Amazon issues back to office mandate

[Threviel]

Is it a "layoff" where the lower management gets discretion as to who gets an exception so that they can keep the better ones?

Otherwise I think this could turn out to be a lowering of the quality/capita of the employees, seeing as only the very good ones can quit and be certain to find employment elsewhere

[Josquius]

Is it a "layoff" where the lower management gets discretion as to who gets an exception so that they can keep the better ones?

Otherwise I think this could turn out to be a lowering of the quality/capita of the employees, seeing as only the very good ones can quit and be certain to find employment elsewhere

Another article I saw about the story mentioned a bunch of people claiming to be amazon employees posting on reddit (great journalism guys) that they were going to quiet quit off the back of this.
So I expect a proper free redundancy  choice might not be in the offing?

[grumbler]

Another article I saw about the story mentioned a bunch of people claiming to be amazon employees posting on reddit (great journalism guys) that they were going to quiet quit off the back of this.
So I expect a proper free redundancy  choice might not be in the offing?

I'm not sure what you re saying here, but it is always true that the best/most qualified employees are going to be the first ones to look at outside jobs, because they can and because they want to get the good outside jobs before the rush.

[Threviel]

Yeah, a targeted proper layoff seems better in the long run, kick out the sub-par performers and invest in the good ones.

But I guess Amazon knows what it's doing.

[Zanza]

My workplace just reaffirmed our two days in office policy. There are exceptions for people hired under the assumption of full remote work.

[DGuller]

Yeah, a targeted proper layoff seems better in the long run, kick out the sub-par performers and invest in the good ones.

But I guess Amazon knows what it's doing.

Or it could just be not a layoff, but a decision about how their business should be managed?  Yes, they may lose some top performers, but good businesses understand that team performance is not just a sum of individual performances. 

My first company was notorious for being filled with mediocre people, and that anyone with ambition should not stick around there for more than a couple of years at the start of their career.  Looking back, I would definitely confirm that employees there, especially the lifers, were for the most part truly mediocre, although there were always exceptions.  However, the stock that those employees got for a yearly bonus 26 years ago that was worth $1,500 at the time is worth $675,000 now.  Not bad for a yearly bonus.  One of the keys to that company's success was that their management team was very strong, and apparently it was good at chugging along without requiring individual excellence.

My second company was the opposite:  it never had problems attracting good people despite its poor reputation, but time and again it wasted those good people, as the company was a disorganized mess and was always lurching from one initiative to another.

I don't know which kind of company Amazon is, but judging by stock performance, I'd say it's closer to the first one.  Maybe it's confident enough in its processes to not fear losing some good people, and came to a conclusion that the synergy effect of people working together in person more frequently would be worth the losses.