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...

How would you even gather data to support this? You can't a/b test company culture.

Sure you can. Why can't you?

Its lack of imagination and inability for upper management leadership to even consider that the way they "always done things" may no longer be the best way, and they need to evolve with the times.

For instance, find a group of teams that work on a similar function, have some of the teams RTO, and have some WFH, and see if there is any tangible difference in the results and what they are.

Thats off the top of my head. Never mind that there are actually more scientific approaches that can be used than what I've suggested, and there are researchers that are clamoring to do this as well.

> For instance, find a group of teams that work on a similar function, have some of the teams RTO, and have some WFH, and see if there is any tangible difference in the results and what they are.

I'm not sure I buy this. In my mind the downsides to permanent working from home are these intangible things like team cohesion, speed of onboarding, effective cross functional collaboration, etc. Some of these issues wouldn't manifest themselves in a measurable way until more than a year later.

Firstly, there are better more scientific ways than I what I proposed at thinking about it for maybe 30 seconds.

Secondly, you're saying this

>In my mind...

There's still no objective metric being cited?

>the downsides to permanent working from home are these intangible things like team cohesion, speed of onboarding, effective cross functional collaboration, etc.

But we can prove these things can work well remotely. If they didn't, remote only companies would have such a higher bar to clear and that would be proven already. Gitlab did great in their IPO, and they're 100% remote. Zapier has grown strong and steady, 100% remote, Deel has grown quickly since 2019, also 100% remote etc.

Clearly none of these businesses have issues collaborating.

>Some of these issues wouldn't manifest themselves in a measurable way until more than a year later.

So measure it as long as it takes. 1-2 years is a blip comparatively, and lots of companies already have internal data they could use to make this determination: look at employee performance and satisfaction rates before they worked from home and compare it to after they worked from home. Lots and lots of people worked at the same place before WFH became far more common, and after it became far more common. I imagine this is true at Amazon as anywhere else it would be.

What I find entirely humorous about this is its executives that want hybrid / RTO by a large margin, and comparatively few employees want hybrid / RTO and prefer working from home.

Do you think this would even be a conversation if it was the inverse?

I don't understand why CEOs and executives who lurk on here don't just come out and say what the deal is. I can only assume because that doesn't happen, they would rather not say, which in turn actually says volumes.

> I can only assume because that doesn't happen, they would rather not say, which in turn actually says volumes.

If a CEO posted on here, “Here’s data that shows RTO was better for us” would that change anyone’s mind here?

No, people who hate RTO would continue to hate it.

> people who hate RTO would continue to hate it

It's honestly mindblowing that we're having so much difficulty parsing multiple optima. RTO works. WFH works. Hybrid works. They don't each work for everyone or every company. But these are preferences, not hard and fast rules.

It's like people arguing over whether driving on the left or right side is better. It doesn't matter. As long as everyone in a system is in sync, it works.

> It's like people arguing over whether driving on the left or right side is better. It doesn't matter. As long as everyone in a system is in sync, it works.

I 100% agree with you and this is a great analogy.

The biggest problem of all is that the left-lane (remote) contingent will say, “I don’t care what lane you drive in as long as I get to drive in the left lane.”

> biggest problem of all is that the left-lane (remote) contingent will say, “I don’t care what lane you drive in as long as I get to drive in the left lane."

Which obviously doesn't work. But what also doesn't work is companies pretending they're WFH or hybrid friendly when they're really not.

No, my point was that people who like remote work like to believe that as long as they are working where they want to work (their homes) then everyone else is happy as well if they can work where they want to work.

They miss the point that Person A working in an office while Person B works at home is generally not what Person A wants. Person A generally wants to work with other people in the same physical space.

The pro-remote crowd does not mind upsetting others as long as they can continue to work from home.

Why does anyone have to cater to Person A? Frankly if people can work where they want to work that’s fine, but you’re saying that because one person wants to be in office their entire team does too?

Believe it or not, that’s not at all what I’m saying.

Let’s say Person A wants to be in the office with other people also in that office. Then Person B wants to work in their home and doesn’t care where other people work.

If Person B gets their way (thru remote work) then Person A is dissatisfied. If Person A gets their way (thru companywide RTO) then Person B is dissatisfied.

My point is Why should anyone have to cater to either Person B or Person A?

Whichever choice a company makes, someone is going to be dissatisfied. There are no right or wrong choices here, just choices.

The employees have choices, too. They can get new jobs or they can deal with a situation they find dissatisfying in some way.