I think the biggest wins from covid will just be that we did a massive 3-year WFH experiment and overall it went just fine. Great, even, if you account for the fact that it wasn't just a WFH test in isolation, it was accompanied by a generation-defining negative psychological and virulogical event. We all went fully remote for three years during a terrible humanitarian crisis and nothing exploded (except inflation but that's not our fault)

Nothing exploded while most companies had no idea whatsoever on how to implement it properly. Things worked mostly fine even though it was through a panic emergency plan that was completely winged due to sheer necessity.

Imagine if it was a plan properly designed and implemented? All this bullshit of RTO is getting old for me exactly because of this point, nothing was done in what would be even close to the optimal way for working remotely and things are still going ok...

Some parts of it were coupled with parents trying to homeschool their kids (for younger kids, at least, the parental attention required for remote school was high enough it wasn't too far off from simply home-schooling) while "working". Plus the extra stress of, you know, the whole being-in-a-pandemic thing. I recall some grumbling in those days about remote worker productivity and it's like, yeah, no shit, daycares and schools are all closed and households are all dual-income because game theory and zero-sum competition for housing/schools, so....

Those parts ought to be disregarded for any kind of lessons-learned from this, as far as the broader viability of WFH. 2020 through early 2021, at the very least, had some strong confounding factors going on which, one hopes, will not be common in the future.

I don't think it went "just fine". It looked like companies were doing well because we were in a bubble market.

I definitely feel, and observe, a noticeable decrease in productivity and speed of execution compared to where my org was a few years ago. I know others have noticed it too, including management.

On top of all that, companies are expected to run leaner than before because now that the bubble is over, apparently everyone remembered that having a sane balance sheet and making a profit are things that matter. So now we want per-worker productivity to increase because we can't hire as many people.

The basic social contract of work has not changed. Tech workers have better pay and benefits than almost anyone else, and we should not be whiny about this. Most workers in other fields had to return to the office too.

Times are tough.. let's spent what little money we have on renting an office space?

> Tech workers have better pay and benefits than almost anyone else, and we should not be whiny about this. Most workers in other fields had to return to the office too.

So, if it’s bad for some, let’s make it bad for everyone? What kind of reasoning is that? FFS, we should be making progress, not the opposite!

Define "progress".

Working from an office is not some kind of dystopia. Quite a few people prefer it to other arrangements. Having a pandemic that forced people to work from home for a year or two does not change the fundamental reality of human social interactions.

> we did a massive 3-year WFH experiment and overall it went just fine.

Did it go fine because it was massive?

I'm not certain about that, but I do think companies believe this is a simple way to kill two birds with one stone:

1. Trim headcount.

2. Keep the most "loyal" employees (or those who need the job the most and will say yes to anything, which is a double-sided sword).

haha. Because loyal == high performing. That is how it works. There is absolutely no way that high performing employees that can get a job by crossing the street will ever think about jumping ship because of the shitty manner they are treated.

These companies have no accurate way of measuring performance anyway.

It’s not about being mathematically perfect about performance. In any given team, area, organization one can easily point out who are the good ones.

I don't know of you are making a judgement there but I think it's important to point out that there is practically no useful way of measuring performance in our industry; it's not a company problem.

Some of the most useful employees I've met probably produced less than the most junior developer in tangible assets.

They may not be after high performing right now, they may just want the ones who won't or can't cross the street.

Not to mention, most of these companies keep on saying there will be exceptions for exceptional employees in a clear attempt to still keep the high performing employees they like.

3. Separate the wheat from the chaff. The chaff come to the office.

Problem is loyal != performant. The most valuable engineers want it all, so they will probably leave because they can.

Yes. The biggest companies, with the most political power, believe just that. I pray smaller companies make themselves more competitive by offering WFH but that’s yet to be seen.

hah. i have some bad news for them. the cat is out of the bag. they may be able to force people to do things in the short term but long term they are going to become obsolete.

I mean unless proven otherwise most companies do believe that. What happened to that Vote with your feet / vote with your wallet thing?

>Do people, in general, believe that we can revert to whatever we were doing before the pandemic started?

Why not?

The complaints are also getting old. If you were hired with the expectation that you go in the office, RTO is an eventual expected outcome.

I do see the psychology of taking away what many see as a "benefit", but it's really just going back to the norm.

Hmm... the complaints are getting old? I guess the beatings need to continue until morale improves.

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/traditi...

Hard disagree with "If you were hired with the expectation that you go in the office, RTO is an eventual expected outcome." Ask yourself why do we need to RTO? Who needs the RTO?

we should all read between the lines, this big push is from those that invest in the office buildings and surrounding businesses chains, and are hurting from lower proximity of consumers.

Stop making your own meals, start consuming from their fast food chain down the block from the building theyre leasing to your company.

Stop for gas and buy from their other investments close by.

Need people to stop being so self sufficient at home, and suck the rich tit.

We are so desperate for the help :( /$

i agree that things are shifting. forcing everyone to the old routine that is worse for them, worse for the environment and worse for the tech corporations that are peddling this is insane.

Gas? If we consume less gas that's good right?

Less wear an tear on the cars? Good

Not wasting 1-2 hours commuting? Great

Having a quiet place where you can gather your thoughts and do knowledge work? Amazing

But what about the hard working real estate companies that are going to be impacted by this? What about the small businesses? What about them? Close shop and/or figure out something else that works. Why does everyone have to have a crappier life for you to continue with your crap practices?

Don't ask yourself or your neighbor. Ask your company why they want you to RTO.

Who needs the RTO? Apparently, the company does. This is why they are asking people to return...

hah. i did ask. I also did ask about the metrics that are used to measure productivity. Do you want to hear what the answer was? crickets!

So, I guess at this point you have at least two options:

* Go back to the office as expected

* Look for another job

Which one will you pursue?

If I had to make the choice it would be another job. Easy choice.

Why does it have to be the norm?

We can't just stick to what's been done previously just because it used to be that way. Clearly, for years, workers have been productive remotely. I get some people like being in the office more than WFH, but the "some" is key here and does not align with an RTO mandate

1. of all the norm for a couple of years is home office

2. it is an objective benefit

3. the norm is what the majority want it to be

Agreed. If the expectation was to work from the office when you were hired, you should expect to go back to the office once the pandemic is/was over. Otherwise, why would you take a job in an office if you didn't want to work there (there - as in "in the office")?

It's sort of ironic for Amazon to push for a returning to pre-pandemic norms, given that the pandemic was such a boon to their retail business and stock price.

this was due to low interest rates and savings/stimmies not anything about remote work

Really, it had nothing to do with people ordering even more online for home delivery than prior to the pandemic? You don't think that folks might continue ordering more home delivery if they aren't out driving every day? References for the other reasons for their growth can be found with even the slightest effort.

[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=amazon+pandemic+growth+cause&...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/technology/amazons-profit...

[2] https://fortune.com/2021/10/18/amazon-massive-growth-covid-p...

[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/how-amazon-managed-the-coron... (non-paywall, yay!)

For some things like delivered food, delivery is a luxury.

However, I fully expect that during the pandemic people discovered a lot of things that they could have picked up in the next couple of days in "only" 25 minutes or so can actually be ordered from Amazon at competitive prices. I ordered from Amazon a lot pre-pandemic but added various random stuff instead of going to, say, Home Depot.

Anecdata: been doing it since 5/15/2020. With best effort “social distancing” up until a few months back.

As a layman, in my unprofessional opinion, people in generally good health should not perceive the office as a death trap.

> believe that we can revert to whatever we were doing before the pandemic started?

Yes. We built it that way for a specific reason.

What did we build exactly? The current model of tech open offices originated in the early 2000s. Before that we had cubicles, starting around the 60s and 70s. And something else before that. Office buildings themselves don't go all that far back, maybe a couple hundred years.

None of these is the "right" model. We will continue to evolve to what suits the present work culture and requirements, and WFH is where we have reached for now.

> What did we build exactly?

A shared workspace with centrally located and maintained resources. This allows for greater overall efficiency but allows the organization as a whole to quickly dedicate resources to new and emergent problems. In theory this should save money and allow the company to successfully capture and serve more business.

> None of these is the "right" model.

There is no "right" model. Everything is a question of compromises. Work from home has some employee benefits, but has higher direct and abstract costs for the employer.

> And WFH is where we have reached for now.

This is understandable, companies have not been particularly cognizant of sharing the rewards of the above configuration with their employees. To me, though, this seems like an opportunity wasted to correct this.

> Work from home has some employee benefits, but has higher direct and abstract costs for the employer.

Ah come on now. Instead of my employer paying for a space for me to sit in central London, the electricity and internet connection, I pay for those things myself. Instead of wasting time on a train I get a bit of work done before most people are online.

The only costs are in the crocodile tears of middle management who cannot advance themselves simply by growing their headcount.

All you need are enough people to fall in line.

Amazon is filled with workers on visas. At least from the subset I've talked to, this isn't the hill they plan to die on. "Come in or fuck off back to {home country}" is a pretty strong bargaining chip.

For me, getting fired would mean taking a few months off to leisurely reset, then slowly getting back on the leetcode grind, and then trying to find a new remote job. Drawing lines in the sand is much easier when "uproot your entire life" isn't on the table.

I agree. This is where the people that can draw lines in the sand are even more important.

I will cancel prime and hit them where it hurts. Who will join me?

Cancelled prime eons ago. What else?

Tracker and Ad-blockers, and SEO to discard Amazon results (e.g., tinyurl.com/brave-googles-amzn-free-search).

Return to the status quo like the last three years didn’t happen.