A rebuttal of some of the points of Mr. Jassy

Note I come to work five days a week. I like being in the office. I enjoy being around human beings. And have been leading remote teams for almost 20+ years. In that time, my groups have delivered over 10 billion dollars in actual money, many multiples of that in shareholder value.

Mr. Jassy wrote this memo to his staff, telling them why he would require everyone to come to work.

Update from Andy Jassy on return to office plans (aboutamazon.com)

So he starts with this:

It’s easier to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture when we’re in the office together most of the time and surrounded by our colleagues. It’s especially true for new people (and we’ve hired a lot of people in the pandemic); but it’s also true for people of all tenures at Amazon. When you’re in-person, people tend to be more engaged, observant, and attuned to what’s happening in the meetings and the cultural clues being communicated. 

Except if you have ADD and sitting in a meeting where you cannot sit still gets in the way. Or you are deaf, can’t hear what people are saying, and don’t have zoom translate what is being said in real-time.

For those unsure about why something happened or somebody reacted a certain way, it’s easier to ask ad-hoc questions on the way to lunch, in the elevator, or the hallway; whereas when you’re at home, you’re less likely to do so

I am surprised by this one. The emergence of technology like Slack or the DM function in Zoom has democratized communication. Finding time for a senior leader to ask them a question is tricky. And the senior leader in the elevator can walk away from you. But when you send them a message, they tend to take the time to respond because they can do so asynchronously.

In the more productive brainstorm sessions I’ve been a part of over the years, people get excited and blurt out new ideas or improvements to prior proposals, quickly advancing the seed of an idea, and leading to the broader group getting energized and feeling that it’s onto something. This rapid interjecting happens more often in-person because people feel less inhibited about jumping in or even interrupting sometimes. 

I am a cis-gendered white man at the apex of my profession, which worked for me. How many women and non-white and non-cis-gendered men have we trashed over the years because they didn’t speak up?

My first meeting back in person was the same old guys talking with all of the women and others silent.

It was so bad we had to introduce zoom to deal with the problem.

Serendipitous interactions help it, and there are more of those in-person than virtually

This one surprised me. The number of in-person interactions is an order of magnitude smaller than the interactions with people digitally. Just count the volume of people you contact over email, the number of people your email goes out to, etc. Mr. Jassy feels that is low-value communication.

Regardless, Mr. Jassy has made his choices, declared that he believes they are correct over other people’s lived experiences, and can force his employees to choose to work for Amazon or leave.