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...

There’s absolutely no way that Amazon employees are more efficient at home.

Nothing about the company’s organizational structure or resources are set up to be optimized for this.

It’s like asking someone to play tennis, but you gave them a baseball bat.

If nothing else, home offices can be a lot quieter than the usual mix of plague ward and bazaar that defines modern work environments.

This is a big factor for me, especially as someone who has been doing software development for a long time. When I first started it was typical to have individual offices, or at worst office sharing where you shared an office with one other dev who was likely trying to keep distractions to a minimum as much as you were.

Now almost every workplace is an open office plan, hot desk swapping hellscape.

If offices were like they generally were when I first started I would be a lot more personally pro-RTO, but the way they are these days I much prefer to work at home in peace and quiet.

(Of course, the peace and quiet aspect will vary based on the particulars of everyone's homes/families/etc).

Traffic is of course the other major factor. As someone who lives in Southern California, the commute time from where I live to where I work is either 15 minutes or an hour and a half based on traffic congestion and its pretty freeing to not have to worry so much about preplanning your commute to minimize the likelihood of landing on the bad side of this.