I wonder why companies like Amazon are asking employees to come-back to office for work ? Are there any other companies that is implementing this policy ? Is this just a temporary move and wouldn’t sustain long enough ? Or did the COVID era of WFH come to an end. Would like to hear from fellow blinders !!
Something something.. water coolers...
Most companies are implementing this. Companies realised productivity fell due to WFH. Yes, a lot of individuals proudly announce how they are extremely productive at home. However, there is a large majority of workers who WFH and treat it like a holiday. There is no one holding them accountable and they know it too. This is permanent. Covid is not of high concern anymore.
Companies soared to their highest ever profits and valuations when everyone was WFH from home. RTO is about control over employees, nothing more.
Them soaring to their highest profits is a ZIRP.
Amazon isn't the only ones....
The government asked FAANGs to enforce RTO as a last ditch effort to save their flailing commercial real estate lol
And still comments on other threads saying “remote is here to stay”. Few years from now, remote may become history. That’s why it’s a risk for people to relocate and buy houses.
Agreed. I think it will be a thing of the past very soon.... Unfortunately.
Some companies can operate efficiently while being remote. But again depends on the work and size of the company.
Another reason is to force attrition. Companies expected there to be some attrition as well due to the layoffs and uncertainty created by them. However because of a bad market for employees there was barely any attrition. MZ mentioned this in his Q&A after the November layoffs (“we expect another 5% reduction due to attrition, as is common in cases of layoffs”)
Lots of good answers here already. But I'll also add that for the current economic hardship, I'd guess that RTO represents a cheap way to let workers go (ie, no need to pay severance when someone abandons their post after not reporting to the office for 3 days in a row).
Is that actually true? If you're still reporting to meetings and completing work virtually it seems like they're just firing you based on RTO 'performance'. Wouldn't it be a PIP/paid firing like any other? Obviously they don't have to pay people that just choose to quit but it seems hard to argue someone who continues completing work has abandoned the position.
I'm not in HR, but not showing up 3 consecutive days is a typical abandonment clause. You'd have to check your own employment agreement to be sure.
Tax breaks, forced attrition, boomer managers
A lot of companies are trying to do this, not just amazon, I'm sure it's a combination of multiple factors from within the company and from outside, if a company built a big fancy office, or signed a multi year lease, you can bet that they will force employees to come at least a few times a week to get their moneys worth. And also a lot of commerical real estate might lose its value if employees stopped commuting downtown for work, so it's in the rich real estate owners and cities interest to make sure that companies keep their offices occupied in the city downtown areas. Ultimately rich people don't give a shit how productive you are working from home in your PJ's, they want your ass to warm a seat in their office. P.S there might also be a small push for back to office from people who don't like their home life, or feel the need to physically look at the people they manage to feel like they are doing their job
And still no software engineers union, there could be an agreement to monitoring remote employees that work from home and not take 20% of my precious time on this earth on a commute.
After all the fuckery companies have done this past year, with all the layoffs and shit, I wish a national level union would exist for software engineers so we can collectively get better working rights and long term stability, but this is the land of "fuck you got mine", so that's a pipe dream at best
2 main things - justifying office space on the books, and lazy managers who monitor employees by clock in and out time rather than work product
Does Microsoft require you to be in office few days a week?
Many teams do