Amazon Makes It Harder for Disabled Employees to Work from Home

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...

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

Online interactions aren’t any less complex, they’re just different. Newer generations are more online and less fan of an idea of an “office culture”. This all seems based on the idea that just because something happened before, the only way to reproduce it is to replicate its setup. Times have changed & people have changed since. Office work will continue to exist but some magical “work culture” isn’t just thanks to the office. And 20 people can change trajectory but they’re absolutely nothing without the 180k to stir the boat.

Do you have data to prove that? If not, then leaders have every right to go with their gut instincts.

Give me an example of a company that is immensely successful (massive growth) like say OpenAI that are fully remote

You're arguing on capital's terms. The company isn't owed massive growth. They are allowed to have it if labor is willing to work under the conditions they provide and if the state continues to allow their incorporation and its related benefits (and they get lucky, presumably).