Amazon postpones return to office until January 2022

My company announced a couple of months ago that they are planning on having everyone come back into office starting on September 1st. I request a "full remote exception" three times, and was rejected each time, one of which coming straight from the CTO. So I found a new job and put in my two weeks - somehow, everyone up the chain from me was incredibly surprised and disappointed, and even offered me a "full remote exception" if I stayed (I declined). How long are companies going to pretend that Pandora's Box hasn't been opened with regards to remote work? Why are we pretending that employees aren't as productive when at home? This last year and a half have shown tech companies posting record profits, so it's clear that employees are just as productive from their homes as from the office. Those who can adapt to this new world will be able to hire the best talent, and those who can't are going to really struggle and lost talent.

I don’t want everyone to work remote or everyone work in the office or everyone work remote 2 days and in the office 3 days. What I do want is every person can decide for themselves what is best for themselves without any repercussions. We need to learn that even if we are in the office that not everyone will be so every meeting will have people calling in on zoom - and that is okay.

I feel like I'm in the minority here as a tech worker, I can't wait to return to office full time and hopefully will be able to work in the office 5 days a week. WFH has just never worked well for me personally. I enjoy the physical separation between work and home, and even given the opportunity to work from anywhere in the world, I would still choose to live where I currently do (nyc).

Extremely grateful for tech giants like Amazon putting pressure on the rest of the industry. I wouldn't work for them but I definitely benefit from them in cases like this. Hopefully the rest of the industry follows suite.

And that will be postponed till later in the spring.. I can't see things improving during the winter.

We did the same thing a couple weeks ago. Predictions are hard, especially about the future, but I&#x27;d bet money that will slip, too.<p>If you&#x27;re waiting for &#x27;normal&#x27;, I think you&#x27;re already soaking in it. At least for the next 18 months or so, which is effectively forever in terms of flexible change.

I took bets with others on when we&#x27;d be allowed return to the office. This was in March 2020.<p>Some said April, some stated June or July. One outrageous bet was January 2021 which we all took as a bit of a joke. No way would this last that long. &quot;People will wear masks and isolate and we&#x27;ll beat this&quot;.<p>We made the same bet in March 2021, laughing at our previous bad estimates. The furthest out was again January next year. That was a ridiculous suggestion we thought. &quot;The vaccine is here it should be over soon&quot;.<p>I wonder how 2022 will go.

Kinda off-topic, but am I the only one who&#x27;s experience brain rot from not being able to go poke a colleague on the shoulder and head off to a separate room and have a loose semi-relevant conversation about some work topic (with umpteen digressions) for half an hour?<p>Seriously, I think 90% of every good idea I&#x27;ve ever had has come to me in situations like the above. I don&#x27;t wanna <i>force</i> people to come back to the office with me, but I&#x27;m just surprised that more people aren&#x27;t feeling like they&#x27;ve lost something important without it. Yes, I <i>can</i> informally start off a chat with a colleague over Slack, but it just doesn&#x27;t work for me. People think too much before they write something. All the good ideas die if people weigh their words too much :-(

I bet we&#x27;ll see PR from Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft soon, with roughly the same timeline.

Amazon Corporate. And Amazon&#x27;s website people. But Amazon is not a website. It is a warehouse and delivery company. The vast majority of employees, those working in warehouses and delivering things to customers, will likely not ever be able to work from home.

I wonder if this will affect AWS re:Invent - meant to be kicking off end of November in person. I expect it would flop if it was just customers and no engineers.

Vaccine rollout went so smooth it turned around my pessimism for 3-6 months, but now the last 2-3 weeks have me quite pessimistic.<p>The breakthrough cases (quantity, severity) plus ability of vaxxed to spread, anecdotes of everyone knowing people getting sick, where we are with cases vs last summer, plus % unvaxxed in certain demographics within cities makes RTO seem quite untenable now.<p>Vax seems to protect against hospitalization &amp; death from delta, but can very easily be laid up a week or two sick and have non-trivial respiratory issues.<p>Went into office last week 1st time, stunned to see 2019 style maskless floor with full density occupancy of desks. Attendance is being centrally coordinate &amp; desk reservations required, so this was no coincidence or accident...<p>I go 18 months without eating indoors, shopping for groceries w&#x2F;o mask, getting on a plane, etc and now I&#x27;m gonna sit on a crowded open office floor at 100% occupancy maskless 5 days&#x2F;week? WTF.<p>NY offices seem to be ignoring that even if 80% of white collar staff they employ are vaccinated, the outsourced&#x2F;building services staff are not. Not to mention the place you pickup lunch, coffee, and the cross section of people on public transit.<p>Some actual numbers from recent NYTimes&#x2F;City official stats for even having 1 shot yet:<p>* NYPD 45%<p>* Black Bronx residents ~36%<p>* South Williamsburg ~35%<p>* MTA subway &amp; bus staff ~45%<p>* NYC teachers (whose union demanded to be front of line but refuse a mandate) ~60%<p>* NYCHA ~38%<p>NY seems to be dragging their heals on this, some combination of BdB - Cuomo feuding, Cuomo busy with impeachment defense, return of in-person schools, and the Commercial RE&#x2F;Bank&#x2F;Dining industry pressures. As soon as City&#x2F;State put an indoor mask mandate in place, it puts indoor dining, schools and offices into question all over again. So the tail is wagging the dog, as they say.

Much more reasonable than an employer mandating a vaccine to return to an office setting.

Surprise surprise! no one really believed that 2021 would have been the go back to the office, business as usual year right?<p>COVID-19, unfortunately, is here to stay, and by looking at all the people that could get vaccinated and decide not to, and unfortunately all the people around the world that would like to get vaccinated but can&#x27;t, I have hard time seeing a &quot;going back to normal&quot; anytime soon.<p>Also, we have to hope that the virus does not mutate in more aggressive forms that could defeat the efficacy of current vaccines.<p>Companies small&#x2F;medium&#x2F;big should make piece with their mind and accept the fact that remote working is here to stay, it is a viable option and they should stop expecting people to work from an office just for the sake of having people around.

It is a race between variants and vaccines... and the variants are winning.<p>I think the only solution is to engineer a benign variant of the virus... one that spreads easily but doesn&#x27;t make people sick, and yet gives full immunity to those who are infected with it. Then gather all the anti-vaxxers by offering them free concert, pizza and beer, and secretly release the benign variant on them!<p>This is the only way to immunize the entire country. Once infected with the benign variant, the anti-vaxxers can be encouraged to go to concerts, crowded places, not wear masks, and so on. The benign variant will soon be the dominant variant, displacing all other variants!