story about our healthcare (much cheaper and better)
The US has no law mandating paid time off and you can be fired for being sick unless you're out on FMLA.
FMLA => unpayed
Our leaves => payed
And our healthcare, things you pay a lot for in the US, are actually free here.
Exactly this. Companies that offer remote work are going to get their pick of employees, while companies that live in the past are going to subsist on what's left. Remote work can easily substitute for a huge amount of pay, because for a lot of employees that pay cut is less than what they'll save by not having to live in, say, San Francisco.
Good, leave the company and let it die
I'm doing my part!
Can I come with? I need to jump ship too.
Do it. The only thing holding you back is yourself. There are so many startups out there absolutely salivating for MANGA talent.
Even if I haven't been using Amazon for like a year or more, I don't really see that giant falling soon
It'll decline like the Roman empire.
What an out of touch wind bag. Oh sorry I meant douche bag. I’ve literally never seen a single positive story in the news about Amazon like ever. Plus their shit is filled with cheap Chinese ripoffs, exactly why I stopped using eBay too.
I wonder why idiots like this can become CEO.
What do you mean? The CEO's job is to extract as much value as possible from of the worker, fucking over customers just enough that they don't stop buying stuff from the company and generating short tern value for stock owners. If he has shown himself able to do that; he will get the CEO position.
Again COVID people have already been working remote. Do I have to explain agin.
"Fucking over customers", personally I don't want RATS as CEO.
Dumbass
Hey idiot, didn't you notice what happened during COVID.?
Idiot?
Andy Jassy seems like an incompetent version of Jeff Besos.
Yep. This solidifies my belief- irs a real estate issue
I think it's the intersection of a lot of different issues (most things are), and most of them are about keeping workers beaten down and under control, but real estate is definitely a big part of the push we've seen in the media to suggest that remote work is somehow bad and going to go away.
But why though?
Wouldn't it be more cost effective to not pay for huge buildings?
And even if you can't get out of the contract, wouldn't it still be more cost effective to just leave it empty without paying for electricity, water and heat?
Because the executives have money in, or relationships with, investments funds that are heavily vested in commercial real estate. So it might save money for the company, but the knock on effect of devaluing that real estate is a threat to many wealthy. So no matter how wasteful it is for the companies in question, the personal conflicts of interest at exectutive/board levels will ensure the farce continues until those companies are replaced or have no alternative.
Yes but there are some complicating factors.
Companies may actually need to provide an office for some employees who really need a place to work. Most people want to work from home but there are some who don’t have a suitable space and need something. And think about your IT crew: they need a physical space to store and work on hardware.
An office also gives the company a space where they can conduct job interviews, sales presentations, or corporate meetings. They may not be willing to just exit an entire city have no physical presence anymore.
Then there is the issue of blame: if they eat the real estate loss and just the lights out, whose fault is it? Someone gets the blame or has to at least put that loss on their books. They’d rather direct the blame at employees for not wanting to work.
And finally there are some execs who actually believe the office is better and will die on that hill.
Add up these factors and I think sometimes it tips the balance.
Yes, for the companies offering remote work downsizing your real estate footprint can be a huge cost savings.
For the real estate industry, however, the effects are devastating and the future looks terrifying. These companies are absolutely shitting themselves.
Outside observers tend to get these effects mixed up, because there is some bleed over, albeit in weird ways. Basically, yes, Amazon would be better off using less office space, but Amazon share holders all have huge investments in real estate (because it's considered the safest bet in the universe) and they're watching their portfolios with mounting horror. So even though it doesn't benefit the company, the shareholders are all big on getting people back into the office so that the unbelievably valuable global office real estate industry doesn't face an existential threat.
This happens to align nicely with all the ways in which managers prefer having employees in the office because they prefer keeping people on a short leash (extra time to do all the shit you want to do means extra time for things like learning new skills and hunting for a better job), and of course many of those managers are also heavily invested in real estate themselves.
Its all a big complicated mess with many other factors that I'm glossing over. Real estate is in there, and it's certainly a reason, but people are oversimplifying when they say it's the reason, at least in my opinion.
It's gotta be. If they were concerned about collective action they would be all for remote work, it's much harder for coworkers to bond or fraternize in remote positions.
Yes and no. While it's harder for workers to fraternize, I think they're also concerned that more of that fraternization would take place through channels that they can't observe.
Holy crap. He seriously has the most punchable looking face I've seen in months.
I am just so damn sick of every CEO.
Amazon has done way worse stuff to employees and they’ve not rebelled. They will 100% hold fast on 3 days in the office and be happy to see the back of anyone who leaves over it.
I’m not even talking about the abuses of drivers and warehouse workers. I’m talking about their tech offices. They are notorious for their hard driving long hours, darwinian culture, and aggressive managers.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Thousands of workers signed a petition against the mandate and staged a walkout in response.
In a recording of the meeting obtained by Insider, Jassy told workers, “It’s past the time to disagree and commit,” adding that “if you can’t disagree and commit... it’s probably not going to work out for you at Amazon because we are going back to the office at least three days a week.”
The Verge reached out to Amazon with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.
On top of ongoing layoffs, Amazon has been cracking down on employees who refuse to return to the office.
In July, leaked messages seen by Insider suggested that Amazon would force a “voluntary resignation” on employees who don’t relocate to the in-person hubs where their teams work while others just began quitting on their own.
The company has also started sending warnings to workers about their in-person attendance, according to Insider.
The original article contains 286 words, the summary contains 155 words. Saved 46%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
There isn't a remote chance?
I don't know about the meeting part, but the rest of the stuff in the article is correct. Can confirm.
Sit on a hot desk outside his office and just let it rip with a chesty cough.
A lot of people were bragging about using their mouse wigglers, running errands while working or having multiple remote jobs during the pandemic. What did they think it's going to happen?
