<story><title>Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/16/amazon-jassy-tells-employees-to-return-to-office-five-days-a-week.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>NoMoreNicksLeft</author><text>&amp;gt; There are massive (many trillion) commercial real estate interests at play here that t&lt;p&gt;That theory is bullshit though. Yes, there are companies that stand to lose if office buildings clear out. But they&amp;#x27;re not the same companies that make the RTO decisions. The companies making those decisions could actually gain if they ditched the office buildings... facility cost is some absurdly large line item on the ledger for most businesses.&lt;p&gt;Without a clear connection between the two, I have to chalk this up to irrationality. Companies are still run by humans, and humans are irrational more often than rational. Especially with something like this, where there&amp;#x27;s no clear precedent to steer by.</text></item><item><author>highcountess</author><text>I suggest you dispel of this notion that the players in this game have any sense of rationality or logic about this topic. There are massive (many trillion) commercial real estate interests at play here that totally trump all productivity, health, and even the holiest of holy climate change benefits. I don’t think people quite understand the real order of priorities and issues related to remote working. The big corporations are under both pulling and pushing pressures from the government and interests that control it to “put butts in seats” in big commercial real estate. They don’t care about anything else and they are throwing around money and fear to whip everyone into shape.&lt;p&gt;Yes, there will be some pressure pushing back and dread by corporations stuck between the ol’ rock of competition and the government-favor hard place, but it is unlikely to win out at the corporate level unless some real independent competition rises that is putting on massive pressure by not having commercial real estate capital expenditures.&lt;p&gt;A small office in a city can easily cost $1M per year, sure there are tax benefits, but they’re not benefits if you are competing with someone that does not have those expenses at all or far fewer, even after paying for team meetups that also fund a family vacation.</text></item><item><author>esafak</author><text>&amp;gt; Because of the badging policy in place, I end up scheduling non productive days at the office&lt;p&gt;An added benefit of this is that it makes working from home look more productive, if they&amp;#x27;re keeping score :)</text></item><item><author>ldenoue</author><text>Same here: I work on speech for a big company and working from the office is terrible. I had to squat the restroom 3 times yesterday so I could work (talk to my phone!)&lt;p&gt;At home I am so much more productive and zero commute.&lt;p&gt;Because of the badging policy in place, I end up scheduling non productive days at the office (doing email, reading other docs, meetings which are always with remote folks anyway but at least they see a genuine meeting room or phone booth behind my pretty face, so I guess that counts? ;)</text></item><item><author>ryukoposting</author><text>As a firmware engineer, my job demands more &amp;quot;in-office-y&amp;quot; stuff than most other engineers on HN. I have specialized equipment. Hardware. I need to interface with manufacturing. So on.&lt;p&gt;Guess what? I&amp;#x27;m going on 1 year fully remote, and I&amp;#x27;m doing great! Turns out, all that fancy equipment can be brought home with you. We deal with a contract manufacturer, and emailing them from home is no harder than emailing them from the office. Instead of being stuck in a concrete jungle, I can go test the product out in a more realistic environment in the park across from my home. It&amp;#x27;s made me happier, healthier AND more productive. Eliminating 2 hours a day of driving and train rides left me with more energy I can expend on my work! Who&amp;#x27;da thunk it?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Lutger</author><text>Totally. A lot of corps are ruled by management and sales people. Those often really enjoy talking and connecting, and it is a form of control for them. Of lot of these people think they can&amp;#x27;t do their job well if the quiet people (IT, devs) disappear into their homes. And they often genuinely think the workforce needs to have meetings and show up to be accountable. They don&amp;#x27;t really think about what IT people actually need, or they do sometimes but it won&amp;#x27;t be a decisive factor in the end.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve worked in places where sales people were seated next to programmers, and the sales people were shouting through their phones continuously. The programmers complained endlessly about all the noise - without effect. First lockdown we had showed an increase of at least 300% productivity - hard and reliable numbers because all output was tracked voluntarily by the team (management never asked for this). Number of builds, commits, releases...everything was way up. It was quite shocking.&lt;p&gt;As soon as lockdowns were lifted managers began talking about being in the office fulltime, because it was so good to talk to each other and align your work. I remember working in a team that did 1 day a week at the office, that day we couldn&amp;#x27;t get anything done because everybody was just chit chatting all the time. Even if you wanted to - it was just impossible to focus.&lt;p&gt;Our security officer (CISO) remarked how the lockdown enabled him to think seriously about a security issue for the first time in almost two years. Isn&amp;#x27;t that tragic?&lt;p&gt;Companies are as rational as consumer behavior. You can&amp;#x27;t make this stuff up. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/16/amazon-jassy-tells-employees-to-return-to-office-five-days-a-week.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>NoMoreNicksLeft</author><text>&amp;gt; There are massive (many trillion) commercial real estate interests at play here that t&lt;p&gt;That theory is bullshit though. Yes, there are companies that stand to lose if office buildings clear out. But they&amp;#x27;re not the same companies that make the RTO decisions. The companies making those decisions could actually gain if they ditched the office buildings... facility cost is some absurdly large line item on the ledger for most businesses.&lt;p&gt;Without a clear connection between the two, I have to chalk this up to irrationality. Companies are still run by humans, and humans are irrational more often than rational. Especially with something like this, where there&amp;#x27;s no clear precedent to steer by.</text></item><item><author>highcountess</author><text>I suggest you dispel of this notion that the players in this game have any sense of rationality or logic about this topic. There are massive (many trillion) commercial real estate interests at play here that totally trump all productivity, health, and even the holiest of holy climate change benefits. I don’t think people quite understand the real order of priorities and issues related to remote working. The big corporations are under both pulling and pushing pressures from the government and interests that control it to “put butts in seats” in big commercial real estate. They don’t care about anything else and they are throwing around money and fear to whip everyone into shape.&lt;p&gt;Yes, there will be some pressure pushing back and dread by corporations stuck between the ol’ rock of competition and the government-favor hard place, but it is unlikely to win out at the corporate level unless some real independent competition rises that is putting on massive pressure by not having commercial real estate capital expenditures.&lt;p&gt;A small office in a city can easily cost $1M per year, sure there are tax benefits, but they’re not benefits if you are competing with someone that does not have those expenses at all or far fewer, even after paying for team meetups that also fund a family vacation.</text></item><item><author>esafak</author><text>&amp;gt; Because of the badging policy in place, I end up scheduling non productive days at the office&lt;p&gt;An added benefit of this is that it makes working from home look more productive, if they&amp;#x27;re keeping score :)</text></item><item><author>ldenoue</author><text>Same here: I work on speech for a big company and working from the office is terrible. I had to squat the restroom 3 times yesterday so I could work (talk to my phone!)&lt;p&gt;At home I am so much more productive and zero commute.&lt;p&gt;Because of the badging policy in place, I end up scheduling non productive days at the office (doing email, reading other docs, meetings which are always with remote folks anyway but at least they see a genuine meeting room or phone booth behind my pretty face, so I guess that counts? ;)</text></item><item><author>ryukoposting</author><text>As a firmware engineer, my job demands more &amp;quot;in-office-y&amp;quot; stuff than most other engineers on HN. I have specialized equipment. Hardware. I need to interface with manufacturing. So on.&lt;p&gt;Guess what? I&amp;#x27;m going on 1 year fully remote, and I&amp;#x27;m doing great! Turns out, all that fancy equipment can be brought home with you. We deal with a contract manufacturer, and emailing them from home is no harder than emailing them from the office. Instead of being stuck in a concrete jungle, I can go test the product out in a more realistic environment in the park across from my home. It&amp;#x27;s made me happier, healthier AND more productive. Eliminating 2 hours a day of driving and train rides left me with more energy I can expend on my work! Who&amp;#x27;da thunk it?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>blackeyeblitzar</author><text>Companies like Amazon literally own billions in office space. Making that space valuable again with RTO policies, especially if you create an RTO trend, a way of enabling them to sell at their previous values.</text></comment>