Amazon to sell Bay Area office complex as sales growth cools
msn.com
msn.com
Talk about buying at the exact peak of the market.
The cat is out of the proverbial bag for all these large tech employers. Doesn't matter if you are Amazon or Google or whoever else. Once people got a taste of WFH life they were never going back to the hour plus commutes, weird social structures and power dynamics, noisy environment, lack of privacy.
[1]https://fortune.com/2023/01/20/work-from-home-remote-work-mo...
Sure it is! Free market competition was made for exactly this sort of scenario. As long as some employers offer WFH, workers can make the choice. If we put a $$ figure on WFH and this makes salaries cheaper for employers that offer WFH, they may eventually win out the market.
Saying "employees can't choose to WFH" may eventually be seen as silly of a decision as saying "we only buy inputs from countries with the highest import tariffs".
Let the market decide. It's going to either way.
Say I'm a company saving $50,000,000/year on office leases. That's a lot of room for higher salaries and nicer bonuses for my employees (including execs). And I still get to keep a huge chunk as extra profit.
Long-term what sounds better to the board: A CEO who says "I saved us 50mil" or a CEO that says "I lost 30% of our workforce but we got them all back to the office! Btw I need another 50mil for the office"
I think that it is, actually.
My company was like that. It started firing people who didn't return to work.
Then someone noticed that there weren't enough people left in certain departments to get things done.
Now the company is 90% remote, and selling some of its office buildings. The only people in the office are those who choose to be, and those whose jobs require them to be hands-on.
Took me a moment to parse it properly that returning to the office is stalling.
I always found dating in the workplace kinda alarming, especially when people would date their subordinates.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/how-google-f...
Just a couple of things you might open the company (and yourself) up to (from the POV of the person in the supervisor role):
- a sexual harassment lawsuit in case things end on a bad note
- colleagues complaining (possibly rightfully so) about favoritism
- inability to set policy because you yourself violate policy
- a potentially very toxic situation in case the relationship ends and you have to continue to work together
It doesn't really matter whether the person in the supervisor role is a male or a female, either way it looks bad and will likely lead to trouble.
And for an encore: between founders the risks (but also some of the potential rewards) are even higher. I've seen a start-up that was doing fantastically well end up in shreds because the co-founders got romantically involved, got married, had kids and then divorced, the divorce pretty much killed the company.
Oh, it is so unprofessional to let the wonder of being alive ever interrupt the demands of efficiency and a steady stream of taxes to the IRS. Imagine the nerve of that co-founder who destroyed the startup for unprofessional things like having children! My accountant will make a very stern frown when I tell him.
Please corporate working Americans if you read this: It is okay to have romance in the workplace! Life is too short. All the rest of the world does this and knows it is natural and healthy.
You may not mean to insult but you certainly don't come off as clever.
How did I know you were American?
You didn't.
Seriously though: you are making a lot of fuss about a problem that doesn't exist whilst at the same time pretending that only the US has a workforce sexual harassment problem which I can pretty much guarantee you isn't the case, and which - without even knowing where you live - I guarantee is also a problem where you live, whatever your personal views on the matter, which seem to hover somewhere between 'outright dismissal' and 'romance is so valuable all rules should be forbidden'.
The profits of stock owners, especially those that are 85 have exactly nothing to do with the matter.
The profits for the 85 year old stock owners have everything to do with it, since it is the company leadership who issues these insane policies of trying to forbid their workers from dating. It is one more way that they seek to dehumanize their employees. That anybody actually listens to them is bewildering to me. I haven't met anybody yet who has such low self respect that they would accept an employer doing that to them.
You talked about getting in trouble, but let's step back and we see that who can actually get into legal trouble if they discipline or discriminate against employees on grounds of their private affairs, or try to interfere in the privacy of their employees.
The crime of sexual harassment has nothing to do with this, the subject is dating in the workplace.
So I'll ignore the rest of all that follows from that ridiculous conclusion because it isn't based in fact, nor is it attributed correctly (it's yours, not mine).
These 'insane policies' are issued by just about every workplace anywhere on the globe with more than a handful of employees because those policies seem to work reasonably well in practice whilst accommodating the reality that people will date other people in the workplace.
As for sexual harassment: that happens and more often than not it is exactly in the situation where superiors push subordinates to do more than their job description strictly requires. Likewise for co-workers if superiors don't run a tight ship.
That none of this happens where you happen to work doesn't mean it doesn't happen. And no, the subject is not 'dating in the workplace', the subject is Amazon that is selling a bay area office complex, but if you want to be specific I did mention the word 'superior' in my comment and you seem to have completely ignored it.
"pretending that only the US has a workforce sexual harassment problem"
I haven't touched on sexual harassment. I'm talking about dating and romance in the workplace, and I can assure you that few workplaces globally have any policies against this, including large and very large companies. Principally the largest workplaces of all: the public sector.
American corporate (and American inspired) anti-dating policies are creepy. Not even the Soviets infringed on their workers like that.
If somebody reads our little flame war here, I'd like to tell them: Your boss or company trying to control who you date is as weird as they trying to control what you eat.
But I do honestly think we have different perspective on the roles of bosses and workers in the workplace. For me, it is alien to refer to any boss as a "superior". They lead the daily work, and that's as far as their authority stretches. Referring to them as "superior" would be fit in a military setting, but nowhere else. Is the worker "inferior" then? Calling them "subordinate" is also very alien to me. Where does that kind of language regarding fellow workmates come from?
I've had bosses and I've been a boss. I'd expect my employees to laugh in my face if I tried to tell them what to do outside of job tasks, just as I would laugh in the face of any boss doing the same to me.
Consensual peer level dating is not a problem in the US either. The issue arises when there is a power differential between the 2 partners. And I don’t know what sad little country you live in where one cannot meet anyone outside work, but doing so is not difficult for me in the U.S. at all.
Any given relationship sprouting from coworking isn't terrible, but in aggregate, I think it warrants a decent amount of frowning.
At the worst it can be akin to nepotism which can quickly erode morale and productivity -- (there's no reason to work harder since the "fiance" will get the promotion).
At a previous company a manager dated her direct employee, and working in her team was really an awful experience because of it. Everyone knew it, and nobody could say anything for fear of retribution.
I remember the first large company I worked for. There were married couples there, parents and their kids there, an aunt with her nephew there.
There are a lot of ways to have family at a company.
People opt-in to jobs and the associated commutes completely voluntarily and consensually.
Not necessarily true. Some employers offer company buses to/from certain cities, with wifi, and they count that as working hours.
Yes, effectively your company is choosing to send your worksite to (a place closer to) your home, so that you can start working sooner and stop working later.
I bet that if employers were legally mandated to pay their workers for the time they commute, that those employers would suddenly see effective reserved private transit as a competitive advantage.
edit: I can't be bothered to fix the formatting of this message.
In society, we recognize that one cannot always have a fully 'consensual' agreement between parties of wildly different levels of power. The only reason this hasn't been extended to corporations is because our political system serves them, not the common man.
It's not. It never has been. If I disagree with the terms of my employment, me being unemployed is a far higher burden than the company not having one extra worker. To act like the employee and employer are equals in negotiation is laughable.
It's also good to appreciate what even a well-paid 21st C knowledge worker has in common with other labor, including coal miners. Solidarity helps achieve goals.
Unions do exist there, however they probably do more harm than good for software engineers because they effectively do not allow raising salaries if needed (any rise in every employment contract needs approval by the union).
Like if 2 people get hired into the same role at the same time and one decides to rent a small apartment near the subway and the other decides to drive 45 miles to a suburb, why is the company on the hook to then compensate them differently?
Or am I misunderstanding the argument?
You've not answered the question, instead pointing out that some people have wages that encourage a commute (at the moment we can probably at least assume that they are choosing that job over other choices, for reasons left unexplored as of yet).
Like, the low paying jobs that don't have nearby housing options probably do have to increase compensation to make up for the lack of housing options. Why is it good policy to force the employer to treat the commute as part of the work day vs working to improve the generally available housing and transport options?
1. HN users are not “everyone in the world”
2. Compared to the normal population, software engineers, near equivalent tech professionals, and people working in the sciences or medical industry disproportionately represent most of HN users based on the content being posted.
I drive 85 minutes one direction to work a $25/hr helpdesk job right now.
Barely making ends meet. Gas + car maintenance is killing me slowly.
Your employer has a right to set their terms of employment and you have a right to tell them to pound sand if you don't want to abide by them.
Three years ago, if you'd skip over any employer not offering fully remote, you'd simply not find a job. So your "right" has no meaning.
My office used to be just outside of Boston. Could I move to Utica, NY and claim that my 8 hour round-trip was the entirety of my work obligation and that I was, by definition, "meeting expectations" merely by driving back and forth every workday?
This is compounded in the bay area by its ridiculous housing market.
It turns out that it's not actually my choice to live somewhere that requires commuting to a work location dictated by my employer.
How about your employer has to cover the rent or mortgage of an average single-family unit within a 30-minute rush hour commute of the office if they require you to come in?
Because the employer isn’t choosing where you live. If they did, then, sure, the commute time would be a cost they imposed, rather than a cost imposed by your choice of residence.
Are the jobs that don’t work from home start paying more to compensate for the lesser quality of work life?
And the worst part is that it wouldn't have to be my fault at all, and it wouldn't even require somebody to do something extraordinarily reckless. Driving too fast through my neighborhood is typical, because it happens to offer the shortest path from A to B for many people, and the road is wide thanks to bike lanes that I have never seen bikes in (because: cars drive too fast). I'll cut myself off here before this becomes an overly long screed.
I feel for all the folks that work at a place that implemented a hybrid model because I don't see that working ever if some people are in the office and some are permanently remote. I bet collaboration and feeling of togetherness suffers. When everyone's remote, you have to adjust your processes and ceremonies to account for that.
Just curious about your mindset on this. I would love to find myself at a spot where I’m working 4 days a week, but not interested in doing 10 hour days.
By the way, I do understand that most people, including myself, would probably have a greater fraction of productive hours of work working 4/32 than 5/40. Not sure if many employees would recognize that though.
I would take an 80% pay cut for a 1 day/8 hr workweek in a heartbeat (the industry is remarkably inflexible and I ended up having to do a 100% paycut for 0 workdays and I'm happy with that too).
I take time off during the week for "appointments" at the park for precisely that reason - it's almost impossible to get a relaxing hike at some of my favorite trails on a saturday or sunday.
The flipside is that it's much easier to hang out with your friends on weekends, because most of them are also probably off. So having a little of both is best.
Screw a pay cut the company should be increasing my salary so they can reduce spending on office space. Except they likely get tax benefits on a lease so that’s not happening.
I want to say I am participating in less gossip, less pointless meetings and less ass-kissing rituals. To me, personally, this counts as a major win. What I certainly do not generate is more 'spontaneous collaboration" that various executives are quick to trot out, but.. I never have beforehand either.
We should theoretically expect WFH compensation to asymptotically approach getting paid (prorated per head cost of office space) more.
Amazon just got rid of a 29 acre property that they paid $123m for, why wouldn’t other companies recognize savings from remote workers?
The lavish amenities of big tech were put there for a reason -- to get people to work more. Maybe secondarily for retention.
If you think that companies are going to look at declining productivity and think "hm, that's an acceptable tradeoff, since I'm paying less for office space!", then I'll take that bet.
Isn't this begging the question? I've never been as productive in an office as WFH. I know that's not everyone but I also know I'm not the only one.
Parent is asserting that even in a world where companies want employees in the office (i.e. the current world), they're going to cave on the matter because of the money they're saving on office stuff.
I guess I missed the decision that an in-office workforce is more productive than fully remote (I personally think that hybrid is bad for productivity, and companies should pick one or the other). There is certainly a lot of evidence and debate on both sides but no real proof one way or another.
And of course I am talking about knowledge workers, not surgeons or assembly line workers.
> What if it becomes clear across the industry that remote workers are first in line for convenience layoffs? Beyond reduced pay and benefit scenarios, I'm curious if reduced job security will be a price workers are willing to pay for WFH.
I grant you that it's not explicitly stated, but it's reasonable to assume that companies aren't just laying off productive workers out of sheer pettiness. Replying to GP with the premise reversed (as you did) implies that the cost/benefit equation is reversed as well.
The premise was that remote workers might be first in line for layoffs, no mention of productivity, and as you said, companies wouldn’t lay off more productive workers out of pettiness. So it’s fair to assume that the list of workers that are candidates to be laid off are already at the same level of productivity.
My comment was asking what if the opposite was true and if when it came time for layoffs, workers in the office were first in line because laying off office workers saves money in office space.
At no point did I say or imply that productivity would be ignored.
Right, and followed with a fairly archaic assumption that remote workers are inherently less productive.
I used to believe it too, so I get it.
But a lot of the resistance is less about productivity and more about sunk costs and not fully understanding a relatively new world. Work was done in the office exclusively for so long that it will be hard to change the way some people think about it.
Guess not.
This is really what you're going with?
You know it'd be perfectly fine if you just said "it's my opinion." It's certainly a whole lot less eye rolling than this story you're selling.
But you're clearly just blowing a lot of smoke. You don't have that data.
Not supplying any actual support was a tip-off, but there's little doubt once you started with snark "Real life is not Reddit, sometimes you need to use your brain to figure things out and get ahead" (real quote, not made up) and then trying to project it onto me.
Like I said, I don't care if your answer is "it's just my opinion that WFH is less productive" or "I've heard about data" but you don't have anything to support what you're claiming.
And doing the "you're mad" thing is the last refuge for a broken argument. Do better.
I do think this is something that is identified in aggregate, however. Maybe you can't attribute the loss in productivity to individual employees, but you definitely notice if projects start taking a lot longer than they used to.
After all, we're in a thread about Amazon selling an Office to save money.
From the article:
"The Bay Area’s office market has been hit hard over the past two years, as companies pivoted to remote work and gave up real estate to cut costs."
It looks like remote work is not being singled out. In fact, it's pointed out as a cost saver.
What makes you believe that remote workers are first in line for convenience layoffs?
I’m not saying hit on coworkers, having coworkers increases the entropy of activities after work and their additional social circles. but yes, also hitting on coworkers happens without incident too
As we get more isolated in remote work, are there any diminishing returns which often not talked about? Any idea, how are these concerns for folks who are in or want to work for startups? How are WFH folks networking in bayarea?
I never used one, but the idea that it's a household name is just tone deaf. Most people probably know it best from the Hulu series about it's demise.
This is overlooked so often by (I am assuming) experienced, older engineers. And it's really a one-two punch for younger professionals.
One, they may not have the family at home to spend that time with. Of course, it's also wonderful to spend time alone, but if a person doesn't have a partner and wants a partner, they're going to get more value out of going to the office for several hours than reading a book for 15 minutes at home. It may be they don't/can't/won't date anyone at work directly, but at the very least they're building their social network - which, before dating apps, was THE best source of dating partners.
And punch number two is that networking is so, so important early to one's career. Sure, you can still reach out for references to people you worked with even if you never saw their face, but the connection is almost never as strong as with someone you meet day-to-day. Plus, social events mean you may meet people in their networks, etc.
I am not fighting for return-to-office. Work from home should always be an option for anyone who wants it, and should be the default for many jobs/companies.
However, it's a tricky situation, because if you're young and want to get the value of going in to the office, but 75% of your peers are WFH, well you're not actually getting much of that networking bonus. Then it becomes an issue of finding the right workplace - but again, that's so much harder for younger people or those earlier in their career (those overlap but are not 1:1).
People are inherently social and no workplace will ever be a strict meritocracy. Eschew small talk at your own risk!
I would like to think that should the default if you have a family.
The upside of having most of the big industry names in a relatively small geographic area is that you can't throw a stone in the bay without hitting someone working in tech. I've done as much networking, if not more, by just having a healthy social life versus going into the office.
I don't understand this comment. We're living in a world where the bulk of our social relationships have mostly an online component. Whether it is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, slack, mastodon, WhatsApp, etc... It's all online. We search for jobs online. We have professional social networks.
And we're expected to believe that networking is either done in person or not at all?
Where did OP make this claim?
Not office relationships.
Networking with people in the same industry isn’t as effective as meeting people from a wider base that can exchange services and support each other.
Corporations are not “families”. Work colleagues are not your friends.
Sometimes they become that. But real community connection that isn’t judging you on your office work is far healthier!
http://www.ipglossary.com/glossary/edifice-complex/#.Y9hFf-w...
As I was visiting the new space-age buildings at Meta, Google, and Apple in 2021 (and reading about Amazon's new HQ), I was thinking "Wow, all 4 are building new headquarters. I wonder if this means we're at the high point of Big Tech." Seems like that was prescient.
Commuting is my biggest complaint with forcefully going back to office. If I have a bus or train that requires no brain power for me to get to office, I am more tolerable to it.
Perhaps this will be a kick in the improve US public transportation for the masses? It is the only silver lining I can think of here.
That's why some L cars have a "hobo corner," and why there's (was?) a homeless shelter at the O'Hare airport Blue Line station.
The CTA may be smelly, but it beats getting shot at by thugs on the expressways.
https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-cta-riders-on-delays-sa...
Also, traffic has gotten a heck of a lot worse as well. Also the homeless have moved into the airport. [At the baggage areas,https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/zm4emb/homeless_pe... ]
I can't do anything while driving beyond listen to music. An audiobook is either going to get my full attention and I'll be distracted while driving or I'm going to miss 30-40% of the book trying to stay alert on the road. At that point I might as well just not listen to the audio book at all if I care about the contents.
However if I could just take trains/buses into the city, provided they actually run regularly (i.e. they don't turn a 40 minute drive into 6 hours), I'd have 1-4 hours a day I could allocate to reading, listening to an audio book, watching TV, playing a game, working on personal projects, or continuing my education.
Sure it might be a long commute but I could do the things that I'd otherwise barely have time for so it's not really lost time. Doubly so if I could actually do work on a company device while I commute (no surprise team meetings if you aren't actually on site yet meaning work would actually get done).
Unless managers/directors/VPs/SVPs/C-suite executives get even more strict and companies around the country band together to not offer remote work closing any/all openings, forcing people back to work.
3 options:
1. get lucky enough to find a job that allows work from home
2. be unemployed
3. suck it up and work for a company that demands you work in the office unless you can find an alternative (aka a remote job)
if you can't find a remote job, you're out of luck.
whether this breaks down in reality (aka... what % of open jobs right now after all of these layoffs are in person vs hybrid vs full remote)
is it a fairytale dream that there's a ton of remote jobs out there? especially with microsoft + google + apple + amazon being relatively against remote work.
Hybrid seems to be more popular with 2 or 3 days of WFH
Even the fully remote alot of them are requiring people to be with in 1-2 hour of a company office signalling that maybe they will be going hybrid as well
It took a little bit of work a decade back to find a great paying remote job. These days it's so much more simple even with some of the largest tech employers forcing people back into the office. I'd argue you don't want to work somewhere that "does remote since the pandemic". Apply at remote-only companies and if you're employable they'll find you a spot since they're dealing with brain drain too.
Hot take, but I've done this remote engineer thing for a long time. Feels like we're in the golden age of remote work compared to my experiences a decade back. Find the position in the world wherein you both enjoy your work and how/where you do it. It's out there, guaranteed.
I'm questioning if it's really "just that easy" to get a remote job.
"Amazon in October 2021 paid $123 million for the 29-acre property in Milpitas, California, part of a strategy to lock up real estate near big cities that could be used for new warehouses and facilitate future growth."
Seems kind of crazy to buy an office complex and raze it for an Amazon warehouse/distribution center.
The work life balance is better, sure, but my productivity plummeted and I was stuck doing nothing for hours every day waiting to hear back from coworkers. The stress involved especially during a recession is more than the benefit of no commute for me.
Love the Bay Area, but we've plucked the golden goose.
And yet, on _her_ street, she'll still only be able to afford that tiny place, no matter the market. Only works if you plan on leaving in the city at some point, and many don't.
Now... my coworkers are from all over the world, they're all really awesome and smart so far, and I feel super lucky they chose me to work with them. I'd probably be more productive in the same physical space as them, but that also wouldn't be likely to ever happen.
Companies doing fully remote properly get access to a much more diverse and broad labour pool. They can create combinations of people that never would have been feasible before.
But surviving is all I can say for it. I worked with people that I would call friends, who I haven't seen now in a couple years. I don't want someone to tell me they weren't really friends, either. They were.
Obviously work taking on the role of social commons isn't ideal and I'm actively trying to grow more places, but it is striking how I'm not friends with literally anyone at work who started after the pandemic, but I am with many of the people who I met in the office
From any comment thread here, it's clear that some people really like working from office and some people really prefer working from home. What I find interesting is that neither side seems to be able to acknowledge that the other exists.
So you end up with this sort of semi faustian thing where thoughts of "maybe certain sub groups of product/design/sales/eng really should just be together/remote" are ejected like hot shit in fear that if that thought is allowed to consume management, which ever option that is picked will dominate everyone.
I've moved to a hybrid work environment. I go into the office twice a week, which helps with these issues tremendously. It also means that my employer has to keep paying salaries that are livable within driving distance of our headquarters (I live about 20 minutes away). My biggest fear about WFH is that employers will wise up and start only hiring people willing to live in the middle of nowhere because they can live just as comfortably on half the salary.
No one should be relying on their job for their primary social experience. If you have never had a social life outside of it, you’re missing out on life.
I've probably been lucky that both the teams I've worked with have been small enough to get to know and strong at mixing async messaging, video calls, and occasional facetime to good effect for both coordination and camaraderie. Not everyone is set up that way; I can think of some previous off-site contract gigs I had which didn't fit that description and your downsides match my experience more closely there.
Overall, though, whether in-office or remote the worst work/life balance issues have always come from sheer workload more than anything else. If that's addressed remote work doesn't make it worse, just changes the moment to moment tradeoffs, and the gains from being able to flexibly context shift and not having to manage commutes are alone so strong I wouldn't want to give it up. Social isolation is a problem I'm willing to solve for myself (and at some level have to anyway).
Then Covid hit and we went through several iterations trying to get people back into the office.
The company spent tens of millions renovating the majority of their buildings to open office concepts less than 18 months before Covid hit and was still in the middle of finishing several of the buildings when C19 hit - thus having people back in the office was a huge risk without cubes and people using "hoteling" and they immediately went to assigned areas and desks to try and get people to come back in.
First it was in two week shifts of A and B with assigned seating. Clean, rotate, repeat. Then it was VP's who wanted everybody back in the office and wanted badge reports so they could go after the people not coming in. They got a metric TON of pushback from managers who were telling their people not to come in if they didn't feel safe. In the end, the executives relented and approved full-time telecommuting to a majority of the employees.
The company has already sold off four of its buildings to out-state real estate companies and over the last year have been consolidating everybody down to one or two of the larger buildings.
I've been about half and half. Its a good break to just to get out of the house once in a while and have lunch with the other devs who are essentially doing the same thing.
Maybe if they built cubicles they’d get some people interested.
One of the places I worked at in the early 2000's "experimented" with the open office concept they read about and how awesome it was for "collaboration" and "team building" and really improved communication.
It lasted six months. Two waves of the flu that knocked down a bunch of developers like napalm was the final nail in the coffin. They took out all the huge tables they put in place of the cubicles and replaced them with the 3/4 height cubicles. They also reverted back to the standard communication. Don't just walk over to someone and start talking. Use IM, ask if they have a minute, be polite, use proper channels, etc.
Suddenly, the office was like a library again. People got it. People getting sick all the time was pretty much eliminated, it was much easier to concentrate and it really felt harmonious again.
So you're telling me Amazon is trying to sell us on a new office concept where we work in stalls like we're horses?
/didn't read the article
The pandemic just reminded companies that working from home is a natural, efficient way to produce output when you don’t require special facilities or equipment that you don’t happen to have in your house.
I'm glad to hear they're coming to their senses.
[1]https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/amazon-milpitas-propert...
Is more warehouse space really the most efficient/needed use for land in the Bay Area?
Efficient as in benefit / land used, maybe not, but definitely once you apply the filter of (achievable given capital costs).
Though I can see why locals would prefer Amazon pay property tax and leave the property unused.
https://i1.wp.com/stablestyle.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04...
Edit: On second thought, that pic is way too nice. It'd be an upgrade from my current cube. I was really imagining something more like this:
https://i.pinimg.com/1200x/24/64/1b/24641b4dbede7e32232ebdab...