Amazon exec says it’s time for workers to ‘disagree and commit’ to office return — “I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better.”::“We’re here, we’re back. It’s working,” an Amazon Studios head said in a meeting, before acknowledging a lack of evidence.
Because executives and investors are often cut from the same cloth, flaws and all. Plenty of them will have the same baseless belief that office-based work is “just better”.
Plenty of the are also investors in commercial real estate as well as tech companies, and property bubbles need regular reinflation.
Thing is, all else being equal, office-based work IS better (edit: in many cases). But all else is not even remotely equal. Office-based work has tremendous extra cost: rent, utilities, facilities, morale, commute time, mental exhaustion, inflexibility, environmental impact, and so on. Add it all up and while I don’t have the data to back it up, I’m pretty sure working from home is better.
Where’s your data that, “all else being equal, office-based work IS better”? I mean, I don’t have data that says otherwise, but I know the company I work for as well as higher-ups at other companies I’ve talked to noticed right out the gate that productivity went up when they went work from home. The same work needs to be done, and it gets done. If it doesn’t, fire them. I have trouble seeing how the location the worker is in matters, all things being equal.
The company I am at experienced the same results - a surprising jump in productivity. But they are forcing us back to the office now. Odd, almost like productivity isn’t a factor to them…
Fair enough. I should have qualified with “in many cases”. Design and creative work can be done in large part remotely, but benefit greatly from in-person collaboration and workshopping.