Guessing it’s a flawed idea in some way (but not a manager myself) - I think they should offer a modest but nontrivial pay overlay type of thing for in-office work over remote. If you really like remote, take the paycut but stay comfy. If you really need/want maximal $, you do most or all of your work in the office.
@@sighsgkj Yeah that was funny. You gotta hand it to Wells Fargo. After helping spark the Great Recession years ago, they manage to make everything extremely worse!
And that might not have happened if she had coworkers who didn’t work from home and actually cared. Sorry but that story says more about the every day workers at Wells Fargo than the upper management.
@@ninjagirl226 Do you really think WFH was the reason she wasn't identified, and had nothing to do with management that didn't realize she was entirely gone and unresponsive? She literally was in-office with other managers who were also in-office.
@@ninjagirl226 Nah, not WFH's fault. The janitors & staff on site are responsible. Especially whoever does payroll & tracks work hours. The fact they think its ok for someone stay clocked in on site for up to 96 hours is a bad mark on the company & its on site work culture and why no one wants to go back to the office.
In the 50's my Dad worked a modest job, Mom stayed at home and raised the kids, and they lived a nice middle class lifestyle including owning a home. Nowadays both I and my partner works and can barely afford to make ends meet. Soon the kids and family dog will need to work to keep this household going. It's the destruction of the American dream right before our eyes.
Starts off with "Go to college and make something of yourself" then its "work hard and you will move up" but it should be "look at the demand in careers" "Don't just commit to a single source type of income" Majority of this problem is in education, we're taught how to obey rules and follow directions, ask for permission to use the bathrooms, raise your hand to talk, the list goes on. But at the end of it schools are just programing the future bots for work.
I plan to retire at 62 in another country outside the US that is free, safe and very cheap with a high quality of life. I could fully just rely on only my SS if I wanted to when that times arrives but I'll also have at least one pension, a 403 (b) and a very prolific lnvestment account with my Abby Joseph Cohen my FA. Retiring comfortably in the US these days is almost impossible.
@@VernesaGunz I know this FA, Abby Joseph Cohen Services but only by her reputation at Goldman Sachs; even though she's now involved in managing portfolios and providing investmnt guidance to clients. I have been trying to get in contact since I watched her interview on WSJ last month
@@VonNothiasWell her name is 'ABBY JOSEPH COHEN SERVICES'. Just research the name. You'd find necessary details to work with a correspondence to set up an appointment.
I went from no money to lnvest with to busting my A** off on Uber eats for four months to raise about $20k to start trading with Abby Joseph Cohen. I am at $128k right now and LOVING that you have to bring this up here
I’ll try to make it make sense… “it is not about you or your thoughts about what you think is best for the company. You are an employee, do what you are told or go find somewhere else to work.” The video is right that what is going on is corporate gaslighting. Everyone can hate on corporations, but what really matters is what will employees do? Stay, leave, form a union? Companies are now indifferent to the decision of the majority of average office workers. Companies believe that worker are easily replaced. Best of luck to those in corporate America
@@danielvergara9890 I was looking for something along these lines. Just before my employer announced an RTO, Fox Business release survey results saying 25% of those surveyed admitted it was done at least in part to make people quit and save in attrition.
u r 100% right " in disguise". when they need u, they run n smile 2u, rub ur shoulder, once the NEED 4u over, they fire U, under different excuses. the old wisdom said "dnt put all ur eggs in same basket". this is the real ugly face & side of big capitalists firms= 1st & last Goal is to make n generate profit at any cost or price, even if it require fire part of the gd staff
@@ernil-t3q I work remotely for that space company (Blue Origin). Word from my manager is they will be force all remote workers back in the office as well soon.
Do they? Amazon isn't a major player in my country (Finland), so not that much forcefed their marketing, but haven't seen environmental or sustainability being high on their agenda.
Two thoughts… sounds like they became like Microsoft and that made them uncomfortable. Thinking it will take 2-3 years to determine if this change had impact towards their objectives. So now we wait.
People don't want to believe other people are that sociopathic. You better believe it! Especially those who make it to the top of a company and had to beat everyone to get there.
Tech companies should be leading the way in remote work, not falling back on a 1950s style of in-office only. With employees around the world, who often all report to the same manager, this nonsense about "collaboration" and meeting in person really falls flat. And like you said, with the "open office" where no one has an assigned desk and "teammates" end up on different floors or in different buildings... Come on. This is about control, period. They don't trust their employees. And I guarantee most of them spend half the day socializing, going to lunch, taking breaks, etc. anyway when they're 'on-site."
They claim "collaboration" and at the same time outsource jobs to countries where foreign languages are spoken and are completely remote from the corporate HQ. It's a lie.
This why I hate going to the office. It's the lazy people who waste my time in meetings and the 1.5 hour long chit chat when they come to my office. They don' t care if you have work to do, their venting about actually working, how tired they are, the endless gossiping is much more important. I get paid to work, not socialize - if employers would only see that they get a bigger bang for the buck with remote employees who actually work and can focus on getting work done without the bother of fake "collaboration" by their fellow lazy coworkers. And yet, they actually enable these people and do nothing about them.
True, but then who would purchase the commercial real estate that has plummeted in value. My theory is that RTO policies are just a collective agenda by CEOs to repair the valuations of the commercial real estate market. Managers don't care if offshore workers are fully remote.
Im not even kidding, companies who claim to be eco friendly and are forcing their employees to commute to office at the same time should be punished in some way
I live near a major highway and I remember the air quality was so bad before the shut downs. The air was literally flammable during rush hours. I don't miss the high traffic to say the least. I even began wearing a painters mask in the car because there was no fresh air when sitting in traffic-even with the ac running. Now it's totally different, the air isn't terrible.
It's not what you think. It's a way to trim workforces without taking the PR hit of a layoff. Other big companies have proven that it works. Some workers will refuse to return to the office, effectively "quitting." If that percentage meets the company's downsize requirements, it's a win.
There is no commitment to each other, there is no loyalty, there is no friends at work and I don't care about the CEO. No one will look after you except you and your family! Wake up! This has freed me so much and I am much at ease!
Yes, 💯% agree! Amazon is like the business that insists on using horse and buggy 🐎 drivers after the invention of the automobile 🚗. No matter how much they hate the change, remote work is not going back! 😆🤣😆🤣
I heard one speculation that they were only doing it to avoid doing layoffs and thus preserve their stock pricing. I tend to agree and suspect this is not their long-term plan.
I doubt that. The corpos want control over their employees and they're getting it back, one layoff after another. Things look even grimmer with the two presidential candidates who see no reason to change anything at all.
Given how hard it is to find work and people eschewing all the local stores in their areas I doubt Amazon will go anywhere. Yeah some talented people will quit and maybe that’s the point. Maybe Amazon wants them to quit so they can replace them with outsourced developers who work at smaller salaries and don’t get benefits and all that. And here’s the kicker: there are many skilled and equally talented developers who are capable of doing the work that locals can do. Especially after they are trained. People here are complacent about this fact. Developers in other countries doesn’t necessarily mean lower quality even if they are cheaper to hire. Take the Ukraine for example. So many amazing developers come from there.
Some people may view WFH as a perk. But for people who are disabled (or caring for someone who's disabled), WFH is an accessibility issue. This trend of abolishing remote work is very worrying.
@@anthonyrodriguez2413 It sort of is. Most developed countries will have laws to prevent discrimination against disabled people. In the US, for example, they have to follow the Americans with Disabilities Act, which means they are legally obliged to make reasonable accommodations for workers with disabilities. In the UK, the Disability Discrimination Act says the same thing. They would open themselves to all sorts of lawsuits if they insisted that disabled people working from home come into the office as a covert way of firing them.
I would NOT mention that. It’s one thing if the worker is disabled and that’s an accommodation. Some exceptions for piece work or 1099 or whatnot..But to be fair, in an hourly role, caregiving in any substantial capacity while on the clock isn’t really cool.
I got to go to the office 1 day a week... about an hour away. This was in my offer... but have heard rumors of high ups wanting us to come back to office more. I left a FULLY remote job for this position. If this does actually happen I'll spend my office days looking for a job. I am way less productive while in office because of too many distractions. When I'm at home I can sit and crank out code in my home office with no distractions.... don't need to take a cig break, or go to vending machine, etc.
In my experience, once they open the door to one day or more in office, it's to hypnotize the workforce that this is the new norm, and that... oh wait! Look at that, now we want 2 days, 3 days... pushing further and further in their own self interest, which is fair enough! That being said, workers should push for what is in their best interest, otherwise we're going to be slowly accepting worse conditions each quarter.
Ya the distractions at work are because no one wants to be there. Yes there are distractions at work, but you're in a environment where you are comfortable and no one breathing down your neck.
Office is soooo distracting. People talking loudly on phones, bad smells, dropping by your desk for no reason, horrible lights that cause eye strain.. just to name a few - I’m always more productive all by myself - collaboration should be limited to scheduled meeting times and followed up with emails
It's all just a power play... they want employees back in the office so they have total control. Even more control than monitoring your camera and online activity. They need to see you sitting in that chair, slaving away, in order to make sure you're "giving your all" for the company...
Why are they like this? What is the business reason for pushing people beyond the point of misery? Don't they know that people snap at a certain point?
Everyone was OK with going to work prior to Covid. The worst part is that if everyone returns to work, the traffic will worsen mid afternoon. For some reason the traffic now is ALWAYS terrible
@@dchardin1 NEVER let it get near the point of "snapping". The Americans With Disabilities (including temporary disabilities) exists. There's FMLA and short-term disability payment benefits. It might be a good idea to pay the optional premium for long-term disability coverage as well. The law, healthcare providers and insurance exist for a reason.
I think remote work needs to be a priority. The office work place is fully of bullies, sabotaging, harassment and drama. No thanks. I don't want people counting how many shits I take a day.
Could be that Amazon invested heavily in beautiful commercial real estate headquarters and they are trying to influence CRE market by ending WFH. My teams are happier and more productive while WFH !!!
@@ALifeAfterLayoff How could the tax benefits change is they still own or lease the building. Does the state government have secret police to monitor the cubicles
@@ALifeAfterLayoff Do you think this requires a legal change? These CEO’s are legitimately adding so much bullshit to peoples’ lives. These people are the absolute worst.
@@timgibney5590 If a company invests in new real estate and decides to set up shop in a new location for at least the next several years, it is likely because the local government is offering tax incentives/breaks to hire local talent, especially in economic development zones of certain cities. The more people they hire locally, the more the tax base (funding) grows for the city’s budget. The company pays taxes over the term of their lease in the city as do the employees working there.
@@edash2065 100% essentially cheaper may lay off then drop the costs of hiring people local and remote. The best of the best will be fine. The average 80% will take a pay cut.
Amazon has high turnover rates, but counters that by over hiring people. Depending on the level there are no interviews or background checks. For office workers they do multiple types of interviews and practice exams.
Managers and business owners need to be held accountable for this. Good software devs are scarce, this is gonna slow down things alot and tbh they deserve it.
Thoughts: 1) Those organizations that hire remotely will get the pick of A+ players. 2) If you cannot get sufficient collaboration within three days in the office, you are not in an environment conducive to collaboration. Either the management is falling down on the job, or the actual environment is the problem (physically and culturally). Instead of going to 5 days in the office, fix that first.
Yea, but less and less jobs are remote because corporate world is built on control. Part of controlling someone is keeping them stressed, so they need you in the office.
This is a myth. +A talent will go to where the money and opportunities are at, regardless of remote flexibility. Much of what made those workers valuable were that they were team players and see the long term picture in terms of personal gains returned (which is alooot of money when talking about the best, not your avg dude). Remote work is nice but its not $200k+ nice.
I've posted in other messages about my office environment and how distracting and uncomfortable it is, hindering productivity. It's bad enough that most employees have complained to management about the conditions. Corporate won't fix the problem though because of the amount of money it would cost, meaning they'd have to lease a lot more floor space to make it a more pleasant environment. During the lockdowns we not only hired more people while everyone was working from home, we gave back two leased floors of office space to save money. Now that larger numbers of employees are crammed into 30% less space than we had before 2020 and we were overcrowded back then. So much so that our employer had to check with code enforcement to make sure our small restrooms were legal for the number of people per floor. They only got by because we can technically go to another floor and use one of their small restrooms as well. And you can imagine what those restrooms are like when an overcrowded floor of men use them. It's bad enough that I go to the executive and HR floors to do my business, they're not packed like sardines and their facilities are much cleaner. And when someone that sits only 2 feet from you coughs or sneezes, everyone starts looking nervous in the time of post-C worry. I know I use more sick days in our new office configuration than I ever did before. As for collaboration, we actually collaborate more over Teams while working from home than we do in the office because of the overcrowding and distracting other people, because you have to practically sit on top of your neighbor, when you bring others to your tiny desk to collaborate you tend to ruin the productivity of the others around you not involved. Then there's the search for an available conference room with none of the resources you need to collaborate, resources like the multiple monitors on your tiny desk to crowd around.
We're not going back to the pre-Covid era: we're entering a world where companies are taking advantage of both styles. In office, but now we've got the mental stress of non-stop instant messaging and Zoom meetings, hot-desking, badge/PC/room entry monitoring, but we're still commuting ... the worst of all worlds.
Never going back to an office. Everyones anxiety was off the charts in an office. They already have ways to keep thumbs on us at home. I dont need someone standing over my computer in the office making things worse. Theres too many chiefs and not enough workers. If some managers were to help with work and care like some other managers things would run smoother.
It can happen. The majority of execs are Gen X, and they weren’t as financially impacted by the recession of 2008 as Boomers and Millennials, so right now they’re the wealthiest generation. Unlike the Boomers, Gen X doesn’t live to work, so they’ll retire at the first and quickest opportunity. Millenials won’t have to wait as long as Gen X to get those positions.
@@genxx2724 GenX were in that “sweet spot”. Boomers got hit because their 401K accounts tanked right before they were about to retire, and they had to stay in the workforce much longer than expected to make up for the losses. Boomers were also more likely to be laid off because they were higher paid, and once they were laid off, they struggled to find comparable work because of their pay grade AND age (age discrimination is real in the corporate world). Millenials struggled because they were young and inexperienced, so they were also often laid off, and they struggled to find work because the job market was very tight - even worse than it is now. Some Millenials took advantage of the burgeoning social media platforms to help with their finances, but even those folks had to move back with their parents or take lower paying jobs to pay the bills until things got better. Gen X also took a hit in their 401K, but they had the advantage of youth to make it up quickly so they could still retire at their planned age. Also, Gen X had more work experience than a Millenial, but they were young enough where they were getting paid less than a Boomer, so when companies had to lay off workers, they kept the Gen X workers because they got the experience at a cheaper price. Like the Millenials, younger Gen Xers were taking advantage of the burgeoning social media platforms to help build their nest egg to protect themselves just in case things didn’t improve quickly and they were “next”. Now those in certain industries took a hit, but in general, Gen X didn’t take as big of a financial hit as a Boomer or Millenial, which helped them keep their current wealth.
@@genxx2724 I'm a Gen X'er and I don't understand that statement either. Boomers, the ones still alive were the wealthiest generation, most having at least one pension and social security. Gen X is lucky if they have a pension, it's a 401k and whatever investment you did on your own. I can retire at 55 if I want, provided the economy doesn't implode but that's only because I've been saving and planning since I was 25 years old.
This is a bad decision. Here's why. Remote work allows companies to see other candidates, highly experienced candidates, and potentially game-changing productive employees who could play an integral role in the success of a company but doesn't live near that company's HQ or main office. If you're a company President or CEO why limit yourself to just the talent that's available in your market? The best employee for your company could be someone living on the other side of the country. Why do you think Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meets was invented???
Actually it goes beyond what you talk about with remote meeting software. Almost 30 years ago when I was hired with my employer they used to look for the best candidates. We'd fly people in from anywhere in the country if their resume impressed us. Put them up for 2-3 days in a hotel and after a day long interview, if we liked them we'd pay relocation costs, temporary residence (I had 30 days paid), and other assistance if needed to make them happy new employees. Somewhere around the 2000 timeframe we wouldn't spend money anymore to attract people and HR required that we "hire locally". Things have never been the same quality-wise since HR dictated more who we hired than the actual department managers.
Average American spends $51/day commuting to work plus food etc. all of that was realized during the pandemic fantasy furlough era. This is gonna get ugly 😂
I’m not saying that they should, but if they were going to end remote working, they should have done it in ‘21 or ‘22. The fact that it’s been a thing for 5 years, makes ending remote working that much more ridiculous!
They tried back in 2022 but had a lot of resistance then. People were still scared of the "big C", and companies were still bleeding employees who were jumping ship. I know I was hit with a lot of solicitations for 100% remote jobs, so were a lot of my colleagues who took them. Now those are drying up, but people are still used to the last almost 5 years as you noted.
You go first bud 😁 lol Honestly the onyl power we have is as consumers, not as employees. Vote w/ your wallet ppl and stop buying so much useless crap! Seriously, so many ppl do it. If Americans really changed that habit, prices for a lot of things would drop!
@@zerocal76 Speaking of useless shit people keep buying stupid shit from Amazon, especially sex toys. Friends that work there say they keep having to pack them.
This is why Texans are sick of these out-of-state corporations (and Californians and New Yorkers) coming to the state, building up huge offices, and then overwhelming the roadways with people commuting 30 miles to sit at a desk. It's ridiculous.
@@DeaconG1959 And, in true Republican fashion, your response is... nothing. Ah, but I'm sure one day people will wake up, right? Then you'll show'em what for!
And less free labor hours given to your employers out of gratitude for that lovely work from home time period. I know my employer got a lot of extra hours from me for free in 20-22. It's been a lot less free labor now that I'm commuting 3 days a week again.
I’m working a hybrid remote contract job. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to working full time in the office. Right now I spend about 18 hours a week at the office, the rest of the time I’m home. And I like it that way. We as employees just have to start standing up and fighting back. We can’t take this crap anymore.
After working remotely for 5+ years, I hardly see an opportunity or any sense to visit the office again, especially every day. Productivity is higher when people do not need to waste 1-2 hours of their life commuting to work, and these hours add to months which can be spent with the family or invested in yourself.
I told my manager that when it was decided we had to return to the office 3 days a week after working from home for more than two years. My manager told me that I wasn't unique in voicing that same concern. Many of us worked a lot of extra hours because for one thing, we couldn't go anywhere during the lockdowns easily and enjoyably, but also because we didn't spend the 1-2 hours a day on the road (2+ hours round trip for me). I told my manager he wasn't getting those same hours from me anymore now that I had to drive in just for the sake of the CEO wanting our physical presence in an overcrowded office environment.
For some, it means higher productivity, for most, it's the opposite. Productivity has gone down. That's why all these companies want people back in the office. In this case, they just want to lay them off.
@@sblijheid absolutely, everything is individual and some people feel more productive when they work face to face in the office. However, in my organization with 1000+ employees every person I talked to shared that his/her productivity became tangibly higher in a remote mode. I'm sure companies can conduct some kind of researches to assess the situation before forcing the people back to the offices
Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world. They collect and analyze perhaps the most data in the world. They are focused on efficiency above all else. Clearly, their numbers show that employees are not more productive when working from home. They have every incentive to cut office space and the expenses that come with it. And their data says remote work still doesn't pay off in the long run.
I've been trying to move out of my toxic tech startup for years now. It has never taken this long for me to find a job, ever. All the competition from the layoffs and RTO policies is making it impossible.
I’m in the exact same boat. Working for a startup where I got stuck under a toxic manager and I am desperate to get out, but there’s no hope on the horizon. I’m actually pretty depressed
The company I was working for folded in January, outside of about 2 months of contract work I have been unemployed and looking. Hopefully picking up a long term contract soon, it's extremely rough out there right now though, especially for those of us working fully remote.
Same...been laid off for a few months now..haven't had one interview..at this point I don't even care about going in 5 days...I need a job.🫤And I won't even mention the low paying salaries.
You are asking if remote workers are lazy? Check the quarterly profit reports. Last one was +13% profit for Amazon. And the raises they offered didn’t even cover inflation!!
@@lifecyclestyled6732 They don't care about the money, the money belongs to the company. They want to have a big fancy desk in a big fancy office and boss around underlings.
Never going to go back into an office. Just as you said, my team is spread out all over the US and Canada, no point in driving for an hour plus to see nobody that I work directly with. The company did have a return to office push, however a lot of people have just ignored it (along with their managers), so nothing really came from the push from the "Overhead" perspective. I am sure that the Operational people did have to return, which has been causing it's own set of problems that I only see in the weekly office update e-mails.
Amazon were recruiting fully remote roles during the pandemic (I was approached for one). Anyone who took a job on that basis has just been given a nasty rug pull and needs to talk to an employment lawyer if they don't make the "special exemptions" list. If enough people fight it, the bad publicity and cost may just trigger a re-think.
No, they will just replace the ones that can't work in the office. CEO already said they can't win and he is right. Only one that can win is the CEO. He is still working remote.
Good luck finding a competent lawyer to take on Jeff Bezos. And I hope you have a ton of cash for a retainer because I doubt a good lawyer will do it pro bono.
I work for an Amazon company. Those contracts also state things can change according to what's best for the business. Trust me there's no winning a court case. Those fully remote positions are being demolished and RTO 5 days a week is here to stay. I wish it wasn't true as I absolutely love wfh but sadly, it is and you'll need to RTO if you want to stay w the company.
The "special exemptions list" isn't a good idea. We had one of those for a year after mandatory return to the office and it created a lot of employee resentment about how they had to come to the office and other, "special" people didn't have to. My employer ended up having to end the permanent remote work for everyone and we lost some really good talent in that outcome, including one of my previous managers who, I consider the best engineer I've ever met and I've been around for more than 30 years now. We lost a lot though in productivity with resentful employees though IMO.
I was in a London based Enterprise software company as a Senior manager in 2022, where they wanted us to “lead by example” by going to the office but while most of our staff would work from home. Made no sense and they kept talking about how we needed to lure the staff back to the office, but for most it was a total hassle with long commutes for nothing. The big reason was the office space being mostly empty which frustrated senior management 😅
My viewpoint is this. If companies can outsource jobs to other countries, they can let people work from home. This is likely just about control and to make sure they have eyes on everyone at all times.
An anxious staff is a much less productive one. It's so idiotic. As a boss (and or manager) what do I want? For my staff to be anxious and distracted, or physically and mentally comfortable and focussed / so they can focus on their work? That's a no brainer to me but higher ups and corporate c-suite types aren't often the wisest bunch when it comes to people. I've read some articles that theorize that it's a lot of it is about the big execs and their egos. They don't feel as big and important when they can't see & be seen, and wave their arm across a physical spread and domain of people who work for them - and who HAVE to acknowledge and smile at them cuz they're dependent on them for their jobs. It's like plantation mentality.
Most “office” companies are owned by bigger giant companies that own 10+ smaller companies. These mega corporations often own and rent the office buildings to their smaller companies. Just follow the money.
@@roberth4395 of course, that makes a lot of sense. 👍 All I was thinking was that the company owned the building but rented to other stores and businesses on the street level floor and or other businesses in other floors of the building. And that they're street level floor renters like coffee shops etc have more customers from a full building of people. But yeah, basically many reasons but none that have to do with how useful for the employees and productive for the company WFH is.
For those of us staying remote, management has decided they can squeeze more juice out of us. "You get the benefit of working in your pjs." They no longer take into account the overhead savings they are reaping and are jealous of our time. They are demanding increased productivity ONLY for the remote team members.
He likes the "culture" of having enough money to give thousands of people raises, but instead decides how they get to live their lives and have no say.
Of course they have a say. It's a simple yes or no question, wether you like to jump through the hoops or seek employment elsewhere. It's not a nice situatuation for the most, but each and every worker gets to make that choise.
@@also307 Absolutely an ultimatum. That wasn't my point at all. It's a matter of "take or leave it", but there is a choise. I might be mistaken, but i don't think that Amazon has been at the top of the totem pole for the most desirable employes even for office workers for many years. Those poor bastards unfortunate enough, not to employ elsewhere will probably also have to start peeing in bottles, like other Amazon workers allready do. It never was a secret that Amazon has worse corporate culture than medieval slaves.
All they really want to do is track you while you go into a huge office building they've rented and sit with people you don't know and them go into a teams meeting - with a coworker in a different office on a different coast
Those window offices won't be admired by remote workers and the executives can't have their pointless all hands where they can brag about their bonuses and have their butts kissed by *that* employee who always asks the questions at the end of an all hands. Who else will appreciate the executives' parking spaces? Who will laugh at their lame jokes? They're just a spouse or partner or parent at home. But, they are royalty in the office. What executive would give that up?
Another small thing that's being overlooked that I picked up on when the pandemic happened was that a lot these men were desperate to get back into the office because they didn't want to be around their families 24/7 at home. Also they couldn't get out as freely to meet up with their mistresses and hookups buddies. I knew of at least 2 men cheating on their wives who were mad that we all didn't get called back into the office during the pandemic. The office was available to anyone to use if they were having internet issues or needed a quiet space, but nope those individuals wanted all of us back in the office because they ran out of excuses to tell their spouses. I just laughed them.
Return to office is a collective goal by CEOs to repair the values of commercial real estate. Nobody has any issue with offshore Indians working remote.
Yeah, that's a big problem most aren't talking about. I read it was $4T worth of commercial real estate bonds coming due over the next few years and many building owners can't pay the coming bill.
Remote work should be encouraged across the board. I had an opportunity to work remotely sometimes before it was a thing. I thought I would be lazy, and non productive, but I was not , and not having to commute saved a lot of time. Before my current job I was working from home for an MSP which was very flexible. We were supposed to be in the office 3 days a week, but they looked the other way. One of our customers was a company founded over ten years ago by people working from home ! They never had an office building !
You sound like one of those arrogant disgruntled managers who is insecure and only gets an egoboost by making your employees as miserable as you are. @@maryjanesnow
The only reason management hates remote work is that their little tinpot dictator souls can't bear the thought that people might not have their nose to the grindstone every living second. Being remote keeps them at arms length and they hate that. Instead of being concerned with the real work and whether it gets done properly by the deadline, they obsess over making sure people are 'busy' every second. Trivia fact... people can't work that way because we aren't machines. So what ends up happening is that either people make themselves sick by stressing over being watched incessantly, or they spend all their time figuring out how to evade panopticon culture and not working...
I just want to thank you for all that you do! In June I was laid off from a remote TPM role at a Bay Area tech company and I watched nearly every one of your videos. I just accepted a Staff level TPM role at a Fortune 100! Much higher level and significantly higher pay! Couldn’t have done it without you!
And here's another problem. A lot of companies hired people to work remotely during the Pandemic to the point where there aren't enough desks at the office IF everyone showed up for example. I was hired in May 2024 and there's currently no desk for me at the office.
@@CIS101 That's what a lot of companies did. I wish more (like Amazon) had done that rather than leave giant buildings vacant in the middle of a housing crisis.
@@edupunknoob Ah but here's a twist. A lot of those buildings can be converted to apartments, and condos. There's an architect out there who has come up with a rating system to determine which office buildings can be converted, and which cannot.
@@CIS101 you're phrasing that like we're arguing. I'm not disagreeing with you. It would be great if we actually used the real estate for something we need rather than something to make big corp balance sheets look better.
In my opinion, whether intentionally or not, worker productivity may decline as a result of this decision. Many employees who, while working remotely, put in extra hours and maintained high engagement, might now feel that their preferences have been dismissed. This could lead them to adopt a more minimalist approach to work-doing only what's necessary to avoid being let go, rather than going above and beyond as they might have done when they had more flexibility.
I'm sorry but going above and beyond doesn't equate to more money being added to your paycheck. Just more responsibility for the same pay. I do what I am paid to do and nothing more. These greedy jobs care nothing about their employees and would post your job probably the very next day if something happended to you. I've seen these dirty rotten companies let go of employees who were getting ready to retire just to keep from giving them what they worked for.
@@truthhurts...6574 If you've worked at a company for a long time and are near retirement, it's not in the company's interest to make you redundant, as they have to pay you a severance for every year you've worked there. If you'd been there say 25 years, your severance pay would be huge depending on the company and their individual policy. They're better off just letting you retire.
Yeah, they don't take into account that the commute savings are often turned over to the company. I've always worked remote, since 2011 when I graduated, and the fight we have in my sector is limiting people from over-working since they're all at home.
@@Longlostpuss every company is not the same. I'm speaking from what I have witnessed in my 20 years of working. Believe it or not some people are very spiteful and do not want to see you have a good life. It angers some to see you retiring getting out the rat race especially if you are not broken down and in bad health able to start a new venture in life. I've seen it in the military too with them trying to kick out people before before they can get retirement. Those asre the ones that then go to try to get medically chaptered out to get something for their years of service. It's a dirty game.
Exactly. When our new CEO announced his plan was to bring us back to the overcrowded office 5 days a week I let my manager know that my availability outside of office hours would be much less, my after-hours response time would be much higher as I'd be powering down my home office each day at the end of the "normal workday", that I wouldn't be checking in on things over the weekend and in the evenings before bed, and that I'd be claiming on-call pay anytime they called me after hours, something I've never done before unless it was an excessive amount of time in one day. Apparently that was a common sentiment from many of us salaried workers and the CEO shelved that plan, at least for the last two years. Hopefully that lasts at least a few more years until retirement.
I work for Americans largest retailer. We had the RTO a few months ago. Was told this was because we're a "people culture." First, you're a Fortune 1 company that makes billions of dollars in profit each year while having hundreds, if not thousands, of store associates on welfare. Whom you get a tax benefit from. Stop calling yourself a "people culture." Second, I now travel from Connecticut to New Jersey, every day, to the office to have the same discussions via email and Slack that I could have had at home. Get phuqed.
They just announced at my workplace that they are going back to full-time in-office again. They claim that the reason why is that working remotely is a security liability and that the project wants us back in office 100%. We were scheduled to eventually go back in a hybrid schedule where we would only go into the office 2 days a week. Apparently, from my I've heard from the rumor mill at work is that our off-shore IT folks violated processes that lead to security breaches that cost the company money, so they are going to take it out on us American workers. On top of that, they gave us all crappy merit increases this year even though we did so well throughout the year. The only benefit my job had was it being remote/hybrid. If that goes away, I'll just start looking for other jobs where I can get a nice pay bump.
These employers are gonna have karma come back to bite them in the ass. They’re gonna go from not being able to get top tier talent to getting less then average, to barely have people knock on their door for job opportunities.
Your video inspired me to lower my pay expectations to $7.25 per hour (minimum wage) as an experienced Data Engineer. I would rather get minimum wage than return to the office. Life is better at $20K remotely than $130K in the office.
I assume you're speaking hyperbolically, but I can agree with your setiment to some degree. Some of IT jobs in my area (legit,customer facing IT jobs,not just resetting passwords over the phone) are still paying about 50-60k a year in my area. Long hours with no ovetime, stresful, projects that go on along with your already assigned duties, if you take vacation or a sick day your work sitting there waitig for you. Meanwhile, some fast food / retail jobs with no experience are paying18/20hr. Is all the BS really worth the extra 10k a year?
Unless there's an organized mass movement of that kind of action, and at a big enough level to have an affect on Amazon profits, don't bother. They don't care and won't notice. If it's convenience and service benefits you, keep it. They're a huge global corporation (there's an Amazon for most countries and languages) that's too big and successful (and too convenient and popular to its users) to be affected by anything like a few people here and there cancelling prime in protest.
It won't. In a capitalist society/economy the Companies dictate. Not the Employees. Simple as. People will eventually be happy just to have a job, believe me.
If these companies want to improve and create healthy workplace cultures, they'd at the very least allow hybrid work. Productivity improved while employees worked remotely. I'm currently looking for optimal remote work opportunities. I left the traditional 8 to 4:30pm healthcare job because the work environment was toxic. Especially post pandemic. I have PTSD from my last job. A lot of toxic employees and supervisors are in these companies and they're not being held accountable for their bad behavior.
I agree. No one size fits all model but hybrid is a good compromise between company and employee. I do also find occasion face to face interaction is very productive.
Remote work will not last very long. They’d rather have less people working in the office where they could see them, than infinite people working from home unsupervised. Actually the end goal is AI chat bots handling everything
Employers want the least amount of people on the payroll to get the job done, reliably, safely, and productively. That's a tough balance where too few can cost you more in error and lost opportunity than too many on the payroll cost the company. I work in tech where we're short handed but by all appearances, "getting the job done". We make mistakes, we have single point failures where if a single key person on a project leaves, we're in trouble. We're spread thin enough that we'd have a hard time picking up a project from a colleague who falls ill or leaves the company as we're all working on our own projects as individuals because there aren't enough of us to work multiple projects, and not enough hours in the day to pause your project to work on another project. I doubt we're alone in that flawed balancing act strategy of number of people. And now we have "ghost jobs". We open positions when someone leaves or retires, but we're not interviewing for, or filling them. We've had engineers that retired over a year ago who we've opened job positions to fill. We're not even interviewing for those empty position more than a year later.
I've said this before and will say it again, hoping what I'm saying will get attention. But hear me out: At this point, the government should step in when companies try to do this. We know what they're trying to do. They do this as a way to force people to quit. Companies do this so they won't need to pay 1. Avoid paying severance packages 2. Avoid paying unemployment. I can bet money that we'll hear about Amazon laying off workers shortly. This is just a form of manipulation.
Wow- “corporate gaslighting” that’s a great phrase. I’m a hard working, bright, creative, and thirsty employee.. the problem? I hate teamwork… I hate bosses and coworkers… I would do so much work and for less money if I didn’t have to interact with shitty colleagues all the time. Corporate life is not for me. So much happier away from the BS… missing the paycheck though…
When we returned to office in 2022, the year following was the loneliest and most disconnected year ever. We had a beautiful new building. Lots of space to collaborate. Tiny half-height cubes close together. And nobody talked to each other. Managers never left their office. People just took meetings at their desk. I was miserable. After over ten years there, we had changed. Everyone was dealing with some trauma from COVID, and RTO did not magically fix us. I don’t miss it at all almost two years later. I’m way closer to my remote colleagues across the country now.
... and keep in mind... that NONE of these pos corporations are offering an extra CENT of pay to compensate the employees for having to move, commute, or anything. Interestingly in my ENTIRE career I have yet to see any contract ever that compensates any employee for those costs associated with employment.
That's true today. Almost 30 years ago when I was hired I was given 30 days of temporary housing to find a place to live, money for meals while in temp housing, and if I needed my moving expenses covered, they would have covered that as well. We used to fly people in from all over the country to interview for positions. Around 2000 that all went away. Bean counters demanded we only hire locally or prospective applicants could cover their own interview and moving expenses if they wanted to work for us badly enough.
@@Shadow_Banned_Conservative - I feel like they somehow don't know how negatively that has affected their talent pool. Through that practice they are passing up a lot of good candidates.
@@alexhigginbotham8635 Honestly, I think they know, they just don't care. They are there for only a few years and are there to make the number look good, and then move on to their next job.
A friend of mine who did remote work for Amazon was just let go without warning. He lives in a rural area and was the bread winner for his wife and three kids. I'm trying to help him get a job at the company I work for right now.
One thing in RTO (return to office) especially on tech companies is that bean counters realized this hard truth: if it's remote then it can be anywhere. So if it's not in the office let's move our workforce for India or the Philippines where the cost per hour is less than a fifth of the United States. I've seen this with many of my friends and peers. They moved and the jobs that stayed remote are slowly being replaced by cheaper overseas workers. These tech companies have campuses in many other countries. So, reality is that if you have a remote job the chances that you will be outsourced increase dramatically.
The reason they do this is because its not about fostering collaboration, its about getting people to leave. They don't need work to get done at this point, so the people hired aren't hired for their ability to get done, they are hired because they gamed the system well enough to get approval from everyone.
They waited too long to do this. If they wanted people to come back to the office full time, why did they wait 4 1/2 years to do it? They should have had people come back as soon as the pandemic ended - which was when, sometime in the summer of 2022 I think? I can't even remember. So 2 more years of post Covid remote work. They had us all come back, and unfortunately, now everyone is socializing and talks all day long. The office is noisy. This isn't the kind of work we do. We're supposed to do quiet work. Working from home was perfect for this. I was more productive. Now it's so noisy - all I hear is gossip all day long which I don't care to hear about. They think things will work better coming back in - but we already proved that we could get just as much work done working from home. And we have the technology to do it too. So the argument doesn't hold water.
What's wild is I work remote and went into an office and we still met on teams while all in the same building to talk about the same shit lol. Corporate word salad that doesn't mean anything leading to layoffs. This is why i day drink and do the bare minimum. My middle manager is the best and the director is the hindrance.
My work told us to come back for "the culture". There is no team any longer, we are all out to save ourselves, we deeply do not like each other, nor do we trust any upper leadership. We are all waiting to be laid off. Some "culture".
In short, they are getting ready to do a RIF, and this is a pre-RIF RIF, or a quiet RIF. See who leaves, then decide if it's enough to satisfy their shareholders. It's impossible to be ignorant of the gravity of remote work in the workplace, and people don't have short memories. If you can offer it as a company, you should. When the market is back in the power of Job seekers, they will remember actions like these like it was yesterday. 100% guaranteed.
the market is almost never in the average job seekers hands except for very short periods of time top performers dont have a problem though no matter what the state of the market is. a lot of those people either left already or will leave
@@IP0Monsturd Could be. I wonder though if AI will fail to thrive if people refuse to engage with it in the consumer space. "Oh, it's AI-driven? Nevermind, I'll go somewhere I get actual human interaction". Maybe if we vote loud enough with our dollars, we can make an impact and increase the value of investing in people.
I worked in the office as a dev for many years. Basically just spent most of my time in teams or slack. Especially since half my team was in another country. It’s absolutely a waste of time to make people drive into an office
People don’t even all to each other at the office. Teams are distributed across the world. Why drive to be on a laptop talking to your team VIRTUALLY??? 😢
As someone who works in the hospitality industry, I’m very happy. Remote work in major cities has contributed significantly to many businesses closing down, leading to empty buildings, crime and homeless doing drugs and sleeping all around. This is a step in the right direction for many major cities.
The hospitality industry is collapsing. With our economy going in the dumper, we have less money to spend for your hospitality services. Then the tax increases proposed every time we turn around are finishing it off faster. I work in a different country from where I live and although the voters rejected a "meals tax" twice now, the BoS is looking to put one in anyway, claiming necessity. It will take the tax on your food, with sales tax to 11%. So, that $20 lunch will now cost another dollar, and I'm expected to leave a tip. My property taxes in the county where I do live went up nearly 40% since 2021, and my home and auto insurance as well. I work 3 days a week in the office and buy my lunch daily. I spend between $60-$80 a week for lunch but that ends when the meals tax gets added, probably early next year. That will be the final straw for me.
@@Shadow_Banned_Conservative bring your lunch then. You don’t have to eat out, it’s not for everyone. There will always be a need for nice restaurants. I’m not sure you understand the business conventions, and such are a big business for private dining. I worked in SF for fifteen years, doing very well. Now in Seattle and we are busy at my restaurant with major business and small booking parties. Where do you think business is done? Over the golf course and in restaurants over bottles of wine. No one expects you to leave a huge tip for counter service. I do appreciate what you had to say, as a single woman with no children I have been highly taxed my whole life for things that have nothing to do with me or my life choices! I get it
@@Lucky_Forages_88 The people they're trying to force back into the office aren't your customers though. We're not making business deals or doing fancy dining. We're the worker bees, not the executives and CEOs.
@@Shadow_Banned_Conservativeeven regular people have special occasions, birthdays and anniversaries. I’m not just talking about fancy restaurants shutting down I’m talking about small businesses, groceries stores, etc. my original comment was mostly about how these businesses closing down and being empty directly affect the homeless hanging around and people doing drugs on the streets in these areas. It’s okay for you not to come to a fancy restaurant but all of your presences in the city’s will help. That was more my point. People have gotten used to being home and working and that was bc of the pandemic. Get back to the office! Just like everyone else has had to go back!
More to your point you said hospitality is dying and I was just pointing out that in some places it is not, and I stated some of the reasons why and why my restaurant is busy. So yeah let the fast food places die, but there will always be a place you want to take your partner for a special dinner once in a while.
I completely agree. I recently started a new hybrid position hoping that going into the office would bring more collaboration. However, when I got to the office, I didn't have an assigned seat and didn't know where anyone from my team was sitting. This is a large company and many of the people I was working with directly were in other regions anyway. The only difference with being in the office and working at home was the scenery. That and having to commute for over an hour and making more normally 8 to 9 hour day into an 11 to 12 hour day.
My company went to a hybrid work schedule with WFH on Monday & Friday. So guess what we do in the office? We have all of our meetings and huddles in Teams. We communicate with each other 90% of the time on chat and never leave our cubicles. We do the same thing in the office we do at home. So much for all of this “collaboration and culture” nonsense.
Thanks a lot, Amazon. As if it already wasn’t hard enough in this tech market to get a different position. I’m stuck under a toxic boss at a dysfunctional startup and I’ve desperately want it out for many months now. Trying all the things that the experts say when looking for a new job and I’m coming up With nothing. It’s depressing, and I feel like my walls are closing in
Use your heads here guys. This is here to trigger layoffs. Knowing that, I definitely wouldn’t move back. If they’re trying stuff like this, where’s the guarantee that there won’t be another sweeping around of layoffs when not enough people had the balls to resign in this market?
I work in software and they were getting rid of all remote workers. I am fully remote and in a reduced team asked to work more than double the load we were doing previously. They targeted me, but since I'm employed in France, they had to give me 6 months of salary even though I only worked 2 years with them. They were the hardest 2 years of my working life. They squeezed me like a lemon but eventually I just started working at my own pace and forced them to negotiate my leaving. Thankfully, I don't need to do what they tell me because I have a good FU fund.
@@IP0Monsturd The loser who doesn’t know how long his work takes and would believe it if I told him modifying a simple line of code took eight weeks while I took advantage of it and worked six jobs? Jeff Bozos is a joke.
Amazon spent 20 years dragging as many people as possible to Seattle. Now it's unaffordable and impractical. And you can't really build vertically there. Part of this will look like a slow-motion RIF and more voluntary quits. Some will stay, some will leave. May a thousand startups bloom!
Absolutely!! I think it is going to encourage people to get out and start a business. Lots of talk on the campaign trail offering tax credits for small business start ups.
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Guessing it’s a flawed idea in some way (but not a manager myself) - I think they should offer a modest but nontrivial pay overlay type of thing for in-office work over remote. If you really like remote, take the paycut but stay comfy. If you really need/want maximal $, you do most or all of your work in the office.
They say team but then you read in news "Wells Fargo took 4 days to notice an employee had died in cubicle."
@@sighsgkj Yeah that was funny. You gotta hand it to Wells Fargo. After helping spark the Great Recession years ago, they manage to make everything extremely worse!
This is a perfect comment, so true
And that might not have happened if she had coworkers who didn’t work from home and actually cared.
Sorry but that story says more about the every day workers at Wells Fargo than the upper management.
@@ninjagirl226 Do you really think WFH was the reason she wasn't identified, and had nothing to do with management that didn't realize she was entirely gone and unresponsive? She literally was in-office with other managers who were also in-office.
@@ninjagirl226 Nah, not WFH's fault. The janitors & staff on site are responsible. Especially whoever does payroll & tracks work hours. The fact they think its ok for someone stay clocked in on site for up to 96 hours is a bad mark on the company & its on site work culture and why no one wants to go back to the office.
In the 50's my Dad worked a modest job, Mom stayed at home and raised the kids, and they lived a nice middle class lifestyle including owning a home. Nowadays both I and my partner works and can barely afford to make ends meet. Soon the kids and family dog will need to work to keep this household going. It's the destruction of the American dream right before our eyes.
Starts off with "Go to college and make something of yourself" then its "work hard and you will move up" but it should be "look at the demand in careers" "Don't just commit to a single source type of income" Majority of this problem is in education, we're taught how to obey rules and follow directions, ask for permission to use the bathrooms, raise your hand to talk, the list goes on. But at the end of it schools are just programing the future bots for work.
I plan to retire at 62 in another country outside the US that is free, safe and very cheap with a high quality of life. I could fully just rely on only my SS if I wanted to when that times arrives but I'll also have at least one pension, a 403 (b) and a very prolific lnvestment account with my Abby Joseph Cohen my FA. Retiring comfortably in the US these days is almost impossible.
@@VernesaGunz I know this FA, Abby Joseph Cohen Services but only by her reputation at Goldman Sachs; even though she's now involved in managing portfolios and providing investmnt guidance to clients. I have been trying to get in contact since I watched her interview on WSJ last month
@@VonNothiasWell her name is 'ABBY JOSEPH COHEN SERVICES'. Just research the name. You'd find necessary details to work with a correspondence to set up an appointment.
I went from no money to lnvest with to busting my A** off on Uber eats for four months to raise about $20k to start trading with Abby Joseph Cohen. I am at $128k right now and LOVING that you have to bring this up here
My leadership hates letting us work remote, but we only meet on Teams in the office. Make it make sense.
Sounds about right.
Just sit at your desk and use meetings at a break and just casually listen in.
Why do you callem leadership then
@@AldhairJOyaga because they are "leader" of the team.
I’ll try to make it make sense… “it is not about you or your thoughts about what you think is best for the company. You are an employee, do what you are told or go find somewhere else to work.”
The video is right that what is going on is corporate gaslighting. Everyone can hate on corporations, but what really matters is what will employees do? Stay, leave, form a union? Companies are now indifferent to the decision of the majority of average office workers. Companies believe that worker are easily replaced. Best of luck to those in corporate America
This is nothing but a lay-off in disguise
@@danielvergara9890 I was looking for something along these lines. Just before my employer announced an RTO, Fox Business release survey results saying 25% of those surveyed admitted it was done at least in part to make people quit and save in attrition.
Most likely. More to come.
u r 100% right " in disguise". when they need u, they run n smile 2u, rub ur shoulder, once the NEED 4u over, they fire U, under different excuses. the old wisdom said "dnt put all ur eggs in same basket". this is the real ugly face & side of big capitalists firms= 1st & last Goal is to make n generate profit at any cost or price, even if it require fire part of the gd staff
Correct.
Probably just trying to push out some folks.
That's why people "don't want to work anymore", because they are sick and tired of this corporate BS.
Commuting to work everyday in a big city is soul draining.
@@witblitsfpv1265 then someone else that wants the job will go into the office. Never think you are not replaceable.
Well if you’re too lazy to even go to the job site, then saying you “don’t want to work” seems pretty accurate.
Stop yer yapping and get your azz to werk.
@@crinklecut3790some been too comfortable, a rude awakening is coming. 😊
Managers always start announcements with a bunch of word salad no one gives a shit about.
Gotta distract the people from the real outrage.
Oh you know same ol' "office politics." The only worse politics are the presidential election type... 🤷♂
middle managers get told what to say
@@fyodor8008this. I quit middle management because I hated myself for some of the things I had to tell my team.
Politicians and government officials too.
Perhaps we should abandon remote shopping and head back to brick and mortar stores.
never gonna happen... the laziness has set in and strip malls are being demolished.
@@MarkDaMak and no one wants to go in the store with a bunch of nutbags lol
@@joes3376 Very, very clever comment!! Touché Amazon! Thank you for making me smile amidst all this real gloom :)
Hahahaha!
Best
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Ever
I miss the 90s mall. But I love Amazon 🥰
Creates a major cloud hosting platform: doesn't allow remote work.
And now Jeff Bezos is working on a space company.
I'm sure you'll have to show up for that too.
@@ernil-t3q being required to "show up" to ur job LOL
@@ernil-t3q I work remotely for that space company (Blue Origin). Word from my manager is they will be force all remote workers back in the office as well soon.
Zoom did the same thing, absolutely nuts
Can't be much of a product then, can it?
Amazon should not claim they are environmentally conscious.
Do they? Amazon isn't a major player in my country (Finland), so not that much forcefed their marketing, but haven't seen environmental or sustainability being high on their agenda.
Amazon is not a friend of the rainforest.
Two thoughts… sounds like they became like Microsoft and that made them uncomfortable. Thinking it will take 2-3 years to determine if this change had impact towards their objectives. So now we wait.
Their customers certainly aren't.
But there also the richest company that's Number and that got to stay plus what's wrong just drive to work
Why don't they just come out and say it?
"We're doing this because we know you hate it. It satisfies our sadistic glee."
Time to get out of your pajamas and go to work.
Because you're assuming they care enough about you to be sadistic in the first place.
😂
@@sanshinobi3664 They don't need to care about you in order to be sadistic.
They scr*w people over indiscriminately.
People don't want to believe other people are that sociopathic. You better believe it! Especially those who make it to the top of a company and had to beat everyone to get there.
Tech companies should be leading the way in remote work, not falling back on a 1950s style of in-office only. With employees around the world, who often all report to the same manager, this nonsense about "collaboration" and meeting in person really falls flat. And like you said, with the "open office" where no one has an assigned desk and "teammates" end up on different floors or in different buildings... Come on. This is about control, period. They don't trust their employees. And I guarantee most of them spend half the day socializing, going to lunch, taking breaks, etc. anyway when they're 'on-site."
If they're gonna fall back to the 50s then we should get pensions and they should have 90% tax on $3 million+ in income.
@@watamatafoyu Co-sign.
They claim "collaboration" and at the same time outsource jobs to countries where foreign languages are spoken and are completely remote from the corporate HQ. It's a lie.
This why I hate going to the office. It's the lazy people who waste my time in meetings and the 1.5 hour long chit chat when they come to my office. They don' t care if you have work to do, their venting about actually working, how tired they are, the endless gossiping is much more important. I get paid to work, not socialize - if employers would only see that they get a bigger bang for the buck with remote employees who actually work and can focus on getting work done without the bother of fake "collaboration" by their fellow lazy coworkers. And yet, they actually enable these people and do nothing about them.
True, but then who would purchase the commercial real estate that has plummeted in value. My theory is that RTO policies are just a collective agenda by CEOs to repair the valuations of the commercial real estate market. Managers don't care if offshore workers are fully remote.
Im not even kidding, companies who claim to be eco friendly and are forcing their employees to commute to office at the same time should be punished in some way
That company will be punished when you quit and deny them your awsomeness.
@sayyara2921 Totally agree.
Have you caught on already that THAT was just a gimmick from the start?
I live near a major highway and I remember the air quality was so bad before the shut downs. The air was literally flammable during rush hours. I don't miss the high traffic to say the least. I even began wearing a painters mask in the car because there was no fresh air when sitting in traffic-even with the ac running. Now it's totally different, the air isn't terrible.
The vast majority of corporate 'eco-friendly' initiatives are nothing more than green-washing, anyway.
It's not what you think. It's a way to trim workforces without taking the PR hit of a layoff. Other big companies have proven that it works. Some workers will refuse to return to the office, effectively "quitting." If that percentage meets the company's downsize requirements, it's a win.
Amazon does not give a fuck about PR, this move is aiming at saving severance packages and stock bonus.
But all these “work from home” geniuses think their company will close their doors without their daily 15 minutes worth of work from them.
This.
And cheaper too if people chose to quit rather than being laid off.
What did you think we were thinking?
There is no commitment to each other, there is no loyalty, there is no friends at work and I don't care about the CEO. No one will look after you except you and your family! Wake up! This has freed me so much and I am much at ease!
Want loyalty? Get a dog.
Not even family looks out for you
@@IP0Monsturd not even a dog!
@@IP0Monsturd Yet these same companies demand loyalty while having none themselves.
underrated comment.
Amazon has just officially made itself a dinosaur. Remote work is here to stay.
Yes, 💯% agree! Amazon is like the business that insists on using horse and buggy 🐎 drivers after the invention of the automobile 🚗. No matter how much they hate the change, remote work is not going back! 😆🤣😆🤣
I heard one speculation that they were only doing it to avoid doing layoffs and thus preserve their stock pricing. I tend to agree and suspect this is not their long-term plan.
ok so whhat is yr alternative if u work for amazon ? quit and then how will u pay yr bills ?
I doubt that. The corpos want control over their employees and they're getting it back, one layoff after another. Things look even grimmer with the two presidential candidates who see no reason to change anything at all.
Given how hard it is to find work and people eschewing all the local stores in their areas I doubt Amazon will go anywhere. Yeah some talented people will quit and maybe that’s the point. Maybe Amazon wants them to quit so they can replace them with outsourced developers who work at smaller salaries and don’t get benefits and all that.
And here’s the kicker: there are many skilled and equally talented developers who are capable of doing the work that locals can do. Especially after they are trained.
People here are complacent about this fact. Developers in other countries doesn’t necessarily mean lower quality even if they are cheaper to hire.
Take the Ukraine for example. So many amazing developers come from there.
Some people may view WFH as a perk. But for people who are disabled (or caring for someone who's disabled), WFH is an accessibility issue. This trend of abolishing remote work is very worrying.
Yes. We really shouldn’t accept this
It’s not the jobs problem to worry about your personal issues. Businesses are there for the bottom line. Haven’t figured that out yet?
@@anthonyrodriguez2413then why do they give us healthcare? Edgy hot takes are fun especially with the edgy stoic one liners.
@@anthonyrodriguez2413 It sort of is. Most developed countries will have laws to prevent discrimination against disabled people. In the US, for example, they have to follow the Americans with Disabilities Act, which means they are legally obliged to make reasonable accommodations for workers with disabilities. In the UK, the Disability Discrimination Act says the same thing. They would open themselves to all sorts of lawsuits if they insisted that disabled people working from home come into the office as a covert way of firing them.
I would NOT mention that. It’s one thing if the worker is disabled and that’s an accommodation. Some exceptions for piece work or 1099 or whatnot..But to be fair, in an hourly role, caregiving in any substantial capacity while on the clock isn’t really cool.
I got to go to the office 1 day a week... about an hour away. This was in my offer... but have heard rumors of high ups wanting us to come back to office more. I left a FULLY remote job for this position. If this does actually happen I'll spend my office days looking for a job. I am way less productive while in office because of too many distractions. When I'm at home I can sit and crank out code in my home office with no distractions.... don't need to take a cig break, or go to vending machine, etc.
In my experience, once they open the door to one day or more in office, it's to hypnotize the workforce that this is the new norm, and that... oh wait! Look at that, now we want 2 days, 3 days... pushing further and further in their own self interest, which is fair enough! That being said, workers should push for what is in their best interest, otherwise we're going to be slowly accepting worse conditions each quarter.
Ya the distractions at work are because no one wants to be there. Yes there are distractions at work, but you're in a environment where you are comfortable and no one breathing down your neck.
Office is soooo distracting. People talking loudly on phones, bad smells, dropping by your desk for no reason, horrible lights that cause eye strain.. just to name a few - I’m always more productive all by myself - collaboration should be limited to scheduled meeting times and followed up with emails
Are you at amzn? I have the same experience. I was told it was going to be 1 day at the office, then it became 3, now it's 5. fuck this, seriously.
One guy gets to decide how thousands of other people spend their days.
Yes!! That's why he is the CEO. He makes decisions in the company's best interest, NOT for the employees.
@@michaelisherwood9096Yep that why you get paid for your time.
@@michaelisherwood9096 By the looks of your profile picture, you'd like to be him.
@@michaelisherwood9096What is a company without it's employees, a business model?
@@michaelisherwood9096 what is a company without employees?
It's all just a power play... they want employees back in the office so they have total control. Even more control than monitoring your camera and online activity. They need to see you sitting in that chair, slaving away, in order to make sure you're "giving your all" for the company...
Why are they like this? What is the business reason for pushing people beyond the point of misery? Don't they know that people snap at a certain point?
@@dchardin1 Workers are like cogs in a machine. If one breaks , it needs to be replaced immediately.
@@dchardin1They don't care.
Everyone was OK with going to work prior to Covid. The worst part is that if everyone returns to work, the traffic will worsen mid afternoon. For some reason the traffic now is ALWAYS terrible
@@dchardin1 NEVER let it get near the point of "snapping". The Americans With Disabilities (including temporary disabilities) exists. There's FMLA and short-term disability payment benefits. It might be a good idea to pay the optional premium for long-term disability coverage as well. The law, healthcare providers and insurance exist for a reason.
I think remote work needs to be a priority. The office work place is fully of bullies, sabotaging, harassment and drama. No thanks. I don't want people counting how many shits I take a day.
Remote work doesn’t stop any of that.
Could be that Amazon invested heavily in beautiful commercial real estate headquarters and they are trying to influence CRE market by ending WFH. My teams are happier and more productive while WFH !!!
It's 100% related to tax benefits in their local markets.
@@ALifeAfterLayoff How could the tax benefits change is they still own or lease the building. Does the state government have secret police to monitor the cubicles
@@ALifeAfterLayoff
Do you think this requires a legal change? These CEO’s are legitimately adding so much bullshit to peoples’ lives. These people are the absolute worst.
@@sephondranzer then work for yourself instead for someone lol
@@timgibney5590 If a company invests in new real estate and decides to set up shop in a new location for at least the next several years, it is likely because the local government is offering tax incentives/breaks to hire local talent, especially in economic development zones of certain cities. The more people they hire locally, the more the tax base (funding) grows for the city’s budget. The company pays taxes over the term of their lease in the city as do the employees working there.
As a former mechanical engineer at Amazon Robotics for 5 years, I can confirm you are spot on about the directors being the problem
This is likely a backhanded way to push people towards quitting, i.e. back door way of laying people off.
And judging from the comments it will work beautifully.
Yup!
Ok. And?
@@edash2065 100% essentially cheaper may lay off then drop the costs of hiring people local and remote. The best of the best will be fine. The average 80% will take a pay cut.
Amazon has high turnover rates, but counters that by over hiring people. Depending on the level there are no interviews or background checks. For office workers they do multiple types of interviews and practice exams.
I bet Amazon's top talent is already polishing their resumes for remote-friendly companies. This could be a huge brain drain! 🧠💥
Cope
@@kapp651cope? You sound so jealous. Why not just get a skill?
@@bobsemple9341 cope
I doubt it. More and more companies are curtailing remote work.
Managers and business owners need to be held accountable for this. Good software devs are scarce, this is gonna slow down things alot and tbh they deserve it.
Thoughts:
1) Those organizations that hire remotely will get the pick of A+ players.
2) If you cannot get sufficient collaboration within three days in the office, you are not in an environment conducive to collaboration. Either the management is falling down on the job, or the actual environment is the problem (physically and culturally). Instead of going to 5 days in the office, fix that first.
Yea, but less and less jobs are remote because corporate world is built on control. Part of controlling someone is keeping them stressed, so they need you in the office.
Point #2 is spot on!
*2 days not 3. By halfway thru the 2nd day ppl should be able to plank their as*es down and focus together.
This is a myth. +A talent will go to where the money and opportunities are at, regardless of remote flexibility. Much of what made those workers valuable were that they were team players and see the long term picture in terms of personal gains returned (which is alooot of money when talking about the best, not your avg dude). Remote work is nice but its not $200k+ nice.
I've posted in other messages about my office environment and how distracting and uncomfortable it is, hindering productivity. It's bad enough that most employees have complained to management about the conditions. Corporate won't fix the problem though because of the amount of money it would cost, meaning they'd have to lease a lot more floor space to make it a more pleasant environment. During the lockdowns we not only hired more people while everyone was working from home, we gave back two leased floors of office space to save money.
Now that larger numbers of employees are crammed into 30% less space than we had before 2020 and we were overcrowded back then. So much so that our employer had to check with code enforcement to make sure our small restrooms were legal for the number of people per floor. They only got by because we can technically go to another floor and use one of their small restrooms as well. And you can imagine what those restrooms are like when an overcrowded floor of men use them. It's bad enough that I go to the executive and HR floors to do my business, they're not packed like sardines and their facilities are much cleaner.
And when someone that sits only 2 feet from you coughs or sneezes, everyone starts looking nervous in the time of post-C worry. I know I use more sick days in our new office configuration than I ever did before.
As for collaboration, we actually collaborate more over Teams while working from home than we do in the office because of the overcrowding and distracting other people, because you have to practically sit on top of your neighbor, when you bring others to your tiny desk to collaborate you tend to ruin the productivity of the others around you not involved. Then there's the search for an available conference room with none of the resources you need to collaborate, resources like the multiple monitors on your tiny desk to crowd around.
We're not going back to the pre-Covid era: we're entering a world where companies are taking advantage of both styles. In office, but now we've got the mental stress of non-stop instant messaging and Zoom meetings, hot-desking, badge/PC/room entry monitoring, but we're still commuting ... the worst of all worlds.
Never going back to an office. Everyones anxiety was off the charts in an office. They already have ways to keep thumbs on us at home. I dont need someone standing over my computer in the office making things worse. Theres too many chiefs and not enough workers. If some managers were to help with work and care like some other managers things would run smoother.
same. I'll go on the dole or retire, or both before I go back to an office-based job.
I can’t wait for millennials to be in charge cuz they’ll understand the value of allowing employees to work remotely without sacrificing productivity
It can happen. The majority of execs are Gen X, and they weren’t as financially impacted by the recession of 2008 as Boomers and Millennials, so right now they’re the wealthiest generation. Unlike the Boomers, Gen X doesn’t live to work, so they’ll retire at the first and quickest opportunity. Millenials won’t have to wait as long as Gen X to get those positions.
@@Jennifer_Lewis_Beach_Living Why do you say Gen X suffered less impact from the of 2008 crash than the baby boomers and millennials?
@@genxx2724 GenX were in that “sweet spot”.
Boomers got hit because their 401K accounts tanked right before they were about to retire, and they had to stay in the workforce much longer than expected to make up for the losses. Boomers were also more likely to be laid off because they were higher paid, and once they were laid off, they struggled to find comparable work because of their pay grade AND age (age discrimination is real in the corporate world).
Millenials struggled because they were young and inexperienced, so they were also often laid off, and they struggled to find work because the job market was very tight - even worse than it is now. Some Millenials took advantage of the burgeoning social media platforms to help with their finances, but even those folks had to move back with their parents or take lower paying jobs to pay the bills until things got better.
Gen X also took a hit in their 401K, but they had the advantage of youth to make it up quickly so they could still retire at their planned age. Also, Gen X had more work experience than a Millenial, but they were young enough where they were getting paid less than a Boomer, so when companies had to lay off workers, they kept the Gen X workers because they got the experience at a cheaper price. Like the Millenials, younger Gen Xers were taking advantage of the burgeoning social media platforms to help build their nest egg to protect themselves just in case things didn’t improve quickly and they were “next”. Now those in certain industries took a hit, but in general, Gen X didn’t take as big of a financial hit as a Boomer or Millenial, which helped them keep their current wealth.
@@genxx2724 I'm a Gen X'er and I don't understand that statement either.
Boomers, the ones still alive were the wealthiest generation, most having at least one pension and social security. Gen X is lucky if they have a pension, it's a 401k and whatever investment you did on your own.
I can retire at 55 if I want, provided the economy doesn't implode but that's only because I've been saving and planning since I was 25 years old.
They will understand the advantages of WFI (work from India).
This is a bad decision. Here's why. Remote work allows companies to see other candidates, highly experienced candidates, and potentially game-changing productive employees who could play an integral role in the success of a company but doesn't live near that company's HQ or main office. If you're a company President or CEO why limit yourself to just the talent that's available in your market? The best employee for your company could be someone living on the other side of the country. Why do you think Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meets was invented???
Actually it goes beyond what you talk about with remote meeting software. Almost 30 years ago when I was hired with my employer they used to look for the best candidates. We'd fly people in from anywhere in the country if their resume impressed us. Put them up for 2-3 days in a hotel and after a day long interview, if we liked them we'd pay relocation costs, temporary residence (I had 30 days paid), and other assistance if needed to make them happy new employees. Somewhere around the 2000 timeframe we wouldn't spend money anymore to attract people and HR required that we "hire locally". Things have never been the same quality-wise since HR dictated more who we hired than the actual department managers.
I wonder why I was censored for elaborating on your post. Am I at least allowed to say I agree with you 100%?
The cheapest employee may be living in India and be perfectly competent to do YOUR job. Does RTO seem better NOW?
Average American spends $51/day commuting to work plus food etc. all of that was realized during the pandemic fantasy furlough era. This is gonna get ugly 😂
I’m not saying that they should, but if they were going to end remote working, they should have done it in ‘21 or ‘22. The fact that it’s been a thing for 5 years, makes ending remote working that much more ridiculous!
They tried back in 2022 but had a lot of resistance then. People were still scared of the "big C", and companies were still bleeding employees who were jumping ship. I know I was hit with a lot of solicitations for 100% remote jobs, so were a lot of my colleagues who took them. Now those are drying up, but people are still used to the last almost 5 years as you noted.
Can we try the Great Resignation again? Apparently it's the only way giant corporations will care to treat workers fairly.
Too many people are broke right now...
You first
The economy is basically toast now.
You go first bud 😁 lol Honestly the onyl power we have is as consumers, not as employees. Vote w/ your wallet ppl and stop buying so much useless crap! Seriously, so many ppl do it. If Americans really changed that habit, prices for a lot of things would drop!
@@zerocal76 Speaking of useless shit people keep buying stupid shit from Amazon, especially sex toys. Friends that work there say they keep having to pack them.
This is why Texans are sick of these out-of-state corporations (and Californians and New Yorkers) coming to the state, building up huge offices, and then overwhelming the roadways with people commuting 30 miles to sit at a desk. It's ridiculous.
Floridians agree.
@@DeaconG1959 And, in true Republican fashion, your response is... nothing.
Ah, but I'm sure one day people will wake up, right? Then you'll show'em what for!
@@ernil-t3qand the democrats response is what? Bellyaching on UA-cam?
@@IP0Monsturd Democrats don't need a response. They're the ones doing it to you.
This also. It absolutelt bull shit
Back to sharing bathrooms 🤮 listening to horrible office jokes, spending time in traffic, and stressing about being late to the office. Yuck.
And less free labor hours given to your employers out of gratitude for that lovely work from home time period. I know my employer got a lot of extra hours from me for free in 20-22. It's been a lot less free labor now that I'm commuting 3 days a week again.
Then go live in a cave
Listen companies are not loyal to you. And this remote work will be a tension between employees and employer. So this will be interesting.
I’m working a hybrid remote contract job. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to working full time in the office. Right now I spend about 18 hours a week at the office, the rest of the time I’m home. And I like it that way. We as employees just have to start standing up and fighting back. We can’t take this crap anymore.
Yeah!!!!! But you go first...
@@larahporter8123 😅😅 "you go first" good1
After working remotely for 5+ years, I hardly see an opportunity or any sense to visit the office again, especially every day. Productivity is higher when people do not need to waste 1-2 hours of their life commuting to work, and these hours add to months which can be spent with the family or invested in yourself.
I told my manager that when it was decided we had to return to the office 3 days a week after working from home for more than two years. My manager told me that I wasn't unique in voicing that same concern. Many of us worked a lot of extra hours because for one thing, we couldn't go anywhere during the lockdowns easily and enjoyably, but also because we didn't spend the 1-2 hours a day on the road (2+ hours round trip for me). I told my manager he wasn't getting those same hours from me anymore now that I had to drive in just for the sake of the CEO wanting our physical presence in an overcrowded office environment.
For some, it means higher productivity, for most, it's the opposite. Productivity has gone down. That's why all these companies want people back in the office. In this case, they just want to lay them off.
@@sblijheid absolutely, everything is individual and some people feel more productive when they work face to face in the office. However, in my organization with 1000+ employees every person I talked to shared that his/her productivity became tangibly higher in a remote mode. I'm sure companies can conduct some kind of researches to assess the situation before forcing the people back to the offices
Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world. They collect and analyze perhaps the most data in the world. They are focused on efficiency above all else. Clearly, their numbers show that employees are not more productive when working from home. They have every incentive to cut office space and the expenses that come with it. And their data says remote work still doesn't pay off in the long run.
I've been trying to move out of my toxic tech startup for years now. It has never taken this long for me to find a job, ever. All the competition from the layoffs and RTO policies is making it impossible.
I’m in the exact same boat. Working for a startup where I got stuck under a toxic manager and I am desperate to get out, but there’s no hope on the horizon. I’m actually pretty depressed
It is time to leave this field, it's crowded and doesn't priduce anything good anymore. There are other jobs that the people should start doing again.
The company I was working for folded in January, outside of about 2 months of contract work I have been unemployed and looking. Hopefully picking up a long term contract soon, it's extremely rough out there right now though, especially for those of us working fully remote.
Same...been laid off for a few months now..haven't had one interview..at this point I don't even care about going in 5 days...I need a job.🫤And I won't even mention the low paying salaries.
Laying off employees based on their willingness to jump over arbitrary hoops is a way to get rid of best employees, not worst.
You are asking if remote workers are lazy? Check the quarterly profit reports. Last one was +13% profit for Amazon. And the raises they offered didn’t even cover inflation!!
Good point.
I think the executives want the real estate to be used.
Correct, once the rental lease is up or if they can sale the property, they will be happy to have remote workers to save a ton of money.
@@lifecyclestyled6732 They don't care about the money, the money belongs to the company. They want to have a big fancy desk in a big fancy office and boss around underlings.
Yeah they had to spend money on that stupid biodome thing instead of paying people fairly
You "think" this because everyone else says this. And?
most executives (and their friends) are likely highly invested in commercial real estate. Do the math...
Never going to go back into an office. Just as you said, my team is spread out all over the US and Canada, no point in driving for an hour plus to see nobody that I work directly with. The company did have a return to office push, however a lot of people have just ignored it (along with their managers), so nothing really came from the push from the "Overhead" perspective. I am sure that the Operational people did have to return, which has been causing it's own set of problems that I only see in the weekly office update e-mails.
Amazon were recruiting fully remote roles during the pandemic (I was approached for one). Anyone who took a job on that basis has just been given a nasty rug pull and needs to talk to an employment lawyer if they don't make the "special exemptions" list. If enough people fight it, the bad publicity and cost may just trigger a re-think.
If "remote" was in the contract then go to the court
No, they will just replace the ones that can't work in the office. CEO already said they can't win and he is right. Only one that can win is the CEO. He is still working remote.
Good luck finding a competent lawyer to take on Jeff Bezos. And I hope you have a ton of cash for a retainer because I doubt a good lawyer will do it pro bono.
I work for an Amazon company. Those contracts also state things can change according to what's best for the business. Trust me there's no winning a court case. Those fully remote positions are being demolished and RTO 5 days a week is here to stay. I wish it wasn't true as I absolutely love wfh but sadly, it is and you'll need to RTO if you want to stay w the company.
The "special exemptions list" isn't a good idea. We had one of those for a year after mandatory return to the office and it created a lot of employee resentment about how they had to come to the office and other, "special" people didn't have to. My employer ended up having to end the permanent remote work for everyone and we lost some really good talent in that outcome, including one of my previous managers who, I consider the best engineer I've ever met and I've been around for more than 30 years now.
We lost a lot though in productivity with resentful employees though IMO.
5 days back in the office is the last straw, never doing that again.
Me either. I work from home five days a week. On weekends I work at a local school kitchen. Its a mile down the road. Not going to change nothing.
I was in a London based Enterprise software company as a Senior manager in 2022, where they wanted us to “lead by example” by going to the office but while most of our staff would work from home. Made no sense and they kept talking about how we needed to lure the staff back to the office, but for most it was a total hassle with long commutes for nothing. The big reason was the office space being mostly empty which frustrated senior management 😅
My viewpoint is this. If companies can outsource jobs to other countries, they can let people work from home. This is likely just about control and to make sure they have eyes on everyone at all times.
An anxious staff is a much less productive one. It's so idiotic. As a boss (and or manager) what do I want? For my staff to be anxious and distracted, or physically and mentally comfortable and focussed / so they can focus on their work? That's a no brainer to me but higher ups and corporate c-suite types aren't often the wisest bunch when it comes to people.
I've read some articles that theorize that it's a lot of it is about the big execs and their egos.
They don't feel as big and important when they can't see & be seen, and wave their arm across a physical spread and domain of people who work for them - and who HAVE to acknowledge and smile at them cuz they're dependent on them for their jobs. It's like plantation mentality.
Most “office” companies are owned by bigger giant companies that own 10+ smaller companies.
These mega corporations often own and rent the office buildings to their smaller companies.
Just follow the money.
@@roberth4395 of course, that makes a lot of sense. 👍 All I was thinking was that the company owned the building but rented to other stores and businesses on the street level floor and or other businesses in other floors of the building. And that they're street level floor renters like coffee shops etc have more customers from a full building of people.
But yeah, basically many reasons but none that have to do with how useful for the employees and productive for the company WFH is.
If you can do your job WFH, can't it be done WFI (work from India) at far lower cost?
Do you REALLY want to encourage companies to replace WFH employees with WFI (work from India) employees?
Think carefully about that.
For those of us staying remote, management has decided they can squeeze more juice out of us. "You get the benefit of working in your pjs." They no longer take into account the overhead savings they are reaping and are jealous of our time. They are demanding increased productivity ONLY for the remote team members.
He likes the "culture" of having enough money to give thousands of people raises, but instead decides how they get to live their lives and have no say.
Of course they have a say. It's a simple yes or no question, wether you like to jump through the hoops or seek employment elsewhere.
It's not a nice situatuation for the most, but each and every worker gets to make that choise.
@@konzza looks more like an ultimatum rather than a choice
@@also307 Absolutely an ultimatum. That wasn't my point at all. It's a matter of "take or leave it", but there is a choise.
I might be mistaken, but i don't think that Amazon has been at the top of the totem pole for the most desirable employes even for office workers for many years. Those poor bastards unfortunate enough, not to employ elsewhere will probably also have to start peeing in bottles, like other Amazon workers allready do. It never was a secret that Amazon has worse corporate culture than medieval slaves.
@@konzza I agree with @also307, it seems like more of an ultimatum, given the current state of the job market.
All they really want to do is track you while you go into a huge office building they've rented and sit with people you don't know and them go into a teams meeting - with a coworker in a different office on a different coast
Those window offices won't be admired by remote workers and the executives can't have their pointless all hands where they can brag about their bonuses and have their butts kissed by *that* employee who always asks the questions at the end of an all hands. Who else will appreciate the executives' parking spaces? Who will laugh at their lame jokes? They're just a spouse or partner or parent at home. But, they are royalty in the office. What executive would give that up?
LOL! But they still get to flex on LinkedIn. That's gotta count for something.
Agreed. I hate All Hands meetings. Just a waste of productive time. Shameless cheerleading and butt kissing.
Another small thing that's being overlooked that I picked up on when the pandemic happened was that a lot these men were desperate to get back into the office because they didn't want to be around their families 24/7 at home. Also they couldn't get out as freely to meet up with their mistresses and hookups buddies. I knew of at least 2 men cheating on their wives who were mad that we all didn't get called back into the office during the pandemic. The office was available to anyone to use if they were having internet issues or needed a quiet space, but nope those individuals wanted all of us back in the office because they ran out of excuses to tell their spouses. I just laughed them.
Return to office is a collective goal by CEOs to repair the values of commercial real estate. Nobody has any issue with offshore Indians working remote.
Yeah, that's a big problem most aren't talking about. I read it was $4T worth of commercial real estate bonds coming due over the next few years and many building owners can't pay the coming bill.
Remote work should be encouraged across the board. I had an opportunity to work remotely sometimes before it was a thing. I thought I would be lazy, and non productive, but I was not , and not having to commute saved a lot of time. Before my current job I was working from home for an MSP which was very flexible. We were supposed to be in the office 3 days a week, but they looked the other way. One of our customers was a company founded over ten years ago by people working from home ! They never had an office building !
Upwork and Fiverr are basically the only places where remote work can and will continue but then again it requires a certain persona to do that.
So they'll be paying more so people can afford to live near corporate offices, right?
You sound like one of those arrogant disgruntled managers who is insecure and only gets an egoboost by making your employees as miserable as you are. @@maryjanesnow
Being in the office doesn't increase collaboration....CEOs just want to see their worker bees
Tell your CEO to pound sand. You aren’t getting out of your pajamas for anybody!
and the crappy coworkers want to bother people. lie about good workers and keep up drama. no thank you. i love working in my pjs
may be, but there certainly is an increased risk in terms of information and system security
exactly. We can "collaborate" over Zoom just fine. Worked fine for the past few years.
Except the CEOs don't come watch us. They have managers to do that menial work.
The only reason management hates remote work is that their little tinpot dictator souls can't bear the thought that people might not have their nose to the grindstone every living second. Being remote keeps them at arms length and they hate that. Instead of being concerned with the real work and whether it gets done properly by the deadline, they obsess over making sure people are 'busy' every second. Trivia fact... people can't work that way because we aren't machines. So what ends up happening is that either people make themselves sick by stressing over being watched incessantly, or they spend all their time figuring out how to evade panopticon culture and not working...
Bingo!
I just want to thank you for all that you do! In June I was laid off from a remote TPM role at a Bay Area tech company and I watched nearly every one of your videos. I just accepted a Staff level TPM role at a Fortune 100! Much higher level and significantly higher pay! Couldn’t have done it without you!
Nope , never going back in an office!
And here's another problem. A lot of companies hired people to work remotely during the Pandemic to the point where there aren't enough desks at the office IF everyone showed up for example. I was hired in May 2024 and there's currently no desk for me at the office.
This right here. Most companies aren't cash rich enough to have held on to their giant, empty offices.
There is nowhere for many to go.
@@edupunknoob Ok so then why don't they sell or abandon their real estate, and let people work from home ?!
@@CIS101 That's what a lot of companies did. I wish more (like Amazon) had done that rather than leave giant buildings vacant in the middle of a housing crisis.
@@edupunknoob Ah but here's a twist. A lot of those buildings can be converted to apartments, and condos. There's an architect out there who has come up with a rating system to determine which office buildings can be converted, and which cannot.
@@CIS101 you're phrasing that like we're arguing. I'm not disagreeing with you. It would be great if we actually used the real estate for something we need rather than something to make big corp balance sheets look better.
Great work culture in which you aren't allowed to have toilet breaks during shifts.
In my opinion, whether intentionally or not, worker productivity may decline as a result of this decision. Many employees who, while working remotely, put in extra hours and maintained high engagement, might now feel that their preferences have been dismissed. This could lead them to adopt a more minimalist approach to work-doing only what's necessary to avoid being let go, rather than going above and beyond as they might have done when they had more flexibility.
I'm sorry but going above and beyond doesn't equate to more money being added to your paycheck. Just more responsibility for the same pay. I do what I am paid to do and nothing more. These greedy jobs care nothing about their employees and would post your job probably the very next day if something happended to you. I've seen these dirty rotten companies let go of employees who were getting ready to retire just to keep from giving them what they worked for.
@@truthhurts...6574 If you've worked at a company for a long time and are near retirement, it's not in the company's interest to make you redundant, as they have to pay you a severance for every year you've worked there.
If you'd been there say 25 years, your severance pay would be huge depending on the company and their individual policy.
They're better off just letting you retire.
Yeah, they don't take into account that the commute savings are often turned over to the company. I've always worked remote, since 2011 when I graduated, and the fight we have in my sector is limiting people from over-working since they're all at home.
@@Longlostpuss every company is not the same. I'm speaking from what I have witnessed in my 20 years of working. Believe it or not some people are very spiteful and do not want to see you have a good life. It angers some to see you retiring getting out the rat race especially if you are not broken down and in bad health able to start a new venture in life. I've seen it in the military too with them trying to kick out people before before they can get retirement. Those asre the ones that then go to try to get medically chaptered out to get something for their years of service. It's a dirty game.
Exactly.
When our new CEO announced his plan was to bring us back to the overcrowded office 5 days a week I let my manager know that my availability outside of office hours would be much less, my after-hours response time would be much higher as I'd be powering down my home office each day at the end of the "normal workday", that I wouldn't be checking in on things over the weekend and in the evenings before bed, and that I'd be claiming on-call pay anytime they called me after hours, something I've never done before unless it was an excessive amount of time in one day.
Apparently that was a common sentiment from many of us salaried workers and the CEO shelved that plan, at least for the last two years. Hopefully that lasts at least a few more years until retirement.
I work for Americans largest retailer. We had the RTO a few months ago. Was told this was because we're a "people culture." First, you're a Fortune 1 company that makes billions of dollars in profit each year while having hundreds, if not thousands, of store associates on welfare. Whom you get a tax benefit from. Stop calling yourself a "people culture." Second, I now travel from Connecticut to New Jersey, every day, to the office to have the same discussions via email and Slack that I could have had at home. Get phuqed.
My boss is in Detroit, my co worker is in Souix Falls and our director is in Alabama. Yeah, not moving.
Are you working for Amazon ?
GM?
It’s just a way to lay off without severance
They just announced at my workplace that they are going back to full-time in-office again. They claim that the reason why is that working remotely is a security liability and that the project wants us back in office 100%. We were scheduled to eventually go back in a hybrid schedule where we would only go into the office 2 days a week. Apparently, from my I've heard from the rumor mill at work is that our off-shore IT folks violated processes that lead to security breaches that cost the company money, so they are going to take it out on us American workers. On top of that, they gave us all crappy merit increases this year even though we did so well throughout the year. The only benefit my job had was it being remote/hybrid. If that goes away, I'll just start looking for other jobs where I can get a nice pay bump.
These employers are gonna have karma come back to bite them in the ass. They’re gonna go from not being able to get top tier talent to getting less then average, to barely have people knock on their door for job opportunities.
Just a way to get people to quit.
Your video inspired me to lower my pay expectations to $7.25 per hour (minimum wage) as an experienced Data Engineer. I would rather get minimum wage than return to the office. Life is better at $20K remotely than $130K in the office.
I assume you're speaking hyperbolically, but I can agree with your setiment to some degree. Some of IT jobs in my area (legit,customer facing IT jobs,not just resetting passwords over the phone) are still paying about 50-60k a year in my area. Long hours with no ovetime, stresful, projects that go on along with your already assigned duties, if you take vacation or a sick day your work sitting there waitig for you. Meanwhile, some fast food / retail jobs with no experience are paying18/20hr. Is all the BS really worth the extra 10k a year?
Im going to be canceling my prime account, something ive had for 10 years.
Unless there's an organized mass movement of that kind of action, and at a big enough level to have an affect on Amazon profits, don't bother. They don't care and won't notice. If it's convenience and service benefits you, keep it.
They're a huge global corporation (there's an Amazon for most countries and languages) that's too big and successful (and too convenient and popular to its users) to be affected by anything like a few people here and there cancelling prime in protest.
😂Ok
The lawmakers should prohibit in-office work for anyone who can work remotely. The benefits to the environment are huge.
This is going to backfire horrendously.
if it does, theres ai and outsourcing to india
Depends on what the goal is. If they want voluntary layoffs, it will be great and their labor costs will look great without having to pay out.
It won't. In a capitalist society/economy the Companies dictate. Not the Employees. Simple as. People will eventually be happy just to have a job, believe me.
I don’t know about AI, but tech companies had tried outsourcing ever since the 90s and failed horribly each time.
@@learntoplumbwell you know what AI stands for… An Indian
It’s “quiet firing”. This is how they get ppl to quit so they don’t have to report layoffs and avoid paying out severance pay & unemployment.
If these companies want to improve and create healthy workplace cultures, they'd at the very least allow hybrid work. Productivity improved while employees worked remotely. I'm currently looking for optimal remote work opportunities.
I left the traditional 8 to 4:30pm healthcare job because the work environment was toxic. Especially post pandemic. I have PTSD from my last job. A lot of toxic employees and supervisors are in these companies and they're not being held accountable for their bad behavior.
I agree. No one size fits all model but hybrid is a good compromise between company and employee. I do also find occasion face to face interaction is very productive.
Remote work will not last very long. They’d rather have less people working in the office where they could see them, than infinite people working from home unsupervised. Actually the end goal is AI chat bots handling everything
1. Fewer people, not less people.
2. Companies that hire remote will out-compete others.
3. non-narrow ai is mostly hype.
Employers want the least amount of people on the payroll to get the job done, reliably, safely, and productively. That's a tough balance where too few can cost you more in error and lost opportunity than too many on the payroll cost the company.
I work in tech where we're short handed but by all appearances, "getting the job done". We make mistakes, we have single point failures where if a single key person on a project leaves, we're in trouble. We're spread thin enough that we'd have a hard time picking up a project from a colleague who falls ill or leaves the company as we're all working on our own projects as individuals because there aren't enough of us to work multiple projects, and not enough hours in the day to pause your project to work on another project. I doubt we're alone in that flawed balancing act strategy of number of people.
And now we have "ghost jobs". We open positions when someone leaves or retires, but we're not interviewing for, or filling them. We've had engineers that retired over a year ago who we've opened job positions to fill. We're not even interviewing for those empty position more than a year later.
I've said this before and will say it again, hoping what I'm saying will get attention. But hear me out: At this point, the government should step in when companies try to do this. We know what they're trying to do. They do this as a way to force people to quit. Companies do this so they won't need to pay
1. Avoid paying severance packages
2. Avoid paying unemployment.
I can bet money that we'll hear about Amazon laying off workers shortly. This is just a form of manipulation.
The government is in their pocket. Be real
Wow- “corporate gaslighting” that’s a great phrase.
I’m a hard working, bright, creative, and thirsty employee.. the problem? I hate teamwork… I hate bosses and coworkers… I would do so much work and for less money if I didn’t have to interact with shitty colleagues all the time. Corporate life is not for me. So much happier away from the BS… missing the paycheck though…
When we returned to office in 2022, the year following was the loneliest and most disconnected year ever. We had a beautiful new building. Lots of space to collaborate. Tiny half-height cubes close together. And nobody talked to each other. Managers never left their office. People just took meetings at their desk. I was miserable. After over ten years there, we had changed. Everyone was dealing with some trauma from COVID, and RTO did not magically fix us. I don’t miss it at all almost two years later. I’m way closer to my remote colleagues across the country now.
When I go into the office, I don’t know anyone. It’s alienating. Hot desking also sucks for ergonomics.
Amazon has a reputation for being a lousy place to work where I'm from.
... and keep in mind... that NONE of these pos corporations are offering an extra CENT of pay to compensate the employees for having to move, commute, or anything. Interestingly in my ENTIRE career I have yet to see any contract ever that compensates any employee for those costs associated with employment.
That's true today. Almost 30 years ago when I was hired I was given 30 days of temporary housing to find a place to live, money for meals while in temp housing, and if I needed my moving expenses covered, they would have covered that as well. We used to fly people in from all over the country to interview for positions. Around 2000 that all went away. Bean counters demanded we only hire locally or prospective applicants could cover their own interview and moving expenses if they wanted to work for us badly enough.
@@Shadow_Banned_Conservative - I feel like they somehow don't know how negatively that has affected their talent pool. Through that practice they are passing up a lot of good candidates.
@@alexhigginbotham8635 Honestly, I think they know, they just don't care. They are there for only a few years and are there to make the number look good, and then move on to their next job.
Amazing how corporations are all about money, except when it comes to leased office space.
This is just Amazon pre-gaming for a mass lay off. And remote workers are just low hanging fruit. If there's no office close to the remote worker....
Jeff Bezos and his upper management team aren’t dummies.
A friend of mine who did remote work for Amazon was just let go without warning. He lives in a rural area and was the bread winner for his wife and three kids. I'm trying to help him get a job at the company I work for right now.
He may be forced to move to a larger city.
One thing in RTO (return to office) especially on tech companies is that bean counters realized this hard truth: if it's remote then it can be anywhere. So if it's not in the office let's move our workforce for India or the Philippines where the cost per hour is less than a fifth of the United States. I've seen this with many of my friends and peers. They moved and the jobs that stayed remote are slowly being replaced by cheaper overseas workers. These tech companies have campuses in many other countries. So, reality is that if you have a remote job the chances that you will be outsourced increase dramatically.
But people who WFH will tell you that they are super special and smart and bring tons of value so outsourcing will effectively doom the company.
The reason they do this is because its not about fostering collaboration, its about getting people to leave. They don't need work to get done at this point, so the people hired aren't hired for their ability to get done, they are hired because they gamed the system well enough to get approval from everyone.
Exactly! This will let them get rid of people without the the cost and negative perception of doing formal layoffs.
They waited too long to do this. If they wanted people to come back to the office full time, why did they wait 4 1/2 years to do it? They should have had people come back as soon as the pandemic ended - which was when, sometime in the summer of 2022 I think? I can't even remember. So 2 more years of post Covid remote work. They had us all come back, and unfortunately, now everyone is socializing and talks all day long. The office is noisy. This isn't the kind of work we do. We're supposed to do quiet work. Working from home was perfect for this. I was more productive. Now it's so noisy - all I hear is gossip all day long which I don't care to hear about. They think things will work better coming back in - but we already proved that we could get just as much work done working from home. And we have the technology to do it too. So the argument doesn't hold water.
What's wild is I work remote and went into an office and we still met on teams while all in the same building to talk about the same shit lol. Corporate word salad that doesn't mean anything leading to layoffs. This is why i day drink and do the bare minimum. My middle manager is the best and the director is the hindrance.
My work told us to come back for "the culture". There is no team any longer, we are all out to save ourselves, we deeply do not like each other, nor do we trust any upper leadership. We are all waiting to be laid off. Some "culture".
In short, they are getting ready to do a RIF, and this is a pre-RIF RIF, or a quiet RIF. See who leaves, then decide if it's enough to satisfy their shareholders. It's impossible to be ignorant of the gravity of remote work in the workplace, and people don't have short memories. If you can offer it as a company, you should. When the market is back in the power of Job seekers, they will remember actions like these like it was yesterday. 100% guaranteed.
the market is almost never in the average job seekers hands except for very short periods of time
top performers dont have a problem though no matter what the state of the market is. a lot of those people either left already or will leave
@@dynamo3059 Top performers are not insulated, just to a lesser degree.
@@gz6x they are in that they can always get another job
By then, A.I will be is full swing.
You will be wishing you had a job to commute to.
@@IP0Monsturd Could be. I wonder though if AI will fail to thrive if people refuse to engage with it in the consumer space.
"Oh, it's AI-driven? Nevermind, I'll go somewhere I get actual human interaction". Maybe if we vote loud enough with our dollars, we can make an impact and increase the value of investing in people.
I've never heard of a single reason for killing remote work that wasn't pure idiocy
I worked in the office as a dev for many years. Basically just spent most of my time in teams or slack. Especially since half my team was in another country. It’s absolutely a waste of time to make people drive into an office
I am a former Amazonian myself. I whole heartedly wish to the current Amazonians to UNIONIZE and STRIKE.
People don’t even all to each other at the office. Teams are distributed across the world. Why drive to be on a laptop talking to your team VIRTUALLY??? 😢
The thing about remote work is that if something can be done remotely, it can be outsourced to India or whatever for cheaper.
after that level of corporate gaslighting, I have to go to puke....
As someone who works in the hospitality industry, I’m very happy. Remote work in major cities has contributed significantly to many businesses closing down, leading to empty buildings, crime and homeless doing drugs and sleeping all around. This is a step in the right direction for many major cities.
The hospitality industry is collapsing. With our economy going in the dumper, we have less money to spend for your hospitality services. Then the tax increases proposed every time we turn around are finishing it off faster. I work in a different country from where I live and although the voters rejected a "meals tax" twice now, the BoS is looking to put one in anyway, claiming necessity. It will take the tax on your food, with sales tax to 11%. So, that $20 lunch will now cost another dollar, and I'm expected to leave a tip. My property taxes in the county where I do live went up nearly 40% since 2021, and my home and auto insurance as well.
I work 3 days a week in the office and buy my lunch daily. I spend between $60-$80 a week for lunch but that ends when the meals tax gets added, probably early next year. That will be the final straw for me.
@@Shadow_Banned_Conservative bring your lunch then. You don’t have to eat out, it’s not for everyone. There will always be a need for nice restaurants. I’m not sure you understand the business conventions, and such are a big business for private dining. I worked in SF for fifteen years, doing very well. Now in Seattle and we are busy at my restaurant with major business and small booking parties. Where do you think business is done? Over the golf course and in restaurants over bottles of wine. No one expects you to leave a huge tip for counter service. I do appreciate what you had to say, as a single woman with no children I have been highly taxed my whole life for things that have nothing to do with me or my life choices! I get it
@@Lucky_Forages_88 The people they're trying to force back into the office aren't your customers though. We're not making business deals or doing fancy dining. We're the worker bees, not the executives and CEOs.
@@Shadow_Banned_Conservativeeven regular people have special occasions, birthdays and anniversaries. I’m not just talking about fancy restaurants shutting down I’m talking about small businesses, groceries stores, etc. my original comment was mostly about how these businesses closing down and being empty directly affect the homeless hanging around and people doing drugs on the streets in these areas. It’s okay for you not to come to a fancy restaurant but all of your presences in the city’s will help. That was more my point. People have gotten used to being home and working and that was bc of the pandemic. Get back to the office! Just like everyone else has had to go back!
More to your point you said hospitality is dying and I was just pointing out that in some places it is not, and I stated some of the reasons why and why my restaurant is busy. So yeah let the fast food places die, but there will always be a place you want to take your partner for a special dinner once in a while.
I completely agree. I recently started a new hybrid position hoping that going into the office would bring more collaboration. However, when I got to the office, I didn't have an assigned seat and didn't know where anyone from my team was sitting. This is a large company and many of the people I was working with directly were in other regions anyway.
The only difference with being in the office and working at home was the scenery. That and having to commute for over an hour and making more normally 8 to 9 hour day into an 11 to 12 hour day.
This is most people's situation, at this point is a tug of war for remote work vs the control executives feel they need to have their employees under.
My company went to a hybrid work schedule with WFH on Monday & Friday. So guess what we do in the office? We have all of our meetings and huddles in Teams. We communicate with each other 90% of the time on chat and never leave our cubicles. We do the same thing in the office we do at home. So much for all of this “collaboration and culture” nonsense.
Thanks a lot, Amazon. As if it already wasn’t hard enough in this tech market to get a different position. I’m stuck under a toxic boss at a dysfunctional startup and I’ve desperately want it out for many months now. Trying all the things that the experts say when looking for a new job and I’m coming up With nothing. It’s depressing, and I feel like my walls are closing in
95% of big companies will follow suit. Remote work is ending
Use your heads here guys. This is here to trigger layoffs. Knowing that, I definitely wouldn’t move back. If they’re trying stuff like this, where’s the guarantee that there won’t be another sweeping around of layoffs when not enough people had the balls to resign in this market?
I work in software and they were getting rid of all remote workers. I am fully remote and in a reduced team asked to work more than double the load we were doing previously. They targeted me, but since I'm employed in France, they had to give me 6 months of salary even though I only worked 2 years with them. They were the hardest 2 years of my working life. They squeezed me like a lemon but eventually I just started working at my own pace and forced them to negotiate my leaving. Thankfully, I don't need to do what they tell me because I have a good FU fund.
If I had to bet on who would win this contest. Jeff Bezos or the pajama wearing work at home employee I think I would put my money on Jeff.
@@IP0Monsturd The loser who doesn’t know how long his work takes and would believe it if I told him modifying a simple line of code took eight weeks while I took advantage of it and worked six jobs? Jeff Bozos is a joke.
Amazon spent 20 years dragging as many people as possible to Seattle. Now it's unaffordable and impractical. And you can't really build vertically there. Part of this will look like a slow-motion RIF and more voluntary quits. Some will stay, some will leave. May a thousand startups bloom!
Absolutely!! I think it is going to encourage people to get out and start a business. Lots of talk on the campaign trail offering tax credits for small business start ups.