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no_wizard ◴[] No.42130354[source]
For a company that is supposedly data driven like Amazon likes to tout, they have zero data that RTO would provide the benefits they claim[0]. They even admitted as much[1].

I wouldn't be shocked if one day some leaked memos or emails come to light that prove it was all about control and/or backdoor layoffs, despite their PR spin that it isn't (what competent company leader would openly admit this?)

[0]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/over-500-amazon-...

[1]: https://fortune.com/2023/09/05/amazon-andy-jassy-return-to-o...

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meta_x_ai ◴[] No.42130723[source]
Unless you can spin an alternate universe, some complex-dynamic things like corporate culture can't be data driven.

A classic example is this https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship...

How will you design an experiment that would create a world where Jeff Dean WFH just solved the problem and 'completed his Task' and Google was just a search engine with a $10B market cap due to scaling issues or a huge operations cost.

Today Google is $2.5T marketcap and you can bet a significant portion of it came from the work culture created in the office.

No amount of Social Science can ever capture the tail events that has massive upside like tech companies.

Even if 180,000 employees are unhappy, but the 20 who are happy create the next Amazon revolution can change the trajectory of Amazon that can't be measurable

Edit : Butthurt HNers downvoting a perfectly logical argument. Then they expect leaders to listen to them

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1. vitus ◴[] No.42131475[source]
> Today Google is $2.5T marketcap and you can bet a significant portion of it came from the work culture created in the office.

Ah yes, that must be why execs at Google are incentivizing hiring in lower cost-of-labor locations like India and central Europe, and placing very large barriers in the way of business travel that would normally encourage knowledge-sharing and foster collaboration, all while forcing people back into the office and discouraging fully remote roles.

I'd like to also point out that Alphabet's market cap was $0.9T back in March 2020 when WFH due to COVID started, and more than doubled in the ensuing year and a half (it was just shy of $2T back in Nov 2021). Further, during that same timeframe, the S&P 500 rose about 70%, so there's a fairly strong correlation between Google's market cap in this timeframe and overall stock market performance.

... which is a long-winded way of saying that I would not place as much stake in Google's current market cap being driven by the in-office culture as you seem to. (Speaking as someone who's been employed at Google throughout this period and then some.)