Amazon’s Office Mandate: The End of Remote Work?

Ryan Burgess
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy just hit employees with the return to Office mandate, this time, five days a week. That's already after clawing back remote work to three days in the office. I'm sure Amazon employees have a strong opinion about it. None of us here at Front End Happy Hour currently work at Amazon. However, we do have strong opinions about the broader discussion. Well, welcome to front end happy hour. Let's give introductions of today's panelists. Stacy, you want to start us off? Sure,

Stacy London
I'm Stacey London. I'm a principal front end engineer working on Trello at Atlassian, Jem

Jem Young
Young engineering manager at Netflix. I'm

Ryan Burgess
Ryan Burgess, and as many of you know, I formerly an engineering manager at Netflix, taking a nice little break from work before we dive in, we have a quick word from our sponsor. Hey, listeners, have you heard of Infinite Red? They're a powerhouse in the React Native world, and we're excited to have them as a sponsor of this episode. Since 2015 they've built over 75 apps for companies ranging from startups to global brands. Infinite Red's team of senior developers are the experts you need to build your next React Native app. They're not just about delivering amazing products. They also empower your team by working with your team to share their knowledge, plus they're deeply involved in the community, hosting the chain react conference to over 400 developers and producing the popular React Native radio podcast. If your company needs a React Native partner, look no further than Infinite Red. Check them out at Infinite.red/FrontEndHH. today we're going to be talking about Amazon's return to Office. Amazon employees were informed as of January, they will be required to be in the office five days a week. This came after the company had already reduced remote work down to three days in the office per week. CEO Andy Jassy explained that the decision was made to help boost collaboration and maintain Amazon's culture. This shift has sparked strong reactions, and it's raising questions about the future of work in tech. What do you both think about this? I mean,

Stacy London
it's, it's a real bummer for people that they hired that were remote with the intention to be remote. You know that it's effectively like move or not or don't have a job. I mean, that's, that's pretty rough decision making that you have to start forcing on people, and especially, like, what if someone was hired,

Ryan Burgess
yeah, like, and that they thought that they could be remote, right? Like, that was the policy at the time. And then it changes that one. Always, I struggle with that one a lot. When I was interviewing folks at Netflix before the pandemic, before we were remote, I would talk to people, and I think they're great. And I'm like, Oh yeah, you want to, like, move to California. And they're like, sorry, I can't, like, lot of people have really good reasons, family or whatever, that they can't just up and move. And I get that, but it was so painful sometimes to be hit with that, because you're like, oh, this person's so good, but I can't have them work remote. And so now having the ability to have people remote is huge. But then if you went and hired that person and then, like, a year later, that changes like that kind of sucks for everybody involved. So

Jem Young
this decision me and my partner made during the pandemic, when I think everybody in Tech had the same decision, was like, Oh, we can just leave and go live in Maine or something amongst the trees and work in tech and live the life and all that. But me being very cynical of technology, as you know, you're a friend and happier listener, I'm very cynical of Silicon Valley Technology. My thinking was, you know what? Meta is still building out their headquarters here, and they've invested billions in there. Google's still building out their headquarters. So is Microsoft, so is Amazon. So are all over them. I don't have high degree of confidence working from home is going to stay forever. Or if it does, it's going to be a much smaller percent of the workforce in it than it is today. So we needed to move to buy a house on the other side of the bay rather than leave. So come around. What are we four years off the pandemic, and we start seeing companies forcing people back? Maybe I'll play devil's advocate here, not on side of Amazon, but in the side of there are benefits to being face to face, because I have two teams. One is all located here in Silicon Valley and in the office, and the other is distributed. And they're both good teams, very, very different teams. But there are benefits I see to being in the office and meeting with people and solving problems face to face, and that can't be discounted. But regardless say I'm not surprised. I'm really I'm just not surprised. I won't be surprised when I see it rolling out more, which it already has been, I think, into it. I think is bringing people back to the office. I think most of the big companies around here are bringing people back

Ryan Burgess
to the office. Well, I think, like, Apple is doing it where it's like the three days a week, right? And then there's a few others that are taking on that three days a week. Obviously, Amazon had three days. Now they're to five. So it is a bit of a trend. And are we going to see more? Do you

Stacy London
think they're doing it based on data? What they think based on data? We know we were more productive. We did better when people. People were in the office, because all these companies are, you know, so data driven, we'd make decisions based on data. I haven't seen anything saying that that's the case.

Ryan Burgess
No. I mean, if we want to pick on the Amazon thing, their changes were very vague in the letter that their CEO wrote, and saying, like a lot of it was around culture, right? They want to manage the culture better. And I think, yeah, being in person, I can see that argument a little bit. I struggle with it too, because I think that that's the easy way, right? It's like, okay, we want to manage the culture and have it this certain way. Well, could you say, like, what's broken when it's people remote? And how do we maybe get creative? In that sense, that was one big piece that they talked about. They never really talked about any data. And like, I was thinking the productivity side. I'm like, how are people more productive? I don't see how that is possible, because you're adding commutes in. I know when I'm in an office, I'm talking to people more, I'm actually doing less work. Maybe it's more meaningful, though. Maybe I'm focusing more on the meaningful things, and that's actually quite impactful. So that may be true, I don't know. But then the other piece of it that they argued was for new employees starting at a company, and this is actually one, I kind of agree. I think it is a little bit easier to onboard a team member when you're all together in person and meeting each other. I think you build trust faster and all those things. And I think it is better for that new person to the team. They probably will feel the culture a lot easier if it was in person. But I don't think that the answer is that you all go back to the office. But I just don't buy that. I feel like there's ways that you can optimize and improve the remote work and get a lot of the benefits and hopefully more. I don't know employee happiness, like, Do companies care about that anymore?

Stacy London
Not right now.

Ryan Burgess
I mean, maybe they don't, too because, like, right now the market is not great for trying to look for jobs. Yeah,

Stacy London
they kind of have a bit of a, I guess, like an upper hand now. It's like the inverse of what had been the case for so many years, where it was like, the employee had, like, a lot of pull they could, you know, interview at lots of different places, and you're getting lots of offers and, you know, trying to entice you with different, you know, perks and things, and trying to win the employee to come work for us. And it's almost like, yeah, it's like, flipped quite a bit in the last few years.

Ryan Burgess
Do you think people will stay like, I feel like, even with the market like, I feel like retention has got to be tough with something like that, even just for the argument, there's probably people who are like, I can't do it. Like, I literally just can't move or that's just not going to work for me and my family, or whatever, like the circumstances are. But it'd be interesting to see, like the numbers that people like internally, what those conversations are looking like too,

Jem Young
I don't know. So Amazon's kind of a interesting case where they are one of the largest employers in the United States. They're one of the largest employers of engineers in the United States. I remember thinking, wow, it's wild that Amazon does hiring events in like football stadiums like that's how many people they hire. But also remember, Amazon has a mandatory cut 10% of their engineering, like engineers every single year. So, you know, we can get into that and maybe some other episode. But to be clear, like Amazon probably did this more along the lines of, we need to shrink our workforce even more, and this is a good excuse to do that again. I don't know. I mean,

Ryan Burgess
they're not going to say that. They're not going to come out and say that, but no, never

Jem Young
say that. But, you know, like, but the fact is, there are people who it's their job to figure out, hey, if we implemented X, what would be our attrition rate for a number of people leaving? And they factor that in, like, this is business. This is what they do. They put numbers to that. The real impact for people like you and I, who are, like, I just had a kid and I bought this house, and I can't, you don't pay me enough to live in Seattle or wherever the office is, and you're just putting this really tough position. And like Stacey was saying, the market has flipped and is now in the employer's favor. For the past probably 1112, years, it was definitely on the engineers side of things, and we saw our salaries and perks and battles to get high, high talent employees at the company with with all the benefits and all that. But that is now flipped. Salaries are lower, job acceptance rates are higher, which means people are just taking whatever offer they get, and that's just the state of the market now. So yeah, did Amazon do this and probably cut their workforce to trim it? Yeah, probably there's lots of other reasons, but when I see companies mandating return to office, it's usually that because five days a week. Just like onerous, like I my team that's located here, I say be in the office one day a week, ideally, the stakes we're all here, but I just want you to not forget that we all exist, and there are benefits sitting on desk and knowing people. But I also recognize people have lives. I'm not going to force you to be here, but I do want you to be around at some point because you are here. But saying five days a week is just like a screw you like you get here, if you really wanted people to be together, you could say they

Ryan Burgess
had three days. If you really that's what the thing is, they already had the three days, and now it's like, Nope, we're gonna do all five and gem to your point of like, cutting, you know, trimming some of that 10% or whatever. Maybe this is a smart move if that's the goal, because you don't pay for severance, if people are like, I'm just can't get on board with that. I've got to go find another job. You don't have to pay out severance. Like, if you're letting 10% of the workforce go, you got to pay severance on that, right? Like, if you're just like, we let people go. So maybe it is a ploy on that, which just feels icky.

Jem Young
Again, being cynical, I feel like being a manager has made me even more cynical about technology, because now I understand more the business side and the money. But yeah, you're right, Ryan, it's much cheaper to get someone to quit than it is to let them go, because you don't have to pay them severance. And that that factors into the equation here. I hate to say it, but the fact is, most companies have some sort of return office that we know. If Google's three days a week, meta is three days a week, Salesforce is four to five days a week. Snap four days a week. So it's been happening for a while, but I think five days a week is is pretty strong. Atlassian

Stacy London
still very much anything you choose. So maybe the recruiting efforts will pick up and we'll get a lot of people that oughta good talent coming through that is being forced back and doesn't want to

Ryan Burgess
Well, I mean, that's the thing, though, too. Is like, then some a company like Atlassian, Netflix is still fully remote too. Is like they might have an a competitive edge at that point, right? Because there are people who are going to be like, Well, I don't live in Seattle. I mean, I live in Ohio, and I'm not moving I'm just still want to work at a tech company, and so I'm going to apply out all these other companies. Maybe that opens the door for other companies. That's a competitive edge, like, I feel like it shouldn't be, it should be like, baseline. That's just kind of the way that we've gone. And this is the direction that, like, there's value in having people remote.

Stacy London
There's kind of interesting thing too, if, if you, if you care about, like, diversity of your employee workforce, too, it's like, there are, you know, studies that show, like, diverse teams do better, and, you know, make money that actually affects, like, financials and stuff. Well, flipping to say, you know, you have to be in the office five days a week, you start to, like, really cut out. Potentially, some people that you know don't, maybe they're disabled and they can't actually be in an office, or they they need more flexible time because they're caring for elderly parent. Or they, they have health needs and they need to have more privacy. And so, like, there's all these different like, accommodations that can help people be really productive, but also have your diverse workforce through the fact that you can let people work anywhere. So it's like, is that important to you as a company, or does that not matter? And so you're kind of making a statement that way too, a little bit Stacy

Ryan Burgess
and actually Jem too. Since all of us have onboarded newer people on the teams, I would be curious, because that one was called out as a big, important thing for Amazon. And I, you know, I kind of agree. I just think that there's ways around it. Is that, you know, that can be really difficult to onboard someone new or make them feel like they're part of that culture. How have you both found it on your teams, like, when you've onboarded someone? Like, are there certain things that are harder, remotely, when someone's joining and like, how have you made that easier for them? I

Jem Young
can speak to the so at Netflix we, we recently started, like, having new grads, which is new to Netflix as a company. We've only been doing it maybe two, two and a half years now, what I've seen is, especially for new grads, people that don't have any career experience. You need to have them in the office, and you need to have them able to roll over to someone's desk and walk through something. Because a lot of people feel, Oh, I don't want to bother them with my question. Like, well, they're your mentor, they're here to help you. But people still feel uncomfortable, but that like, you know, high frequency communication. You get face to face. You can only do in an office setting. You can say you can do over video chat. It's just there's always lag. It's just not the same. So I think there are cases where people do need to be in the office, and especially those early career people, definitely, unless you're just really disciplined, which is pretty rare, that kind of mean. Straight out with no experience onboarding. I've done both. I've done people who have in the office and people who are remote and they they came in. There is something about feeling like the culture or that sense of, oh, wow, this is a real company, not just a name on the internet. By being in a building with with other people, and meeting them face to face and understanding them. But do you need to be in office all the time to really get that experience? No, not if you're senior and you have, like, the right qualities that make you good at remote work, but overall, say, yeah, there are cases when it is beneficial being in person. So I get what they're saying. But a company size of Amazon, they could figure something out, like they're huge, they could just create a division that just onboards people and has a whole remote onboarding if they wanted to they choose not to.

Stacy London
Yeah, I think, like Jen was saying, it's kind of a It depends on if the company's set up to, like, try to be very explicit about being remote friendly and creating connectivity. So you have, like, rituals, or you have things as an example, if you have something where you get the team together once a quarter in person, even though everybody's remote, you create those connections, and for the onboarding, that's different. I guess, if you like, just started, maybe that quarterly get together is not happening for a while, but it depends, like, maybe you're near, near ish and office, and you can, like, you can go in and do some of the onboarding there. I think, I think it can be done. And I think it just the company has to be really intentional about it and create a culture around that. So it's like, maybe the new person, it's not up to them to set up one on ones with everybody and get to know people. Maybe, like, somebody sets it up for them, so then they don't feel like they're, you know, bothering someone, like it's just that, like, small little things like that, where you flip it and make it where someone feels welcomed and invited, instead of them having to, like, reach out, like, stuff like that. Can make a big difference for new grads. I don't know I I was in an office when I first graduated, and I do feel like it could be tough, yeah, because you're not, you're not, like, having a camera and a video on, zoom on, all on, all day, where you're hanging out with your mentor, like, where you can just, you know, like that would be exhausting. But also probably, probably what is best for someone new to their career to, like, really understand how, how to be productive and ask questions at the right time. And the whiteboarding thing, I feel like still is a struggle. I feel like I am such a visual person, and I draw all the time. And no matter what tools in the world there are for digital drawing, they're not as good as just, like quickly drawing something and with someone right there, and like working on an idea and that, that one's always that's still been tough for me. So I feel both ways about it, like I think you can be successful if you really try with the remote culture, but a lot of companies aren't putting in the effort to, like, really make that work, which

Ryan Burgess
in some ways can be understandable too, is it's like, that's not a priority for them. Like, they're like, we've solved this in the fact that we're all in the office and it works, and so we're not going to put that effort into to doing that. Like, I kind of get it, but I do agree with both of you, is that there are ways in which you can do this, or you think, you know you have to be intentional. I think Jem you mentioned, or Stacy, one of you had mentioned being intentional. I think that's exactly it. I think you should be in person sometimes, like, if it is once a quarter or whatever, there is something meaningful, there's certain type of work that if you're in person, you know, building trust, that type of stuff will happen a lot quicker. But even just the collaboration, like you said, Stacy, like on a whiteboarding session, or just planning out, like a higher level architecture, or just some of those things. Being in a room with someone is huge, like the video, just can't cut it. If you do things more intentionally, you can kind of get the best of both worlds, where it is that hybrid approach, but Hybrid's tough too. And I know that you both probably have thoughts on that one, like hybrid, where some of the team is in the office and some are remote, can be really difficult. And I know we've said it on past episodes, especially if you're the like only person,

Stacy London
yeah, I think you still need the remote culture and all those rituals with hybrid. So like when, if it is hybrid, you can't have people calling in from a conference room where there's six of them there and three people on Zoom. Have every single person call in individually to zoom so you can see their face and you can hear them better, and it's not echoey, like you have to do things like that to make it as if everyone's still remote, even though there maybe are a few people that are sitting together like that, just little things like that will make it so that you can still see facial expressions and have have more connection. But you have to, like, mandate that and be like, really good about making sure people do that. And. Yeah, that can get hard in an open plan office, because if everyone's calling in, usually from their desk, it's loud and,

Ryan Burgess
well, that's the thing too. Is like, Yeah, where are the office spaces? Right for that? Not every person can have a meeting room. Like, that's going to be tough to do. I did see Amazon. I think it was 3500 phone booth that they're putting in. They're like, putting a bunch of those phone booths for individuals so that they can do calls and interactions a little bit, having that quiet space more. Because I think people learn to really enjoy that when they're at home is I don't have interruptions. I'm not in the open office space. The

Stacy London
worst part about those phone booths is, if someone comes out of those, and it smells so gross.

Jem Young
I've not been in a good one yet the like, the lighting is always terrible, always terrible. And yeah, they do smell because they don't ventilate. Well, maybe it's a hot take or a spicy take. Hybrid is much harder to manage. I'll say, like, I have two teams, and one's fully remote, one's in person, and the remote team is great. And to me it's worthwhile, the like, maybe a little extra work to manage them, because they're an incredible group of engineers, and I couldn't have done it if I forced everybody to move here. So for me, it's worthwhile. But yeah, hybrid is difficult. If I have an on site and there's one person who or two people aren't there, if I have some big group activity, I have to now plan to make it digital. Instead of being in person. It's just, it's a lot of little things like that, I think, as a as a leader, that add up to, like, more cognitive load, I think, and you multiply that out by a lot of managers and directors and such. You can see where the pushback against remote or even hybrid is coming from. Where they're like, it's so much easier when everybody's there, I can address them. I can talk to them. Is that right or wrong? I don't know, but that's I mean, I think that's a real perspective that a lot of companies are now taking. The other is, it's hard to be a good it takes more work to be a manager, a good manager of a remote team, because you have to find ways to connect with them. You have to find ways to check in when you're not sitting next to them. You have to understand their group dynamic and how they talk to each other without actually seeing that in person. And that is more that's more work. I understand where the push is coming. I'm not saying I agree with it, but really, I think for a company be successful, it either has to be we embrace a remote first culture, or we're all remote first, like GitLab is all all remote. They do it well famously. Or you say, like this Division's all remote, or something like that. But yeah, piecemeal, it's really hard to do well, I think, is what we've kind of figured out in these four years of, I guess, kind of an experiment of working from home. The other

Stacy London
interesting point is, even if you get every you say, everyone has to return to office, a lot of these companies are still global. So they are you still potentially on zooms with people in different countries, in different time zones. So, like, it doesn't, it still doesn't solve, like, the complexities of that and, like, that's still, that's

Ryan Burgess
a good call out, Stacey. It's like, you're still going to have that no matter what. I guess then you're just, like, two big rooms, right? Like you're talking to, like, you know, it's like, we're in one room, you're in the other. So that that can work, but, yeah, that's a tough one too. Is like, you're right, it's still going to be somewhat remote at some point because you're working with different time zones or different locations. Time Zones is hard to even to gems point like having a remote team that's across time zones, it's so much harder. It truly is be

Jem Young
cynical about technology like gem in the old days, if you want to have a meeting with someone in a different office, you had to go fly there, or maybe get on a conference call, but usually you flew. That's the old trope growing up, of the salesperson in a rumpled business suit like flying economy, because they're just flying all the time. Now, we just get on a call, and I can talk to 50 people at once, and I'm not to go anywhere. Where's the savings from that? Like, we don't have to travel anymore. We should all be more productive and be working less, if anything. But we're not working less, we're working more. Where did where did that go? It went into corporate profit somewhere, and then they took it and they didn't give it back. And now we see it where they're like, Oh, now come back to the office. But like they said, We're still gonna be on Zoom, by the way, because I'm traveling, and I'm really important, I can't afford to fly back there, but you all need to come back. And I'll say this, look at the trends of companies. So before they do did layoffs, it's probably about two years ago when, I think when the layoffs like really started. Before they did layoffs, usually the first thing I did was some sort of return to Office. And again, being cynical, you say, oh, okay, so return to Office is more about cutting headcount, cutting the people that want to leave first, and then you start getting the cuts. So now, every time I see return office, I see, oh yeah, they're trying to cut and they don't want to do layoffs, because that looks bad. But if you can get people to quit, like Ryan was saying, it looks. Better. We didn't do anything. We just said this thing. We made up something about productivity, and they all left. And, you know, terrible. It didn't work out for them. But now we don't do layoffs, or maybe we will. We will do layoffs. And look at all the companies that have returned office. They all did layoffs, but usually they did return office first, and then layoffs, and then even more, return to office. Well,

Ryan Burgess
they did say even that Amazon wants to reduce the leadership, right, like, so that they have too they have too many leaders, or, you know, and they just want to reduce the count of that. And, you know, probably have larger teams with one leader doing that. And so they're saying that at the same time as this. So you're like, Well, maybe that's one way to do it. And

Stacy London
then like, and I guess the funny part about that is, if, to gems point about like, it's harder to manage. You know, people, even if it's like a smaller team, if they're maybe remote, you don't know, have interactions with them constantly. But if you're all in an office, but you've now, you've gotten rid of like, layers of management, and you have many more people reporting to you, then you still have that same problem, because you're not going to be able to know, you know, 25 people reporting to you very well, because even in an office, that's not going to be possible, you're not going to be interacting with, you know, 25 people.

Ryan Burgess
One thing that I thought was really funny that maybe is almost a con of remote is going back to the office, like, you have these physical rooms, right? So you can only fit so many people in a meeting room. I think that's a good thing. I think with the remote times like, you know, Jeb kind of even hinted at, like, all these meetings or things that are happening there you working more. And you know, where's the profits going? Because people are, if they're remote, they're doing more. I think the problem too, with the remote side of it is you can fit as many people in a room as you want virtually, and so, you know, you just throw people on the invite, and everybody's showing up. And I think that's ridiculous, because, like, we don't need everybody in a meeting. It's just not effective. It's just not going to be and so that's one thing that I think has bothered me about remote I think somebody

Jem Young
considers, what would you rather do? Would you rather see a concert on the internet in the comfort of your living room, or would you rather go to the concert and like feel the energy? And there is something about the energy of seeing other humans together in one place that you can't replicate over video. But that said, I'm still to be clear, even though I've made both sides of the argument, I'm not for in the office every single day of the week, I think hybrid is a much more effective approach, and it's much more inclusive of everybody, including me, with small kids, I don't go to I go to the office twice a week, one, because I have a super long commute. Two, because I have kids, I've picked them up from school, and that's a big burden. If I have to now, I gotta wake up at five in the morning to get to the office and then leave by three because I gotta pick them up by five, and it's just a mess. So I actually, I love hybrid where I can choose the days I go into the office when I'm like, Oh yeah, I've got a lot of one on ones. Probably not gonna get a lot of heads down time, but I can meet people face to face and be effective in that way. Or the days I'm like, Oh, actually, don't have a lot of meetings. I'm gonna focus on this doc and I'm gonna get that three hours of commute time back where I can just sit at my my computer. I think that's the way to go. Is it more work? Yeah, it's, it's, it's a bit more work. But the trade off and flexibility is, it's the way talking about

Stacy London
the energy of the office. And I think we're really spoiled in the Silicon Valley, where these offices are actually really nice, and they have good interior design, and they have a lot of really great food, and there's maybe they've designed it so that people can have hangout areas and couches and places to socialize, like there's all of that, but there's a lot of offices. Probably most offices are like soul sucking. They're like fluorescent lights, cubes, high walls, cubes.

Stacy London
I've totally, you know, like, there sometimes it, I don't know if it's the energy, if there's an energy build there,

Ryan Burgess
when companies save money on not having so much office space, too, like you would think that, you know, if you don't need as big of office spaces, then because people are more remote, or even the hybrid approach, where you don't have permanent seating. You might have someone like Jem, he's like, I go in two days a week. So he might not have a permanent desk, but he, you know, can just find, like, a hotel, station, or whatever that is. He's able to do that. So I think, like that should be a benefit for the company. I don't, I would think, I don't know, unless there's some major tax breaks are getting for having, you know, physical locations, like, who knows you started with

Jem Young
your states were talking about worker productivity and why that's a difficult thing to measure. I think it's, I won't say, impossible to measure, but it's a very, very difficult thing to measure. It takes a lot of work to do it, and most companies don't put in that. Effort and return to Office, and seeing butts in seats is like a much easier measure for a lot of executives and people that think of that level where they're like, I don't see anybody the engineers, so they're probably not working because whatever reason they want to choose, but if I see them in the office, I feel better about myself because I'm I see all the people I get to lead, but also I know they're working because they're here in the office, which is ridiculous, like

Stacy London
we've all worked with that person that, like, just meanders around the office all day, going desk to desk, just chatting people up, and probably not doing anything harder to do that on Slack and zoom.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, they could still do it, but, yeah, it's just not the same. Yeah, the productivity aspect is, it is a tough one. I've never liked the Aston seat model that does, never made sense to me. Even as a manager, it's like it doesn't tell me anything. It's like someone can stay there be the first one to arrive and the last one to leave. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are delivering, right? There can be reasons that they're not delivering the effective work. And there could be that person who's like, wow, they're always on vacation, or they're, you know, I don't do they actually work. I'm not sure, but they're delivering, and you don't question it, then, right? Like, you're like, that's working for them. It might be a factor that if someone's remote or always on vacation and they don't deliver, you might think, Well, it's because they're remote or they're always on vacation, and that could be it. But there's also people who are very effective, who are remote and delivering. I think it comes down to accountability for the leader, right? If I have a team of 10 people, and five of them are delivering, five or not? Well, that's I'm accountable, right? I'm accountable for that team to deliver, and I got to figure that one out. And it could be letting some people go, or digging in, whatever it is, but it I just don't think it needs to be like you have to be in the office. I

Jem Young
think you nailed it right there. It's much easier at a really high level. Say, some metrics are down. I don't know your your profits are point oh, one percentage of where you project them to be. It's easy, I think, for bad leaders to say, where can I point the finger? It's those engineers. They're not working hard enough. Because I heard about this one guy's cousin's brother who was actually doing two jobs working remotely, and he was, like, scamming this company. Like, I think we all heard those stories on the Internet. Never actually met those people. But you know, executives here, then they're like, that's probably like, 10% of my engineers, they're not they're working two jobs, or they're not working hard enough, so we're going to put them back in the office where I'm guaranteeing they're going to work we're it's funny, but it's also true, because people think that way at a higher level, who one don't understand how engineering works, which is terribly true for a lot of executives at tech companies, but also people fundamentally don't trust their teams and their people to do the work that they said they're going to do. So they the only way they trust them is if they can see them and they guarantee them. And I don't know that's that's kind of the meta story for me, of what all this is, is like, do you trust people who are getting work or getting work done? If so, let them do it how they want, however it's productive and however works for the team and the manager, as long as they can have these bonds. But when you don't trust your your team and the people that work for you, and just think they're perpetually lazy, and that's that's your philosophy in life, it's just they just need to work harder, then you're like, get them in the office, get them back to work. And that's yeah, it's just easier to rationalize than Yeah, how do we actually make people happier and more productive? How do we make work environments that they want to come back to and that facilitates like just building great things? But that's, that's, that's work, but it's much easier to blame the engineers for being lazy and sitting at home playing video games instead of, you know, coding in the office,

Ryan Burgess
which you could play the video games in the office too. So it's

Jem Young
literally, Oh, absolutely,

Ryan Burgess
exactly like, you know, it's, it's funny, yeah, you're right, gem. It feels like the easy way out is, is just to kind of go that route. I think about it is, yeah, it kind of gets to that point, if someone's not delivering, it must be because they're remote. I remember a leader I worked with had mentioned that someone had been going on vacation. Like, you know, Netflix has unlimited vacation, and there's no real like, how much should you take? Or, you know, there's probably an upper bound on how much you should take, but at the end of the day, it's is the person delivering or not, and if they're not delivering, well, that's probably they're on vacation too much, if that's the you know, that could be it. But, yeah, this leader was very much like, we could be getting more work out of them, which to me, is like no, not necessarily. This person is delivering and doing great work. By them doing more doesn't necessarily mean they're going to do better or more work. They might just burn themselves. Out they might be doing great work because they are taking that break and and that, to me, always stuck out to me, where I'm like, yeah, just because you have people there doing the work doesn't mean that it's going to be as meaningful. Same thing with the trust aspect, Jem, like you kind of mentioned like that they don't trust employees. Well, I don't know if you don't treat your employees that Well, are they going to go above and beyond for you?

Stacy London
Just, a lot of companies are just optimizing right now for numbers and not people. It's very short term it's very short term thinking, not very like long term happiness of employees, viability, long term vision. It's, yeah, it's very short term thinking. It'll be very interesting a few years from now to see, like, how all these decisions have played out. All

Ryan Burgess
right, I got one before we dive into pics. If you were at an office and you're like, yeah, totally flexible. To be hybrid. You can go in the office, you can be remote, and they slammed you with the five days a week, what do you do?

Stacy London
I'm looking probably for a different, different situation,

Jem Young
depends where I live, if I'm close to the office or not. If moving is feasible. The challenge I have is I still feel very privileged to be in the the area where I am in the position. I never thought in my my life I'd be where I am. I i get compensated pretty well, and I would still go into the office five days a week for that compensation. I don't know. I'm not that spoiled. I feel very privileged. And I'm like, yeah, if I got to do that, I got to do that. But that works for me because I have a more flexible schedule a little bit. But yeah, would I be happy? No, is the job market going to support me? Like, being like, Fu, I quit, like, it was five years ago, no, and that's kind of the reality people are facing,

Ryan Burgess
that market's going to change eventually. Like, I could be wrong, but I feel like it's going to bounce back. It's like, you know, there's always growth in the tech companies, and they're going to need new engineers all the time, and so I think that's going to adjust over time. But, you know, I like that thinking too is like, if you are close the office, it might not really bother you that much, but it's for those folks that needed that flexibility, or who had no intent to move to Silicon Valley, and, you know, they just couldn't, and have now taken a job, and now that's changed. I think that's going to be a very, very difficult decision. All right. Well, let's dive into picks in each episode of the front end Happy Hour podcast, we like to share things that we found interesting with all of you. Can be anywhere from music, picks, books, TV shows, random things that Jem finds that are way too expensive and he coins as Valley silicon Stacy. Do you want to start us off?

Stacy London
Sure, I've got two picks today. They're a bit of a departure, but it's still music, but they, both of these have some vocals in them, and I usually don't pick things with vocals, so a little bit of a departure. The first ones in my dreams by forte and Ellie Golding. This one the Forte guy, Kiernan, he said, I wanted to make something that was about juxtaposing hard, aggressive sound with delicate and intimate. So her voice is very beautiful in that but it is kind of like an aggressive electronic track,

Ryan Burgess
awesome. I mean, you still stayed on point with your music. So that was, yeah, still on theme. Yeah, exactly gem. What do you have for us?

Jem Young
I've got three picks, and the first one is a music pick. It's funny that Stacey mentioned the departure, or a departure. So because one of my picks is new album from Max Richter, who did the soundtrack to the HBO show the departure, which actually how I discovered Devin I think he's been a pick for Stacy. So Max Richter is very famous for his soundtracks. Released his first ever studio album called in a landscape, and it has some really gorgeous tracks on there. I can't do justice to the poetic descriptions that Stacy applies the music. So I'll say it's really good. It's that some of the tracks are kind of all over the place, but in a good way, in a like, a cohesive way. But they're not all like the same thing over and over again. So I highly recommend, just came out, I think, two weeks ago on Spotify. So check out in a landscape by Max Richter. The second pick I have is a show on Netflix. I haven't finished it yet, but my partner I are working through it. It's delightful. The show is called chaos on Netflix, and it's kind of about, if the Greek gods were real, and in today's world, like, what would that world look like? And it's got, like, Jeff Goldblum plays Zeus. And it's just He is full, full Goldblum there. And it's fantastic. You're like, Yes, he was born to play this role. It's just funny. The I just finished playing a video game not too long ago called Hades, which had a. Like, reconnect. So I like, recognize a lot of the names, but I won't spoil the show. Check it all on Netflix. I think it's still, still in the top 10. It has been for a couple weeks now, but it's, it's a delightful and funny show, but also serious too. I've got one, one more pick, and it's about Valley silicon. Pick. This one comes courtesy of Ryan, uh, who, who sent me my way. I this is usually I for Valley silicon. Those who don't know it's things that only exist because people in Silicon Valley make too much money. So normally what I do is, I say some products, and I say, Ryan Stacy, how much do you think this costs? And then you all will throw up some lowball offers, and I'll say, like, oh, no, you're way off this one. I'm not even going to let you you try, because it's so ridiculous. So AMG, the car company, part of Mercedes, but the car company released a speaker, and it's shaped like an AMG grill, and it has really exhaust ports and everything for the low cost of $20,000 and you really, you really have to see it. So check out the show notes and check out the speaker. It. It's cool, but it's a it's a speaker, and it's so big, and it doesn't look like a speaker either. So I don't know who the market for this is, other than people that just have a lot of money. I don't know how you design around this giant speaker that's shaped sort of like a car grill and things like that. But take a look at it, have your laughs and ponder next time you're in the shower or something. Who has enough money to buy these things and who, who even designed this? Just like, I don't know why this exists,

Ryan Burgess
I'm always curious. Like, how many get sold, right? Like, because I feel like it's so niche of a piece of equipment that, like, does it even sound good to like, I would hope that it's like, really well designed from like, a sound perspective, but like, yeah, it's an interesting it looks cool, but, like you said, gem, it's large. It's like, maybe actually doesn't look that cool. I wouldn't want that in my living room or something

Stacy London
like that. It sounds ugly. I need to see. Yeah,

Ryan Burgess
it's like, it looks like the front end of a car, like it really, truly does. And the exhaust tips are actually gold plated, if I remember correctly, unnecessary.

Jem Young
I'm on this website now, which is also the link to the show notes. And there's more 20, there's like, $40,000 speakers that are anyways, maybe I'm just gonna save these for my future picks. I can just do this whole website. Geez, this is great. Thanks, Ryan for pointing me in this direction.

Ryan Burgess
Oh, yeah, I had a good laugh and thought of you right away. So I had to share that one all right. Time for my picks, I've got two shows, both on Netflix. The first one called the perfect couple. The show was really engaging, like plot, the story kept me good. It was really well done. It's a good mix of, like, drama and a little bit of mystery. I think they could have had a little deeper mystery to it, but hey, that was just me. I think it's really worth watching. It's also a limited series. I really like those limited series because it's like, get to the point, get done. Hopefully it was a good story. So that one was good. I highly recommend watching that. And then my second pick is a comedy. It's called tires. It's basically people who work in a mechanic shop. And it's very laid back to watch. It's quirky, kind of raunchy comedy. I really enjoyed it. It's even just the way it's filmed. I really enjoyed it, so worth checking that one out too. So today we explored Amazon's decision to bring their employees back in the office five days a week, and its potential impact that it will have on both their workforce and the tech industry at large. We covered the pros and cons of in the office versus being remote, and what this shift might mean for the future of work. One thing we all agreed on was there's no real one size fits all, and companies will need to balance collaboration and flexibility. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Is remote work on the way out, or will flexible work policies continue to thrive? Let us know what you think as always. Thank you for joining us on the discussion, and we'll catch you on the next happy hour. Get back in the office.

Jem Young
Yeah, get back get back in the office. Get back to work. You lazy? You.