However, what’s right for me isn’t right for you and enforcing a rule one way or another does not work so I agree with your point.
Megacorps need to understand that we humans have a range of preferences and, if we’re to assume some prefer remote and some prefer office, then making a big decision as Amazon has will alienate a decent amount of workers. Cue calamity.
If you believe that only physical environments can be properly collaborative then you invalidate the remainder of your post.
Literally the next sentence after the one you quote is “what’s right for isn't right for you”.
I’m not saying that only physical environments have those qualities - I’m saying through my experience I work better, feel better, and contribute better when I can communicate in a physical space and not a virtual one.
Again, as I say, whatever is right for the individual. If virtual works for you, that’s great, but I’m consciously stepping out of remote work as I really struggle with it.
It's impossible to collaborate in an open office. It's hard to talk to my team if that requires yelling louder than the other 200 people in the floor.
The offices are big enough to not be _too_ expensive, and small enough to enhance collaboration and concentration.
This is a great philosophy to have when your skills are in high demand. What do you say to the people who might have trouble finding a full-remote job that pays enough?
I don't think anyone is born and dreams about working remote doing engineering work in front of a computer for 8 hours a day. You end up doing a venn diagram of what you like with what the world offers and you decide what your values are.
If my life philosophy would include sipping margaritas at the beach or spending my days with my friends outside building an off-grid community I'd be out of luck because I'm not rich and my friends are not rich either.
Find a job that you like because you'll get good at it and your skills will be in high demand as well. Work hard and save enough every month to be able to walk away and into the company next door if your boss turns to shit.
My grandpa passed this philosophy to me and he was a plumber from a remote village in Portugal. He'd tell me how he kept to his values and didn't work for anyone that didn't respect him. He didn't die rich but he was proud in his work. Find what that is for you.
If people focused more on this instead of needing to place themselves on either side "get max salary" or "unionize the world" things would be way better.
But I still believe in individual agency. There are things individuals can still do to make things better. I feel for the edge cases of people who don't have choice. But in general, people have more choice than they think.
Either way you're missing the complete point of the post to harp on a meaningless detail. I was no way implying that remote work is a "right." I was simply pointing out how in many ways worker's rights have been diminished. One only has to look at the recent rail strike to see that, or the countless examples of wage theft, or the switching of hourly to salary to avoid paying overtime.
But despite all this we still have some agency and we should exercise it, even if things are "wrong" or "unfair." That's the point.
The evolution of worker rights has always followed this path. Introduced as perks, then standardized and encoded legally as rights. While there are outliers that get dunked on a lot ( eg on-site laundry at Meta) for the most part the perks have been entirely reasonable (flexible hours and schedules).
Why? Because the calculation is biased by how atoms move, not information.
Fully remote works great - there are plenty of awesome collaboration tools (Miro for example) where you can collaborate. Fully in-person obviously works as well.
But with hybrid, someone always loses - either the folks in the room or the folks on the screen.