At my current company, there's a place I think I can see my reports' office attendance, but I've never actually checked it. Why would I? I'm not even a WFH zealot myself; I just don't see why I should care if they're in the office.
a job of a manager is to gain trust both up and down the chain. if you’re forcing your employees to do something, you’ve lost their trust.
Now let's also imagine that you already have the trust of your direct reports (I would think a lot of Amazon managers don't but that's neither here nor there). You explain a policy to them - they have to be in the office 5 days a week or Things happen, whatever they may be. This person just refuses to do it. Is the manager to just say "oh well I don't want to 'be a dictator' so I'll just let them ignore this policy?" Of course not. They'd be abdicating part of their job if they did that.
see in the example you’ve given, you’ve still placed the employee second over the business. or to put it another way, a human over money. so poof, gone is the trust if you did have any.
> see in the example you’ve given, you’ve still placed the employee second over the business
I mean yes, this is how businesses work. Of course the business is of primary importance over any individual employee, especially employees who are in violation of prioritized corporate mandates. Anytime someone is fired, for pretty much any reason including poor performance, that's prioritizing the business's needs over the individual's. But that's literally just what everyone signed up for; the business is a mission and profit-driven organization, and it puts its needs above those of any individual cog in the machine.
A lot of ppl on the market means we have no leverage in discussion.
Several times in my career I've had my boss or one of my boss's peers send someone's resume to me because our tenures at another company lined up. Sometimes I knew them, and sometimes someone otherwise very well qualified for a job on the technical merits didn't get an initial interview because they were horrible to work with.
they won’t let you make yourself irreplaceable
This will work only if your manager has 62 IQ.
* Teams when working 5 days in office, but nobody checked (other than maybe your direct manager) and you could wfh if you needed it to
* Teams were completely remote
* Amazon was checking you came to the office 3 times in the week
* Amazon was checking you came to the office 3 times a week for a certain amount of time
And now the expectation is completely different to all of those. Again.
why do you need to see me to do my job?
Having worked from home for 20+ years, I'm in favour of remotely working more than just about anyone, but I'd be remiss to claim that said networking isn't harder remotely. I don't think it is impossible, but it is different, and not very well understood. I expect most people working from home don't engage in this much, if at all.
Now, keep in mind that the people running these companies are every day normal people who aren't particularly intelligent. They don't really know or understand how to get people working remotely to network better (or even at all). All they know is that there is some chance that if you bump into someone else at the water cooler that you might start talking, so they lean into that. Even that is not a great solution, but it is seen as being better than what happens remotely.
I assume from what description of your job you have given us that you are in a problem solving-type role (e.g. software development). There is the problem they face. Here is your time to shine!
there is none of this happening regularly enough to warrant coming in the office full time. teams are already so isolated they cannot interact much less network and converse. then you also have distributed teams, so you end up with offices that have 1 team member in them with the other coworkers working in some entirely different field with no hope of ever interacting.
so again, why do they need to see people work? this is an outdated idea
Even if it only happens just once, that's more than enough justification on the employer's side. That's a huge win.
The employee can choose if the slim chance of a win is equally valuable to them or not. It takes two to tango, as they say.
> so again, why do they need to see people work?
I like that you assume they are actually taking time to watch and not just on the golf course.