Amazon exec says it’s time for workers to ‘disagree and commit’ to office return — “I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better.”

SirEDCaLot , 6 months ago

Amazon monitors and logs and analyzes everything. As a company they are all about data. If they find something that will get the package out the door one half second faster, they’ll spend millions rolling it out everywhere.

If he doesn’t have the data, there is zero chance that means the data doesn’t exist. That means the data paints a very different picture and he has chosen to ignore it.

MystikIncarnate , 6 months ago

I would put money on this.

Business owners and business leaders are all about efficiency, unless it inhibits their ability to keep you under their boot.

EatATaco , 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

You realize this is a self defeating point, right? If they knew the workers were more efficient at home they would commit to total WFH.

The logical conclusion from your claims is not that the data contradicts what he wants to be true, but that the data confirms that return to office is better, but for some reason he can’t share that information.

hglman , 6 months ago

No, it does not. It means that they think it’s more profitable for shareholders.

EatATaco , 6 months ago

So the logical conclusion is that it’s better for the share holders for the employees to be less productive?

Enfors , 6 months ago

It’s not that simple. There’s also the issue of paying rent for offices which also feeds into shareholder (although possibly different shareholders) profits, etc. I’m no expert, but I have a feeling this is all very complicated.

EatATaco , 6 months ago

I can’t come up with a care where making their employees less productivity is better for the shareholders simply because they are paying for space somewhere. you’ll have to explain this.

SirEDCaLot , 6 months ago

Okay I can do that.

Pre-pandemic- Amazon says offices are important. Signs 25 year leases for lots of office space.
Pandemic hits. Everyone goes WFH. Data shows people work just as well from home. Company publicly announces that they are running at full productivity. Shareholders love it.
Now we’re here. Employees are WFH and loving it. Middle management is chafing because they like being able to manage their employees by walking to desks. Upper management is unhappy because they like having a big corner office at the top of the building humming with workers. Workers are happier than ever.
Upper management says ‘if we embrace WFH, we’ll have way too much office space and leases that will cost a fortune to break. If we do that and take the hit, the shareholders will ask why we didn’t have the vision to do that in the first place, before we signed for this expensive office. The managers we listen to all hate WFH too. So we’ll push RTO.’ And in the grand scheme of things, a few % employee productivity doesn’t mean that much…

EatATaco , 6 months ago

Thats plausible, but pretty complicated. I would absolutely invoke Occam’s razor here tho

SirEDCaLot , 6 months ago

Okay then even simpler, management likes having workers they can physically see and thinks it makes them more productive. Amazon may relentlessly pursue efficiency, but they also make choices in how they do that based on their own culture. For example, if they paid their employees more but weeded out all but the best employees, which is the strategy Netflix uses, that might also increase efficiency more than just cycling through employees like disposable robots. But they don’t do that (or even try it) because that isn’t their culture.

Tkpro , 6 months ago

Pretty sure Amazon gets kickbacks from the city of Seattle to keep the offices filled with ppl

EatATaco , 6 months ago

Amazon is massive. Much of their overhead goes to workers, and if the workers were more efficient at home, the city would have to offer a ton of money to make up for the most productivity. So unless you have some convincing evidence otherwise, this is hard to believe.

SirEDCaLot , 6 months ago

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” --Anais Nin

A manager who thinks physical access to employees makes him an effective manager is going to push for that, even if the data says otherwise. We see this in every industry. During pandemic the headline was ‘productivity is flat or increasing with WFH’, now it’s ‘time for RTO’.

It’s also not just about management, it’s about real estate. Companies including Amazon have paid billions for office space, including long term leases that will be very costly to break. So if they say WFH is the future, they’ll have to explain to their shareholders why they signed for (apparently unnecessary) office space that’s hurting the bottom line.

EatATaco , 6 months ago

You’re contradicting the top level commenters point that they relentlessly pursue efficiency. Now it’s that the pursue shareholder happiness. I wonder why you didn’t correct them, but me.

It’s almost like we’re throwing explanations against the wall looking for something to stick.

But the simple counter is the simple explanation: we didn’t know a pandemic was coming and couldn’t foresee what no one was able to foresee: a rapid shift to WFH. We held the offices as we didn’t know that WFH could be a long term solution. Now that we are pretty confident our workforce is more productive at home, we’ve decided to cut our office space losses.

No one would bat an eye at this.

killeronthecorner , 6 months ago

The data does exist and shows one thing: the death of commercial property and long term leases accruing cost without creating value.

This is incompatible with capitalism and so it’s working hard to eliminate the incongruence.

SirEDCaLot , 6 months ago

The funny thing is, it’s compatible with capitalism, just people are either afraid of change or invested in the old ways.

Amazon would love a 1% increase in employee productivity, unless it means $500MM worth of lease breaking fees and shareholders grilling them for why they signed those leases in the first place. Or worse they bought the building, and now have to sell it at a big discount.

Everyone’s invested in commercial real estate because it was a cash cow. Now the party’s over, and rather than acknowledge that lots of people (and cities) have a financial incentive to try and keep the party going.

Of course the shitty thing is the big losers in all this are the individual people. The workers in a city lose when property values (and cost of living as a result) are so high they can’t afford rent. The workers in a company lose when they have to waste time and money commuting. But nobody seems to give a shit about the little guy…

Lettuceeatlettuce , 6 months ago

Straight up fundamentalist religious thinking right there.

“There isn’t any reason for you to believe what I’m saying, but just believe it anyways.”

EatATaco , 6 months ago

This is not at all what he said. I understand that the facts are unimportant in the face of the narrative, but he just said he doesn’t have the facts to back up what he believes is true. There are lots of reasons to believe it is true, and he gave a bunch. Whether or not it is true is hard to tell without the data, but claiming he’s saying nothing more than “just because” is ignoring the facts in favor of what you want to be true.

I mean, unless you have the facts to back up your (I assume) claim that WFH is better, then you are no different than he is on this, and you are effectively calling yourself a “fundamentalist religious” thinker.

Lettuceeatlettuce , 6 months ago

Nice try, but maybe practice in the garage next time before stepping up for a debate.

1. What do you call somebody who admits they have no data or evidence to back up what they believe but still insists that they are right and you have to agree with them? Yeah, a religious fundamentalist is a good example. His claim was all anecdotal, he just “feels” like people work better in person based on his own subjective experience.

Now that might be fine when it comes to some things, live and let live, etc. The difference here is that he and other upper management get to just force the rest of the workers to conform to their viewpoint without any evidence. It’s a structural problem.

2. I never claimed that WFH is universally better than in-office work, so strike two on that one. I’m merely critiquing his approach of forcing workers to conform to a policy that he believes in, based on no supporting evidence, just vibes. I was making a structural critique.
3. If you want my actual viewpoint, I think that WFH should be up to the employee. Some people work better in person, some people work better from home, and some (like me) enjoy hybrid because of the flexibility it offers. Also, some people are brutally punished by mandated in-office work. A person who has a 90 minute commute both ways (who typically isn’t compensated for commute time,) is a perfect candidate for WFH. But because this guy “feels like” WFH is bad, he gets to just dictate that from on high instead of workers being able to figure out what works best for them and their teams.

In other words, nuance is important, unless you are a fundie who builds their beliefs off vibes and anecdotes and then imposes them on other people regardless of their views, desires, situations, or objective data.

EatATaco , 6 months ago

You’ve already moved the goalposts from:

There isn’t any reason for you to believe what I’m saying,

To

What do you call somebody who admits they have no data or evidence to back up what they believe

The change in your language already admits one of my points landed, so thanks for the indirect admission.

That being said, I don’t have the data to prove that when I walk down the sidewalk I’m not going to fall through the ground…although I have reason to believe that this won’t happen. Does this make me a religious fundamentalist? Of course not. We don’t need data for everything in order to come to reasonable conclusions based on past experience. Even if those conclusions are wrong and one day I do fall through the ground, that doesn’t make me unreasonable or equivalent to a religious fanatic.

I think that WFH should be up to the employee.

Sorry, but this is painfully naive. I absolutely agree that this is what is best for the worker, but it’s not necessarily what’s best for the business for a few reasons. One, mainly because of what the guy said in the article that there are many reasons why being in the office is better: collaboration being the big one. Additionally if workers always were making that decision based on how they work best then that would be one thing, but we know that is not how people work and they are going to be making decisions on what’s best for them. I mean, just go and look at the over employed subreddits. It’s filled with people figuring out ways to make it look like you’re working without actually working.

I think flexibility is important, but my experience is that our team works better when people are in the office. Im sure WFH is better for a tiny subset of workers (from a productivity standpoint) but in all the places I’ve worked it seems almost like wilful ignorance to ignore the benefits of people working in the same space.

Lettuceeatlettuce , 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

You left out the second part of my initial comment, not surprising since it expresses what I said in my expanded response. “…but just believe it anyways.” and then you left out that same sentiment in my second response.

You didn’t address my point about my comment being a structual critique probably because you were more concerned with comparing the differences in my wording vs extracting the meaning and arguments from those words.

Actually, there is data to support your trust in walking down the sidewalk safely. Sidewalks are built by crews of concrete workers, and that process at every level is overseen by trained individuals who conform to clear standards for concrete strength, safe construction practices, etc. So no, your act of walking on a sidewalk doesn’t require blind faith.

Plus, it doesn’t matter, you’re trying to make a point about epistemic warrant and I’m trying to make a point about structual inequality in corporate America. Plus, even if you didn’t have any good reasons to think sidewalks were safe to walk on, that’s still not equivalent to my argument because in that example, you aren’t trying to impose your personal view on others. Religious fundies are almost never content just believing their doctrine in a vaccum, they attempt to impose it onto other people who don’t share their views.

Your whole last point misses what I said. I never claimed that WFH is universally better for employees, I said that it should be up to the employees and their teams to decide what works best for them. There are reasons other than general productivity why WFH is better for some workers, like the example I gave of folks who have extremely long commutes.

But because of the structural inequality within the corporate world, those considerations are thrown into the trash by executives that get to impose their will on those workers just because vibes. (I actually think in many cases it’s far more nafarious than that, but I’m being charitable in my assumptions here.)

And finally, I never claimed there are no benefits to working in the office, I literally said that I was a person who enjoys a hybrid situation. I’m arguing for more workplace democracy, instead of an authoritarian environment where the high-ups get to impose their will on everybody else based on nothing more than their feelings.

puppy , 6 months ago

Amazon doesn’t have data? I say bullshit!

StereoTrespasser , 6 months ago

I wish these assholes would just come out and tell the truth: they need you in the office to justify their multi-decade office leases that they can’t get out of.

Got_Bent , 6 months ago

Ding ding ding!

PeleSpirit , 6 months ago

A lot of them are in the real estate business too (ex: Amazon), and the people who rent from them like retail/hospitality, aren’t renewing their leases. Tiny violin is playing.

w3dd1e , 6 months ago

I work on commercial real estate. Sometimes the fees we charge make me feel shitty but then I remember the borrowers are landlords.

BrianTheeBiscuiteer , 6 months ago

At least then we’d know it was a rational decision.

prole , 6 months ago

That’s still sunk cost fallacy. If they’ve already paid, it doesn’t matter. In fact, they’d probably save money on maintenance and overhead by keeping the office empty (or even subletting it or something).

DragonTypeWyvern , 6 months ago

But that would require them to admit they were wrong and not prescient.

FlyingSquid , 6 months ago

Corporations base so many decisions on sunk cost.

hglman , 6 months ago

They don’t have leases. They own that real estate. So its value is a considerable line item in the company’s value. If they get people in office, it’s a boost to the company’s value. The property is hit yet sunk in their eyes.

prole , 6 months ago

They own that real estate.

Yes, that’s the sunk cost. It’s fallacious to believe that: just because you’ve already paid for the real estate in an attempt to earn money in the long term, it’s necessarily more profitable to see that plan to the end regardless of changes in circumstances. More often than not, it’s better to just cut your losses.

If they get people in office, it’s a boost to the company’s value.

I don’t really understand what this means… We’re talking about those people doing that same work, but from home. They’re still doing the same amount (if not more due to higher efficiency) of work. Only now you don’t need to pay the salaries of maintenance, janitorial staff, security, etc., which would be a savings and help recoup some of the losses.

Or, like I said, if they own the building, they could lease out part of it or all of it themselves while their employees do their work from home.

penguin , 6 months ago

The people who claim “real estate value!” have just latched onto the simplest reason they can which aligns with their worldview.

The reasons I suspect companies are forcing return to office are more:

• shareholders don’t like unused assets, so they tell the ceo to "use it or lose it"
• the people who make the decision have the type of extroverted personality where they actually do work better in the office and they can’t fathom people being different
• the people who make the decision prefer to have the office full because it makes them feel more powerful. They can see the people they lord over.

hglman , 6 months ago

If getting people back into work makes your property more valuable that the productive losses, it’s not a sunk cost. The leaders might be doing their math wrong, but they are not necessarily making a sunk cost fallacy here.

However, i do agree it’s likely a choice driven by power and personalities, not money. I suspect a lot of talk about how remote workers can be abused and controlled has happened.

NoLifeGaming , 6 months ago

People don’t want to because WFH is much better for employees. Why waste time on commute, gas, and get out from the comfort of your home?

Maddie , 6 months ago

“I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better.”

This is every boss in every company throughout time lol

stolid_agnostic , 6 months ago

The business bro in a nutshell.

Fermion , 6 months ago

How do statements like that not spook investors? You’re telling me that leadership in the world’s largest internet hosting service are making decisions without collecting relevant data first, or worse, wilfully ignoring the data available that doesn’t support their preference? That is not a good sign for the future growth of AWS.

Touching_Grass , 6 months ago

I think this stuff entices investors more than anything

aegis_sum , 6 months ago

The investors are also invested in commercial real estate, so it’s a win/win .

mosiacmango , 6 months ago

One of Amazon’s core values is being data driven. If you want to change something, you colllect data about it first. It was one of employees large counterpoints to RTO at the org, the lack of data provided about its value.

This is the exec admitting they aren’t following the Amazon process, but are making people do it anyway.

"Disagree and commit" is another one of their principles, i.e “we acknowledge that you disagree, but you need to commit anyway now that we made the decision.” Better known as “Im the boss, so shut up.”

This guy is just a bald face saying “we dont have the data to back this up so we shouldn’t do it, but i said do it, so do it.”

Excrubulent , 6 months ago

“Disagree and commit” is a line that’s used in Hardspace Shipbreaker by a terrible middle manager who’s bullying his crew. It’s so obviously framed in the game as just some bullshit to say shut up without using mean sounding words. I should have expected it came from the real world but it was so weird to see it crop up in a news article lol.

thehatfox , 6 months ago

Because executives and investors are often cut from the same cloth, flaws and all. Plenty of them will have the same baseless belief that office-based work is “just better”.

Plenty of the are also investors in commercial real estate as well as tech companies, and property bubbles need regular reinflation.

EvilBit , 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

Thing is, all else being equal, office-based work IS better (edit: in many cases). But all else is not even remotely equal. Office-based work has tremendous extra cost: rent, utilities, facilities, morale, commute time, mental exhaustion, inflexibility, environmental impact, and so on. Add it all up and while I don’t have the data to back it up, I’m pretty sure working from home is better.

TheActualDevil , 6 months ago

Where’s your data that, “all else being equal, office-based work IS better”? I mean, I don’t have data that says otherwise, but I know the company I work for as well as higher-ups at other companies I’ve talked to noticed right out the gate that productivity went up when they went work from home. The same work needs to be done, and it gets done. If it doesn’t, fire them. I have trouble seeing how the location the worker is in matters, all things being equal.

EvilBit , 6 months ago

Fair enough. I should have qualified with “in many cases”. Design and creative work can be done in large part remotely, but benefit greatly from in-person collaboration and workshopping.

III , 6 months ago

The company I am at experienced the same results - a surprising jump in productivity. But they are forcing us back to the office now. Odd, almost like productivity isn’t a factor to them…

cheese_greater , 6 months ago

Its ironic too cuz Amazon analytics and measures everything. If they don’t have it, it don’t exist

SuperSaiyanSwag , 6 months ago

My previous company’s head blamed poor FDA results on WFH and then mandated everyone to be in the office 4 times a week. People who work from home don’t even work on that stuff, it was just an excuse to justify buying yet another building.

Lemminary , 6 months ago

I feel it in me booones! And my right tibia is always right.

Kolanaki , 6 months ago

I don’t have data to back it up but I know it’s better

I do have data to back it up, and I know it’s not.

SineSwiper , 6 months ago

I have the data just from car usage alone. It is braindead easy to produce a detailed ROI document proving how much money both the employer and employees are saving from remote work. It’s a lot from both sides, and that’s not including all of the less tangible benefits, like morale, team building, more focused work with less distractions, etc.

HessiaNerd , 6 months ago

If you dig into the links in the article, there is one study finding data entry workers in India worked only 87% as hard as their in office counterparts, however, the studies authors are quick to point out living conditions and management styles are significantly different there than in the US. There is also a study in the US which found that approximately 40% of time saved by not commuting went to additional work. Guess which study is brought up in more articles by FORTUNE?

EatATaco , 6 months ago

Care to share that data?

Kolanaki , 6 months ago

…owllabs.com/…/owl-labs_state-of-remote-work-2021…

EatATaco , 6 months ago

This is self reporting productivity, not actual productivity.

likelyaduck , 6 months ago

RTO is only “better” for the owning class.

RTO makes it harder to micromanage > employees realise they can self-organise > employees form unions and demand “better” employment contracts

Also the money saved by not commuting has allowed (some) office workers to save up for emergency funds, which comes in handy when it is time for a strike.

RTO = preventative union busting

Heisenberg9999 , 6 months ago

Fuck this piece of shit,

Ookami38 , 6 months ago

I don’t have data for you eating lead chips either, but I’m sure it’s better.

captainlezbian , 6 months ago

It really sounds like he thinks workers are refusing to return to work purely out of a sincere belief that wfh is better for the company and not “go fuck yourselves this is really nice and I’m able to do my job just as well from my home”

dojan , 6 months ago

I’m able to do my job (and life) better with work from home.

I don’t crave the social interaction as much as others. Social situations wear me out, and the ability to schedule my work fairly freely means that I can work around my debilitating neurological condition. Work from home has given me the opportunity to function mostly like a normal member of society, and I really value that.

Honestly don’t think I’d last long if a return to office was made mandatory. If I don’t burn out I’ll jump off a bridge or something.

bjoern_tantau , 6 months ago

When wfh was implemented company wide at the start of Corona communication actually got better because now everyone was forced to use a chat app with video calling. That way every colleague was just one click away. The shyer ones typed out their quick requests and those who needed to see a face called with the webcam enabled. Before that it was just too much hassle for some people to write an email, use the telephone or walk through the large building to the colleague. Even quick meetings with people from four different departments were now much easier and quicker to organise.

LadyAutumn , 6 months ago

I love socially interacting with my co-workers. I can just as easily do that over teams. Better honestly, as if I’m focused heavily on a task, I can take a moment to stop at a convenient spot before checking my messages. As opposed to having people literally walk up to me or just start talking to me while I’m busy doing something. The face to face conversation was nice, but the pros far outweigh the cons in my opinion.

I personally will never go back. I have adhd and being able to stay home and thusly have 0 commute time has been an absolute wonder for my well-being.

FlyingSquid , 6 months ago

Yep. My last job was a hybrid schedule and I was always far more productive at home than at the office. Because I was comfortable at home and had no distractions.

III , 6 months ago

They give people adjustable chairs at work, so the concept that every worker isn’t an identical and replaceable cog exists somewhere in their brains. Sadly it is behind the intense desire for money and will likely never be given the space to grow.

AutVincamAutPeriam , 6 months ago

They have the data. It’s Amazon. The data just doesn’t say what they want it to say.

reverendsteveii , 6 months ago

every time my boss threatened RTO I got a new job with a raise. My current company pays me twice what I was making the first time someone tried to force me back into the office, and they don’t have an office. They have a PO box for what little physical mail they get, and that’s it.

FlyingSquid , 6 months ago

I wish you could do word substitution in real life like you can with text substitution. If so, every time I heard “I don’t have the data to back it up,” it would become “I’m an idiot who doesn’t know what I’m talking about but-”

dukk , 6 months ago

But wouldn’t that be too long? At that point, you’d either have to speed it up or you’d have to push back everything else they were saying, causing you to be delayed.

I’d shorten it to “I’m making this the fuck up”.

shasta , 6 months ago

Seems to work fine in Star Trek