Five days a week in the office? Forget it!
A few weeks ago, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that all corporate employees, including AWS staffers, will be expected to work in the office five days a week beginning in January. I don’t work for Amazon, but if I did, I’d quit. Period. End of statement.
I stopped working from offices decades ago, long before it was cool. I did it for two reasons. One, as I told my employer at the time, “If they really needed me in our New York City office, I could fly in the same day, but I doubted if they’d ever need me.” I was right. While I’ve been back to Manhattan many times for business, they’ve never needed me there. And, two, I’d be a lot more efficient working from my home office.
Then along came COVID-19, and many other people found that they could be out of the office and get more and better work done from home.
Jassy in his letter, insisted, as is the wont of arrogant CEOs, that in-office work facilitates better teamwork, brainstorming, and innovation. Really? I found it only increased clique-building; allowed extroverts to claim credit for introverts, women, and minority groups’ work; and led to more middle-management yes-men.
