Perhaps something of a corollary of the saying, don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. The Amazon senior folks making these decisions almost certainly have reasons. If people quit, maybe they just don't care who it is. I really wonder if they AB tested RTO. Given it is Amazon, I would put a small wager they have.
Further, the impact between middle managers and individual contributors is uneven in remote work. The article mentioned there was a desire to reduce management. Remote work was an interesting experiment IMO to show the (lack of) effectiveness of middle management. Perhaps the impact to ICs is negative, but the middle management can be more effective. Arguably that would give greater "focus" on the specific KPIs desired by the VP level. Again, would be super fascinating to know the data used by Amazon here, of if this is a rare decision truly made by fiat alone.
Others have mentioned Amazon's real estate holdings. I kinda think that is likely. Amazon made huge investments to stop leasing offices and to build and own their own offices. If nobody is there, the surrounding neighborhood is devalued, in turn devaluing the offices further. It would be s considerable loss on paper. ICs perhaps are about as effective in office under a whip compared to remote, and if some quit - then maybe all the better to reduce head count.
As a senior engineer, I benefit from remote work. But it’s sad to see those informal lunches replaced with Zoom “coffee.”
Let's stop pretending that remote work is new. I've worked remotely on and off from the beginning of my career. Majority of my mentors have been remote, at least two of whom I've never met "on real life" - one of whom shared tremendous technical experience over 18 months we worked together three provinces away, other who has taught me corporate life and consulting skills from four provinces away (I'm in Canada, think states:).
I've spent four years as ops manager recently on a troubled project and I agree thay extreme situations under shared duress can build a specific, very strong kind of bond (not the only kind, mind you!). It's just that physical presence is completely orthogonal to it.
I have a hard time believing all this concern is for "young generation and their social and mentoring opportunities". Young generation grew up with remote and social networking infused in their lives (for better or for worse, separate conversation :)! If a senior person doesn't know how to mentor or communicate remote, let's be upfront on that and discuss it openly and coach them. But let's not blame the "juniors" for that :-).
People say this, but "this is the kind of true bonding experiences with which I'm familiar" isn't the same as "this is the only way true bonding can occur." I'm certainly old enough to remember the dismissive scoffing in the '90s that true friendships are made only in person, not with people online.
But if you really think there is no difference between these two things then you are living in a fantasy world.
Proximity does a lot to encourage socialization between super senior people and super junior people.
Without proximity, it's much easier for either side to put off or brush off things that would be good mentorship opportunities. You don't have to go into work the next day and see your coworker face to face to explain why you ditched them on that pair coding session or whatever it may have been.
All this is just made up bullshit though.
It’s not bullshit. It’s perhaps exaggerated, and many of the “work from a desk in a specific building” people are the ones who can’t mentor them anyway, but there are benefits in
It doesn’t have to be, you can mentor people in a fully remote environment, but it’s far harder for most ok both sides - especially for young people and people on HN that think WFH means you don’t actually have to work.
Yes, these policies are quiet layoffs.
I could see it be the other way around, or various factors balancing each other out. From my experience the current young generation is more willing to trade money for QoL , and quit when they feel QoL is bad, than the previous one.
How did the last 40 years of tech do it? Were the boomers that invented all this stuff resigning left and right or not have children? Did I misread history about Bill Gates sleeping in his office or did he run MS from his kitchen table?
Nowadays I go to the office (open space) only during evening hours when at most 2 hackers are there. Working from home probably not productive when you have smaller kids. Maybe good for the kids though.
Yes, Bill Gates worked like a maniac and didn't see his family. His wife took care of the kids. I think that's a terrible example to set (I wouldn't want to do it) but each to their own.