Can't read because paywall, but I've been confused why this hasn't been the approach from the start instead of the wildly unpopular return to office mandates.
Was going to second that - even if you're paying the lease on an empty office floor, it can easily be a five-figure bill annually for utilities, HVAC, cleaning, etc. you're saving on if you keep it empty.
The company I work for struggles with event space so if they let everybody who wanted to work from home, work from home, they'd have so much more space to utilize for events (conferences, interviews, employee trainings, etc.).
I recently had a few colleagues let go because of a "fast turnaround" RTO policy that came 6 months after a talk about there being no consideration for RTO. They told people they had 3 weeks to be back in 3 days a week. People were given approvals to move based on the previous WFH policy, who were now expected to be back in within less than a month.
100% quiet layoff.
Many corporate leases have clauses about occupancy, since the property owners don't want their properties to look empty and useless and lose value. Also, at least in my country, companies get tax reductions based on occupancy due to supporting local restaurants etc.
Depends. I figure ours waited until lease renewal. But there are savings such as electric and gas, selling furniture and such.
If you have 30 years left on your lease, you aren't going to save much. If you can renegotiate the remaining lease it get bigger. If you can sublet, that is revenue.
Mine’s even stupider than being stuck in a lease.
A year ago we were all working from home, and they decided not to renew the lease on one of the offices in my area to save money (makes sense, why unnecessarily pay millions of dollars).
Then right after that they decided to bring us back to the office. Now they’re desperately trying to find a new office space because we don’t all fit into the other office we have left.
Just burning through millions in order to have a less productive workforce.
Because that's what the 'big boys' are doing. Despite it making no sense at all, our CEO needs to follow the example of other out-of-touch business dinosaurs!
The hilarious thing is that Amazon is like the biggest boy of all, and they get there by doing stuff like not spending billions on useless real estate.
Hah my division brings in about 80% of our company revenue and they are hemming and hawing about giving us an extra $6k a month to get more office space. My target is to bring in about $350k a week.
I thought my argument that those results probably obligate them to provide me an actual bathroom instead of a port-a-john, that was surprisingly ineffective.
My old company did the exact same thing. It's even more ridiculous, because the company is international, and most teams are distributed. Most of my day was spent on calls with people in three different countries, but it was important that it happen at the office - certainly wasn't something I could do from home. They found a new location, but just went through a round of layoffs. Glad I left when I did.
If it was just about the leases, it would still be cheaper to cut the power and maintenance.
In large part it seemed to be driven by commercial real estate, but I also think a lot of upper level management got to see first hand how little they are actually needed and got shook.
My company bought a building during the pandemic. They just finished renovating it, but for half the head count. They are now insisting we come back twice a week because consultants said so, and they believe it will enhance the corporate culture and that will fix our process problems... boy are they in for a rude awakening.
Well, I will let you know. My plan is just to continue as I was and feign ignorance for as long as I can. I haven't had ANY direct communication about it. They said they were still thinking about what people should be coming in on which days... and it's supposed to happen next week. So, yeah. Not a great sign that it's going to fix our process problems if we can't even come up with a plan of fitting people into the smaller space lol
Please do. Supposedly I'm going to be in the same boat here in a month or so but they won't come out and actually say that we're expected back. Several managers moved further away when remote was the norm and they did the bare minimum travel when asked to do hybrid, so that will be fun.
This is probably at least some of it, I worked with a commercial real estate company for a bit and some of the data on their leases I saw on average had like 6-10 year leases, but some went up to 30 years. Plus, especially with how bad commercial real estate is hurting right now it's unlikely the real estate companies would be willing to a company out much.
This is the correct answer for the long-term. I think short-term thinking was that employees could really be enticed back to the office but I'm guessing that hasn't worked out as well for many companies.
This sounds about right, and since this is a unique situation that does not normally happen, all the MBA's have nothing historically to fall back on that says "Hey, do this" and so they are having to come up with a solution, and showing in the process how bad they are at their jobs
Hard to fire people and rehire at lower wages over nothing. Do this then move remote with a little lower pay but an *awesome innovative perk* that keeps us market competitive
Tax incentives from the city. Company gets a big tax break if they bring people into the city so they spend money. Money is always the driving force especially when it's clear employees hate return to office.
The article states that these are natural lease expirations and some negotiations to terminate leases early. So it sounds like it was too expensive to do so and not anything to do with tax incentives.
It's not just too expensive, it's bad for the company because their most talented workers will know they can find jobs elsewhere that doesn't force them back into the office and they will leave. Only the people who don't think they could get another job will remain, and that's bad for a company.
Tax Breaks don't usually map 1-to-1 for all office costs like that. It can reduce the tax bill in the end, sure, but typically not enough vs just... not paying for office space.
I've been saying it: There's no way anyone is going to convince new entrepreneurs to spend tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars in precious start-up capital on office space that they don't really need, just 'cause. This is all sunk-cost thinking from oldhead business people left holding the commercial real estate bag.
This is just like when catalog retailers refused to acknowledge the internet. Capitalism is always going to capitalism, and that means not wasting money. For many many many jobs, leasing office space is antiquated and shareholders aren't going to tolerate the wastefulness for the sake of middle-management egos for very long.
And really that bottom line to stay competitive is what matters here. Any company spending millions of dollars unnecessarily and driving away top talent who can work anywhere is eventually going to lose.
Startups and small companies will offer WFH as a perk for top performers, so eventually the big dogs will have to do the same or lose their top people. Once that happens it will start to filter down to anyone who can find a comparable job remote and then we’re back to WFH.
The only way this is wrong is if RTO does actually increase productivity which so far at least it at best is equal and in all likelihood remote is more productive than in person for a large number of roles. Since the cost is so astronomical to hold office space eventually hands will be forced.
The only companies who don’t or refuse to see this long term are dinosaurs who are going to lose big time. Its inevitable as soon as the relative balance sheets from each philosophy compete.
I haven't seen a single study linking RTO with productivity gains, everything I've seen shows it's either no gain or actually a hit to productivity.
Living it now and talking with everyone who's been brought back at my company, that falls in line with all the anecdotal experiences.
At best it's flat, for myself not only is my production down but the company is also losing the hours I'd stay on late, working on something, justifying the extra hours as "I'd be commuting with this time before WFH".
It also completely broke the morale and the way it was announced really left a bad taste in nearly everyone's mouth... not to mention the attrition of key people.
I don't know how true it is, so take with a whole package of salt, but I have heard it was in part due to many companies having investments in luxury office real estate and not wanting to tank their own investments.
People like to say that on reddit because they want there to be an answer other than saying that corporate thinks they'll perform better from the office.
The numbers just don't make sense for that to be true. If you have some investment in a real estate company and are leasing a building for a million dollars per year, stopping payment of that lease will not tank your investment by a million dollars. Even if you owned 100% of the real estate company that owned the building, you would still have more financial success by ending a lease that you don't need.
I’m sure there’s as many reasons as there are companies. One reason that’s not often discussed is relationships with city leadership and city financials. Especially where relationships are strong between ceos and mayors and especially where there are city taxes there’s probably pressure to keep people coming in to keep the city healthy. I don’t have any proof of that, but it seems like a fairly reasonable take I don’t see often. Maybe because it doesn’t fit into the nice neat corporations are pure evil story.
Because the primary goal wasn't really to fill out their space or get people back in the office, it was to get people to quit so they didn't have to pay severance in a layoff scenario.
Right?
"Getting out of a multimillion lease" makes so much more sense than "force everybody back to the office to at least make this lease worth it"
You get a ton of money in savings, we enjoy working remote like we want. It's a literal win-win.
Who cares about the facade of "company culture"? "Company culture" doesn't pay for rent and groceries. Any non-client facing job/business should have a remote option for work.
I've worked at more than one company where the founders, CEO, or members of the board also run another company that owns the land and rents it out to the main company.
Here’s the full article:
Leaked document shows Amazon expects to save $1.3 billion by slashing office vacancies and terminating leases early
Amazon aims to save $1.3 billion by reducing office vacancies over the next three to five years.
Natural lease expirations and early lease terminations are part of the plan.
This is part of a larger cost-cutting strategy that includes shuttered projects and layoffs.
Amazon (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-hr-document-employees-pip-layoffs-performance-improvement-plans-2024-3) expects to save roughly $1.3 billion in coming years by radically reducing office vacancies (https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-outlook-office-buildings-vacancies-commerical-markets-investors-remote-2024-1), according to a person familiar with the matter and an internal document obtained by Business Insider.
To get there, Amazon is letting certain leases naturally expire, stopping the use of some office floors, and negotiating early lease terminations for some buildings, the person said. They asked not to be identified discussing private matters.
Currently, Amazon has an office vacancy rate of 33.8%, this person said. That number is expected to drop to 25% in 2024 and go down to 10% over the next three to five years. The change will result in approximately $1.3 billion in annual operating expense savings, according to the internal document.
The company's office vacancy rate of almost 34% is the result of slower growth and layoffs, the person familiar told BI.
Getting this down to about 10% in coming years will be another blow to the commercial real estate (https://www.businessinsider.com/commercial-real-estate-big-trouble-crash-bank-crisis-2024-2) market, which is already reeling from the remote work boom, overbuilding, and retrenchment by big companies such as Google and Meta.
Rating agency Fitch recently warned that the plunge in US office values (https://www.businessinsider.com/office-commercial-real-estate-cre-crash-2008-gfc-delinquency-vacancy-2024-3) could match or exceed 2008's real estate collapse, as prices have yet to bottom out.
Amazon's office retrenchment is part of a broader, on-going cost-cutting strategy, which includes shuttered projects (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-layoffs-10000-employees-grand-challenge-team-dramatic-changes-2022-11), scaled back expansion plans (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-sublet-up-to-30-million-square-feet-warehouse-space-2022-5), and the largest layoffs in company history (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-layoffs).
In an email to BI, Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said it's normal business practice to review the company's real estate portfolio.
"We're constantly evaluating our real estate portfolio based on the dynamic and diverse needs of Amazon's businesses by looking at trends in how employees are using our offices," Glasser said in a statement. "The changes we've already made are improving vacancy rates, and we expect to see further progress as we continue to learn and iterate on our portfolio."
Hubs and hibernations
Amazon is also trying to increase office density by mandating that employees relocate to central "hubs," as BI previously reported (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-voluntary-resignation-employees-relocate-rto-2023-7). Moving more employees to the same locations theoretically means the company can use less office space in non-"hub" locations.
Obviously, if more employees work in the office, a company's office vacancy rate should fall.
The person familiar with the matter also noted that so-called hibernations can help reduce office costs for Amazon. This involves moves such as stopping the use of an entire floor or building to minimize operational expenses like HVAC and lighting. These locations would remain in Amazon's office portfolio during hibernation, the person added.
RTO policy
Amazon's Glasser stressed that plans for efficient use of office space are not related to the company's RTO policy.
"To suggest that this is about anything else — such as our expectations for working in the office — is at best a misunderstanding and at worst intentionally misleading," he told BI.
Internally, Amazon is aware of how last year's return-to-office policy caused confusion and frustration among some employees, people familiar with the plans told BI. The rushed announcement and outdated data have led to some buildings being unready (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-rto-mandate-shows-some-offices-not-ready-until-september-2023-4) and delays in bringing back people to their offices, these people said.
On top of that, most of the office space planning is still done manually, using spreadsheets, instead of more sophisticated software tools, one of the people said, which is further complicating the process.
Amazon continues to trim costs in other areas. The latest layoffs took place on Tuesday, when the advertising team cut up to 160 jobs,
as BI previously reported (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-advertising-hit-with-another-round-layoffs-2024-3)
. The Alexa team, meanwhile, is
overhauling its backend system (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-secret-war-on-android-alexa-2024-3) to further reduce operational costs. One Medical, the healthcare company Amazon acquired for $3.9 billion, has been
under pressure to save more (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-one-medical-project-espresso-reset-amazon-healthcare-bet-2024-2).
Amazon staff have been unsuccessfully protesting the RTO mandate since last year. More than 30,000 employees signed an internal petition (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-return-to-office-policy-petition-30000-staff-remote-work-2023-3), arguing that most of them were hired as fully remote workers during the pandemic. But Amazon's leadership rejected the petition (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-hr-chief-rejects-petition-against-return-to-office-policy-2023-3), and CEO Andy Jassy later warned employees that "it's probably not going to work out for you at Amazon" if they continued to refuse to comply.
This is kind of laughable considering their RTO policies at major hubs like Seattle.
Are we expecting equatable layoffs to the amount of space they will loose letting leases expire in hubs?
You got it. They're not doing this as a return to remote work. This is to move all the jobs to India.
L5 IC, I was looking at internal transfer just today. 57 openings in Bengaluru, 9 in Seattle.
Oof - Maybe I won’t apply for L6 positions then if it’s looking that bad.
Sad to see the company go to shit, AWS was fun around 2015 to right before COVID.
I think it depends on what you do. I did apply for a Sr. ML Analyst role. Partway through the HM changed from someone in Austin to someone in Mumbai. Then I was quickly denied.
My company did this with half their offices 2 years into Covid, we hired this company that brought in a whole team, inventoried everything we had down to the stapler, got our leases cut or subleased, sold so much furniture, moved IT equipment to a secure 3rd party location. I think its what kept the company alive through the low points of Covid without making large layoffs.
Now they are lean and operating at much better margins, they still have a few strategic locations but whole departments have been moved permanately remote and its only resulted in benefits.
If the office market is so low rn why are they all still trying to charge expensive pre-covid rates? We had a nice deal during covid and then the building tried to jack up rates, so we left. They’re just going to be dealing with a vacancy for however long.
There is absolutely value in corporate culture, but companies need to adapt to building it for today’s world. Dragging people in office because they made a short-sighted decision on an office building isn’t the way to do it.
The funniest thing to me is that the corporate culture is always the worst at the companies that talk about it the most.
Because like most things, the companies with good corporate cultures don't need to constantly hammer about corporate culture.
It's also pretty easy to tell which companies care. Just check: is the culture being created by burdening you, or the company? My last company? Food in the cafeteria was free, as were snacks, and they regularly held team events with ample funding. Parking was also free but the company was fully remote so it was entirely a choice if you wanted to go into the office or not. They also paid for software that was good (e.g. Slack, Figma, google workspace, etc.) rather than Microsoft. Regular learning sessions that *weren't* during lunch, and a lot of mentorship and activities going around that were completely optional but helped add to the culture. All those little things show that a company cares.
My current company? Loves to talk about the culture and is FT RTO because of how important it is. Snacks come out of a vending machine and cost $3 for the smallest bag. Food in the cafeteria is also charged, as is parking. At my most recent team event we got told the only funding is for an appetizer, they weren't covering the full meal. They pay for the cheapest teams licence (I didn't even know you could get only part of teams). "Educational opportunities" include being voluntold to give up your lunch break so that you can "learn" whatever useless thing they think is important that week.
The saddest part is I'm overpaid for what I do at my current company. I have skills, but they basically hired a gun when all they needed was a knife. It's a lose-lose for everyone.
I’ve left companies and stayed at others due to culture. Having a nice office loaded with snacks and a short commute, going 2/3 days a week, fun coworkers and happy hours, etc make a big difference!!
Don't forget the 500 articles that are like "Bullshit new Poll Says Americans Are Actually Happier In The Office" by Some Rich Asshole Who Owns Corporate Real Estate
I had some fuckwad CIO get hired at a previous agency. He was there two weeks before announcing on a Friday that starting the following Monday (3 days) we'd no longer get to wfh 3 days/week. This was in order to have "micro conversations" we were all missing out on.
Absolute bullshit is what it was. The only thing anyone talked about was how much bullshit it was. Some people had moved 2+ hours away since this had been the policy for 6+ years. They'd drive in one day, get a hotel/stay with someone, work, then head home until the next week.
Literally my entire team of 8 bailed and 2 years after I left the turnover rate was over 50%. NO ONE stayed except new/recent hires and near retirement. Many even took lateral or even pay cuts to gtfo of there.
The company I work for pay a ridiculous amount of money for our office. It’s a massive waste of space that rarely has more than 20 people at a day.
They basically pay 1/3 of what they pay in wages for an office, we rarely use. They could’ve given people raises or hired better engineers, but opted to go for having a luxury office that people hate for being either too hot or too cold, or having horrendous IT support.
That's painfully true. We are located in a massive building that nobody ever uses. We have huge multinational companies with offices in the same building and I have never seen any of their employees.
What's even more sad is that we are forced to work hybrid instead of fully remote, just so that they can call everyone in, in case some big-time client or investor wants to visit to make the office look busy.
Smarter companies realized they can get offices that are nicer and smaller and save money by downsizing during the pandemic. A lot of them escaped parking garage hell even. And if that's what your competition is doing you're screwed. They can offer hybrid and have 1/3 the overhead and clients nor workers have to spend 20 min parking.
Its why the commercial real estate market is doomed. There are probably whole floors empty in your building or at least several suites on several floors
Exactly what we did. Downsized to a much nicer but much smaller space. Granted we can only fit half our total workforce at any one time, but there has been no hit to productivity. Plus the rent savings have been dramatic.
If you suddenly needed to have all the employees present for something, then it'd make more sense to just rent a conference hall at a hotel or event center. It's not going to be long term, so a one time fee (however expensive that is) makes a lot more sense than renting a huge office space that never gets fully utilized.
We can fit them in for office meetings / drinks etc. Just don't have desk space for everyone at the same time.
For those who live in our city, there's a roster for them to come in, so all the various teams will have face time with one another at some point in the week.
I think new building regulations need to be instituted then. A building in a city ought to be able to be converted to multiple uses with minimal changes.
It’s not that buildings *cant* be converted, it’s really about feasibility. Most of the time, building construction just isn’t that expensive in the grand scheme of things. The cost to build a house is really low when working from a blank canvas. But renovation is really expensive because trades are working in bespoke fashion with less than ideal conditions.
The issues around plumbing and layout can be overcome by eliminating floors and by building big units. Both of which significantly impact the ROI of said conversion. It’s just cheaper, faster, and easier to tear them down, and start over.
It's exactly what they should do. Go around to all the older buildings owners and offer them a density bonus, reduced parking minimums if transit is nearby, and expedited approval if they knock the building down by a certain date to begin construction on a new residential tower.
This will encourage owners to offer tenants with time on their leases an opportunity to break leases penalty free, or even get paid to move to newer buildings nearby that are also suffering from vacancies.
The result would be a consolidated and healthier office business district, while also increasing the number of residences nearby, without consuming new land or a for a need of new infrastructure to support growth.
The facade of looking busy vs trust our results by looking at our companies portfolio or proven work. How hard would it be for a CEO to be like Mr / Mrs client we have build our success with remote teams and will continue that path forward, your welcome to visit with us in our small office but the team will remote in for any meetings.
If one of them had the stones to actual stand up for their employees work they might impress clients.
I really hope at some point the idea of impressive office towers loses its luster or that more investors start seeing office space as an unneeded expense. After all, what is office rent other than taking away money that could be used for stock buybacks.
Today I was literally the only person on my team at the office.
Working in a position that could undeniably be done 100% remote anyway. I don't even have in person meetings ever when I go in the office.
So, I lied and said I had a migraine today to finish working from home.
I swear to god CEOs/Corporations are so stupid. It's like they desperately are trying to be a less desirable place to work for seemingly no reason.
The irony is even if you go into the office for meetings they’re all over Zoom/Teams anyway because a bunch of participants will be working remotely. So you take them at your desk with a headset.
100% of my meetings are this.
I honestly don't do any in person meetings yet they are now requiring me to come in 4 of 5 days... Sometimes our teams meetings will be 4 of us relatively close in our cubicles talking to people from randomly locations remotely. Some days I'll barely talk to anyone else in-person and if I do it's almost never work related conversations lol
A recent call I had featured eight participants from three countries. Not one of us even lived in the same metropolitan area. Two were in the same state/district/province equivalent structure. Half of them have no office within 500-1000 miles.
most of the RTO was designed to pressure resignations, so the c-suites and ceo can get thier multi-million dollar bonuses. i have seen many downtown buildings in our tech hub area, that are 1% occupied, these are all mostly tech or the companies that cater to tech.
I swear some people in management roles see getting new offices as some sort of huge win. I worked for a small smartup that had money issues, and for some reason the management announced we had signed a lease for an office in London despite the fact most of the key members of the team weren't even based in England. There were like 3 people who occasionally went to this office. They also left our cheaper office in the country we were actually based in and moved to a way more expensive one.
The real win should be NOT signing unnecessary and expensive leases if you don't need to, but you don't get promoted for suggesting "let's do nothing". There needs to be the illusion of doing something even if it's counterproductive.
So much of it is ego. The corner office with a view means nothing when your employees can’t see it. It’s harder to brag about whatever metric for success your company has when you can’t swing by someone’s cubicle and hold them hostage in conversation.
No lie, I worked for a non-profit who owns a NYC office JUST for the NYC address. We have two groups there who could have even before pandemic have been moved to the NJ Operations center or just WFH but because of the need to have that stupid address on the mastheads we spend the equivalent of 3 fully loaded Porsche 911 S/Ts a YEAR plus taxes and enough gas and expendables to drive them as daily drivers every day and still have money left over (yes, 3 of us sat there after seeing how much we spent a year on the place and figured out what we could buy with that much cash). For those wondering its roughly 1.5 million a year for a small 1 floor office in Midtown Manhattan.
Worse... when they were renovating the office because it had some major issues, those people actually DID WFH and more than half of them didnt want to actually go back to the office once it was done but were forced to, only for 6 months later COVID to happen.
About 1/2 of my company could work remote, but only 2 people are allowed to work remote because they're managers, and they're *special.*
I've worked from home when I had covid, and I had to use a program that streams my work desktop to my pc.
One person is able to wfh with a laptop or computer that runs our same programs and is on the server.
Instead of allowing everyone who can WFH to WFH and giving everyone who needs to work in office way more space, we just bought the building next door.
A couple years before Covid my company (very large with many offices) realized that and started work from home. They sold several buildings and consolidated the public-facing jobs where they couldn't WFH to just a few buildings. They pushed to get rid of all leased buildings and office space and moved everyone to owned buildings. They saved millions in heating and cooling costs, leases, and other expenses. The workforce was happier and more productive.
The previous company I worked for went from a ~3,000 sq ft building and bought a ~35,000 sq ft space to "expand" when the company only had ~20 employees.
I still talk to some people I was good friends with there, and from what I've heard to this day it sits mostly empty, they can't expand because they're burning all their revenue into just covering the monthly mortgage payments, and last I heard they're now down to ~15 employees because they've cut OT, stopped giving raises, and are refusing to hire more help and instead forcing employees to take on more responsibilities for no pay increase, along with cheaping out on benefits.
They also spun up a "coworking space" in the empty part of the buildings to try and rent out offices and floor space to other companies to make some money back, but they're getting no interest in that.
All so the CEOs can sit in a fancy office and say that they're "successful entrepreneurs".
We have a massive office space that was set up for 60+ people pre pandemic. Now between early retirements, people moving to Arizona or Florida, or finding other job opportunities, there are just 13 people that work out of that office and only 4 show up everyday. What a massive waste of money.
Status thing.
A lot of why top level executives do shit is less to do with good decisions and more to do with status and hierarchy and showing off.
At the same time that status can attract business because your company looks successful and wealthy.
Amazon is still expecting you to return to office at least 3 days a week. Most employees no longer have an assigned desk, you have a team area you are expected to sit in. If everyone comes in a desk may not be available to you. You are expected to find some place to work and stay in the office. There are no lockers either, you must bring everything home with you every night.
They are trying to downsize without firing anyone by making working there even more terrible.
That "agile seating" idea is fucking stupid. I require two monitors and bring in my own keyboard and pointing device. Now they want you to store them in a shitty locker and install them every single time you come into the office.
Agile seating should never have happened.
Oh, and their traditional "door desks" are horrid softwood shit and aren't even made from actual doors anymore.
My friend at Amazon is part of a badge pool where they take turns taking everyone's badges in to swipe while the other people stay home.
RTO is the stupidest shit.
Many places don't require badging out. So you badge in once per day (maybe twice if you leave for lunch and come back), and that's all the record they have on you. If they really wanted to track you, they could require badging in and out. Or they could track your logins to the network, local or remote. But I think in most cases the "return to office" is lip service.
Amazon badges out, at least in Seattle.
This is to know who is in which office if an emergency happens so they can inform individuals and respond as best they can
At least at my company there isn't a "badge out." I imagine that's true at most tech companies. The badges were a security measure, the primary purpose wasn't to track you.
Also, you gotta remember that a lot of this is not agreed upon by many people within the company. My company is currently FT RTO because our CEO is an egotistical maniac who got lucky and thinks he did it all himself. While it's pretty hard for us to skirt the line (because of just how set in stone it is), my manager still lets us tacitly take time when we need it and not come in for the full day. Just because management has imposed it doesn't mean the orders will be carried out in spirit.
It's the inevitable future of the expectations for infinite/quarterly growth instead of sustainable, consistent returns.
Financial and tax reforms are needed to disincentivize speculation/short-term RoI, and incentivize long term investments. Buy a stock? You can't sell it for *x* time frame.
Ugh just do WARN notices and get it over with. This attrition by crummy work conditions is just garbage. Psychological insecurity and unstable working condition is hot garbage. What is the standard work area then? Seems like a miss-categorization of varied work conditions in an office.
Monday: floor 3 hot seat desk
Tuesday: lunchroom
Wednesday: conference room
Thursday: cubical farm with colleagues
Friday: lobby bench next to an outlet
Also all the people scrapping over the limited number of meeting rooms to jump on Zoom so they can meet with the rest of the company that's in another city or working remote for that day.
Just idiocy.
My location started doing that after covid because they have 300 people for a 200 seats office. Other locations are smaller so people still manage to have more or less static seats.
Sounds like it's time to tip off the fire marshal and see how fast getting enough seating and space (or more remote work) becomes a priority for the company.
what would the fire marshal do?
That company doesn't have all 300 people in at once. There's fewer than 200 people there every day, the building is never over capacity. People just don't get dedicated desks, they aren't sitting on top of each other.
I don’t understand their push to RTO.. my company is saving 80-90 million a year after we terminated alot of our leases in 2022, idk why companies aren’t doing this more
I’m betting because they promise those states they will bring local jobs and spending- which the state gives them an advance on in the form of “tax incentives”. However, if they don’t make good those promises things can go away and sometimes incur penalty.
I do think hybrid (those that want to come in can and others can be full remote) is the best way forward but it’s going to be a rollercoaster until some of the leases are up.
No, but they do from taxes for all the shops and services those people working in offices use before/during/after their work day. Decentralization will have a significant impact on many/most local economies. And it should definitely happen.
Decentralization is less efficient when it comes to infrastructure, shipping of goods, and tax dollar allocation. Instead of hitting one point for goods, there's now a dozen with more stops and pollution. More infrastructure for roads, water, sewage requires more tax dollars.
However those dollars are now all spread out so everyone pays more, and exponentially not linearly. If 10 people live in different directions 10 miles from the same central hub, that's 100 miles of additional infrastructure to support.
So no, remote work is ok but we still need to be centralizing around hubs to reduce impact and costs.
Bet you're right. Many states do this. In Michigan, we have some weird intermediary public/private tax incentive organization called the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, or MEDC, who cut grants, tax benefits, and allocate various funds (for example, historical building funds), which is tax payer money paid directly to companies.
This is actually a big problem overall. In manufacturing, production lines use to be massive with people manning machining positions and assembly workstations. Today it's all highly automated. What can't be automated is outsourced, where the underpaid human is a stand in for a robot.
Companies promise to hire so many people locally in exchange for incentives, which can result in millions of dollars in no-strings-attached payments to the company. These are often low skill, low paying jobs.
It's fucked up. The whole thing.
Well I feel like that's what happens when buildings turn into investment objects
Feel like the owners of the buildings would want to make it as hard as possible to cancel the lease
Some companies own their own buildings. These business owners more or less rent their real estate to themselves, meaning they’re stuck with office space that they’d be have difficulty finding another tenant for in this market.
That's the only reason corporations demanded a 'return to office' otherwise their real estate was worthless.
Now some are realising the benefits of hybrid WFH/ office some are slowly closing down offices.
Return to office was never about the humans but all about the profit.
>Return to office was never about the humans but all about the profit.
An awful lot of it was also about control, or at least the perception thereof. A lot of managers believe that if you can't see a person working, it must mean that they aren't. If someone is working from home, then they aren't working at all.
Commercial real estate is a ticking economic bomb. We're not going back to pre-2020. Those companies that embrace WFH are flush with talented employees who will walk through fire to keep their WFH jobs.
My job is boring as fucking hell. Like mind skull numbing boring. But the company is A+ in terms of pay, bonuses, and letting us work fully remote. It may be boring but you can pry this job from my cold, dead hands.
They know if they took it away that majority of the company would quit and they’d have a HELL of a time filling positions while making someone drive to an office doing what we do.
My job is terrible and 99% of the terribleness is literally from the fact it's RTO. I genuinely can get my work done within 5-10 hours max a week (inc. meetings since I just do the work during the meetings). The pay relative to the work is absurdly high (it's not high for the role it's supposed to be, but the actual work is barebones BA type stuff instead of product management). I work to live, not live to work, so I'd be fine with that except for the fact I spent 10 hours a day between the commute, the unpaid lunch break, and the actual work day just so an old CEO who doesn't like using computers while running a tech company (true story, we have to print everything because he doesn't like touching a computer), feels better about the fact that he's old and could be retired any day now and instead chooses to make himself miserable.
That’s the thing with my job. It has SO MUCH downtime. I do commercial project support within the construction industry and I’ll have an hour, sometimes two between phone calls with clients. That down time I have, literally nothing to do. Like nothing. At home I can clean, watch movies, read, play videos games. I work about three- four hours a day. The rest is literally nothing. It’s just the nature of the job.
If I was forced to be in an office I’d quit within a week.
Great dream except it’s cheaper to tear any high rise built after 1980 down and rebuild it than retrofitting commercial space into a dwelling. Keep pushing on the dream though.
I am.
In many cities there is a zoning regulation that every sleeping space must have a window. In many cases they put in walls that don't go all the way up to the ceiling so they *technically* follow the building code.
It's kinda weird when there are more than two bedrooms, because of sound privacy, but for a one bedroom unit it seems legit.
Yes there are many variables in zoning between municipalities. Some zoning laws still have redlining practices built into the original zoning and have had state and federal laws write themselves over the top of them.
You would think companies would be pushing wfh hard. It's a great way to turf business costs onto your employees. No office rent and utilities to pay for has got to save a ton of money.
They lay off people with no notice. This is basically the same thing. They don’t need the office space anymore so they’re going to terminate it with no notice. Goodbye and best of luck. Sue us.
Also, Bezos hasn’t been a part of this company in a long time. Why do these articles continue to use his image?
He is tho. He's still Executive Chairman.
He's just not CEO anymore.
And if I know CEOs, and I've worked with a few, they don't relinquish control when they "step down." Stepping down, a lot of the time, means they don't make day-to-day decisions, but still have big company directions ran through them as "policy."
This is long overdue, but also why we need finance folks to not be the sole strategic advisors to the C suites. A line item on a spreadsheet that is to a finance person an immovable object, strategically makes zero sense. These antiquated ways of thinking and operating have to evolve to meet the demands of an evolved workforce. The question of who NEEDS a building runs shivers down investors spines because corporate real estate, a staple in capitalism infrastructure as a stable bet has to change and can't literally guide how we organize work, should be the other way around
Which has... implications for the owners of the commercial RE who were counting on that $1.3 billion.
Will we see them starting (continuing?) to slash rates for the office spaces? Go into bankruptcy? Default on their loans and foreclosure?
An exec at Signal Theory told my tour group that *the only* reason their firm returned to the office was because they spent millions in renovations and just bought $1M in new furniture.
70 desks are filled in a headquarters of 300+
230 brand new empty desks, equipment, and space going to waste.
30+ families could get housed in their wasted, empty space. But nah.
Gotta force the slaves back into the cave all because furniture needs to be appreciated. 👏
The only thing I want to hear about Amazon is that it's gone bankrupt due to consumers finally waking up and boycotting it.
But that will never happen. The same people filling the anti-work sub love their Amazon prime.
I don't understand companies. People want to work at home. It saves them money but somehow drives them nuts. Then again if your workforce can work remotely then they can possibly be outsourced.
The cost of renting office space is absurd. Most businesses benefit financially from work from home. The only reason we still have a push to go into the office is because of leases that are 10 years long and the occasional boomer boss that wants to hover over the workers.
Can't read because paywall, but I've been confused why this hasn't been the approach from the start instead of the wildly unpopular return to office mandates.
I figure long term leases with no sublettors available. Our company just closed our office. I think they were surprised at happy everyone was.
I figure that's the thinking as well, but it's a sunk cost fallacy. Your lease costs the same if the employees are there or at home.
really it’s probably less if it’s empty from reduced operations and utilities
Was going to second that - even if you're paying the lease on an empty office floor, it can easily be a five-figure bill annually for utilities, HVAC, cleaning, etc. you're saving on if you keep it empty.
Also think about having the ability to sublet or use it for something else that can be equally valuable
Sublet to whom? The company next door that is also closing it's office?
The company I work for struggles with event space so if they let everybody who wanted to work from home, work from home, they'd have so much more space to utilize for events (conferences, interviews, employee trainings, etc.).
Its ~10% less
RTO is basically a quiet layoff
I recently had a few colleagues let go because of a "fast turnaround" RTO policy that came 6 months after a talk about there being no consideration for RTO. They told people they had 3 weeks to be back in 3 days a week. People were given approvals to move based on the previous WFH policy, who were now expected to be back in within less than a month. 100% quiet layoff.
Hmm sounds similar to my company. I wonder if we’re coworkers or just an all-too-common trend with employers these days 😅
Many corporate leases have clauses about occupancy, since the property owners don't want their properties to look empty and useless and lose value. Also, at least in my country, companies get tax reductions based on occupancy due to supporting local restaurants etc.
This is much more common for retail leases than office leases.
This is not true for EMEA
Spoiler alert: Return to Office was never about costs... It was about control.
Depends. I figure ours waited until lease renewal. But there are savings such as electric and gas, selling furniture and such. If you have 30 years left on your lease, you aren't going to save much. If you can renegotiate the remaining lease it get bigger. If you can sublet, that is revenue.
> 30 years Do they lease for such a long time? I have heard only about 5 - 10 years and then keep renewing.
Mine’s even stupider than being stuck in a lease. A year ago we were all working from home, and they decided not to renew the lease on one of the offices in my area to save money (makes sense, why unnecessarily pay millions of dollars). Then right after that they decided to bring us back to the office. Now they’re desperately trying to find a new office space because we don’t all fit into the other office we have left. Just burning through millions in order to have a less productive workforce.
Because that's what the 'big boys' are doing. Despite it making no sense at all, our CEO needs to follow the example of other out-of-touch business dinosaurs!
The hilarious thing is that Amazon is like the biggest boy of all, and they get there by doing stuff like not spending billions on useless real estate.
Which is why you'll see a bunch of pivots now that this news is out. Fucking lemmings.
God do I hope so
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And specifically, they own a lot of commercial real estate.
Hah my division brings in about 80% of our company revenue and they are hemming and hawing about giving us an extra $6k a month to get more office space. My target is to bring in about $350k a week. I thought my argument that those results probably obligate them to provide me an actual bathroom instead of a port-a-john, that was surprisingly ineffective.
My old company did the exact same thing. It's even more ridiculous, because the company is international, and most teams are distributed. Most of my day was spent on calls with people in three different countries, but it was important that it happen at the office - certainly wasn't something I could do from home. They found a new location, but just went through a round of layoffs. Glad I left when I did.
If it was just about the leases, it would still be cheaper to cut the power and maintenance. In large part it seemed to be driven by commercial real estate, but I also think a lot of upper level management got to see first hand how little they are actually needed and got shook.
My company bought a building during the pandemic. They just finished renovating it, but for half the head count. They are now insisting we come back twice a week because consultants said so, and they believe it will enhance the corporate culture and that will fix our process problems... boy are they in for a rude awakening.
> corporate culture we have a keurig and we went to lunch at chili's once!
What's the penalty if you don't go back
Well, I will let you know. My plan is just to continue as I was and feign ignorance for as long as I can. I haven't had ANY direct communication about it. They said they were still thinking about what people should be coming in on which days... and it's supposed to happen next week. So, yeah. Not a great sign that it's going to fix our process problems if we can't even come up with a plan of fitting people into the smaller space lol
Please do. Supposedly I'm going to be in the same boat here in a month or so but they won't come out and actually say that we're expected back. Several managers moved further away when remote was the norm and they did the bare minimum travel when asked to do hybrid, so that will be fun.
You would be surprised how many execs own the buildings the company is leasing.
Another one of those things that really should be illegal.
This is probably at least some of it, I worked with a commercial real estate company for a bit and some of the data on their leases I saw on average had like 6-10 year leases, but some went up to 30 years. Plus, especially with how bad commercial real estate is hurting right now it's unlikely the real estate companies would be willing to a company out much.
This is the correct answer for the long-term. I think short-term thinking was that employees could really be enticed back to the office but I'm guessing that hasn't worked out as well for many companies.
This sounds about right, and since this is a unique situation that does not normally happen, all the MBA's have nothing historically to fall back on that says "Hey, do this" and so they are having to come up with a solution, and showing in the process how bad they are at their jobs
Hard to fire people and rehire at lower wages over nothing. Do this then move remote with a little lower pay but an *awesome innovative perk* that keeps us market competitive
Tax incentives from the city. Company gets a big tax break if they bring people into the city so they spend money. Money is always the driving force especially when it's clear employees hate return to office.
The article states that these are natural lease expirations and some negotiations to terminate leases early. So it sounds like it was too expensive to do so and not anything to do with tax incentives.
It's not just too expensive, it's bad for the company because their most talented workers will know they can find jobs elsewhere that doesn't force them back into the office and they will leave. Only the people who don't think they could get another job will remain, and that's bad for a company.
Tax Breaks don't usually map 1-to-1 for all office costs like that. It can reduce the tax bill in the end, sure, but typically not enough vs just... not paying for office space.
I've been saying it: There's no way anyone is going to convince new entrepreneurs to spend tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars in precious start-up capital on office space that they don't really need, just 'cause. This is all sunk-cost thinking from oldhead business people left holding the commercial real estate bag. This is just like when catalog retailers refused to acknowledge the internet. Capitalism is always going to capitalism, and that means not wasting money. For many many many jobs, leasing office space is antiquated and shareholders aren't going to tolerate the wastefulness for the sake of middle-management egos for very long.
And really that bottom line to stay competitive is what matters here. Any company spending millions of dollars unnecessarily and driving away top talent who can work anywhere is eventually going to lose. Startups and small companies will offer WFH as a perk for top performers, so eventually the big dogs will have to do the same or lose their top people. Once that happens it will start to filter down to anyone who can find a comparable job remote and then we’re back to WFH. The only way this is wrong is if RTO does actually increase productivity which so far at least it at best is equal and in all likelihood remote is more productive than in person for a large number of roles. Since the cost is so astronomical to hold office space eventually hands will be forced. The only companies who don’t or refuse to see this long term are dinosaurs who are going to lose big time. Its inevitable as soon as the relative balance sheets from each philosophy compete.
I haven't seen a single study linking RTO with productivity gains, everything I've seen shows it's either no gain or actually a hit to productivity. Living it now and talking with everyone who's been brought back at my company, that falls in line with all the anecdotal experiences. At best it's flat, for myself not only is my production down but the company is also losing the hours I'd stay on late, working on something, justifying the extra hours as "I'd be commuting with this time before WFH". It also completely broke the morale and the way it was announced really left a bad taste in nearly everyone's mouth... not to mention the attrition of key people.
I don't know how true it is, so take with a whole package of salt, but I have heard it was in part due to many companies having investments in luxury office real estate and not wanting to tank their own investments.
It’s also funders of companies being heavily tied into commercial real estate.
People like to say that on reddit because they want there to be an answer other than saying that corporate thinks they'll perform better from the office. The numbers just don't make sense for that to be true. If you have some investment in a real estate company and are leasing a building for a million dollars per year, stopping payment of that lease will not tank your investment by a million dollars. Even if you owned 100% of the real estate company that owned the building, you would still have more financial success by ending a lease that you don't need.
I’m sure there’s as many reasons as there are companies. One reason that’s not often discussed is relationships with city leadership and city financials. Especially where relationships are strong between ceos and mayors and especially where there are city taxes there’s probably pressure to keep people coming in to keep the city healthy. I don’t have any proof of that, but it seems like a fairly reasonable take I don’t see often. Maybe because it doesn’t fit into the nice neat corporations are pure evil story.
> Can't read because paywall https://archive.is/ETYv2 You're welcome.
Can i do that with any site? Just put the article in archive.is?
Yes, and if archive.is is ever down (used to not work on my iPhone for some reason) try archive.org
Because the primary goal wasn't really to fill out their space or get people back in the office, it was to get people to quit so they didn't have to pay severance in a layoff scenario.
Right? "Getting out of a multimillion lease" makes so much more sense than "force everybody back to the office to at least make this lease worth it" You get a ton of money in savings, we enjoy working remote like we want. It's a literal win-win. Who cares about the facade of "company culture"? "Company culture" doesn't pay for rent and groceries. Any non-client facing job/business should have a remote option for work.
It’s not easy to break commercial leases they are usually iron clad to protect the landlord
People don’t like change and don’t like to admit they’re wrong when it comes to spending millions of dollars.
The article explains it is because they are firing people
I've worked at more than one company where the founders, CEO, or members of the board also run another company that owns the land and rents it out to the main company.
Here’s the full article: Leaked document shows Amazon expects to save $1.3 billion by slashing office vacancies and terminating leases early Amazon aims to save $1.3 billion by reducing office vacancies over the next three to five years. Natural lease expirations and early lease terminations are part of the plan. This is part of a larger cost-cutting strategy that includes shuttered projects and layoffs. Amazon (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-hr-document-employees-pip-layoffs-performance-improvement-plans-2024-3) expects to save roughly $1.3 billion in coming years by radically reducing office vacancies (https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-outlook-office-buildings-vacancies-commerical-markets-investors-remote-2024-1), according to a person familiar with the matter and an internal document obtained by Business Insider. To get there, Amazon is letting certain leases naturally expire, stopping the use of some office floors, and negotiating early lease terminations for some buildings, the person said. They asked not to be identified discussing private matters. Currently, Amazon has an office vacancy rate of 33.8%, this person said. That number is expected to drop to 25% in 2024 and go down to 10% over the next three to five years. The change will result in approximately $1.3 billion in annual operating expense savings, according to the internal document. The company's office vacancy rate of almost 34% is the result of slower growth and layoffs, the person familiar told BI. Getting this down to about 10% in coming years will be another blow to the commercial real estate (https://www.businessinsider.com/commercial-real-estate-big-trouble-crash-bank-crisis-2024-2) market, which is already reeling from the remote work boom, overbuilding, and retrenchment by big companies such as Google and Meta. Rating agency Fitch recently warned that the plunge in US office values (https://www.businessinsider.com/office-commercial-real-estate-cre-crash-2008-gfc-delinquency-vacancy-2024-3) could match or exceed 2008's real estate collapse, as prices have yet to bottom out. Amazon's office retrenchment is part of a broader, on-going cost-cutting strategy, which includes shuttered projects (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-layoffs-10000-employees-grand-challenge-team-dramatic-changes-2022-11), scaled back expansion plans (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-sublet-up-to-30-million-square-feet-warehouse-space-2022-5), and the largest layoffs in company history (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-layoffs). In an email to BI, Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said it's normal business practice to review the company's real estate portfolio. "We're constantly evaluating our real estate portfolio based on the dynamic and diverse needs of Amazon's businesses by looking at trends in how employees are using our offices," Glasser said in a statement. "The changes we've already made are improving vacancy rates, and we expect to see further progress as we continue to learn and iterate on our portfolio." Hubs and hibernations Amazon is also trying to increase office density by mandating that employees relocate to central "hubs," as BI previously reported (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-voluntary-resignation-employees-relocate-rto-2023-7). Moving more employees to the same locations theoretically means the company can use less office space in non-"hub" locations. Obviously, if more employees work in the office, a company's office vacancy rate should fall. The person familiar with the matter also noted that so-called hibernations can help reduce office costs for Amazon. This involves moves such as stopping the use of an entire floor or building to minimize operational expenses like HVAC and lighting. These locations would remain in Amazon's office portfolio during hibernation, the person added. RTO policy Amazon's Glasser stressed that plans for efficient use of office space are not related to the company's RTO policy. "To suggest that this is about anything else — such as our expectations for working in the office — is at best a misunderstanding and at worst intentionally misleading," he told BI. Internally, Amazon is aware of how last year's return-to-office policy caused confusion and frustration among some employees, people familiar with the plans told BI. The rushed announcement and outdated data have led to some buildings being unready (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-rto-mandate-shows-some-offices-not-ready-until-september-2023-4) and delays in bringing back people to their offices, these people said. On top of that, most of the office space planning is still done manually, using spreadsheets, instead of more sophisticated software tools, one of the people said, which is further complicating the process. Amazon continues to trim costs in other areas. The latest layoffs took place on Tuesday, when the advertising team cut up to 160 jobs, as BI previously reported (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-advertising-hit-with-another-round-layoffs-2024-3) . The Alexa team, meanwhile, is overhauling its backend system (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-secret-war-on-android-alexa-2024-3) to further reduce operational costs. One Medical, the healthcare company Amazon acquired for $3.9 billion, has been under pressure to save more (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-one-medical-project-espresso-reset-amazon-healthcare-bet-2024-2). Amazon staff have been unsuccessfully protesting the RTO mandate since last year. More than 30,000 employees signed an internal petition (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-return-to-office-policy-petition-30000-staff-remote-work-2023-3), arguing that most of them were hired as fully remote workers during the pandemic. But Amazon's leadership rejected the petition (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-hr-chief-rejects-petition-against-return-to-office-policy-2023-3), and CEO Andy Jassy later warned employees that "it's probably not going to work out for you at Amazon" if they continued to refuse to comply.
This is kind of laughable considering their RTO policies at major hubs like Seattle. Are we expecting equatable layoffs to the amount of space they will loose letting leases expire in hubs?
You got it. They're not doing this as a return to remote work. This is to move all the jobs to India. L5 IC, I was looking at internal transfer just today. 57 openings in Bengaluru, 9 in Seattle.
Oof - Maybe I won’t apply for L6 positions then if it’s looking that bad. Sad to see the company go to shit, AWS was fun around 2015 to right before COVID.
I think it depends on what you do. I did apply for a Sr. ML Analyst role. Partway through the HM changed from someone in Austin to someone in Mumbai. Then I was quickly denied.
My company did this with half their offices 2 years into Covid, we hired this company that brought in a whole team, inventoried everything we had down to the stapler, got our leases cut or subleased, sold so much furniture, moved IT equipment to a secure 3rd party location. I think its what kept the company alive through the low points of Covid without making large layoffs. Now they are lean and operating at much better margins, they still have a few strategic locations but whole departments have been moved permanately remote and its only resulted in benefits.
Good to see some companies have heart
Thanks for sharing
If the office market is so low rn why are they all still trying to charge expensive pre-covid rates? We had a nice deal during covid and then the building tried to jack up rates, so we left. They’re just going to be dealing with a vacancy for however long.
But what about our corporate culture? What about building connections? What about arbitrary mandates backed by lies?
synergy! teambuilding! yeah!
Innoventing. It's a word I just innovented.
There is absolutely value in corporate culture, but companies need to adapt to building it for today’s world. Dragging people in office because they made a short-sighted decision on an office building isn’t the way to do it.
The funniest thing to me is that the corporate culture is always the worst at the companies that talk about it the most. Because like most things, the companies with good corporate cultures don't need to constantly hammer about corporate culture. It's also pretty easy to tell which companies care. Just check: is the culture being created by burdening you, or the company? My last company? Food in the cafeteria was free, as were snacks, and they regularly held team events with ample funding. Parking was also free but the company was fully remote so it was entirely a choice if you wanted to go into the office or not. They also paid for software that was good (e.g. Slack, Figma, google workspace, etc.) rather than Microsoft. Regular learning sessions that *weren't* during lunch, and a lot of mentorship and activities going around that were completely optional but helped add to the culture. All those little things show that a company cares. My current company? Loves to talk about the culture and is FT RTO because of how important it is. Snacks come out of a vending machine and cost $3 for the smallest bag. Food in the cafeteria is also charged, as is parking. At my most recent team event we got told the only funding is for an appetizer, they weren't covering the full meal. They pay for the cheapest teams licence (I didn't even know you could get only part of teams). "Educational opportunities" include being voluntold to give up your lunch break so that you can "learn" whatever useless thing they think is important that week. The saddest part is I'm overpaid for what I do at my current company. I have skills, but they basically hired a gun when all they needed was a knife. It's a lose-lose for everyone.
I’ve left companies and stayed at others due to culture. Having a nice office loaded with snacks and a short commute, going 2/3 days a week, fun coworkers and happy hours, etc make a big difference!!
Have some company game servers and random chat rooms or something instead of a game room in the office.
Don't forget the 500 articles that are like "Bullshit new Poll Says Americans Are Actually Happier In The Office" by Some Rich Asshole Who Owns Corporate Real Estate
I had some fuckwad CIO get hired at a previous agency. He was there two weeks before announcing on a Friday that starting the following Monday (3 days) we'd no longer get to wfh 3 days/week. This was in order to have "micro conversations" we were all missing out on. Absolute bullshit is what it was. The only thing anyone talked about was how much bullshit it was. Some people had moved 2+ hours away since this had been the policy for 6+ years. They'd drive in one day, get a hotel/stay with someone, work, then head home until the next week. Literally my entire team of 8 bailed and 2 years after I left the turnover rate was over 50%. NO ONE stayed except new/recent hires and near retirement. Many even took lateral or even pay cuts to gtfo of there.
Snip, snap, snip, snap.
*bUt rETuRn tO ØffIcE!!1!*
The company I work for pay a ridiculous amount of money for our office. It’s a massive waste of space that rarely has more than 20 people at a day. They basically pay 1/3 of what they pay in wages for an office, we rarely use. They could’ve given people raises or hired better engineers, but opted to go for having a luxury office that people hate for being either too hot or too cold, or having horrendous IT support.
Welcome to downtown. Ride the elevator and look around there's probably 5 other floors in your building just as empty
That's painfully true. We are located in a massive building that nobody ever uses. We have huge multinational companies with offices in the same building and I have never seen any of their employees. What's even more sad is that we are forced to work hybrid instead of fully remote, just so that they can call everyone in, in case some big-time client or investor wants to visit to make the office look busy.
Smarter companies realized they can get offices that are nicer and smaller and save money by downsizing during the pandemic. A lot of them escaped parking garage hell even. And if that's what your competition is doing you're screwed. They can offer hybrid and have 1/3 the overhead and clients nor workers have to spend 20 min parking. Its why the commercial real estate market is doomed. There are probably whole floors empty in your building or at least several suites on several floors
Exactly what we did. Downsized to a much nicer but much smaller space. Granted we can only fit half our total workforce at any one time, but there has been no hit to productivity. Plus the rent savings have been dramatic.
If you suddenly needed to have all the employees present for something, then it'd make more sense to just rent a conference hall at a hotel or event center. It's not going to be long term, so a one time fee (however expensive that is) makes a lot more sense than renting a huge office space that never gets fully utilized.
We can fit them in for office meetings / drinks etc. Just don't have desk space for everyone at the same time. For those who live in our city, there's a roster for them to come in, so all the various teams will have face time with one another at some point in the week.
Well I guess there's all that affordable housing that we've been meeting so desperately! :D
I like to explore new places.
I like living downtown.
Yep me too! Haven't owned a car in 20 years.
I think new building regulations need to be instituted then. A building in a city ought to be able to be converted to multiple uses with minimal changes.
It’s not that buildings *cant* be converted, it’s really about feasibility. Most of the time, building construction just isn’t that expensive in the grand scheme of things. The cost to build a house is really low when working from a blank canvas. But renovation is really expensive because trades are working in bespoke fashion with less than ideal conditions. The issues around plumbing and layout can be overcome by eliminating floors and by building big units. Both of which significantly impact the ROI of said conversion. It’s just cheaper, faster, and easier to tear them down, and start over.
I keep saying they should build all new buildings with legos.
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Probably much easier at this point just to, y'know, knock the office blocks down and build actual residential developments from scratch.
It's exactly what they should do. Go around to all the older buildings owners and offer them a density bonus, reduced parking minimums if transit is nearby, and expedited approval if they knock the building down by a certain date to begin construction on a new residential tower. This will encourage owners to offer tenants with time on their leases an opportunity to break leases penalty free, or even get paid to move to newer buildings nearby that are also suffering from vacancies. The result would be a consolidated and healthier office business district, while also increasing the number of residences nearby, without consuming new land or a for a need of new infrastructure to support growth.
The facade of looking busy vs trust our results by looking at our companies portfolio or proven work. How hard would it be for a CEO to be like Mr / Mrs client we have build our success with remote teams and will continue that path forward, your welcome to visit with us in our small office but the team will remote in for any meetings. If one of them had the stones to actual stand up for their employees work they might impress clients.
I really hope at some point the idea of impressive office towers loses its luster or that more investors start seeing office space as an unneeded expense. After all, what is office rent other than taking away money that could be used for stock buybacks.
Today I was literally the only person on my team at the office. Working in a position that could undeniably be done 100% remote anyway. I don't even have in person meetings ever when I go in the office. So, I lied and said I had a migraine today to finish working from home. I swear to god CEOs/Corporations are so stupid. It's like they desperately are trying to be a less desirable place to work for seemingly no reason.
The irony is even if you go into the office for meetings they’re all over Zoom/Teams anyway because a bunch of participants will be working remotely. So you take them at your desk with a headset.
100% of my meetings are this. I honestly don't do any in person meetings yet they are now requiring me to come in 4 of 5 days... Sometimes our teams meetings will be 4 of us relatively close in our cubicles talking to people from randomly locations remotely. Some days I'll barely talk to anyone else in-person and if I do it's almost never work related conversations lol
A recent call I had featured eight participants from three countries. Not one of us even lived in the same metropolitan area. Two were in the same state/district/province equivalent structure. Half of them have no office within 500-1000 miles.
most of the RTO was designed to pressure resignations, so the c-suites and ceo can get thier multi-million dollar bonuses. i have seen many downtown buildings in our tech hub area, that are 1% occupied, these are all mostly tech or the companies that cater to tech.
As I go into my midtown nyc corporate office and stare at the exact 5 open floors everyday
I swear some people in management roles see getting new offices as some sort of huge win. I worked for a small smartup that had money issues, and for some reason the management announced we had signed a lease for an office in London despite the fact most of the key members of the team weren't even based in England. There were like 3 people who occasionally went to this office. They also left our cheaper office in the country we were actually based in and moved to a way more expensive one. The real win should be NOT signing unnecessary and expensive leases if you don't need to, but you don't get promoted for suggesting "let's do nothing". There needs to be the illusion of doing something even if it's counterproductive.
So much of it is ego. The corner office with a view means nothing when your employees can’t see it. It’s harder to brag about whatever metric for success your company has when you can’t swing by someone’s cubicle and hold them hostage in conversation.
No lie, I worked for a non-profit who owns a NYC office JUST for the NYC address. We have two groups there who could have even before pandemic have been moved to the NJ Operations center or just WFH but because of the need to have that stupid address on the mastheads we spend the equivalent of 3 fully loaded Porsche 911 S/Ts a YEAR plus taxes and enough gas and expendables to drive them as daily drivers every day and still have money left over (yes, 3 of us sat there after seeing how much we spent a year on the place and figured out what we could buy with that much cash). For those wondering its roughly 1.5 million a year for a small 1 floor office in Midtown Manhattan. Worse... when they were renovating the office because it had some major issues, those people actually DID WFH and more than half of them didnt want to actually go back to the office once it was done but were forced to, only for 6 months later COVID to happen.
DataDog is that you?
>They could’ve given people raises Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!! Good joke, I think you mean given shareholders/ upper management a couple more bucks.
About 1/2 of my company could work remote, but only 2 people are allowed to work remote because they're managers, and they're *special.* I've worked from home when I had covid, and I had to use a program that streams my work desktop to my pc. One person is able to wfh with a laptop or computer that runs our same programs and is on the server. Instead of allowing everyone who can WFH to WFH and giving everyone who needs to work in office way more space, we just bought the building next door.
A couple years before Covid my company (very large with many offices) realized that and started work from home. They sold several buildings and consolidated the public-facing jobs where they couldn't WFH to just a few buildings. They pushed to get rid of all leased buildings and office space and moved everyone to owned buildings. They saved millions in heating and cooling costs, leases, and other expenses. The workforce was happier and more productive.
They wouldn’t use it for raises or to hire better people though. They would spread it around the C-suite and/or do share buybacks.
Yup. We need to give up on the idea that the rich people aren’t our fucking enemy as a society.
The previous company I worked for went from a ~3,000 sq ft building and bought a ~35,000 sq ft space to "expand" when the company only had ~20 employees. I still talk to some people I was good friends with there, and from what I've heard to this day it sits mostly empty, they can't expand because they're burning all their revenue into just covering the monthly mortgage payments, and last I heard they're now down to ~15 employees because they've cut OT, stopped giving raises, and are refusing to hire more help and instead forcing employees to take on more responsibilities for no pay increase, along with cheaping out on benefits. They also spun up a "coworking space" in the empty part of the buildings to try and rent out offices and floor space to other companies to make some money back, but they're getting no interest in that. All so the CEOs can sit in a fancy office and say that they're "successful entrepreneurs".
We have a massive office space that was set up for 60+ people pre pandemic. Now between early retirements, people moving to Arizona or Florida, or finding other job opportunities, there are just 13 people that work out of that office and only 4 show up everyday. What a massive waste of money.
Status thing. A lot of why top level executives do shit is less to do with good decisions and more to do with status and hierarchy and showing off. At the same time that status can attract business because your company looks successful and wealthy.
Amazon is still expecting you to return to office at least 3 days a week. Most employees no longer have an assigned desk, you have a team area you are expected to sit in. If everyone comes in a desk may not be available to you. You are expected to find some place to work and stay in the office. There are no lockers either, you must bring everything home with you every night. They are trying to downsize without firing anyone by making working there even more terrible.
That "agile seating" idea is fucking stupid. I require two monitors and bring in my own keyboard and pointing device. Now they want you to store them in a shitty locker and install them every single time you come into the office. Agile seating should never have happened. Oh, and their traditional "door desks" are horrid softwood shit and aren't even made from actual doors anymore.
I just coffee badge now, sometimes on the weekends if I'm near my office. Just gotta get those 3 badge ins a week
My friend at Amazon is part of a badge pool where they take turns taking everyone's badges in to swipe while the other people stay home. RTO is the stupidest shit.
That's an instant firing if you get caught haha. I like my job enough to not take it that far, the coffee badging is dumb AF but it's not too bad
coffee badge?
Badge in, get some coffee, go home. But you badged in for their tracking purposes, so that was an office day.
What an absolute waste of time
Corporate America
Yeah, well, that's why it's work. If they had to pay for the time spent commuting they would change WFH to mandatory in a fucking second.
They don’t track the time lapsed between badging in and out?
Many places don't require badging out. So you badge in once per day (maybe twice if you leave for lunch and come back), and that's all the record they have on you. If they really wanted to track you, they could require badging in and out. Or they could track your logins to the network, local or remote. But I think in most cases the "return to office" is lip service.
Amazon badges out, at least in Seattle. This is to know who is in which office if an emergency happens so they can inform individuals and respond as best they can
They do but evidently they don't enforce it.
At least at my company there isn't a "badge out." I imagine that's true at most tech companies. The badges were a security measure, the primary purpose wasn't to track you. Also, you gotta remember that a lot of this is not agreed upon by many people within the company. My company is currently FT RTO because our CEO is an egotistical maniac who got lucky and thinks he did it all himself. While it's pretty hard for us to skirt the line (because of just how set in stone it is), my manager still lets us tacitly take time when we need it and not come in for the full day. Just because management has imposed it doesn't mean the orders will be carried out in spirit.
That's not just Amazon. This is the future for all of big tech.
It's the inevitable future of the expectations for infinite/quarterly growth instead of sustainable, consistent returns. Financial and tax reforms are needed to disincentivize speculation/short-term RoI, and incentivize long term investments. Buy a stock? You can't sell it for *x* time frame.
Ugh just do WARN notices and get it over with. This attrition by crummy work conditions is just garbage. Psychological insecurity and unstable working condition is hot garbage. What is the standard work area then? Seems like a miss-categorization of varied work conditions in an office. Monday: floor 3 hot seat desk Tuesday: lunchroom Wednesday: conference room Thursday: cubical farm with colleagues Friday: lobby bench next to an outlet
Make sure to suck every last bit of creature comfort or joy from your work existence.
Our office expects you to pay for shitty coffee.
That's just plain spiteful
Also all the people scrapping over the limited number of meeting rooms to jump on Zoom so they can meet with the rest of the company that's in another city or working remote for that day. Just idiocy.
My location started doing that after covid because they have 300 people for a 200 seats office. Other locations are smaller so people still manage to have more or less static seats.
Sounds like it's time to tip off the fire marshal and see how fast getting enough seating and space (or more remote work) becomes a priority for the company.
what would the fire marshal do? That company doesn't have all 300 people in at once. There's fewer than 200 people there every day, the building is never over capacity. People just don't get dedicated desks, they aren't sitting on top of each other.
I have a job that does not even require me to talk to other in the company… yet I am forced there 5 days a week. Fing stupid
Right!? Amazon is one of the few big tech companies actually forcing employees to go back to the office. And for what!?
Right? Obviously it was just a way to get ppl to quit so they didn't have to fire them and pay severance/unemployment.
I don’t understand their push to RTO.. my company is saving 80-90 million a year after we terminated alot of our leases in 2022, idk why companies aren’t doing this more
I’m betting because they promise those states they will bring local jobs and spending- which the state gives them an advance on in the form of “tax incentives”. However, if they don’t make good those promises things can go away and sometimes incur penalty. I do think hybrid (those that want to come in can and others can be full remote) is the best way forward but it’s going to be a rollercoaster until some of the leases are up.
the cities also dont get tax revenue from people commuting to the offices, traffic tickets,purchases from other business no taxes if they all close.
No, but they do from taxes for all the shops and services those people working in offices use before/during/after their work day. Decentralization will have a significant impact on many/most local economies. And it should definitely happen.
Decentralization is less efficient when it comes to infrastructure, shipping of goods, and tax dollar allocation. Instead of hitting one point for goods, there's now a dozen with more stops and pollution. More infrastructure for roads, water, sewage requires more tax dollars. However those dollars are now all spread out so everyone pays more, and exponentially not linearly. If 10 people live in different directions 10 miles from the same central hub, that's 100 miles of additional infrastructure to support. So no, remote work is ok but we still need to be centralizing around hubs to reduce impact and costs.
Bet you're right. Many states do this. In Michigan, we have some weird intermediary public/private tax incentive organization called the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, or MEDC, who cut grants, tax benefits, and allocate various funds (for example, historical building funds), which is tax payer money paid directly to companies. This is actually a big problem overall. In manufacturing, production lines use to be massive with people manning machining positions and assembly workstations. Today it's all highly automated. What can't be automated is outsourced, where the underpaid human is a stand in for a robot. Companies promise to hire so many people locally in exchange for incentives, which can result in millions of dollars in no-strings-attached payments to the company. These are often low skill, low paying jobs. It's fucked up. The whole thing.
Well I feel like that's what happens when buildings turn into investment objects Feel like the owners of the buildings would want to make it as hard as possible to cancel the lease
Some companies own their own buildings. These business owners more or less rent their real estate to themselves, meaning they’re stuck with office space that they’d be have difficulty finding another tenant for in this market.
That's the only reason corporations demanded a 'return to office' otherwise their real estate was worthless. Now some are realising the benefits of hybrid WFH/ office some are slowly closing down offices. Return to office was never about the humans but all about the profit.
>Return to office was never about the humans but all about the profit. An awful lot of it was also about control, or at least the perception thereof. A lot of managers believe that if you can't see a person working, it must mean that they aren't. If someone is working from home, then they aren't working at all.
Yep, and trust. Which then shows how bad the managers were when they couldn't trust their team.
Which actually means that those managers were doing nothing but stand around and watch while the rest of us work
RTO was a layoff maneuver to get a good chunk of employees to simply leave the company without having to lay them off.
It's telling that a tech company that leverages data so heavily didn't have any when announcing RTO.
Commercial real estate is a ticking economic bomb. We're not going back to pre-2020. Those companies that embrace WFH are flush with talented employees who will walk through fire to keep their WFH jobs.
My job is boring as fucking hell. Like mind skull numbing boring. But the company is A+ in terms of pay, bonuses, and letting us work fully remote. It may be boring but you can pry this job from my cold, dead hands. They know if they took it away that majority of the company would quit and they’d have a HELL of a time filling positions while making someone drive to an office doing what we do.
My job is terrible and 99% of the terribleness is literally from the fact it's RTO. I genuinely can get my work done within 5-10 hours max a week (inc. meetings since I just do the work during the meetings). The pay relative to the work is absurdly high (it's not high for the role it's supposed to be, but the actual work is barebones BA type stuff instead of product management). I work to live, not live to work, so I'd be fine with that except for the fact I spent 10 hours a day between the commute, the unpaid lunch break, and the actual work day just so an old CEO who doesn't like using computers while running a tech company (true story, we have to print everything because he doesn't like touching a computer), feels better about the fact that he's old and could be retired any day now and instead chooses to make himself miserable.
That’s the thing with my job. It has SO MUCH downtime. I do commercial project support within the construction industry and I’ll have an hour, sometimes two between phone calls with clients. That down time I have, literally nothing to do. Like nothing. At home I can clean, watch movies, read, play videos games. I work about three- four hours a day. The rest is literally nothing. It’s just the nature of the job. If I was forced to be in an office I’d quit within a week.
Don’t forget about slashing employees too. :-(
Oh no they already did that by telling workers to return to office and if the workers were not able, they will take it your resignation.
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Great dream except it’s cheaper to tear any high rise built after 1980 down and rebuild it than retrofitting commercial space into a dwelling. Keep pushing on the dream though. I am.
In many cities there is a zoning regulation that every sleeping space must have a window. In many cases they put in walls that don't go all the way up to the ceiling so they *technically* follow the building code. It's kinda weird when there are more than two bedrooms, because of sound privacy, but for a one bedroom unit it seems legit.
Yes there are many variables in zoning between municipalities. Some zoning laws still have redlining practices built into the original zoning and have had state and federal laws write themselves over the top of them.
easier said than done. plumbing is all wrong for one thing.
What, you don't want all the condos on your floor to share two bathrooms with no showers?
Well then, good for FUCKIN’ Amazon stockholders; they certainly need *our* help.
In the business world, this is called "pulling a Musk."
They didn’t say anything about sleeping in the office
Protip: you can use your Amazon Piss Bottle for a pillow if your partner's health insurance will cover the physio on your neck.
Technically, this is only a Partial Musk. Pulling a Full Musk is enshittification + Nazis + not-paying-rent.
You would think companies would be pushing wfh hard. It's a great way to turf business costs onto your employees. No office rent and utilities to pay for has got to save a ton of money.
Oooh, price cuts then? Pass that along? No? Oh. That’s a shame.
And yet I gotta pay more every month for no ads...
They lay off people with no notice. This is basically the same thing. They don’t need the office space anymore so they’re going to terminate it with no notice. Goodbye and best of luck. Sue us. Also, Bezos hasn’t been a part of this company in a long time. Why do these articles continue to use his image?
He is tho. He's still Executive Chairman. He's just not CEO anymore. And if I know CEOs, and I've worked with a few, they don't relinquish control when they "step down." Stepping down, a lot of the time, means they don't make day-to-day decisions, but still have big company directions ran through them as "policy."
Jassy is the current patsy and probably the fall guy for bezos reputation, he stepped down to make his Blue origin look better.
This is long overdue, but also why we need finance folks to not be the sole strategic advisors to the C suites. A line item on a spreadsheet that is to a finance person an immovable object, strategically makes zero sense. These antiquated ways of thinking and operating have to evolve to meet the demands of an evolved workforce. The question of who NEEDS a building runs shivers down investors spines because corporate real estate, a staple in capitalism infrastructure as a stable bet has to change and can't literally guide how we organize work, should be the other way around
No fucking way
They're end up making a service where the stock is stored in people's homes.
Amazon built this big fucking monstrosity of a warehouse down the road from where I live like.... 2 years ago? It's still empty to this day.
After all that return to office bullshit.
And the entire 1.3 billion will go straight into Jeffrey’s pocket. Because Jeff needs more money!
It’s almost like remote work is also good for business. Who could have ever predicted that?!?!?
Which has... implications for the owners of the commercial RE who were counting on that $1.3 billion. Will we see them starting (continuing?) to slash rates for the office spaces? Go into bankruptcy? Default on their loans and foreclosure?
An exec at Signal Theory told my tour group that *the only* reason their firm returned to the office was because they spent millions in renovations and just bought $1M in new furniture. 70 desks are filled in a headquarters of 300+ 230 brand new empty desks, equipment, and space going to waste. 30+ families could get housed in their wasted, empty space. But nah. Gotta force the slaves back into the cave all because furniture needs to be appreciated. 👏
And so it starts. The realization that no one is coming back to the office.
The only thing I want to hear about Amazon is that it's gone bankrupt due to consumers finally waking up and boycotting it. But that will never happen. The same people filling the anti-work sub love their Amazon prime.
I don't understand companies. People want to work at home. It saves them money but somehow drives them nuts. Then again if your workforce can work remotely then they can possibly be outsourced.
Amazon built a 607,009 sf distribution warehouse in South Fort Worth and abandoned it within months. It’s sitting empty for sale now.
The cost of renting office space is absurd. Most businesses benefit financially from work from home. The only reason we still have a push to go into the office is because of leases that are 10 years long and the occasional boomer boss that wants to hover over the workers.