Tech company has no data.
When I worked at Amazon we had data for every little decision we made. Do you want to change the color of a button? Run an A/B test and see if it improves some metric.
Want to stop supporting a 5-year-old device? Go determine the total number of impacted people and figure out some way to compensate them.
Want to get promoted? Get 5 people you worked with to answer specific questions about your work over the last year.
Want to make an entire workforce return to an office after they kept your company afloat during a pandemic? Want to increase commute time? Want to increase cars on the road? Want to make new parents spend less time with their kids? No need for any data, some guy says he knows better.
These days all the data used to inform decisions internally feel like they’re completely made up to support whatever bias the manager already has. This used to be an org dependent problem but it’s everywhere now, AWS, retail, digital.
Uh oh, someone’s commercial real estate investments must not be performing as well as they expected.
None are doing well. It’s the next big bubble to pop and it’s going to hurt real bad. Bidens plan to convert office space to residential sounds like a savior for commercial real estate but it will take years and not everyone can be at the front of the line.
Bidens plan to convert office space to residential sounds like a savior for commercial real estate
For the owners…
He’s giving them millions (I think actually billions) for them to make those office spaces trendy expensive condos most people won’t be able to afford.
Rather than telling the disgustingly wealthy people that own those offices to pay for it themselves while prioritizing affordable housing for people who need it.
Trendy, expensive, poorly insulated, poorly suited, overly priced condos.
You can’t easily convert open plan office space into suitable residential housing.
You can if it’s designed to not be lived in but simply traded by wealthy investors who only ever look at a picture of the place.
This is prioritizing affordable housing
Even if they’re expensive condos, supply and demand still applies. Other housing will go down in price.
I swear people here would punch a gift horse in the mouth
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Biden’s a neoliberal stooge. What we need is somebody like FDR. Never mind that we limited Presidential terms to a maximum of 2 precisely because FDR broke Washington’s 2 terms and out precedent.
Never forget FDR wanted Social Security to be universal healthcare… And so did the people who voted for him.
“Moderates” just kept telling he had to wait, and when he kept getting elected they changed the rules to get rid of him.
It’s why I hate people like Biden still say “it’s too soon”
We’ve literally been told that longer than Biden has been alive, and that’s a long fucking time.
They’re never gonna say it’s time.
This is why I hate the Democratic party almost as much as I hate the Republicans. They’re not the same, but they’re both scum and I want them all to shit themselves to death. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with the Dems as the closest thing the GOP/KKK has to an effective opposition.
From a European perspective, the USA is effectively a single party state, and within that party there is a right wing and a very right wing.
I know. But try telling that to centrists and liberals in the US. They just give you shit for thinking “both sides are the same”. No, you ignorant shitfountains, they’re not the same. It’s neoliberals on one side and neo-Nazis on the other, and neither of them give a fuck about anything but rimming their billionaire donors.
But I know it’s better
Better for whom?
Board rooms full of people heavily invested in commercial real estate.
I have very real examples of this being the case where I am. There’s a lot of real estate that if it falls in value it materially impacts the exec leadership. No wonder they are so keen to save Pret.
People who have investments in:
• corporate real estate and companies like Blackrock, Concord Pacific and Amazon who easily own tens of billions of dollars of corporate real estate.
• downtown coffee shops that exist toripoffserve otherwise stranded office workers.
• car and oil companies because all that rush hour traffic makes them money.
• road construction companies since rush hour traffic jams means easy bribing governments into paying billions for complex and frequently experimental road enhancements.You forgot the governments who gave Amazon $5 billion in subsidies to have offices in their jurisdictions: https://qz.com/amazon-s-5-billion-discount-see-all-its-tax-cuts-and-1849821611
Here’s a fun article from pre-covid about Amazon buying Vancouver’s old post office building. They gutted the historic building and left only the outer shell. And added an estimated 4.2 million square feet of office space in one of the most expensive cities and pro-WFH cities in the world.
Hey, I worked for this moron and left because of these moronic statements.
Absolutely mind boggling that this company is “run on data” yet there’s no data besides anecdotes to support this backwards idea.
To make it even funnier, here’s an Amazon Director apologizing on LinkedIn because they thought forcing people to come into an office was the right thing to do.
Compromise is the moment a group has given up on finding the best solutionWhat a toxic and zero-sum viewpoint. What a stark admission that someone is unable to be willing to consider the possibility that someone else might be right, or at least partially right. If this philosophy was prevalent at Microsoft in 2010+, it would explain a number of Microsoft corporate decisions. Putting a smartphone touchscreen UI on a computer server product (Windows 2012) being just one obvious example.
Strongly agree. If anything, compromise is necessary for finding the best solution for everyone, especially as we’re all different.
That manager thinking that compromise is “giving up” needs to get out of the selfish delusion and come back to reality. Feel sorry for the subordinates!
The reasons to be accepted for a mid-level and above management position have long stopped including “being a leader”.
Doesn’t it also contradict his own decision? Below that quote he also says:
compromises that preserved cohesion were tantamount to “deciding to lose”
Forcing RTO is maintaining the status quo, which itself is a compromise you make to not do anything about the changes that happen as time goes on. He is literally making a compromise to preserve cohesion. But I guess in his mind him making compromises with himself don’t count, the only compromise that matters is the one he has to make with others.
if someone said this to me I’d be like “oh okay great. I won’t compromise then. I’m working from home.”
In business, all data are vanity metrics. If they make you look good, you slap that shit on everything; if they make you look bad, you “don’t have it”.
It’s just that sometimes you can use negative data to make decisions that look good to those above you, and sometimes you know that you can’t.
Hell, businesses might even keep asking you to keep changing criteria and numbers until they hear what they want to hear. I literally am dealing with this right now for a local retailer; they keep insisting that I keep changing criteria and numbers relating to how many sales they closed until they hear an answer they like. When I gave them the raw numbers, the owner and manager were straight-up in denial about it and said I was wrong and that the data is off because they felt it should have been a different number than presented.
Fucking frustrating and stupid, but that’s how upper management and corporate people can be apparently.
Over the last 15 years these tech leaders have led the charge to offshoring. Now they’re telling us we have to work with people on the other side of the world - unless we’re in the same timezone. Then we have to be “together” but separated into cubicles. Their logic makes no sense.
It’s because their logic isn’t about what they claim it’s about.
It’s about control.
Gotta keep the poors in line with the knowledge they can be made poorer at any time, with their kids as hostages
You guys are getting cubicles? Living the dream.
I hear to really boost morale, we might get to wear jeans on Fridays. I mean, working from home is great, but have you ever gone into the office in non-business casual clothes?
What industry/retion do you work in? I’m over the Midwest and was in the office today in jeans and a graphic tee.
This is extremely typical for Amazon corporate.
They have the data because they ask (corporate) employees about their working experience constantly. I’m sure employees love the option to WFH. But they don’t like the data (typical) because they spent billions building cheap, crowded, loud office space around the world.
So what do they do? They pull out the mantra, “Disagree and Commit”, which is Amazon manager speak for “shut up and do what I say.” Ironically, Disagree and Commit is actually “Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit” and is about finding alternative solutions or data when you think the company is doing the wrong things rather than keeping quiet.
Amazon, like most American corporations is an oligarchy and it’s run terribly at the top with dire consequences for their employees, customers, and the world.
Yep. There have been so many people having backbone since this was announced in January. The remote-advocacy slack channel is the third largest opt in channel (pay-equity is the largest opt in, with people posting their salaries anonymously). There have been many protests and many people pushing back.
It’s all about the money to these corporate execs. Tax cuts, real estate value, parking lot payments, etc.
I will say that working in the office with others on your team has benefits. However, I’m not working with my team directly for 3 days a week. We could do a couple design days a few days a month or even a full week a few times a quarter and that would cover the bases. Half my team is on the other side of the US anyways.
‘I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better’
This is exactly the reason why every single one of Amazon’s products are shittier today than they were yesterday.
Bro, trust me bro - dumb AF execs.
It’s time to flay the skin from Amazon executives. I don’t have the data to back it up, but I know it’s better.
Just a reminder that if you commute by car it’s probably the most dangerous thing you do every day. This guy is literally saying “I have no data but I want you to risk your lives and waste your money twice a day.”
I hear similar nonsense at my day job. Senior management wants me to risk my ass driving to the office, where I will sit at a randomly assigned desk in an open-plan space attending meetings that should have been emails using Zoom and Teams. Not happening. I’ve been working 100% remote for these assholes and crushing it in annual reviews since 2018. If they want me on-site again they need to offer me a much better incentive than “do it or we’ll fire you”.
'Cause if they fire me, and decide they still need me after all, then I’ll damn well hold out for $100/hour as a 1099 merc with contractually-guaranteed time and a half for overtime after 32 hours/week.
ProTip: If you’ve prepared a PowerPoint deck for your meeting, then your meeting should have been an email.
“Source: trust me, bro.”
I read a lot of comments of angry, rightfully angry, people toward Amazon and its exploitative work policy. I do not buy from Amazon since 2012; I’ve thrown away my Kindle and told myself F**k that predator. (You cannot hire workforce that has to live with food stamps because your wage isn’t enough, I mean, how corrupt one must be to do something like that?)
I wonder how many of you are actually boycotting Amazon? Out of curiosity. I’m Italian and I am petrified that here is imported the Amazon model. And I’ll fight with all the energy to stop this Hun who, btw, does not pay taxes. It’s immoral and it’s unexplainable how his business can be legal.
I’m doing the same, but must admit it feels fruitless sometimes. 99% of people will just lap up whatever shit is fed to them and ask for seconds.
Amazon has a serious customer trust issue. Their reviews are fake, their prices aren’t competitive, their shipping promise is routinely broken, and you will likely receive a counterfeit product.
Do not order tech products from Amazon. Co-inventory means you will get whatever item the picker picks, not the store you order from.
Had my Amazon account with thousands on it stolen by someone. They wouldn’t help and actually recommended I get a new one and re-purchase prime and all my stuff. So no. I don’t think I’ll be going back.
My employer decided to close one of our biggest offices right when the pandemic hit, having everybody work from home. This office housed probably 75% of our engineering staff (software developers, QA, IT, etc). Our CEO made it clear that the plan was to be able to hire the best people from the tech sector that we could find, no matter where in the world they were located, and not have them feel left out by being the only remote employees.
The team that I’m on was all local prior to that decision. It now spans every US timezone and two other countries, and we are very good at what we do. I do miss seeing coworkers in person from time to time, but my employer provides us with all the tools we need to remain productive, including being very flexible about work hours, time off, etc. The company also encourages occasional social get-togethers for employees in the same geographic areas.
I personally haven’t set foot in an office since 2019. The company does now encourage people who are within an hour drive of an office to come in a couple times a month. The closest office to me is 2+ hours away.
I really wish executives like this dolt would actually do some real research on this subject and not just rely on gut feelings. Yeah, I know this wouldn’t work for every company, but ours can’t be the only one that’s quietly succeeding at it.
Umm, no?
