this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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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.”::“We’re here, we’re back. It’s working,” an Amazon Studios head said in a meeting, before acknowledging a lack of evidence.

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[–] [email protected] 397 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 143 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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"

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

That shit takes work, worth more than his salary!

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 248 points 1 year ago (4 children)

"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

[–] [email protected] 83 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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."

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

"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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

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

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

The business bro in a nutshell.

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[–] [email protected] 126 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A lot of them are in the real estate business too (ex: Amazon), and the people who rent from them like retail/hospitality, aren't renewing their leases. Tiny violin is playing.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

Ding ding ding!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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).

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

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

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[–] [email protected] 123 points 1 year ago (15 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 108 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago

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 .

[–] [email protected] 106 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

Companies that allow remote work see an average increase of $2,000 in profit per remote worker.

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-working-home-future-looking-technology

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[–] [email protected] 80 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

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?

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[–] [email protected] 74 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!”

[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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”

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

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

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago (3 children)

August 3, 2023

Stop submitting old shit!

Submit new shit!

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

Fuck this piece of shit,

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

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?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

Ah, there it is

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I wish you could do word substitution in real life like you can with text substitution. If so, every time I heard "I don't have the data to back it up," it would become "I'm an idiot who doesn't know what I'm talking about but-"

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Literally everything he said rebuked that last sentence.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

I don't have data for you eating lead chips either, but I'm sure it's better.

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