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Amazon exec says it’s time for workers to ‘disagree and commit’ to office return — “I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better.”

Amazon exec says it’s time for RTO: ‘I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better’

https://fortune.com/2023/08/03/amazon-svp-mike-hopkins-office-return/

“We’re here, we’re back. It’s working.”

Amazon exec says it’s time for RTO: ‘I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better’

Amazon exec says it’s time for workers to ‘disagree and commit’ to office return — “I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better.”::“We’re here, we’re back. It’s working,” an Amazon Studios head said in a meeting, before acknowledging a lack of evidence.

116 comments

NotMyOldRedditName

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You should also pay everyone 2 million dollars a year. The company will do great and your employees will be happy. I don't have the data to back it up, but I know it's better!

TransplantedSconie

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You know for a fact that motherfucker thinks eating lunch at a Michelin rated restaurant and headed back to the office to pressure his secretary to fuck him is "work"

NotMyOldRedditName

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You don't think all those come on lines make themselves up?

That shit takes work, worth more than his salary!

cheese_greater

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Particularly the cocaine one(s). Definitely (s)

aegis_sum

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Yes to the expensive lunch, but Secretary? Oh no, they don't go into the office. That's for you people.

Maddie

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"I don't have data to back it up, but I know it's better."

This is every boss in every company throughout time lol

Fermion

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How do statements like that not spook investors? You're telling me that leadership in the world's largest internet hosting service are making decisions without collecting relevant data first, or worse, wilfully ignoring the data available that doesn't support their preference? That is not a good sign for the future growth of AWS.

mosiacmango

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One of Amazon's core values is being data driven. If you want to change something, you colllect data about it first. It was one of employees large counterpoints to RTO at the org, the lack of data provided about its value.

This is the exec admitting they aren't following the Amazon process, but are making people do it anyway.

"Disagree and commit" is another one of their principles, i.e "we acknowledge that you disagree, but you need to commit anyway now that we made the decision." Better known as "Im the boss, so shut up."

This guy is just a bald face saying "we dont have the data to back this up so we shouldn't do it, but i said do it, so do it."

Excrubulent

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"Disagree and commit" is a line that's used in Hardspace Shipbreaker by a terrible middle manager who's bullying his crew. It's so obviously framed in the game as just some bullshit to say shut up without using mean sounding words. I should have expected it came from the real world but it was so weird to see it crop up in a news article lol.

thehatfox

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Because executives and investors are often cut from the same cloth, flaws and all. Plenty of them will have the same baseless belief that office-based work is “just better”.

Plenty of the are also investors in commercial real estate as well as tech companies, and property bubbles need regular reinflation.

EvilBit

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Thing is, all else being equal, office-based work IS better (edit: in many cases). But all else is not even remotely equal. Office-based work has tremendous extra cost: rent, utilities, facilities, morale, commute time, mental exhaustion, inflexibility, environmental impact, and so on. Add it all up and while I don’t have the data to back it up, I’m pretty sure working from home is better.

TheActualDevil

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Where's your data that, "all else being equal, office-based work IS better"? I mean, I don't have data that says otherwise, but I know the company I work for as well as higher-ups at other companies I've talked to noticed right out the gate that productivity went up when they went work from home. The same work needs to be done, and it gets done. If it doesn't, fire them. I have trouble seeing how the location the worker is in matters, all things being equal.

III

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The company I am at experienced the same results - a surprising jump in productivity. But they are forcing us back to the office now. Odd, almost like productivity isn't a factor to them...

EvilBit

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Fair enough. I should have qualified with “in many cases”. Design and creative work can be done in large part remotely, but benefit greatly from in-person collaboration and workshopping.

aegis_sum

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The investors are also invested in commercial real estate, so it's a win/win .

Touching_Grass

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I think this stuff entices investors more than anything

stolid_agnostic

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The business bro in a nutshell.

cheese_greater

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Its ironic too cuz Amazon analytics and measures everything. If they don't have it, it don't exist

SuperSaiyanSwag

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My previous company’s head blamed poor FDA results on WFH and then mandated everyone to be in the office 4 times a week. People who work from home don’t even work on that stuff, it was just an excuse to justify buying yet another building.

StereoTrespasser

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I wish these assholes would just come out and tell the truth: they need you in the office to justify their multi-decade office leases that they can't get out of.

PeleSpirit

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Permanently Deleted

w3dd1e

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I work on commercial real estate. Sometimes the fees we charge make me feel shitty but then I remember the borrowers are landlords.

Got_Bent

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Ding ding ding!

prole

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That's still sunk cost fallacy. If they've already paid, it doesn't matter. In fact, they'd probably save money on maintenance and overhead by keeping the office empty (or even subletting it or something).

DragonTypeWyvern

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But that would require them to admit they were wrong and not prescient.

FlyingSquid

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Corporations base so many decisions on sunk cost.

hglman

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They don't have leases. They own that real estate. So its value is a considerable line item in the company's value. If they get people in office, it's a boost to the company's value. The property is hit yet sunk in their eyes.

prole

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They own that real estate.

Yes, that's the sunk cost. It's fallacious to believe that: just because you've already paid for the real estate in an attempt to earn money in the long term, it's necessarily more profitable to see that plan to the end regardless of changes in circumstances. More often than not, it's better to just cut your losses.

If they get people in office, it's a boost to the company's value.

I don't really understand what this means... We're talking about those people doing that same work, but from home. They're still doing the same amount (if not more due to higher efficiency) of work. Only now you don't need to pay the salaries of maintenance, janitorial staff, security, etc., which would be a savings and help recoup some of the losses.

Or, like I said, if they own the building, they could lease out part of it or all of it themselves while their employees do their work from home.

penguin

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The people who claim "real estate value!" have just latched onto the simplest reason they can which aligns with their worldview.

The reasons I suspect companies are forcing return to office are more:

shareholders don't like unused assets, so they tell the ceo to "use it or lose it"
the people who make the decision have the type of extroverted personality where they actually do work better in the office and they can't fathom people being different
the people who make the decision prefer to have the office full because it makes them feel more powerful. They can see the people they lord over.

hglman

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If getting people back into work makes your property more valuable that the productive losses, it's not a sunk cost. The leaders might be doing their math wrong, but they are not necessarily making a sunk cost fallacy here.

However, i do agree it's likely a choice driven by power and personalities, not money. I suspect a lot of talk about how remote workers can be abused and controlled has happened.

BrianTheeBiscuiteer

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At least then we'd know it was a rational decision.

SirEDCaLot

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Amazon monitors and logs and analyzes everything. As a company they are all about data. If they find something that will get the package out the door one half second faster, they'll spend millions rolling it out everywhere.

If he doesn't have the data, there is zero chance that means the data doesn't exist. That means the data paints a very different picture and he has chosen to ignore it.

MystikIncarnate

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I would put money on this.

Business owners and business leaders are all about efficiency, unless it inhibits their ability to keep you under their boot.

killeronthecorner

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The data does exist and shows one thing: the death of commercial property and long term leases accruing cost without creating value.

This is incompatible with capitalism and so it's working hard to eliminate the incongruence.

SirEDCaLot

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The funny thing is, it's compatible with capitalism, just people are either afraid of change or invested in the old ways.

Amazon would love a 1% increase in employee productivity, unless it means $500MM worth of lease breaking fees and shareholders grilling them for why they signed those leases in the first place. Or worse they bought the building, and now have to sell it at a big discount.

Everyone's invested in commercial real estate because it was a cash cow. Now the party's over, and rather than acknowledge that lots of people (and cities) have a financial incentive to try and keep the party going.

Of course the shitty thing is the big losers in all this are the individual people. The workers in a city lose when property values (and cost of living as a result) are so high they can't afford rent. The workers in a company lose when they have to waste time and money commuting. But nobody seems to give a shit about the little guy...

EatATaco

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You realize this is a self defeating point, right? If they knew the workers were more efficient at home they would commit to total WFH.

The logical conclusion from your claims is not that the data contradicts what he wants to be true, but that the data confirms that return to office is better, but for some reason he can't share that information.

hglman

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No, it does not. It means that they think it's more profitable for shareholders.

EatATaco

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So the logical conclusion is that it's better for the share holders for the employees to be less productive?

Enfors

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It's not that simple. There's also the issue of paying rent for offices which also feeds into shareholder (although possibly different shareholders) profits, etc. I'm no expert, but I have a feeling this is all very complicated.

EatATaco

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I can't come up with a care where making their employees less productivity is better for the shareholders simply because they are paying for space somewhere. you'll have to explain this.

SirEDCaLot

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Okay I can do that.

Pre-pandemic- Amazon says offices are important. Signs 25 year leases for lots of office space.
Pandemic hits. Everyone goes WFH. Data shows people work just as well from home. Company publicly announces that they are running at full productivity. Shareholders love it.
Now we're here. Employees are WFH and loving it. Middle management is chafing because they like being able to manage their employees by walking to desks. Upper management is unhappy because they like having a big corner office at the top of the building humming with workers. Workers are happier than ever.
Upper management says 'if we embrace WFH, we'll have way too much office space and leases that will cost a fortune to break. If we do that and take the hit, the shareholders will ask why we didn't have the vision to do that in the first place, before we signed for this expensive office. The managers we listen to all hate WFH too. So we'll push RTO.' And in the grand scheme of things, a few % employee productivity doesn't mean that much...

EatATaco

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Thats plausible, but pretty complicated. I would absolutely invoke Occam's razor here tho

Tkpro

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Pretty sure Amazon gets kickbacks from the city of Seattle to keep the offices filled with ppl

EatATaco

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Amazon is massive. Much of their overhead goes to workers, and if the workers were more efficient at home, the city would have to offer a ton of money to make up for the most productivity. So unless you have some convincing evidence otherwise, this is hard to believe.

SirEDCaLot

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"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." --Anais Nin

A manager who thinks physical access to employees makes him an effective manager is going to push for that, even if the data says otherwise. We see this in every industry. During pandemic the headline was 'productivity is flat or increasing with WFH', now it's 'time for RTO'.

It's also not just about management, it's about real estate. Companies including Amazon have paid billions for office space, including long term leases that will be very costly to break. So if they say WFH is the future, they'll have to explain to their shareholders why they signed for (apparently unnecessary) office space that's hurting the bottom line.

EatATaco

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You're contradicting the top level commenters point that they relentlessly pursue efficiency. Now it's that the pursue shareholder happiness. I wonder why you didn't correct them, but me.

It's almost like we're throwing explanations against the wall looking for something to stick.

But the simple counter is the simple explanation: we didn't know a pandemic was coming and couldn't foresee what no one was able to foresee: a rapid shift to WFH. We held the offices as we didn't know that WFH could be a long term solution. Now that we are pretty confident our workforce is more productive at home, we've decided to cut our office space losses.

No one would bat an eye at this.

jordanlund

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"I don't know how to micro-manage people unless I can see them sitting in an open floorplan."

dual_sport_dork

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AKA, he is so out of the loop he has no idea what his subordinates actually do, so he has no way of assessing their productivity. Thus his only recourse is to fall back on his gut feelings on whether people "look busy" and other nebulous bullshit .

xantoxis

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Oh, that's interesting, because lots of people have the data. It says the exact opposite of that, though.

xkforce

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Do you have a link to that because it would be useful to pull up whenever some sycophant tries to defend forcing people back into the office

Bluefruit

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https://toggl.com/blog/remote-work-statistics

https://www.strongdm.com/blog/remote-work-statistics

Couple links i found with sources for the statistics. Owllabs is a common source between tem but i tried to find at least 2 sites with different sources.

PeleSpirit

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Permanently Deleted

ImFresh3x

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I’m about as pro wfh as it gets. It’s been one of the best life improvements I’ve had for me and I absolutely feel like it’s made me more productive for the people I work for.

That said, any statistic that begins with “workers say…” isn’t going to matter to the skeptics or c suite types. And a lot of those stats cited what workers say.

Bluefruit

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Fair point, to be quite honest it took me a while to even find those two sites. There may be better sources available but i also use duckduckgo for searching so ymmv.

But I absolutely agree with you. I do hybrid remote with my company and it not only saves me time but improves my quality of life significantly even only at 2 days a week.

And thats just what's normally available as i can request to work from home under special circumstances like when my cat was sick and i wanted to be around to make sure he was alright.

Work from home should be available to everyone it can possibly apply to like office work, programming, call center, etc in my opinion.

SinningStromgald

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Won't really help. Most of them ignore reality and substitute their own.

SkyezOpen

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Sure, but ratioing him with the actual data would be funny as hell.

Kolanaki

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I don't have data to back it up but I know it's better

I do have data to back it up, and I know it's not.

SineSwiper

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I have the data just from car usage alone. It is braindead easy to produce a detailed ROI document proving how much money both the employer and employees are saving from remote work. It's a lot from both sides, and that's not including all of the less tangible benefits, like morale, team building, more focused work with less distractions, etc.

HessiaNerd

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If you dig into the links in the article, there is one study finding data entry workers in India worked only 87% as hard as their in office counterparts, however, the studies authors are quick to point out living conditions and management styles are significantly different there than in the US. There is also a study in the US which found that approximately 40% of time saved by not commuting went to additional work. Guess which study is brought up in more articles by FORTUNE?

EatATaco

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Care to share that data?

Kolanaki

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https://resources.owllabs.com/hubfs/SORW/SORW_2021/owl-labs_state-of-remote-work-2021_report-final.pdf?utm_campaign=State%20of%20Remote%20Work%202021&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=180908804&utm_content=180908804&utm_source=hs_automation

EatATaco

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This is self reporting productivity, not actual productivity.

uriel238

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Once again, someone in authority misuses their power by dictating what they want reality to be as truth, rather than finding impartial data and serving stakeholders, they ignore their duty and serve their own ego.

Evidence that top-down capitalism sucks ass even at what it is allegedly supposed to do. It's autocratic feudalism with extra steps, and should be confronted accordingly.

meat_popsicle

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“I reject your reality and substitute my own!”

captainlezbian

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It really sounds like he thinks workers are refusing to return to work purely out of a sincere belief that wfh is better for the company and not “go fuck yourselves this is really nice and I’m able to do my job just as well from my home”

dojan

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I'm able to do my job (and life) better with work from home.

I don't crave the social interaction as much as others. Social situations wear me out, and the ability to schedule my work fairly freely means that I can work around my debilitating neurological condition. Work from home has given me the opportunity to function mostly like a normal member of society, and I really value that.

Honestly don't think I'd last long if a return to office was made mandatory. If I don't burn out I'll jump off a bridge or something.

LadyAutumn

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I love socially interacting with my co-workers. I can just as easily do that over teams. Better honestly, as if I'm focused heavily on a task, I can take a moment to stop at a convenient spot before checking my messages. As opposed to having people literally walk up to me or just start talking to me while I'm busy doing something. The face to face conversation was nice, but the pros far outweigh the cons in my opinion.

I personally will never go back. I have adhd and being able to stay home and thusly have 0 commute time has been an absolute wonder for my well-being.

bjoern_tantau

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When wfh was implemented company wide at the start of Corona communication actually got better because now everyone was forced to use a chat app with video calling. That way every colleague was just one click away. The shyer ones typed out their quick requests and those who needed to see a face called with the webcam enabled. Before that it was just too much hassle for some people to write an email, use the telephone or walk through the large building to the colleague. Even quick meetings with people from four different departments were now much easier and quicker to organise.

FlyingSquid

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Yep. My last job was a hybrid schedule and I was always far more productive at home than at the office. Because I was comfortable at home and had no distractions.

III

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They give people adjustable chairs at work, so the concept that every worker isn't an identical and replaceable cog exists somewhere in their brains. Sadly it is behind the intense desire for money and will likely never be given the space to grow.

kescusay

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How about... No?

I'm one of the folks who actually likes to go in to the office every once in a while, but I'm never making it a daily commute. Never again.

Hell, I'm on an international team now. Over the course of the pandemic, we built ourselves up with folks from multiple states and multiple countries. There is exactly one person on my team I could see regularly if we went back to the office. Literally everyone else is hundreds of miles away at a minimum. Many would need passports.

And that one person? He's got an immune-compromised family member, so he's never going back to the office and risking his loved one's life.

Fortunately, my employer knows it would make zero sense to require all of us to go back to the office. My boss doesn't even live in the same state as me.

silverbax

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Yeah, I'm never commuting again, either.

For companies, your laziest employees are the ones who want to be in the office, because they know that's the only metric the company is measuring, so they go in and fuck around doing nothing all day.

Companies who don't get with the remote work program are dinosaurs and will die off over time.

Magister

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Same, winter is coming, with snow a commute could be 2h forth and 2h back, to do ~20 miles ; never again.

scytale

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Same. All the meetings I attend comprise of people from different parts of the world. If I go in to the office, all my meetings will be on zoom anyway, so what's the point of being physically present? I only come in from time to time as well and the primary purpose is socialization, where the only other person on my team in the same location as me plan to meet up in the office, which is once every few weeks.

FlyingSquid

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There was not a single thing at my last job that I needed to do in the office that I couldn't accomplish at home. Not one. I know, because it was a hybrid schedule and I did the exact same thing both places. They didn't even need to get me equipment to do my work at home. I just did it on my computer I already had. Everything was either done directly on the company's website or was Google cloud-based and all of our meetings were via Zoom.

And yet, I had to come in half the week. It wasn't even a saving money on real estate thing because it was an office that was part of a big warehouse/factory, so they would not only need the space regardless, they could actually put more production lines in if they could take out the office space.

It made absolutely no sense.

NickwithaC

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August 3, 2023

Stop submitting old shit!

Submit new shit!

lemann

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This is a bot 😂

sebinspace

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then it’s a shit bot

FlyingSquid

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I guarantee they haven't changed their minds on this. Maybe we should keep talking about it.

AutVincamAutPeriam

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They have the data. It's Amazon. The data just doesn't say what they want it to say.

sapient_cogbag

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Say you're a control freak without saying you're a control freak 🤣

MystikIncarnate

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The speaker owns a company.

IMO, that's easily one of the best ways to determine if someone is controlling.

spudwart

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Return to the office “My source is that I made it the fuck up” edition.

mmababes

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I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better

I hope that this becomes a meme

dustyData

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A variation has been viral for years in the Hispanic sphere of the internet. “No tengo pruebas pero tampoco tengo dudas”, “I have no proof, but I have no doubts either”, said in relation to something that is inferred or assumed, specially when describing something negative about a third party who is mutually disliked.

jballs

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Here ya go. Should be easy enough to edit.

mmababes

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Thank you 🙏🏼

Heisenberg9999

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Fuck this piece of shit,

Magister

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Since March 2020 I work from home. 2 years for a company ~20 miles from me, I went there 1 time to take a PC and 1 time to bring the PC back at the end of my contract. Then a year in a company ~100 miles from me (did 4 trips to bring HW), and for next year I should have a 2+ years contract for a company ~375 miles away.

Never ever I will RTO commuting useless hours. If the job is 5 minutes from me I may, but else, never.

toasteecup

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Better be 5 minutes walking

FlyingSquid

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Nope. My last job was a 10-minute commute. Still not going back to an office. Nothing in my skillset requires me working in an office.

reddig33

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Amazon exec is about to lose good employees to other places that pay better and have better benefits (like work from home days).

dustyData

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Amazon, the store, is already in a downward spiral of quality. Other stores like Shein, Ali Baba, Wish, etc. are slowly gaining market worldwide. Plenty of people are preferring quality brick and mortar stores than online shopping more and more. It's small but it is a trend.

BeigeAgenda

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The more I hear about how crappy Amazon are treating their employees the less I want to buy from Amazon again.

gian

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True.
And not only for the quality. In the last weeks I noted that, aside being basically impossible to look for a product even querying with the full brand and product name/code, that buying the same item from the brand own on-line store is ofter less expensive than buying it from Amazon (even with Prime) also accounting for the shipping costs.

fuzzzerd

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I'm not so sure. Black Friday shopping barely kept up with inflation this year, but cyber Monday shopping was up over 12%, so while I'm with you in the minority that prefer a real quality store, it seems most folks don't.

Prox

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Amazon exec doesn't give a shit. Their whole model with tech workers is to recruit them based on the "prestige" of working for Amazon, dunno increasingly more talking on them, burn them out before they start asking for real raises, rinse and repeat.

gian

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Their whole model with tech workers is to recruit them based on the “prestige” of working for Amazon,

At some point the "prestige" of working for Amazon will become less attractive than having a life...

Skaryon

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My company subleased 3 out of 4 stories of the office building when they realised most people could happily and effectively work from home. Crazy eh?

cheese_greater

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Ah, there it is