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Amazon tells managers they can now fire employees who won't come into the office 3 times a week
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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It's all about unused office space and it's value.
I seriously doubt this is the case, mostly because it doesn't actually pencil out money-wise.
More likely, it's a stealthy way to be able to lay people off without calling it a layoff.
Also, in-office employees are easier to control and monitor for bad managers.
It's also a way to steal pay from any employees that were paid in stocks and haven't been fully vetted yet.
Amazon is notorious for paying less salary in currency and more in stocks that will take like 3 years before they belong to the employees.
Amazon is famous for its back-weighted vesting schedule, yes.
I’d reckon it’s probably a bit of pile A a bit of pile B depending on the company location of the offices
Yeah, I bet it'll be selectively enforced. The high performers (or people whose managers like them, anyway) can do whatever, but low performers or those whose managers dislike them get fired. Incidentally, that will surely have lots of bias, as selective enforcement always does.
I left a job in France (the base company is American) partly because of this stupid rule (3 days at the office) they tried to push. Our contracts give us the right to 2 days only. There was absolutely no need at all to do it but the managers were all on it like flies on a turd. 4 days was like their wet dream.
IMO it was all about control locally, but the USA base company "asked for it" which means way different things in the USA and the EU (in France you can't just order people around that way or fire them 'on a whim'), but they sure jumped on it like it was free abuse day for psychopaths.
Helped me leave that toxic environment though, gotta see the silver lining right!
I keep hearing people making this argument.
Is the assumption that Amazon is ignoring their finance dept and that this is driven by the sunk cost fallacy? “We dumped a bunch of money into this, therefore we should continue to move forward with it.”
I ask because the appraised value of property is based on what other’s will likely pay for it. If no one else is wants to pay a lot of money for my office space, it doesn’t matter if I have 1 employees or 10,000 employees in that building.
A lot of companies have long-term contracts for these office spaces that they can't get out of, so whether or not their workers are using the space, they have to pay for it. They should really just write it off as a loss, but I'm not too familiar with how that works. Maybe they can't.
They do write it off. The real estate theory of RTO doesn't hold water.
Yeah, that’s kind of what I was getting at with the “sunk cost” thing. “We’re stuck paying for it, so we should use it.”
Even if using it make people less productive, make recruiting harder, and forces tech companies to pay expensive regional Silicon Valley salaries.
I think you have the right idea but came to the wrong conclusion. Why would anyone buy office space if there is no value in employees coming to the office? Hint: they wouldn't.
Edited to add: these properties may become a liability on their books which would impact their ability to apply for or pay for loans, as well as other negatives for the company.
No company likes to have liabilities on the books, but to think that they would force an RTO for that reason alone doesn't pass the smell check. It's a more economical option to write off the loss and try your best to sublease the space, or attempt to get out of your lease early. That way, you're no longer stuck with the costs once it's done, and can make more money long-term.
We can also observe this happening in the real world: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/20/dropbox-hands-over-25percent-of-san-francisco-headquarters-back-to-landlord-.html
I doubt it's just a singular reason they are forcing return to office.
It's likely property value, micro managing , reducing head count and so on all play a role in jt
I am not saying they are whole valid reasons. I am just giving examples of some of the reasons they might want people back in.
I love remote work and hope I can stay in it